Herman Li, Guitar God

My junior year of college I spent winter term at Birkbeck College, part of the University of London. I lived there for about 3 months. In my journies around town, I made friends with a couple of local guitar players I met at various shows and guitar clinics. One of them was this Asian dude named Herman Li. He was THE shred guitar fanboy – super long hair, big collection of autographs, said “dude” all the time and his nickname was “Shred.” He was a great guy. We kept in touch sporadically over the next few years as he started his first real band, a group that eventually evolved in Dragonforce…the band of his dreams: the fastest-playing, highest-singing, most Dungeons & Dragons metal band I’ve ever seen. And kids, I’ve seen a lot.

Today, Herman is a bona fide guitar hero. I’m seeing him in guitar magazines in the States now. It’s amazing how good he’s gotten – he’s so fast you just have to laugh yourself silly. Just watch this, a solo section where he trades licks with his bandmate Sam Totman. For the full song, click here.

Metal like that doesn’t wind my particular clock the way it used to, but I still marvel at Herman’s will to power – he has fulfilled his goal of becoming the shred monkey guitar hero he always wanted to be. Here’s to you, lad.

Free of Cancer

Ladies and gentlemen, my grandmother Virginia Vorse Todd has been declared free of cancer! She’s 92 and she will NOT be trifled with!

Virginia V. Todd, Cancer Ass-Kicker

When we first heard the diagnosis of a small inoperable cancer development in her upper lung, I thought this was how it was going to end for her. It was grossly unfair, considering how her lungs have always been clean, at least since the 1950’s when she quit smoking. But this will not be the end for her. She made it through the chemo with most of her hair intact, and she still lives on her own, albeit with help from mom. I’m so glad it won’t end the way I had assumed it would. Her warranty isn’t up yet. She’s still got a good 10 years/100,000 miles left in her.

Best Daily Show Bit Ever

Every night The Daily Show delivers the finest comedic satire that I think this world has ever produced. Every episode is worthy of the praise Saturday Night Live gets (or used to get, or occasionally gets) for being the best comedy since Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Tonight’s episode was the first time I felt compelled enough to transcribe a bit for posterity. This from a conversation between Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee:

Jon: Sam, what are you reading from?

Sam: It’s the official Middle East Reporting Template. It provides the basic story of cyclical violence. All you have to do is fill in the specific country, weapon, and number of hostages – boom, there’s your story. It’s a lot of fun. Around here they call it MidLibs. Here’s one my niece Kimberly filled in. “Monkey planes continue to rain strawberry jam from the skies as tensions in the region mount over a unicorn prarade.” Kids, you know…

Jon: Sam, but is there any chance that this is a different kind of conflict, that might change this paradigm; I mean that out of all this cyclical horror something positive might result?

Sam: Your lips to God’s ears…I mean Allah, I mean Jesus, er, Abra – God I hate this f*cking place! Argh!

Jon: Sam, how is all this affecting the people on the ground?

Sam: Well, Jon, for now, the hope is that these violent aerosols between Israel and Lebanon won’t result in a nuclear fudgecicles. Ooh! KIMBERLY!

Jon: Thank you, Sam. Samantha Bee, everyone.

So perfect. So true. So damned funny.

And the Lord Did Grin

The gods of guitar acquisition hath smiled upon me. I took back the Eric Johnson strat I mentioned awhile back because, for me, no guitar is worth $1650. Perhaps as karmic payback, I discovered yesterday a Starfield Cabriolet. Starfield was a brand made by Ibanez for a few years in the early-to-mid 90’s. They listed for around $650, and this one was in apparently perfect condition for $319. Here’s an example of what it looks like.

I found it yesterday at the Blue Suede Shoes Antique Mall in Bryant while shopping with Heather and Kristin. I didn’t jump on it initially; I wanted to research it a little beforehand. These are pretty rare guitars, and I think there might be some collector value to it. I also took an amp with me to make sure the electronics were OK. Everything felt great to I took it to the register and the nice lady informed me that everything in that booth is 30% off right now….so the guitar cost me $224.

So jazzed was I about the 30% off that I went back and bought two cymbals and a microphone (Sabian crash, Pearl ride, and Shure SM48) for $34, $40, and $24, respectively. Hooray for cheap gear!

In other news, PBS’s Soundstage program featured Bill Laswell’s musical circus of freaks, including Bootsy Collins, Buckethead, Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan, DJ Disk, and several others. I had always assumed Laswell’s work to be too far under the radar for PBS, but perhaps the world is changing for the better.

On a completely unrelated note, I had a dream last night that my ceiling was covered in ants. I woke up to discover my can of ant-fighting Scrubbing Bubbles somehow made its way into the bathroom overnight. I think I woke up in the middle of the night and moved it there for some reason. Weird.

Freakish Coincidences

So I’m a big fan of this guy Bryan Beller, bass player for Mike Keneally. Bryan has just recently moved to Nashville, and in looking for work has set up a transcription service. Send him a tune and he’ll transcribe it. When I read this in his email newsletter, I immediately thought, “hmm, bass player offering transcriptions…I should commission a transcription of John Patitucci’s “Scophile,” one of the knottiest melodies in the known jazz-rock universe.

I keep reading the rest of his newsletter, and as I scroll to the bottom he says he’ll have a column in the next issue of Bass Player magazine wherein he will transcribe the melody[1] to John Patitucci’s “Scophile.”

Now, kids, that’s just freaky. And because you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s the song in question:

John Patitucci – Scophile (right click to save as..)

And for those who might care, here’s the column in question, Bryan Beller’s Woodshed at BassPlayer.com.

1.) Or “head” as the jazzers call it.

King Kong as Elaborate Metaphor for Black America

I was listening to a live version of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong” this morning and Frank introduced the tune by saying this:

The name of this song is “King Kong.” It’s a story of a very large gorilla who lived in the jungle, and he was doing OK until some Americans came by and thought that they would take him home with them. They took him to the United States and they made some money by using the gorilla. Then they killed him.”

Often have I heard that the Godzilla movies were a subconscious metaphor for World War II and Pearl Harbor’s awakening of a “sleeping giant” in the minds of the Japanese. So I wonder if King Kong isn’t subconsciously a parable about Black America: we went into the jungle and brought people back to make money off of them and we mistreated and often killed them. Certainly we killed their sense of cultural and religious identity.

It may be a stretch, but it would be a better explanation for the incredibly iconic status of King Kong in American film history than just the film’s special effects. Why else would a story of a giant primate on the rampage, who runs off with a (white) girl be so fascinating to so many? Would the film have worked if Kong were any other animal but a lower primate, so close to us evolutionarily, and to many minds in the early/mid 20th century, a closer relative to blacks than whites? I’ve always been at a loss to explain the appeal of King Kong. I never saw the recent remake, because I knew the story and wasn’t very excited by it the first time. This larger allegory makes sense to me, at least.

How My Life Was Vastly Improved by 1/8″ to 1/4″ Inch Jack Adaptors

I’ve always had an affection for toy musical instruments, particularly cheap ones purchased at Savers.  I also have a Speak and Spell. I had been trying to devise some way to amplify these things via guitar pickups, but I’d need to modify a guitar to really get the job done. But last night as Bryan and I were rehearsing the Corey Hart classic “Sunglasses at Night,” Bryan pointed out that all I need are some 1/8″ to 1/4″ jack adaptors, and I could use the headphone outs to send signal to an amp or PA.

Fortunately I have such things handy. Now the world is a whole new place, the birds are singing and choirs of angels litter my path with lotus petals. Or something.

So we played Whitewater last night, toys in tow. The adaptors allowed us to use my $3 keyboard as a drum machine – I ran it through my Digitech Whammy Pedal to take the sound an octave down (because kiddie-keyboard drum patterns are really heavy on the treble). I used the Speak and Spell for fills, musical and verbal. I also brought along my old digital answering machine, because the female voice that says “You have no new messages” sounds really spooky through a reverb-and-delay-laden guitar amp.

Good times. And only the beginning. I stand at the cusp of my own personal revolution in sonic experimentation, all because of the simplest of suggestions. Such is the way of innovation.

Perpetual Adolescence?

I am realizing of late that my generation was the first to really get marketed to in a psychically deep way. Where in my father’s generation, something like the Red Rider BB Gun might have been the cool thing to have, my generation insisted I have every facet of the Star Wars/Transformers/G.I. Joe/He-Man/M.A.S.K/etc universe. So many toys. So many commercials and cartoons for toys. And then came the explosion in video games. Now, as the children of the 80’s are hitting their 30’s, I see that we have yet to put away childish things, many of us unrepentantly so[1]. Now, I’m personally proud to admit that I have not, nor will I ever “grow up” in a conventional sense, but more and more I wonder if my position wasn’t psychologically impressed upon me by the Toys R Us jingle, “I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid.”

What if a significant portion of my personality was marketed to me by Hasbro®? Maybe we don’t want to give up on acquiring toys because we’ve been conditioned to continue enjoying them, so lodged in our subconscious is the allure of the fantasy world, so appealing is the packaging, or in the case of videos games, so gratifying is the accomplishment of the game? And this isn’t just a nerd thing…I just watched leading man Vince Vaughn play video games in his swank Chicago high-rise condo in The Break Up. Are we a generation who has had the the Peter Pan Syndrome psychologically transmitted to us by Madison Avenue?

It’s harmless of course; I’m still a mature 30 year old who has a career and a mortgage, and who doesn’t behave like a teenager. I do, however, prefer to dress in odd t-shirts and I still find trips to the toy department appealing, even if my purchases there are fewer and further between. A great lesson from Twilight Zone: The Movie that I took to heart was to grow old with a fresh young mind. I think that’s something good for everyone to do.

1.) Of course I’m not talking to you, Josh. What would make you think that? 😉