Rock and Roll Faces and David Gilmour

Jamming with my guitar teacher last week, and again he mentioned that I need to incorporate more emotion in my playing. To mechanical he says. His suggestion...make some "rock and roll" faces while playing. So I'm jamming in the basement making all types of weird faces as I'm playing. I can only imagine what it looks like.

We were talking soloing etc., and we starting looking at Gilmour's solo in Comfortably Numb. It's relatively simple but damn does it sound good, every note seems to be perfectly placed. I already know the solo to "Another Brick in the Wall pt 2", which is another Gilmour classic. Again it is a pretty simple solo, but anybody who likes rock music recognizes it. I was never a big Pink Floyd fan growing up and never realized what a great guitar player he is. He definitely puts note selection and emotion ahead of speed and technique. I think I am going to have to "Study" some Pink Floyd.

One Hit Wonders

It always amazes me how a band can write one or two great tunes but the rest of their stuff is crap. What is it that allows a musician to come up with an immensely popular tune but then can't follow it up and are gone after their next album or two. I realize writing a good song isn't easy. Hell I write about 10 bad ones each week on my guitar, but then again I suck. These are guys who are "professional" musicians. So here is my list of my favorite one hit wonders (not in any specific order)....

Free.....All Right Now
Ten Years After.....I'd Love to Change the World
Aldo Nova.....Fantasy
Twisted Sister......We're Not Gonna Take It
The Firm.....Radioactive
Autograph.....Turn up the Radio
Honeymoon Suite.....Feel It Again
Kix.....Don't Close Your Eyes
Faster Pussycat.....House of Pain
Accept.....Balls To The Wall
Red Rider.....Lunatic Fringe


And here are a few bands/artists who I wish would have been one hit wonders (actually I wish they would have been no hit wonders). These bands for the most part are fingernails on the chalk board to me:

• Poison (Nothin but a Good time is their only good tune)
• Green Day (Holiday but after that suckage)
• Milli Vanilli (don't need to say anything here)
• Nirvana (CRAP CRAP CRAP, Kurt did us a favor)
• Ramones (Noise)
• The Clash (you can "Rock The Casbah" right up your ass as far as I'm concerned)
• The Sex Pistols (In General early Punk Rock just sucks ass musically. Sure if you get off on their "rebellion" that's fine but don't call them musicians)
• Ramones (Hell even I can play this shit)
• Iggy Pop (Sure if you are into self mutilation I guess he's good, but as a song writer and artist forget it)
• Marilyn Manson (Don't get it....but I do like Alice Cooper so go figure)
• Bob Dylan (Everybody must get stoned...sure that is the only way you can listen to him)
• Anything by a Rapper, except Anthrax type of rapping.

Rappers...that's a long rant. I guess I just don't get it. But is sampling somebody else's music and adding your own lyrics really creative? I realize that in many cases the "music" isn't sampled but it just sucks. I guess maybe people get into their "controversial" messages, but a song should stand on it's harmony/melody etc., the words themselves are irrelevent. I have to stop now or else I will continue on for days on this and similar topics. Don't want to miss the poker game.

Rough Weekend Coming Up

Sigh, looks like a tough weekend coming up. Saturday morning either work or fishing, Saturday afternoon Guitar playing, Saturday evening Poker, Sunday morning Fishing, Sunday afternoon Football, Musky Club business, and Guitar. Sunday evening Bills and Football.

How will I ever survive.

More Cowbell..........

Started working on "Burnin for You" by Blue Oyster Cult. What a great tune. Not real difficult to play, even for me. I hadn't listened to BOC much recently but when I decided to learn "Burnin" I went back and started listening to them again. What an under-rated band. They have some great tunes. Obviously "Burnin", "Don't Fear the Reaper" are great tunes, but so are "Veteran of the Psychic wars", "Harvester of Eyes", "Astronomy".

I guess back in the day, they were known as Heavy Metal for the "thinking man". I'm not really sure what that means. It's to bad that most people only recognize "Don't Fear the Reaper" as the "more Cowbell" song. BOC is the voice of the revolution - they just said so on That 70's Show.

So, good old Guitar Teacher Boy must have decided it's time to completely destroy Musky's guitar playing confidence. This week we were jamming some A blues. Mid way through, he stops and says you know what, your picking is getting better, but you play way to mechanically. You need to show some feeling, you need to build tension with your solos. So, now we are working on Bends, Slides and Volume within my soloing. I was actually happy with my Bends and Slides...lord knows I worked on them enough when learning the solo's in "Sultans of Swing", "Another Brick in the Wall", and "Fight the Good Fight". Now I'm bending everything in sight....owwy, my fingers hurt.

On another note, I had to go to Guitar Center today. I hate going there. But I need some "Nut Sauce" so that I could (well) lubricate my nut. Yes, that would be singular. Luckily I'm not similar to Lance Armstrong, so when I mean nut I mean the nut on my guitar. My B-string is binding. Anyways, as usual there were a bunch of guys wanking, playing way to loud. When out of the blue, I hear a guy rip off an amazing riff that sounded a cross between EVH and George Lynch. I strolled over to where the guy was playing and damn he was the ugliest MF'er I have ever seen. Luckily it seems that the only riff the guy knew was the EVH/Lynch riff. I don't think I would be able to handle a guy that ugly being a good player (I'm just shallow that way). He played it over and over and over and over again and he just kept getting louder and louder. So without my nut sauce I left and went back to work. Sigh.