Well I Know What’s Right

I have no moral objection to shredders, and some of my favourite guitarists have put down some lightning fast licks.  But have a listen to the guitar solo in Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down.

What additional notes would improve that solo?

Just Get On Board

I could never figure Jeff Beck out.  I mean, his talent is undeniable, and, in many respects, I’ll admit maybe even unsurpassable.

And I get that not everyone has the same taste, but I have always struggled with his choice of tunes.  And his choice of notes is usually, well, baffling – at least to these blues-rock, minor pentatonic-conditioned ears.

So when I hear songs like, People Get Ready, which has some of the tastiest guitar work in the last 60 years, I can’t help but wonder how much larger Jeff Beck would be in our collective psyche if he’d been more, well, mainstream.

But he’s obviously his own man, and for that he will always have my respect.

Something Somewhere Has To Break

Was listening to Synchronicity II the other day, one of my favourite Police songs.

Great driving beat, terrific tension, overwhelmingly depressing lyrics tempered with humour ... a great song.

One of its best features is the non-solo. Some noises and screeching sounds explode, complimenting Daddy's seemingly secret knowledge that it's all pointless and we're all doomed.

Explosions, noises, howls, yet it's all very understated ... maintaining the tension as the incessant guitar riff wells back up, taunting, baiting, threatening untold malice. Keep running, man. Unspeakable horrors are still to come.

Pretty clever for a song built around guitar riffs to not have a guitar solo. I guess The Police knew there was only so much more we could take.

About Influences - Part 2

After such a promising start, music seemed to lose the plot in the early 70's.

Folk disappeared and Rock 'n' Roll was unofficially abolished.  Soul morphed into Disco, and Metal split into cheesy Power Pop on the one hand and some kind of demonic cartoon on the other.  Prog Rock became so bloated and pretentious is started to suffocate itself.  You sure couldn't dance to it.

What a godsend, then, when Punk opened a door for the New Wave explosion in the late 70's.  Suddenly things were fresh and energetic again.  We had guitar hooks, palm-muted shuffles, catchy harmonies and energetic beats.  We even had a return to boy-meets-girl lyrics, though with a lot more irony and menace than we got in the 50's and 60's.

And it wasn't copycat stuff.  The Cars, The Police, The Pretenders  ...  the new bands created a new sound even while they made us feel it was 1965 all over again.  New harmonies, new technologies, and new attitudes - all added fresh life to old ideas.  Artists like Elvis Costello and Tom Petty got to the very root of things, sounding authentic, yet current and relevant at the same time.

Then is all went wrong again.

The guitars were replaced by synths, the leather and denim were replaced by spandex, bad hair proliferated, and the 80's became a virtual wasteland. 

Somewhere in there I realized that you couldn't even hear a guitar on the records I was buying.  That's when I started filling out my record collection with stuff I had missed the first time around. 

That process required a bit of thought and introspection;  I had to analyse what it was I really liked, and why.  Part of the answer was obvious, of course:  guitar-based rock 'n' roll, creatively presented and expertly produced.

The other part of the answer was an overdue surprise:  the thread that held everything I'd ever loved together, the foundation on which all this wonderful music had been built ... was The Blues.