Geeky Bob

Today marks the 46-year anniversary from Van Halen's multi-platinum debut album. To celebrate this occasion, I thought I'd share the following story from my youth.

In the fall of 1978, I was starting out in Middle School, and I made friends with another student, Gene, who was just beginning to play guitar like I was. We met because Gene was carrying a notebook emblazoned with the KISS logo, and at the time I was a big KISS fan. (Hey, no judgment.) Gene and I eventually played together in several bands throughout our Middle School and High School years, and we've remained in touch over the years. I visited Gene and his wife recently, and Gene recounted the story of when I came up to him during our 7th grade year to say, "Dude - you've got to hear this new album I just bought!!!" The album in question was Van Halen's debut offering, which had been released earlier that year.

When Gene came by my house after school, the track I immediately dropped the record needle on was - of course - "Eruption." Gene's mind was completely blown, as mine had been when I first listened to the album end to end. I had a reel-to-reel deck at the time, and we recorded "Eruption" on tape so we could slow it down, and yet it was still so @#$% fast. Neither of us had seen Eddie's signature two-handed tapping yet, so we had no idea what EVH was doing to play at such a mind-numbing tempo.

By my Freshman year of High School I would play "Eruption" at the backyard parties and other gigs that typical High School bands would get, though never as cleanly as EVH. (And these days I probably couldn't pull off playing the bulk of "Eruption" without some serious practice.)

Nevertheless, EVH turned my world upside down - but in a good way. To this day I phrase a bunch of chords on the guitar in ways I learned from playing Van Halen's assorted catalog of songs, and my efforts to learn what EVH was doing on each of Van Halen's albums made me a much better guitar player. There are few albums that I can literally say altered the course of my life, and if you read my blog from a few years ago titled My List of 20 Most Influential Albums, you'll see that I listed Van Halen's debut album at #3.

My brother shared the following video on social media of Rush during their "R30" tour, in which they were celebrating their 30th anniversary. Despite having seen the video before, I quickly found myself wrapped up in nostalgia as I rewatched Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee, and Neil Peart as they treated their fans to a musical retrospective of their storied career.

It's difficult to believe now, but the first time I saw the "Triumvirate from Toronto" in April of 1981, Lerxst and Dirk were just 27 years old and Pratt was just 28 - yet they were already on top of their game and the undisputed masters of progressive rock's heavier side. Rush was touring to support their Moving Pictures album, which came rapidly on the heels of their Permanent Waves, Hemispheres, A Farewell to Kings, and - of course - 2112 albums.

There are few bands who have managed to release a comparable collection of monumental, musical masterpieces in so short a time. The Boys from Willowdale join the ranks of The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Yes, and a handful of others whose sphere of influence spans across tens of thousands of other world-class musicians.

While I admit that the occasional uneducated malcontent will utter some senseless trifle like, "...but I don't like Geddy's voice," those people can easily be discounted because they're generally not musicians. To put that another way, if you're a musician and you've seen Rush, then you know.

UPDATE: This post used to link to "https://youtu.be/F9NTk0qG1Ig" for the video.

Today's transcription is a song that I began transcribing a couple years ago, but I never took the time to sit down and finish until today: "Love, Salvation, the Fear of Death" by Sixpence None The Richer. This song does a great job of showcasing J.J. Plasencio on the bass (and I'll say more about him in a moment), and Matt Slocum's amazing skills with myriad, layered guitar parts. I briefly mentioned Matt Slocum a few years ago in my Transcribing Girlfriend in a Coma by The Smiths blog when I was discussing Johnny Marr, and the two of them fall into something of the same category for me. As always, I'll have some notes to share after the following video.

Here are my notes about this transcription:

• J.J. Plasencio's intro on the bass does a great job of setting the tone for the piece with a fast tempo and high energy, and it took some experimentation in Guitar Pro to get the effects to sound like the dotted eighth note delays that guitarists have been using for years.
  • If you're sitting down to work on this piece and you're trying dial in Plasencio's sound, all I can say is that a lot of experimentation with a delay pedal will go a long way. For what it's worth, my early skills with delays date back to David Gilmour's and Alex Lifeson's guitar work in the late 1970s and Eddie Van Halen and The Edge in the 1980s, and the skills in question were how to use the delay to create complex melodies that sound like more than one instrument.
  • I saw a live video of Sixpence None the Richer playing this song with Plasencio on bass several years ago (see https://youtu.be/ihwk5ndxhmA), in which Plasencio played his parts on a 6-string bass. However, the song is quite playable on a 4-string bass in Drop-D tuning, which is an instrument that the majority of bassists will have handy, so that's the direction that I chose to go with for this transcription. That being said, if you have a 6-six string bass, some of the parts can take advantage of the high C string and you might not need to jump around the fretboard as much. (Note that in the live video from 1:20 to 1:35, the physical pain that Plasencio is clearly suffering is not imagined; it's a challenging bass part if you're playing with fingers on your right hand, which is why I use a pick.)
• There are a lot of sonic textures going on within Matt Slocum's guitar parts, and I spent a good deal of time listening and re-listening to this song while trying to dig out every little nuance that I could. That being said, I know that the three guitar parts that I ultimately arranged for this transcription may not be perfect, but they're more than good enough for a cover band to sound like 99% of the original.

As I have always said in the past, this is a free transcription. So if you're upset that I left something out, or you don't think something is correct, then it sucks to be you.

NOTE: See https://youtu.be/iOiR8IFcKi4 for the official video for this song.

Ten years ago my son's band, The Union Street Orchestra (TUSO), played a gig at the historic Moore Theater in Seattle as part of the theater's More Music @ The Moore program.

It was a fantastic evening of entertainment, with lots of great, local artists from the Seattle area on the bill. Here's a video of TUSO during a dress rehearsal that took place a couple of days before the final show, which is - unfortunately - the best video that I have of this gig.

As a parting thought, here's a photo of my son belting out the lyrics to "Fooled Again" from the final performance.

I just heard that the Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot passed away yesterday, and before I continue, I should mention that Rick Beato live streamed a great retrospective about Lightfoot at Gordon Lightfoot 1938-2023 R.I.P. Having said that, I am sure few people who were born after 1980 have ever heard of Lightfoot, which is because his type of songwriting has long-since passed from popularity. By way of explanation, way back in the 1970s, there was a style of songwriting that was more of storytelling, and several artists - like modern-day troubadours - made this genre very popular. Here are a few artists to illustrate what I mean:

• Harry Chapin (see Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle and the Professor of Rock's analysis This 70s #1 Hit Is A WAKE UP CALL To Everyone Who DARES Listen, or Chapin's Taxi).
• Jim Croce (see Croce's Operator and Rick Beato's analysis What Makes Jim Croce’s Operator So Unique).
• Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins (see Both Sides Now).
• Dan Fogelberg (see Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne).

I recognize that this singer/songwriter style is no longer in vogue, nor has been for several decades. Listening to songs from that time period illustrates how much the styles of instrumentation and production have not aged gracefully through the years.

Returning to Gordon Lightfoot, he had a unique style of storytelling that I believe set him apart from his peers. He will often be remembered for his story-based songs like Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, though I'd like to suggest that he should be better remembered for songs like If You Could Read My Mind, which is a love song from Lightfoot to his wife as he tries to put his emotions into words as their marriage crumbles. Rick Beato recorded an excellent analysis of If You Could Read My Mind three years ago, in which he delves into the sheer musical brilliance that underpinned the arrangement. Lightfoot's use of 7th, 9th, and 11th chords - both on the vocals and instrumentation - added to the overall melancholy of the piece. Sadly, I cannot recall a recent musical offering with so many rich musical textures and lyrics within a single song.

Of course, I realize that all art is subjective; I like Renoir and my wife likes Van Gogh, while my oldest daughter likes Jackson Pollack and I think his artwork looks like something a four-year-old would do. Nevertheless, when it comes to music, people can fret and fume and think that I sound like some old guy who is pining for the past, but these days I often think that just about anyone with a rhyming dictionary could put together what passes for song lyrics. The singer/storyteller has faded into the sunset, much like the protagonists in the songs they once wrote.

POSTSCRIPT:

Another honorable mention in the singer/songwriter/storyteller genre that I'd like to make is Michael Martin Murphey, who wrote 1975 hit Wildfire. That song has an odd personal association for me, because that song was still popular around the time that I was getting ready to graduate from high school in the early 1980s. I often played guitar with a drummer who had already graduated; he had auditioned to play the drums for Murphey, who needed a guitarist for some shows. My friend had suggested my name, but I passed on the audition/gig since I didn't think that my dad would have let me ditch parts of my senior year to go on tour. (My dad later said that he wouldn't have cared.)

UPDATE: This post is one of several that I had written that I later discovered had never been set to "public."

Nearly 35 years ago, I was driving home from Sickels Army Airfield where I worked when I was stationed in Fulda, Germany. I was listening to AFN radio, which was broadcasting from Frankfurt some 60 miles away. I was headed into the nearby forests and mountains, where I always lost radio reception during my long commute, when an amazing piece of music that I had never heard before came over the radio. The guitar wizardry was amazing, and I pulled off the road to make sure that I would hear the piece in its entirety before losing my radio signal.

As the piece came to a close, I was yelling at the unknown radio announcer, "PLEASE TELL ME WHO THAT WAS!!!" The deejays on AFN were seldom forthcoming with artist or song names, but on this occasion the broadcaster must have heard my desperate, distant pleas and shared the requisite info: the song I heard was "Cliffs of Dover" from Eric Johnson (whom I had never heard of, either). At my first opportunity, I bought the album featuring "Cliffs of Dover," and I've been a fan of Eric Johnson ever since.

Flash forward 30 years, and my middlest daughter, Rachel, bought tickets for the two of us to see Eric Johnson during his scheduled 2020 tour. Unfortunately, everyone knows what happened in 2020... and as a result, the concert was postponed, then postponed again, and possibly postponed yet again as the COVID19 pandemic wreaked havoc on society. That being said, this evening - after several years' wait - Rachel and I were finally able to catch up with Eric Johnson, who absolutely killed it on guitar tonight in Tucson's Rialto Theater.

It should come as no surprise to people who know me or follow my blog, but I was a huge fan of King's X throughout the 1990s. The sublime mixture of Ty Tabor's searing guitar work, Doug Pinnick's thunderous bass tone and booming vocals, Jerry Gaskill's solid foundation on percussion, and their combined Beatlesque harmonies yielded a one-of-a-kind sound that quickly gained attention for this trio from Southern Texas. Over the years, I've transcribed a few classic pieces from King's X for my guitar students, and I've shared my transcriptions of the King's X songs Black Flag and Lost in Germany in previous blogs.

It should, therefore, also be of little surprise to anyone who knows me that my interest was piqued when I heard that King's X recently released a new single, which was their first studio offering after a fourteen-year absence. You can listen to their new single at the following URL.

I have to admit - I was far from impressed by this new single. This track sounded like something that King's X could have released years ago; it was as if the band hadn't bothered to improve their songwriting skills during their lengthy hiatus. In hindsight, I don't think that it's enough to say that "I was far from impressed." I think it is a far better statement to say that I was disappointed.

From my perspective, King's X was at their musical peak when Sam Taylor was producing them, and the Billboard chart history for King's X reinforces my sentiments. Taylor, as many King's X fans might recall, also produced Galactic Cowboys, Atomic Opera, and the "Conspiracy No. 5" album for Third Day (which was their second-best album in my opinion). Once Taylor was out of the picture, King's X produced themselves for several albums, where they sounded like they forgot how to function as a band; their playing was worse, their vocals were worse, their lyrics were worse, and each album contained tracks that were literally nothing but noise. In my estimation, King's X is the poster child for why bands should not produce themselves.

If you've ever watched the excellent documentary series from PBS called "Soundbreaking," it does a great job of explaining how it is the role of a producer to push artists out of their comfort zones and challenge them to try new things. That is why after 40 years bands like Rush continued to change producers on each album; Rush wanted new challenges and a fresh perspective. Cycling back to King's X, after several self-produced albums they had the good sense to team up with Michael Wagener as a producer for a couple albums, but King's X didn't change for the better, and this new single sounds like it has nothing original to offer. Unfortunately, this track sounds like the same old drivel that King's X has been churning out for decades.

It's a shame that a fourteen-year absence doesn't appear to have added anything to King's X's talent pool.

POSTSCRIPT:

As a point of trivia, I should mention that I bumped into Sam Taylor at a show back in 1997. Third Day was doing an acoustic set at a store in the Dallas area to support their "Conspiracy No. 5" album, and I was standing off to the side next to a guy who was a few years older than me. We got to talking, and when he offered his name I immediately said, "You mean the Sam Taylor who produced King's X and Galactic Cowboys?" Taylor looked at me and said, "You must be a guitarist." When I asked, "How could you tell?," he responded, "Because no one listens to King's X except guitarists."

I recently came across the following video, which is an "all star" cover of Boston's classic song "Foreplay/Long Time," which I thought I'd review.

I have to be honest - I disliked this video from the opening notes. As a guitar player, I am always highly critical of keyboard players who have spent far too much time trying to create a keyboard patch that approximates a guitar sound... I always think, "There's already guitarist here - why not leave the guitar parts to him and stick to your own instrument?" (e.g. Play in your own sandbox & keep outta mine...) I feel the same way when keyboardists try to steal the basslines from the bassist; further proof that keyboardists have an overinflated sense of importance that almost parallels lead vocalists (who typically think they're gods). In other words, the keyboardist lost me barely one or two seconds into the video, so this odd excursion wasn't a good start for me.

Once past the faux guitar intro, the keyboardist (Lachy Doley) did a good enough job with the organ part, but then - as others have pointed out - the wrong vocalist (Dino Jelusick) began to belt out the verse in his best Heavy Metal stylings. (Ugh.) My dislike for Jelusick's vocals in this cover version weren't simply because Brad Delp's original vocals are inimitable, but because Jelusick's vocals were totally wrong for this song.

As far as the guitarists were concerned, the slide part (from Justin Johnson) was... well... INTERESTING, but I wouldn't call it "good." It sounded like someone down on the bayou was drunk and playing along with the radio. On the other hand, the guitar solo in the bridge (from Joel Hoekstra) was a hastily-slapped-together montage that consisted of an odd set of completely nonsensical choices, which paled by comparison to Tom Scholtz's brilliantly melodic original; my ears are still bleeding from the resulting maelstrom of cacophony. Much like Jelusick's vocals, Hoekstra's guitar parts were completely out of place for this song.

The only decent parts of the song were the rhythm section of Henrik Linder on bass and Mike Portnoy on Drums. Even with little embellishments here and there, Linder and Portnoy laid down a solid groove that respected the original while putting a bit of themselves into their performances.

Despite those few positive elements, in my final opinion - this entire offering gets a big, fat "no" from me.

On the one hand, you have Yngwie Malmsteen, who is inarguably the most arrogant SOB in modern rock guitar, playing his "Arpeggios from Hell" in the following video while acting like he's some sort of badass:

While on the other hand, you have the teenage Tina S playing the same solo in the following video, and she's playing it arguably better while looking like she's bored to tears:

It's easy to see why I think Tina is far more talented than Yngwie...

I like the band Polyphia, and their piece "G.O.A.T" is nothing short of brilliant. I was completely blown away by that song when I first heard it a couple years ago. (And I loved Rick Beato's break down on that piece, but then I'm a huge fan of Rick Beato anyway.)

One of Polyphia's guitarists, Tim Henson, does some amazing things technically and musically that I've never heard before and never personally considered when playing the guitar. I have mentioned in other musings that I rate musicians on the TOAD scale, where TOAD is Talent, Originality, Affect, and Durability. Watching Henson play guitar, it's abundantly clear that he has Talent and Originality oozing out of every pore. While his Affect on other players remains to be seen, I think that Durability within the industry is quite likely.

With that in mind, I was interested when some of the musicians that I know posted a video from Henson that was titled "Playing my new guitar." Several people made comparisons to Jimi Hendrix, which I assumed was due to Henson's arsenal of innovative techniques. Without forcing you to suffer through more of my descriptive rhetoric, here is the video in question.

Regardless of my feelings for Polyphia, my final opinion for Henson's "playing my new guitar" video was... yawn. Don't get me wrong - for the first 30 seconds or so I was amazed, as I was the first time that I heard Polyphia. But let's be honest - after the first minute of Henson's "new guitar" video, you've heard pretty much everything you're going to hear. The rest of it is just the same thing, over and over, ad nauseum.

Yes - Henson's technique is amazing. Yes - his chops are off the map. And yes - I'm a guitar player who can't play what he plays, but to be clear - my comments are not coming from a position of "I can't do that so I'm just lashing out." On the contrary, Henson's "new guitar" video is almost nine minutes of unstructured, semi-repetitive guitar ramblings that wears itself out long before the conclusion of video.

In a way, Henson's video reminded me of why I dislike a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen's playing. Oh sure, Yngwie is one of the fastest guitar players alive, but that's precisely his problem - eventually an overabundance of self-aggrandizing displays of technical wizardry begin to devolve into a murky sludgefest of technically proficient ear slime. In that sense, I don't like some people's comparisons of Henson to Hendrix, because Hendrix wasn't just an innovator - he was a songwriter. (Though Hendrix often descended into his own pools of ear slime, too.) Henson's video, on the other hand, falls far short of "songwriting"; after the first few minutes, it starts to sound like... noise.

While I realize that art is always in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, in my opinion there's more to music than nine chaotic minutes of slapping the crap out of a guitar. To be clear, I listen to a lot of music that's all over the place from a structure point of view, but there should be SOME sense of where a piece going. And if there's no direction, then a piece has to evolve. I've seen Eddie Van Halen perform a 12-minute solo, and it was entertaining for every minute of it - because Eddie moved on from idea to idea.

Think of Jazz for a moment. I've heard some phenomenal Jazz soloists take off on tangents of technical brilliance that filled long passages of time, but those soloists are usually backed by something underneath that gives it meaning - and quite often one soloist passes off to another, but the underlying essence is there, however veiled it may be. As an example, consider Al Di Meola's "Mediterranean Sundance"; there are technical chops to spare, plenty of guitars getting slapped around, and no shortage of chaos when necessary. However, there's far more to see and hear than what you'll see in Henson's video.

Taking this discussion closer to Henson's "new guitar" video, I've gone to see some brilliant fingerstyle guitar players, and Leo Kottke initially comes to mind. I often think there's something wrong with the way Kottke thinks, because his pieces are underscored by a tumultuous maelstrom of mismatched time and key signatures with brilliant displays of technical prowess soaring over top. For that matter, I would find Antoine Dufour's "Déjà Vu" from several years ago or Andy McKee's "Drifting" from 15 years ago far more entertaining than Henson's video; both of those guitarists were using a lot of the same skills and ideas that Henson was manifesting, without managing to get on my nerves or bore me to tears.

So my apologies to my friends who posted the link to Henson's "playing my new guitar video" - I certainly didn't mean to rain on their parade. But Henson's video reminds me of what a music critic once said was wrong with Emerson, Lake and Palmer when they entered the studio: they desperately needed someone else to tell them when enough was enough. If Henson trimmed his "my new guitar" down to 60 seconds and dropped an intro & outro on it, I'd have been far more impressed.

PS - My sincere apologies to Tim Henson. If you ever read this, I still think you're great - even though I didn't like your "new guitar" video.