Who Needs a Guitar Hero?

An interesting thing happened to me in the late seventies.  I was learning to play the guitar by listening to all the contemporary rock guitar greats to figure out what they were doing. As you can imagine, my bedroom wall was covered with posters of these giants of rock.

One day, in a record store, I came across a poster of a really striking guitarist.  Posing and pouting in a black catsuit, his long, blond hair flying about, he brandished a white Flying V.

I remember thinking, this guy´s either something special or a complete plonker!

Some time later I went to see a British band called UFO.  They had a guitarist called Paul Chapman, who I thought was really good.  I subsequently came across a UFO album in a bargain bin and bought it.  Chapman was really good, so I bought a second UFO album.

Yet as soon as the first, hypnotic solo kicked in… I could tell that it wasn't Paul Chapman!  This solo was like nothing I´d  heard before:-  the tone, the vibrato, the microtonal bends, all of it melodic and precise.  The guitar playing on that whole album was astonishing, so I checked the album cover and noticed this guy with long, blond hair ……. A bit of research later, I found out that the guitarist was, indeed, the poser with the Flying V.

He was none other than the great Michael Schenker, of course.

I have a framed picture of that poster on my wall, for two reasons.

One: because it connects me to the feelings I experienced when I first heard Obsession.  I still love it and it will always be my No.1 rock guitar album.

Two: because it makes me feel good!  When I listen to that album thirty odd years later, I´m taken back in time. 

Moral of the story.  The best thing to inspire any guitarist is a guitar hero.

If you don't have one,  find one!

Queen. Best Band in the World?

I admit to a certain bias here as I loved Queen.  From their first album, Queen, their music suited their name perfectly.  Grandiose, regal, sophisticated, beautiful, soulful, arrogant, splendid. …there are so many highflown words to describe the music of this essentially studio band that used multilayers of vocals and guitars on their records.  Bringing some of their songs to life, live on stage, was quite a task for them but they managed to pull off the almost impossible in their concerts, which is to their credit.

They were an incredibly inventive band; I´d call it collective genius.  While Queen were really Freddie and Brian with their strong grounding in harmony, Roger was a good drummer with a brilliant vocal range and John was a great, inventive bass player who could also write good songs.  Brian and Roger were the rockers (as was Freddie until Studio 54 in New York got his disco hormones raging) but John wasn´t. He was a a bass player of the times who loved funky, bass grooves as heard on the hit Another One Bites the Dust (which should, perhaps, have been entitled Another Queen Fan Bites the Dust……) and on his brilliant Millionaire Waltz. 

While it´s true that none of Queen was a technical virtuoso on his instrument, collectively they were musical wizards, with minds that absorbed and encapsulated many styles soon moulded, uniquely, into a sound called Queen.

With seventies Queen, we had Freddie's beautifully distinctive falsetto voice that could switch to a raspy tenor in the blink of an eye.  We had Brian's sixpence scratchings against the strings of his unique, home-made, wooden, wonder guitar that could emulate anything from a horn to a cello.  We also had Roger's impossibly high, screamed harmonies along with beautifully crafted songs, stunning arrangements, heavenly harmonies and melting movements.

And the most commanding and beautiful singing voice ever.

Sometimes I wonder what they were on! In my thirty six years as a Queen fan, I have yet to hear such perfect harmonies from any other artist, or such brilliant guitar orchestrations as the likes of Brian May.

 In my view, no one can touch them, despite the inferior output that reared it's ugly head in the band´s mid musical career.  Queen sounds will live forever in my heart and in my head and I judge everything musical according to their standards.

Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, AC/DC, KISS, Van Halen, Journey, Rush …. etc, etc.

Yes, I think Queen were the best band in the world.

And I make no apologies for it.

Peas in an i-Pod?

Tonight I'm listening to a musical genius who is a complete master of melody, harmony, chord stuctures, dynamics and lyrics.  He´s also a wonderful vocalist and guitarist. 

I'm talking about the great Todd Rundgren.

Years ago, my cousin insisted I borrow a horrible album. I dragged it home, gave it a listen and thought what a pile of trash.  But Rudgren was using typical pop and rock progressions fused with jazz-influenced movements and blended with clever, and sometimes complex, vocal harmonies.

This was one clever dude (that I probably hated for it). 

(Thanks John, for forcing bands on me).

I´m lucky to have great ears and a mind that can judge for itself.  While I didn't like everything I was hearing, I knew that I was listening to someone with great musical talent and  who was writing from the heart. 

So I have a question.

Why is the melody being erased from music? 

We press buttons to function from day to day.  Our sense of melody and  harmony – that we´re born with -  is slowly decreasing.  We can't survive without sound. We are sound. Like the atoms of which we´re made, we vibrate to stay together. Vibration is sound.

Now, we hear about good and bad vibrations. What are they?  It's quite simple. Good vibrations resonate with our bodies in a good way (make you feel good) and bad vibes are the opposite. So imagine what happens when something fools you into enjoying bad vibrations. Imagine we only listen to synthetic drums and synthetic (by definition, non-natural) sounds.  A drum has indefinite pitch (bad vibrations) and is never in tune.  So what if you make the drum the strongest part of the music then add an unresolved (no resolving cadence) robotic loop.

You get continuous, robotic bass drum, low end bass loop with no groove or ebb and flow - and don't forget that the vocals are often rap with no melody.  Ebb and flow, rhythm, is good for us because our heart beat actually flows (look it up, it´s true).  Take that away by using computerized drum loops and we´re left with a monotonous, static unnaturally bad vibe.  An invisible musical cage.  And as we all know, or perhaps have forgotten, expression can't exist in a cage. But that´s the kind of music with which we´re swamped daily.

Canned carrots, canned peas, canned music. 

As most good musicians know, melody is nothing without harmony. When we hear a melody with no harmony our ears have nothing to relate to, so they can't sense the harmonic stucture. But when we put harmonic structure (chords) behind the melody our ears can make more sense of it.  When we hear a song our brains automatically absorb both the melody and the harmony. Even though you might not understand this interplay, you can hum the tune and get a sense of the movement behind the melody. 

Rundgren's melodies, on the other hand, are strongly enhanced by contrary and oblique motion within the chord structures with the vocal harmonies giving a feeling of depth and breadth.  And so we´re taken on a musical journey with unexpectedtwists and surprises.

We need to follow Rundgren´s example and bring back the Music Grocery where we could pick something fresh.

Not some pre –cooked, tinned peas in an iPod.