Comments on: SWINGING MODERN SOUNDS #15: On Technique

By: Michael Hollander

Michael Hollander — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:20:13 +0000

I’m sure nobody will read this since I’m commenting on a post that’s a year old, but I’m quite glad to see a good review of Briggan Krauss’s album in print. I had the excellent fortune to see one of his compositions performed at Roulette a few years back.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:06:04 +0000

This is quickly shooting to the top of the list of Conversations I Wouldn’t Have Imagined Having (I’d really rather be discussing the Cage/Branca dustup), but for the record I must make one final correction, because someone else will eventually do it if I don’t: Cathedral is actually on Diver Down, VH album number five. Women and Children first (VH #3) didn’t have a similarly dispiriting pyrotechnical solo (other than the intro to “Fools”, which kind of pales in comparison to the others listed above). Okay, please let this end here.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:23:14 +0000

Okay, I have informed myself, and you are correct. These are truly awful, in just the excessively pyrotechnical direction I was describing, and, yes, Eddie Van Halen would perhaps have qualified as well, if not better, than Steve Vai. Really very dispiriting, this music.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:59:46 +0000

It feels way too petty to belabor this, but I feel compelled to point out that each of the first four Van Halen albums featured unaccompanied guitar solos of not-insignificant length (see Eruption, Spanish Fly, Mean Streets, Cathedral) that were drooled over by technique-heads for many years…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruption_(song)

But yes, Running with the Devil is moronic. Thanks for a thoughtful piece.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:28:58 +0000

With all due respect, I can’t sign on here, because Eddie Van Halen was playing in a modality not noted for excessive amounts of solo-ing. It’s eight bars, that solo. And even fewer in “Beat It.” In the rare instance (in concert) he allowed himself to go hog wild. Mercifully, I am spared these moments, having never seen a Van Halen show. Eddie was always an entertainer, and, as such, no one really took him that seriously. I concede the influence of hammering on, but that was being practiced by others (Stanley Jordan, e.g.) at the same time. Eddie played in a sublimely stupid band, in a sublimely stupid idiom. I remember the French guy in my dorm in sophomore year of high school who played “Running With the Devil” all the time. We thought he was a moron. We thought the record was recorded by morons. We did not feel that way about Al DiMeola, or Dicky Betts, or Jerry Garcia. We were wrong, really, to think that they were much better, but the veneer of pretension in a guitar player is what consigns them to the lower circles of hell. Thus: Steve Vai, or Joe Satriani, later on, certainly, and Steve Howe, et al., during Year Zero.

See? Nick Hornby.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:14:11 +0000

Though it may seem a Nick Hornby-style exercise, I’d prefer to think of it as refinement in the interest of accuracy: I’m thinking that EvH would’ve been THE name to pick for rock-styled wankery in 1979 (although a serious case could be made for including Mr. van Halen in a discussion of extended technique). EvH is also a bit more important than Vai (at least in 1980, while VH was still relevant and before Vai turned into the up-his-own-mystical-ass bombast-monger he is today) in that he flatout ruined a decade of guitar playing with that whole fingertapping business.

By: Rick Moody

Rick Moody — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:14:39 +0000

Justin, your point is well taken in the context of Year Zero, and if we think of punk as running from the release of NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS to Sid’s death in early 1979, then, yes, Steve Vai doesn’t really qualify, and my failure here is to come up with a good name. Shall I come up with some good names? Is Al DiMeola not a good enough name? John McLaughlin? If we opened the inquiry up to keyboard players it would be easy, because there’s Rick Wakeman or Keith Emerson to adduce. I certainly could put forward Steve Howe or Steve Hackett as examples of guitar players hated by the Year Zero crowd. But in the end this becomes a Nick Hornby-style exercise, because punk didn’t end in 1979, and neither did the idea that virtuosity was somehow suspect, and at some remove from the expression of deep feeling. It was still current, and in high regard, at the time of the release of NEVERMIND by Nirvana, and, arguably, in the years after when the low-fi movement was at its peak. I remember an interview with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, in the early nineties, in which John Frusciante was ridiculed by the other band members for saying that he liked Robert Fripp’s playing. Indeed, it’s only been in the last five years, it seems to me, when younger musicians came into their own who missed out on this entire controversy, that some of the more showoffy players from the mid-seventies have been rehabilitated (Fripp among them). Steve Vai, and I say this as someone who knew extremely well the Zappa songbook in 1979 (I saw him play that year, in fact), but who was also very passionate about the Pistols, the Clash, the Cure, the Ramones, the Talking Heads, the B-52s, and other bands of that vintage, seemed to me then, in the late seventies and early eighties, a pyrotechnical guitarist, more so, to use another example from the same period in the Zappa Band, than Adrian Belew, who though he was fleet was very tasteful as a player. All of which, I guess, is to say that I don’t think I’m THAT far off here.

By: Justin Farrar

Justin Farrar — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:20:53 +0000

Steve Vai is an odd choice for representing the type of pro rock musicians which the original punk movement was lashing-out at. Punk predated him. Vai was just 17 when “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” came out. His first major gig was with Frank Zappa (off all people) in 1979. Interestingly enough, Vai also worked with Johnny Lydon on PiL’s “Album” in ’85.

Though I’m no fan, I feel like I need to point out that Vai wasn’t on the receiving of punk’s hate because no punk even knew who the kid (literally) was!

Thanks.

By: EnronMoney

EnronMoney — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:43:56 +0000

“That lust for the original doesn’t have to be at some dialectical distance from the Platonic capacity of music to move us. The two can be one and the same.”

Another great piece Rick, thanks so much for sharing these music discoveries.