How long can you hang with this thing? I had to bail at the 3:59 mark. Please feel free to fill me in on what I missed. Thank you.
Jun 262012
Jun 122012
You say you’ve been meaning to check out Gentle Giant? Well, here’s your chance: an entire concert from 1978!
Watching this entire concert is daunting, but I encourage you to click on any point in the video, spend a minute or two, and and see if your highly developed Rock Town Hall sensibilities do not kick in. This performance, by a band dressed in the gamut of Rock’s Unfulfilled Fashion Ideas, is ripe with odd rock details that our Townspeople have made their specialty. For each RTH quirk you spot (eg, fashion/hair oddities, rock stances, specific soloing faces, instrumentation, RTH Glossary-defined behaviors) list it in the Comments section with an indication of the time in the clip—one detail per post—in Last Man Standing fashion!
Right off the bat, for instance, the clip features a guitarist in overalls. Another example: I clicked on the concert at the 14:35 mark to witness a man in an Oakland A’s jersey and hat playing vibes. Then I clicked again, around the 28-minute mark, to hear a guitarist playing a Dr. Q solo! Normal people don’t readily identify Dr. Q solos. We’re not normal.
Make sense? In short, click on this concert video at any point and I bet within 1 minute you’ll see something that delights your RTH sensibilities. Please share your discoveries so that others might see through your eyes. Thank you.
Apr 062012
Hey, I’m not a guitar player, and Mike Campbell certainly isn’t one of my guitar gods, but I found this little video pretty interesting. For you guitar players, the fact that there’s <i>fourteen</i> more of these to follow may be like getting a bonus season of Justified. But Mike seems to be a good guy, and he starts at the beginning and when he name drops, it’s not for showing off. I didn’t even know he had a blog.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-campbell/the-guitars_b_1406937.html
Feb 252012
Did you catch George Harrison‘s son, Dhani, on Conan the other night? I did. Dhani was promoting a new app he helped develop that presents his father’s “stunning stash of vintage axes.” The app, like most apps, didn’t turn me on—not to mention the fact that I’m typically not into gear porn—but Harrison the Younger was delightful: loaded with poise, charm, humor, and all the qualities we could hope for in George’s kid.
It took awhile for Dhani to catch on, didn’t it? While John’s boys, Julian and Sean, long ago burst on the scene and then settled into the occasional feature trumpeting a new, understated release…while Stella McCartney has spent years as a celebrated fashion designer (not that I would understand that scene, but I do see photos of her arm-in-arm with celebrities and fellow fashion designers)…while Zak Starkey follows in the footsteps of Keith Moon to prove to the world that he’s a bigger son of a drummer than Jason Bonham…Dhani seemed to be kept under wraps until he appeared on stage as part of a star-studded tribute to his father, playing acoustic guitar on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Let’s face it: Dhani has claimed the title of Coolest Offspring of a Beatle. It’s looking like he’ll have to mess up royally to lose that title, unless Paul’s 8-year-old kid from his failed marriage to Hamish Stuart Heather Mills develops into a childhood sensation or one of his other kids with Linda springs forward and does something special.
So who is the second-coolest offspring among members of The Beatles?
Dec 052011
Do I blame this Florence + The Machine cover of Buddy Holly‘s “Not Fade Away” on Tom Waits and his percussion and production crew from the early 1980s? I think so, and it’s time musicians stop dicking around with junkyard percussion, already!
Dec 022011
Our recent wake for Andrea True and her disco classic, “More, More, More,” exposed one of the finer things about the song: its use of the cowbell. This lowly instrument has been the butt of Saturday Night Live skits but over time has made a resounding impact on the rock world. I ask you, can we list all songs that feature a cowbell? And can we determine, once and for all, what was the first song to highlight its use?
I’ll start us off with Ian Drury‘s “Reasons To Be Cheerful”
Nov 012011
I recently saw this clip from Billy Connelly’s tour of Route 66, in which he stops by a guitar collector’s house. The guys had 50 Fender Coronados and 3 rooms filled with pedal steels and lap steels. (Oddly, I don’t recall seeing Strats, Teles, Les Pauls, etc. Perhaps he only had the budget for the second-tier collectables?)
On the one hand, I understand this to a degree because I can look at guitars all day. On the other hand, the only thing that really separates this guy from someone on one of those hoarders shows is resale value.
So when does enthusiasm cross over into OCD territory? Personally, I have 6 electric guitars, but they are all different styles and makes. And even though I have somewhere around 1000 cds and about 500 albums, I’ve never felt the need to have the entire catalog of any artist except in cases where they’ve only released a small amount of recordings.
Maybe this is all just a justification on my part (and maybe if I hit the lottery I’d ratchet things up a few notches) but right now, I feel like I’m still on the healthy side of my obsession.
I know some of you have massive collections of music (I’m thinking of a Sinatra-loving Townsman in particular), and I’m guessing that there are some folks on here who have impressive arsenals of guitars.
So how much is too much? And how close are you to crossing the line? (The guy in the clip says that he’s built additions to his house to accommodate his collection.)
