The (displaced) Chilean Guitarists of the Day are victims of the earthquake: HELP OUT!

Help traditional musicians displaced by the earthquake in Chile

I received the following email from Chilean ethnomusicologist Christian Spencer in Santiago, Chile.  It says it all:
  
Dear all:

The last earthquake affected severely jobs and lifes of popular musicians in Chile, specially the oral singers from remote provinces, whose feeble houses came down entirely. There is a centralised and reliable webpage to help both in national or international levels. Here is the link:

http://chileayuda.com/
Christian Spencer Espinosa

Puerto montt está temblando
Es un acabo de mundo

- Violeta Parra 

Puerto Montt is trembling/shaking/quaking

It's the end of a world

- Violeta Parra

Guitarist practice of the day: LISTEN

LISTEN

Although we generally think of practice as an expansive activity, years of solid practice can also obscure alternate pathways, even those that are simpler and clearer solutions to musical questions (i.e., problems). This is especially true for guitarists who are typically addicted to hands and eyes over sound. This is why practice has to be rooted in the here and now and not just automatic repetition of patterns and shapes. Pay attention and listen as well as think about solutions. Emphasize the former and find yourself awake and flying.

Thought and language give impetus, shape and focus to action, but are not action itself. Listening is a part of action, but action is ultimately one thing.

The guitar (book) of the day is The Grateful Dead in Concert

The Grateful Dead in Concert
Essays on Live Improvisation
Edited by Jim Tuedio and Stan Spector
Foreword by Stanley Krippner
ISBN 978-0-7864-4357-4
32 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
365pp. softcover 2010

Buy Now!

Price: $35.00

Quantity:

    


The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation offers a spirited analysis of the unique improvisational character of Grateful Dead music and its impact on appreciative fans. The 20 essays capture distinct facets of the Grateful Dead phenomenon from a broad range of scholarly angles. The band’s trademark synergizing focus is discussed as a function of complex musical improvisation interlaced with the band members’ collective assimilation of an impressive range of marginal musical forms and lyrical traditions. These facets are shown to produce a vibrant Deadhead experience, resulting in community influences still morphing in new directions 45 years after the band’s initial impact. 
 --
This is a really great book by any objective standard. Oh, I just noticed I have an essay in it titled "Non-Systematic Thoughts on Improvisation." Who knew? ...especially that I might know something about "marginal musical forms." :)

C

Hendrix notes no. 1: The Prodigal Son

This series is inspired by the scene in the Monterey Pop documentary of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where an unidentified woman watches the end of Jimi’s performance in stunned silence. She’s never heard or seen anything like this. Hendrix notes is an open question, a forum about all things Hendrix, not  the usual hagiographic account of a supernatural being, but a cyberplace to reasonably discuss his continuing influence.    
That's groovy, man.

Why the title Hendrix notes? Well, making Jimi Hendrix the guitarist of the day seems, for now anyway…too redundant, boringly so. I mean, really? What is there to say that you haven’t literally heard thousands of times? He’s passed into history that by definition, for a single figure, implies a clear narrative/story (what is history?) understood as a definitive statement of that biographical person’s experience in, and continuing effect on, culture; in Jimi’s case: music and pop culture. Don't we already know that story? 

I need another way in, a reason to be interested in writing about Hendrix....a mission. So, here is my mission statement: Hendrix notes is an open question, a forum about all things Hendrix, not  the usual hagiographic account of a supernatural being, but a cyberplace to reasonably discuss his continuing influence.

Let's begin with one view of the mythological Hendrix:

Example no.1. The return of the prodigal son. In the fleshing out of this biblical archtype: Jimi, after being rejected by the racist American music industry, goes to England where he finally, now an old man in his mid to late twenties, gets his chance to succeed in the enlightened neo-blues climate of 1960’s London. All the British guitar slingers creamed (I believe it) their tight bell-bottom blues genes. 

After this oversea success, Jimi is finally embraced in his home country of the USA, as the genius native son (a fact complicated by his being black, but also partly “Indian” since he can’t be too black in this now ancient 1960s story/myth). This return is symbolized by his performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.

Does the above example seem simplistic to you? Plug in another artist's name and run the story in your head. Now?

To be continued ad infinitum.

The guitarist of the day is Joe Maphis "King of the Strings"

You probably did, but I didn't know anything about Joe Maphis until I very recently starting listening, looking at videos, etc. He is the typical "find" in terms of ruining all my assumptions about who invented what and who invented it first. It's the typical mistake: thinking that the first time we heard a style or a sound that impacts us, it is the original utterance.*  Check out Joe Maphis, the virtuoso from Bakersfield (Merle Haggard must've known him?) You'll quake in your snakeskin Gucci boots. The double-neck Mosrite is out of control.

The entry is lifted from Wikipedia (a dubious source), but one that gets us started:

Born Otis W. Maphis (born May 12, 1921 Suffolk, Virginia – died June 27, 1986), was an American country music guitarist. He married singer Rose Lee Maphis in 1948.

One of the flashiest country guitarists of the 1950s and 1960s, Joe Maphis was known as The King of the Strings.^[1] He was able to play many stringed instruments with great facility.^[2] However, he specialized in dazzling guitar virtuosity. Working out of Bakersfield, California, he rose to prominence with his own hits such as "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (and Loud, Loud Music)" as well as playing with acts like Johnny Burnette, Doyle Holly, The Collins Kids, Wanda Jackson, Rose Maddox and Ricky Nelson. His playing was an influence on such greats as Merle Travis, Jimmy Bryant and Chet Atkins. He was known for his use of a double-neck Mosrite guitar, specially built for him by Semie Moseley, which was a boon to Moseley's fledgling career as a guitar builder. He was a regular guest on the Jimmy Dean television show in the 1960s.

Joe's guitar hero was Mother Maybelle Carter, matriarch of the Carter Family. Her daughter June Carter Cash and husband Johnny Cash so admired Joe's guitar playing that Joe is buried in a Hendersonville, TN cemetery next to Maybelle, her husband, Ezra Carter (A.P.'s brother), and daughter, Anita Carter.

"Pickin' and a Singin.'" A display of crazy virtuousity by Maphis on double-neck electric guitar, mandolin, violin, banjo, upright bass, and vocals. The hat flourish at the end is symbolic of a time when a certain kind of of showmanship was a required professional skill. My wife is right in saying that Maphis on all the other instruments really contextualizes the double-neck guitar playing that was his primary focus. I wish I'd thought of that-damn it.




* check out the this video of Jimi Hendrix listening to Buddy Guy in New Orleans, and experience the same kind of reality check. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v5YWSBD23U

The guitarist of the day is Susan Tedeschi

Susan Tedeschi is fucking cool. Don't say it. Don't say she sounds like Janis or Bonnie because it ain't true. It's the genitalia that's confusing you. She sounds like herself. And check out that solidbody D'Angelico in the second clip - damn.  Susan's definitely got the blues, and good for her. Soul, taste, tone, songs, the whiskey-inflected voice quality....it's all there (who knew Boston could produce anything but millions-of-notes guitar clones?) I've never seen her live, but I will ASAP.

Susan's music is drawn from a  confluence of American musics including blues, country, and jazz; and she rocks (see the period).  Her work shows a consistent craftspersonship (yikes!), and her songs contain interesting lyrics, arrangements, and jazz/blues chord changes in addition to the root/fifth blues shuffles we all know and love when grooved right. Susan's musicality and tasteful restraint on the guitar are some of her trademarks, as is her really fine singing. For some reason, I feel like there's an Elvin Bishop reference here, but it might just be my 'magination running away wit me.

Don't compare her to other women, but to other musicians if you are the comparing kind. Gender don't matter here in the USA, y'all (what?). In fact, don't compare her to anyone at all. Especially to her famous guitarist husband: he who shall remain nameless in this post. It's about HER and her artistry. Is she an effective communicator and artist with the musical language she uses? - yeah.

I'm glad to see real artists making a difference in the world, and surviving somehow. It gives us all hope and inspiration. Cheers to Susan Tedeschi. She is definitely on the "good" side of this blog and blogger. Keep up the work. Susan, I'm definitely partial to the telecaster, though. :)

homepage and more sounds at http://susantedeschi.com

The (dickhead) guitarist of the day is X

I recently performed at the Next Wave Festival at BAM in NYC. X was the composer on the project. I've enjoyed X's compositional work in the past, and I've heard he is a decent guitarist, and as a part of the New York downtown scene, X has had a good run as a public artist. I had never met X previous to this project, so I was happy to make his acquaintance. I introduced myself as did a friend of mine who is a composer and leader of a new music ensemble. I gave X some of my music, explained what I did as a composer and fellow guitarist and expressed my excitement about working with him. X was a little distant, but that's cool because it's such a loaded environment, what with the production looming and all, plus we're all artists: a little weird, self-conscious, and socially awkward-well, not so much me and my friend, but definitely X.

Anyway, the next day during a production lunch break, some cast members and I (and my composer friend) go to a falafel place we like in the Brooklyn neighborhood where BAM is located. Lo and behold, X is there and our waiter sits us right next to him. This is cool. We gesture his way, but it is clear that X is not interested since he goes out of his way not to acknowledge us. I know what you're thinking - what a dickhead, right? But let's not jump to conclusions, after all, there is Mediterranean food coming.

Anyway, X begins a LOUD soliloquy about the proliferation of young composers in their twenties who are working and thriving in the city  (I've noticed that too and think it's cool). Then X, still in declamatory mode, asks the rhetorical question: "Why are there are hardly any, or no, composers in their thirties and forties who are doing any interesting work, or that I have even heard of?"  I couldn't believe this douche bag! I mean, we thirties and forties are sitting right there, all of us professional working artists,  and with the gigs and experience to merit collegial treatment at the very least, but not insults from this troll (X).

I chose not to confront X since he was a principal in our show that opened the next night, and I never  want to bring bad vibes to a production (plus X looks a little soft). But, it was all I could do not to channel my Queens vibe and wring X's late-fifties chicken neck. Maybe X hasn't heard of us (hundreds at least) because his inner ear can't hear beyond the perfectly sound-proof sphere of ego that surrounds him; or, perhaps because my generation is too close in age to X for us to be acolytes or fans; or maybe he doesn't support artists other than himself.... I don't know... and don't care to speculate beyond this post.

I'm not inklined to say who X is, but my story is true - my hand to God (Woody Allen voice). X is definitely the (dickhead) guitarist of the day. Way to go X! Keep up the good community work that is a stated part of your liberal ethos.  There is a lesson to be learned here, and that is a lesson in how not to be like X. BTW, the BAM show was fabulous despite the generic music.

The dickhead homepage

Keep on practicing y'all. Don't let the devil get you down.

Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you.

- Carly Simon