perfidy

This is frankly the coolest thing I've seen in a coon's age (which judging from the roads around my parents' house in Ohio is approximately three weeks, unless the hills of Ohio are sick with millions upon millions of racoons to jump in front of cars) and I will be watching.

It would give me great pleasure to walk on stage with a staff of helpers, flick the amps off "standby," and start grinding out DUNT-DUNT-DAAAH, DUNT-DUNT-DA-DAAAH, DUNT-DUNT-DAAAH, DAH DAH! in thirty-one-foot parallel fourths. So LOUD. So SWEET.

(None of you reading this can't tell me that you didn't immediately read the foregoing onomatopoeia as 'Smoke on the Water' without even thinking about it.)

Wait a minute...I can't tell you that I didn't....without...er...double negative...but negated again... um, yes!

I watched last night but thought the show was lame. Too much time making the big fat host look fatter and dumber than he may already be, and waaaay too much hootin' and hollerin' by everyone involved. I wanted to hear more about the concept and construction, and less about the clowning.

But my bigger question mark was why skeletal, spidery has-been Peter Frampton was chosen to "play" the thing. Other than that he 1, was likely handy, and 2, because he had nothing better to do.

Look, I dig Peter Frampton. Or at least that one record he put out that everyone has from ca 1976.

Seriously people- don't you think say Thurston Moore could do alot more freaky interesting stuff with a 30 foot guitar than run up and down the fretboard with a grossly oversized slide as Frampton did?

I second every word. Underwhelming. Adrian Belew. Robert Fripp. Reeves Gabrels. Thurston. Vernon Reid. Elliot Sharp. Tony Iommi. Any one of them could eat Frampton for breakfast on a 30-foot guitar!

Last time I watch that show, for sure.

I like your picks. Tony Iommi would have made the most evil power chord ever. Even if he had to jump up and hang off the neck, swing his feet over to the 4th fret, say, and grind his head into 2 while still holding on. Whatever the tuning of last night's instrument, Tony would have knocked another step off it and made us all cry for mercy. We could also add John McLaughlin, Neil Young, or the flashy LA guys like Hammet/Vai/Satriani to the list of pickers who would've been more interesting to watch and hear wrestle a massive guitar.

Read an article with Gabrels in some guitar mag when Tin Machine was hot. He was explaining how one unorthodox teacher he had early in his musical training gave him a foundation of ...um...unorthodoxy.

Reeves says he went into his usual lesson one day, expecting some sightreading drills. But instead of sheetmusic, the teacher plopped down the front page of the newspaper onto the music stand and said, "Go." Later, he took to carrying a running microrecorder everywhere he went- bus, job, whatever- and would compose soundtracks to it all afterwards.

Not that I'm big into Tin Machine or whatever, just saying that I thought it was great this teacher really challenged Gabrels in this way.

I think that teacher was Joe Satriani, in fact. Satch was famous for having his students play today's headline. Steve Vai was also taught via this method, and it seemed to work out okay for him. Ditto the great Larry LaLonde of Primus. In fact, every note Ler plays sounds like it came from the pages of Weekly World News.

I knew the Satch/Vai/Hammett connection, but did not know that he also was a teacher for Gabrels and LaLonde.

I never much cared for shredders in general, but all of these people do some neat stuff, in terms of sheer agaility and technique as well as compositionally. But Primus...I just don't get 'em, and never will. It's not something you can explain to me, and I understand.

And the story about Les Claypool auditioning for Metallica after Cliff died was pretty funny...James just slackjawed, and said something like, "Dude, you are waaaaaaaay too good for this..."

This show is a piece of shit, grant it a big piece of shit that demonstrates consumer culture by making unnecessary tools for the sake of bigness. Why did they have frampton? because he's perfect for the idea of overselling, too big, consumer culture. thurston moore wouldn't be caught dead playing some piece of shit like this. i only cuaght the first episode where they made a gigantic blender. yay, a big blender now do something cool like throw live cattle in it and it will be worth something as a giant blender, but instead they used it to do things that 50,000 small blenders could do...make smoothies. i think it's easy to see how the frampton/moore comparison fits in.

The Frampton bit totally escaped me, which surprises me given my typical cynicism. I think your oversold-consumer culture-Frampton idea is a good call. All the moreso given the ridiculous irony of the man and the machine. PF looked like an anorexic mantis, yet married to an oversized guitar with an oversized host.

Now, cows in a blender...burger smoothies...you might be onto something.