The Results Are In

And it seems we like our Allman Brothers, many of us like CW and his B-Bending, and we think there's a GP biopic in our future. Interesting.

I knew I liked you guys.

Netflix came through again. Nashville Chops and Western Swing. Brent Mason on HotLicks. Evidently Brent is unhappy with it. Less, I guess, with it than with the financial dealings with Hot Licks. I get the frustration; you don't get to be the Nashville superpicker by doing things that don't pay. And I get the other side; It was Arlen Roths' wife who handled the business, and when she died, it fell apart.

But I shouldn't get into the middle of the financial disagreements of the Telemasters. I haven't seen all of it yet, but I've seen parts of it. But I do like what I see. Danny Gatton's Telemaster vid is a mindbender, something that'll drop your jaw before it's done. Johnny Hiland's Chicken Pickin' Guitar is about a few licks without much underlying information. The best I had seen is Albert Lee's, but with him it's very much drinking from the firehose. James Burton's video was most useful, the first one that give me more than a clue about chicken pickin'.

This is good. Better than most. I'll (of course) have to get into it with a guitar in my hands to pick up more. But it's a fine, fine thing.

The one thing, and I think this is more general abut I'll deal with these specifics, is that Brent has one heck of a rig, one which allows him to switch between four or five amps and and four or five cabs, not just turn on and off effects. It's like Rick Nielsen's five-neck, where unless you know what you're doing, it's beyond your abilities to understand. There's a lot less "this is when I use the this effect, here's why, and here's about the settings I use" in everybody's instructional videos, I think.

I'll tell you more as I see more.

Speaking of more, have any of you heard of Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. To my mind, if you want soul, you want Stax. I thought the bad end, with the original studio torn down, was where things ended. They've rebuilt it and made it a working museum, it seems. I have to make it to Memphis one of these days. Beale Street, Stax Records, and not Graceland.

One thing I didn't know that I learned from the video: The Lorraine Hotel was one of few black-owned hotels in Memphis, and it was a common hangout for the Stax players and writers.

Watch Booker T and the MGs play "Time Is Tight". When are we gonna get the Colonel's instructional video/

And another Netflix hit, Fallen Angel. A documentary on the life and death of Gram Parsons. In the greater sense, he's a minor player in the late 60s and early 70s LA music scene. People get into the story because the last bit, where Phil Kaufman took the body to Joshua Tree. To me, that's the small part. There's a big story there, straight out of Tennessee Williams, and that's before you get to the music. Which is great stuff.

(I get most of my videos at NetFlix. I had owned the Telemaster! and Danny's rhythm guitar video, and the Masters of the Telecaster DVD is at my local library.)