There's Room To Move As A Fry Cook!

Remember Repo Man? If you weren't a fan of that movie in the 1980s, waiting for it to play again on Night Flight on the USA Network, I wouldn't have liked you.

Alex Cox, the director, followed it with Sid and Nancy, then his career went straight to hell.

"Let's make that wiener boy sing his song!"

And now, Alex Cox is making a sequel, called Repo Chick.

Repo Chick?

Alex Cox is not George Lucas. Alex could make three movies on just the catering budget for the second unit on Phantom Menace. But right now, he has the same capability to wipe his ass with my teenage years as George has shown glee (and compulsive cleanliness) exerting on my childhood.

It can't suck. It cannot be permitted to suck.

But even if it does, it will mean another paycheck for Sy Richardson, and that's nothing but good.

If There's Someone Left To Play

There's a raft of things you don't get unless you were there at the time. The Beatles and the Beach Boys as competitors for the most creative and best band in pop music. Jane's Addiction as part of a group of Led Zeppelin clone bands. Sha-Na-Na at Woodstock.

No, wait. I don't think all the brown acid available explains that one.

Here's another. Guitar journalism as we know it today started in order to promote Mike Bloomfield.

How many of you just said "Who?"?

When Dylan went electric, first time, out at Newport, he had Mike behind him, that's who.

The Best White Guitarist That Everybody Has Forgotten.

I picked up Butterfield Blues Band and East-West in the early 1990s, knowing that they were in the used CD bin and had "blues" in the title. I did research and found out who and what this was about. And what it was about was the blues guitar, electrified and hot, beginning to become the dominating force in rock music, followed by "East-West", which shares with the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" the introduction of Coltrane's modal style into rock music.

Farther Along We'll Understand Why

The Invention of the B-Bender:


Clarence White joins the Byrds:


The Wall of Guitarists:


No, I don't own one. Yet.

Strings full of Jelly, Head full of Pain

Ever heard of Jimmy Bryant? He and Speedy West were a Tele/Steel guitar duo sitting firmly on the fuzzy line between jazz and country. Here's a bit of them backing Tennessee Ernie Ford.



They did lots and lots of instrumentals, many of them re-released on Razor and Tie. Look up Stratosphere Boogie. Specifically, track 7, "The Night Rider".

I'll wait.

Here's the first five seconds of it.

"The Night Rider" (Intro)

Ever heard of Jim Campilongo? He's an uptown Tele slinger, known most these days for backing Norah Jones as part of the Little Willies. Slings a 1959 top-loader Tele, and recently a Fender Custom Shop copy of his '59. He also stands firmly on the fuzzy line between country and jazz, and he worked out the intro.


E -----------6-----------6------------6--6--6--6--6--10---
B ---6--8----8----6--8---8----6--8----8--8--8--8--8--8----
G -----------10----------9------------8--8--8--8--8--8----
D ---------------------------------------------------7----
A --------------------------------------------------------
E --------------------------------------------------------


Thanks, Jimmy, for playing it, and thanks, Jim, for transcribing it. There's more, but there's enough here to write.

Now, lets do some analyzing. I see four chords. I will switch to hexidecimal (8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f, 10, with hex10 = dec16) for writing chords, so that'a xxxa86, xxx986, xxx886 and xx788a.

xxxa86 is, low to high, F G A#. A# and F are root-fifth for an A# chord, with the E, we can call it an A#6 chord. Changing inversion and we get a G minor dominant 7. Going with F as root, we get what? F9sus4? A#6 seems simpler to think about.

xxx986 moves the F to a E. A# flat 6?

xxx886 is easy, and it clears up the other three. D# G A# is a D# major, so, that makes the first three essentially D#2, D# flat2 and D#. Ornament notes over a chord, kinda like the earlier "Closer To Fine" example, albeit much cooler. Very chromatic, very jazzy.

xx788a. What? 88a is D# G D, which makes a major seventh. "Makes" doesn't fully mean makes, as these are all partial chords, not full. The 7 is A. The flat five. Don't often see that in chords. The more I think about it, the more I think it should sound awful. But, clearly it doesn't.

So, clearly, because I don't remotely understand why this works, I never would've come up with it. But man, isn't that cool?

Long-Haired Freak!

You probably don't know Mattias IA Eklundh.

He transcribed his inkjet printer and wrote a song around it.

He's a complete freak.

His album titles will tell you so.

That's honestly not what gets me. I can listen to him talk to Guitar Player magazine all day and just get inspired. I'm wanting to learn how to tame his stuff and combine his voodoo with my own style.

What gets me is he's playing high-gain guitar and it's absolutely noiseless.

How does he do that?

And, out of curiosity, that scrunchy on the headstock? Greg Howe has one on his headstock, too, in the latest Guitar Player. Is that to keep the neck quiet above the nut? Does it get pulled down to quiet open strings? Is it just to bring a flash of blue? It can't be to just hold his scrunchy until after the gig.

A Video Interlude

The song: "Young Thing", by Chet Atkins.

The player: John 5, formerly of Marilyn Manson's band. I think he's still Rob Zombie's guitar player.

Yup, he's a Tele guy.

I've been thinking about "Country Metal" for a while, having heard the term bandied about. On the one hand, it's John Rich playing a Flying V with a Stetson on. On the other hand, it's John 5, tattooed and decked out like this, pulling off stuff like this.

I hear him and Brad Paisley and, at least musically, they seem to have about the same sense of humor. I'd love to see them do a version of "Devil Went Down To Georgia" with John being the Devil and Brad being ... well, Johnny.

No matter what, it's clear that John 5's earned his CGP.

I Think I Got A Bootleg

I'm a big fan of Clarence White.

I hope nobody's too shocked by that.

Anyway, I was at a local record shop last week. I found a recording I have been looking for. The Tuff & Stringy Sessions.

Once upon a time, Clarence was a flatpicker in a bluegrass band, but Dylan going electric and the Byrds doing Dylan had caused a folk bust, which killed the gigs for his kind of music. So he started to learn to play a Telecaster like Don Rich and James Burton, doing country sessions and playing clubs until a spot opened up for him in the Byrds. I own all the Byrds stuff I want, from Sweetheart of the Rodeo to Farther Along. I have a copy of Muleskinner, his one-off proto-newgrass outfit. I have the classic Kentucky Colonels albums. I have Nashville West, recorded at one of the aforementioned club gigs. But I had none of that post-Colonels, pre-Byrds session work.

I had seen it on Amazon and other websites, but I hadn't had a copy in arm's reach before, and I felt I could not delay, I could not refuse. So I bought it. And as soon as I opened it, I thought something was up. First of all, as you can see, the liner notes are not stapled. They are on thick enough paper that it is difficult to fold it and put it into the case. And they are not printed in order. I'm one of those big geeks, and part of the reason big music geeks get physical media is so they can read the liners.

It is quite difficult to read the liners if you cannot actually find the order the liners should go.

It is also difficult to read the liners if they are printed poorly. Previous non-Legacy releases may have been a wasted opportunities, but I've never seen them poorly reproduced until now. And there's usually some font and layout continuity between the packaging and the CD itself.

The music itself seems OK, but digital-to-digital copying should not cause much degradation. One of the benefits of CDs, and one of the problems for the music industry.

For me, this one's a special thing. Because I want as much benefit as possible to folks who release CW material, so as much CW material as possible gets released. There might've found things I have found before where the copyright holders received just as much nothing as they got from this, if I am right and this is a bootleg.

Anybody know? Anybody here have this already?

Rollin' In My Pontiac

Listen to the first part of this. Which is Adam Gussow schooling us on Sonny Boy Williamson.

Then listen to the beginning of this. You don't actually have to get more than ten seconds into it. Just the "Down Down Baby, Yo' Street in a Range Rover" part.

Nelly's rockin' the signature riff to "Pontiac Blues". Rockin' a different set of wheels, to be sure, but it's the same riff.

Nothin' new under the sun, I guess.

No Cool Songs On The Car Radio.....

Listening to XM. X Country (Pron: "Cross Country") played a song, like they're wont to do. Mike McClure, "Everything's Upside Down".

It's the best song Tom Petty never recorded.

I've never heard it on the radio.

They Weren't County When Country Wasn't Alt

But, you know Dave, as I write this, it occurs to me that I really have no clue as to the boundaries of what be alt. country.

Well, Jack, I've been thinking long and hard about it. And I've generated some ideas. I'll get into the greater Americana deal in a moment, but first we'll get to the smallest definition of Alt Country. The five essentials, plus some connections.

Uncle Tupelo, and the two offshoot band, Son Volt and Wilco. The band formed by their roadie and spare guitarist, the Bottle Rockets. The Jayhawks. The supergroup containing members of Wilco and the Jayhawks, Golden Smog. The third group contributing songwriters to the Smog, Soul Asylum, which only occasionally leans into this genre, but we'll put them in anyway, just for now. And Whiskeytown, which kinda came later and kinda don't fit in this.

I made a mix for the way home yesterday, and between Brian Henneman and Chrome Dreams, I figured it out. All of the above bands, have Neil Young as their primary inspiration. 1970s Neil Young, the Neil from Decade and Rust Never Sleeps. Not Gram Parsons. Not the Flatlanders. Not Waylon Jennings. Not Buck Owens. It's all on Neil Young. There's other influences, of course, but they come from the rock side, I think. UT plays CCR's "Effigy" for the No Alternative sampler, but they play it like Neil would. When they did March 16-20. 1992, they didn't play bluegrass, they didn't play really folky, they played strummy Neil Young style.

As time went on, they expanded their styles. Much less Neil in Anodyne than Still Feel Gone, for example. And when they did country covers, like Soul Asylum doing "Cocaine Blues" and Tupelo doing "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" with Joe Ely, they're trying to get that sound more. I've been listening to more Waylon these days, and I'd be hard pressed to say how their arrangement differed from Waylon's. The bass was certainly root-fifth and way out in front.

But that brings me to the other part. These bands didn't go to LA and get caught up in that scene like Neil did. They didn't go to Nashville and get day jobs at MCA and play bar gigs on Lower Broadway until they got drawn into the Music City machinery, like the Waylon song describes. They set up their own gigs until they signed to minors, toured small gigs until they got enough following to jump to the majors. They didn't do it like Hank. They did it like Hank! Rather, more like REM. They did it like a college-rock band from the 80s, which really is what they were. Alt Country is a heresy of Rock, not Country.

Not that this was the only influence on these guys.

The Strange Case of Marty Party

The man owns and plays Clarence White's original B-Bender.

He owns and plays Pops Staples Tele, given to him by Mavis.

He owns and plays Lester Flatt's D-28.

He owns a whole lot of other Country memorabilia. Collects it. Curates it.

He recorded one of very few concept albums ever to come from a Nashville label.

He played mandolin for Lester Flatt.

He played all sorts of instruments for Johnny Cash.

He named his backing band with one of the best band names I've ever heard: The Fabulous Superlatives.

He can walk on stage with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and hold his own.

I should be the hugest fan of Marty Stuart.

I'm a fan. Just not a huge one.

It's all on me. It's not fair to say "If you were this guy and not that guy, I'd be your biggest fan." As if he'd listen.

What distinguishes Alt-Twang from Nash-Twang? Comparing Gibson's Top Five to the "Never Call Me" Requirements, you don't see a lot of Mama, prison or modes of transportation. Maybe some getting drunk. Certainly heartbreak. Certainly nostalgia and disappointment. Not much Mama. And certainly, there's nobody singing about Alt-Country or Alt-Country Girls. And if anyone in an Alt-Country song has ever been triumphantly drunk, I don't recall it.

I can think of only one parental reference in Alt Country: The Gear Daddies' "Statue of Jesus"

Lord knows how hard I try but I just don't think I fit
Daddy always said everything I touch, it turns to shit

In Marty's songs, the Dads give helpful and good advice.

Uncle Dave Macon said that Earl Scruggs wasn't a damn bit funny. And neither is Alt Country. Marty's an entertainer, not an artist. He'll make you cry, he'll make you dance, and he'll make you laugh. He's a Country guy, and Country includes Minnie Pearl and Larry the Cable Guy. It ain't just music, it's entertainment. I'm used to thinking of Alt Country as a heresy of Rock rather than one of Country, and I'm not used to acts like that. There's only one Alt Country song I've heard on the radio. "Radar Gun" by the Bottle Rockets. If you don't recall, it's a song about a local cop on a quest to fund local government via speeding tickets. It's a rocker, but it's also pretty much a novelty song, the second-closest I've heard an No Depression artist writing a joke song. The closest is "Idiot's Revenge", which couldn't get on radio for one specific word, which I will not repeat here.

(As an aside, I've been thinking. You don't get songs in Rock defending the institutions and history of Rock. Well, outside of Bob Seger. There's never be a "Murder on Music Row" about Rock music, saying someone's killed it. Is it because Rock is so geographically diverse? So musically diverse? So balkanized? And is "Murder", as I'm leaning right now, a terrific song but a bogus thesis?)

So, here I am, trying to learn to digest real Country and not infect it with my pretensions. And listening to him and the Staples Singers sing "The Weight".

Happy Birthday, Lester!

If you play electric guitar, and if you record, most everything you do was thought up first by Les Paul. Not only was he a great inventer (The Gibson Les Paul has his name on it for a reason!), he was and is a shredder. He just turned 93, and he's still gigging. Happy Birthday, Les, and many, many more!

Shouldn't Be Ashamed

First, I put up Gibson's list of essential Alt-Country, then opined that I prefer A.M. to Being There.

Then Jack Pribek (who happens to know people who were involved in Being There) posted a link to some Quicktime (I hate Quicktime) of Wilco's three-night stand in St. Louis. He commented:

I’ve had some recent discussions with some Wilco fans and a lot of them are more enamored of the earlier work. Whereas, I think they sound like a band that is currently at the peak of their form.

Really, I was just looking for some Alt-Twang that isn't old enough to go to Math Camp with my middle child! I have all the Wilco except Sky Blue Sky! I'm a good fan! Really!

But I kinda took that up as a challenge. So, today, instead of setting my playlist to just play things that Windows Media Player hasn't played for me (which should take several weeks), I queued up Wilco. I'm still early into A.M., my avowed favored territory. But I'll go through it all today, commenting as I go. (You're welcome to take the journey with me!)

In part because I very much doubt that the Quicktime stream will flow through the firewall at work. Nope.

Alt-Country: The Missing Years

Gibson has a list of the Top 5 Essential Alt-Country albums.

1. Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne (Warner Bros, 1993)
2. Son Volt, Trace (Warner Bros, 1995)
3. Whiskeytown, Strangers Almanac (Outpost, 1997)
4. Wilco, Being There (Reprise, 1996)
5. The Jayhawks, Hollywood Town Hall (Warner Bros, 1992)

I hope it surprises nobody that I own them all. I hope it surprises nobody that I listen to them all fairly regularly.

Can I tell you what surprises me?

Every one of those recordings is over 10 years old. Brilliant, to be sure. I'm not always sure that those are necessarily the albums I'd pick but I'd certainly go with the artists. Specifically, Wilco's best album by my ears is still A.M., and if I was to pick a favorite Uncle Tupelo album ... I'd pick 'em all, but at this moment I'm leaning more toward Still Feel Gone. Not that Anodyne isn't great, because it is.

But what have the alt-twangers done for us lately? This non-traditional music has always tugged my ear far more than mainstream Nashville stuff, and even though my TV is more often tuned to CMT than to MTV, there's a shallowness to it that puts me off. And while I've been keeping those five artists and a few others in fairly regular rotation, I'm finding out about the newer, cooler stuff in drabs at best.

If a thing shows no signs of life in ten years, it must be considered dead. Is there nothing essential in Alt-Country from the last decade? Rather, what would you consider essential, great or even just really darn good Alt-Country released 1998-2008?

Not musical?

Try this, then.

Who Do You Love?

Bo Diddley, Rest In Peace

Your History is not History, or My Favorite Year

Blame Petty.

By time David Crosby and Chris Hillman were gone, those in the know had given up on the Byrds. It was just Jim/Roger McGuinn running on fumes. So, when Muddy Waters at the end of Hepburn Hall my freshman year at Middlebury purchased "Untitled", I laughed on the inside. Hadn’t he gotten the memo? But there was this one song that emanated from his room, "Chestnut Mare"… And then the reviews started to come in, saying the album was a return to form. Then, Clarence White, the superlative new guitarist, was cut down by an automobile after a gig and Roger McGuinn didn’t get another slice of fame until he participated in Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review. Is that where he met Jacques Levy?

No, in this case, the influence went in reverse. Roger met Jacques first. Or at least used him first. Jacques wrote the lyrics for "Chestnut Mare" and…"Lover Of The Bayou".

I only found this out the other day, when I fired up Petty’s cover. Not that I knew it was a cover at first. I was entranced by that classic guitar figure. The performance was almost garage rock. I was getting in the groove. Had Petty come back? Then, when they reached the line: "I’m a lover of the bayou", I realized I’d heard this before.

Minor research told me it had been done by the Byrds. But WHEN?

The first white act I remember mentioning the bayou was John Fogerty, singing about being born on the bayou (and that’s my favorite Creedence track… "And I can remember the fourth of July, runnin’ through the backwood bare"… Fucking record SOUNDS like it was cut on the bayou!) I didn’t remember Roger McGuinn singing about the bayou… And to do it after Fogerty seemed kind of lame…

This, says Bob Lefsetz.

Just so there's no doubt, he looked up late Byrds because he loved Mudcrutch. I want Mudcrutch because I like the Byrds. No. I accept the Byrds. I really like Clarence White, and he went hardcore electric with the Byrds. If he had joined the Stones, I'd have seven Rolling Stones CDs instead of Byrds CDs. Well, I have some of those anyway. Exile on Main Street is a great album.

I have a conception of 1969, musically. It involves the Stones and Jimi and the Byrds and Creedence. I know that's only part of it. Even within rock, I'm missing the Doors and Janis. I've heard the Doors; I won't go so far as to say all of it, but I'm sure that anything I missed isn't too significant. I could do more with Janis. This was a high point for Simon and Garfunkel. The Grateful Dead were just getting heard outside of Frisco. And that's just when we're discussing hip music.

My kids love I Love The 80s and such. While elements come up, the 80s they talk about on those shows isn't the 80s I experienced. Like 1984, when many people I knew left middle school wearing long hair and Sammy Hagar shirts and started their freshman year with much much shorter hair and bright red Black Flag shirts that said Slip It In. It was at least two years until I was similarly hip to Black Flag, and by then it was too late.

Bob has a 70s that he believes Petty shares, where the Byrds were Roger McGuinn and the Backing Band, where they were a joke, except for certain tunes that bubbled up. I suppose everyone has their own years. I can tell you that in my 1992, I did not know anybody who didn't own Inhale Pink and Exhale Blue by Billy McLachlan and Hollywood Town Hall by the Jayhawks. And that's the year I read the Uncle Tupelo interview in Option where they said in high school they weren't friends with anyone who wasn't into Black Flag.

Black Flag was part of Jeff Tweedy's 80s, too. Probably the same show.

But clearly by Anodyne someone had played 'em Sweetheart and maybe Untitled....

Chapter 6: Don't Listen To Your Elders

This is easy. You like Eddie Van Halen. Who did he listen to? Who are his influences? Cream. So you pick up Disraeli Gears and like Eric Clapton. Who did he listen to? Who are his influences? The Three Kings: Albert, Freddie and B.B. Which leads to Elmore James and Robert Johnson.

Congratulations. You now have the same influences that everyone who ever bought an issue of Guitar World has.

Of course, it's good to listen to Van Halen and pick out what you can. Of course Eric Clapton's important. Of course B.B. King is great. Of course, Robert Johnson is just awesome. I'm not arguing against them.

I am arguing for a variety of influence. X is punk rock with Carter Family harmonies. Lee Roy Parnell is straight blues, but he's out of Nashville so he's Country. Clarence White (yes, I have to mention him) brought Country picking into Rock. John Five is bringing Hank Garland to a generation of young shredders.

So, listen to people outside your style. Integrate it. It'll help you not suck, and it might just help you out of a jam.

Singing another new song

You might not have heard of Ray Phiri, but you've heard Ray Phiri.

He was Paul Simon's guitarist for the Graceland album and tour.

He's an example of the African guitar style. From here, it's easy to generalize over too much music with too little source material to draw from, but it seems that, from flatpicking acoustic guitar to multi-head Marshall stacks, the western style of guitar is trying to get a more and more solid sound. African music in general, and Ray Phiri specifically, always seems almost gossamer in contrast. It's almost not there, but it's so good that it is.

No, I mean REALLY unsung

There's a set of guitar heroes that the public knows. Ask any music fan to name his favorite guitarist and you'll likely get one of a certain set of names. Eric Clapton. Brian May. Jimmy Page. Jimi Hendrix. Slash. Stevie Ray Vaughn. Eddie Van Halen. Angus Young. Tom Morello. Jack White. Probably a dozen others.

Name a guitarist to name his favorite guitarist, it'll be different. Clearly, the above names clearly belong in the pool, but you're as to see James Burton, Allan Holdsworth, Jeff Beck, Michael Hedges, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen, Buddy Guy or Danny Gatton. I think that Danny was once called the most overrated underrated guitarist, meaning that nobody but guitarists had heard of him, but all the guitar players and the guitar press thought he was brilliant. (It is the opinion of this blog that he was brilliant. It is also the opinion of this blog that his brilliance is a fact, not just an opinion of this blog.)

I'm looking for the really unsung heroes, the guitarists who nobody knows and more people should

Today, I am listening to Michael Lee Firkins.

Who?, you say.

Michael Lee Firkins has had four albums on Shrapnel Records, the shred guitar label. So, he's a shredder. Clearly. All about the sweep picking and whammy bar. Well, yeah, but not entirely like that.

Michael Lee Firkins does not play slide guitar on any cuts , the liners say. They have to, because on things like "Hula Hoops" and "Deja Blues", it sounds like he's doing slide and even Hawaiian lap steel. Most shredders bang on their Floyd Roses, down until the strings go slack and up a major third, Vai-style. Firkins holds the whammy between his pinky and ring finger, using it gently to get slide effects.

I am also listening to Mattias IA Eklundh.

Who?, you say.

Mattias IA Eklundh is the kind of guitarist who can play Kiss like it's Django and Django like it's Zappa. He's the kind of guitarist who can imitate his inkjet printer with his guitar. He's the kind of guitarist who plays "Smoke On The Water" doubletime and a sixth up so his dog will enjoy it, too. He's a Freak, so much that his album is called Freak Guitar, and Vai liked it so much that he put it out on Favored Nations.

So, who is your really unsung guitar hero?