This thread is giving me serious flashbacks, not to mention brining my work productivity to a screaching halt. Awesome!

First concert I ever saw was Vai playing with DLR on the Skyscraper tour, caught Satch a couple times in 89 or 90, and Yngwie 90 or 91. Never could get into Yngwie's music too much on the Walkman™ but damn he was amazing to watch.

Good times, good times.....

This reminds me of a story

I met this guitar player in a bar in Cape May. He was the stereotypical blues-man … an old black dude, trucker hat, playing slide on a black Tele. The place was wild for this three-piece roadhouse band. During a break, I approached him at the bar and gave him the usual white-boy blues fan bullshit.

“Young man, cut the crap,” he said to me, “I saw your hands movin’. You play. How long?”

“I’m learning guitar, but,” my head dropped, “I’m really a just bass player.”

“Don’t discount the rhythm section, son,” he reprimanded me.

“You know how long I been playin’?” he asked. Before I could do any calculations, “Three years. That’s it. And people come from all around to see an old black man playing sloppy guitar.”

You might not be a virtuoso, you might only be starting out [three chords and the truth, right?] but if the audience buys it ... that's the rush

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

nah..i mentioned paul gilbert's solo stuff a few times but admittedly didnt mention racer x...if you want to throw up you can find a few teenage girls playing 'technical difficulties' and 'scarified' on youtube...selling my guitars after that one.

good call on john myung..

saw clapton one time and had mark knopfler as his sideman. ....i wasnt sure itd work but his style of playing really brought something different and quite tasteful to it....

Finally my words collide! Yngwie malmsteen kick

i agree with you 100%..though i love virtuosity i dont think speed equates to being a good musician. there are plenty of shredders on youtube and pros too who just dont do anything for me because all they are doing is running scales. that gets very boring very quickly...what is appealing to me, as im discovering yngwie, is his note selection. its not just mindless drivel. it goes somewhere, has a beginning and end and at least in my opinion, hes truly creating music not playing scales as fast as possible...

go listen to 'julia florida' as played by jason vieaux on youtube...a classical song, one of the most famous but not fast (it aint easy, ive fiddled with it but never gave it a good stab)...very very emotional piece...or to take it a step further the 'concierto de aranjuez'....a stunningly beautiful piece of music but not fast, actually really slow. written by rodrigo when his wife gave birth and the baby died shortly thereafter.

i havent specifically addressed it in this thread but people have mentioned the three chord guys, (ac/dc, zz top)....but those guys are awesome musicians...who cant hum the beginning of 'you shook me all night long' or 'thunderstruck' or 'legrange'.....or lets go with the simplest ever, though odd note choices 'smoke on the water'....all critical to music..

its interesting, i was in a music shop the other day talking to a drum tech in his late 50s and we got to chat along similar lines. he specifically mentioned dave weckl and said how no one wants to hear that 's**t'....i agreed in the sense that it wasnt for everyone but man the guy is good...im paying more attention to drummers these days and have been blown away by the zappa drummers and recently marco minnemann...not because of speed but because theyre innovative and more importantly, can keep the beat :) i played very briefly with a guy in college whod been taking drum lessons since he was six. truly amazing drummer but what we found when we played songs was he couldnt keep the beat..go figure...just like mindless shredding sounds like nonsense in the context of a song..

You think you're a good drummer? Can you keep up with this dude?

http://www.youtube.com/...ed&v=WqE9zIp0Muk

steve morse is awesome..i was actually in guitar center and they had the deep purple version of his guitar. i was so psyched to finally play it...as expected it didnt disappoint. musicman makes some truly awesome instruments...i bought a fender telecaster because i wanted to be steve morse..well that hasnt happened..at one point i could play simple simon, battle lines and vista grande but that was about it...met him once and got his, van romaines and dave larues autograph on a copy of the sheet music of one of his tunes...

I'm all about...

John Petrucci - Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment
Paul Gilbert
Joe Satriani
Alex Lifeson - Rush
Eddie Van Halen - Van Halen
Randy Rhoads - Ozzy Osbourne
Steve Vai

More is more... less is more... more is less, it's all good, just spread the love. (((HUGS))) \m/>.<\m/

me too... all this talk about tappers is reminding me of one of my favorite amp up videos....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZuSaudKc68

I'm more versatile than him. Like, I bet I can beat him in a game of basketball. ; ^ )

---

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

That's a funny story and kind of counters my point. ; ^ )

I think in a way we can separate everything. Much like a triathlon might have a best swimmer, a best runner, and a best cyclist, as well as rich guys with the most expensive bikes and in shape dudes that get all the girls, the same goes for guitar playing. Just because eddie is more popular than yngvei shouldn't detract from the fact that yngvei has really mastered his craft!

---

-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

[quote PappaD
Jeezus, it's like you stole the thoughts from my head. Anyone looking for total guitargasmania should go find the band Cacophony. Jason Becker and Marty Freidman, who later landed in Megadeth.

Oh, and really, Steve Morse schools them all.[/quote]
I remember back in the late 80's when I first started playing music and thumbed through every Guitar World (if I remember the name correctly) magazine. Racer X and Cacophony ads were all over the place. I will state again that I am a metal person and it seems today the guitar gods are rare. I think there was a point in the late 80's through the mid 90's when bands were known more for their guitar players than their singers.

When Freidman started with Megadeth I did get worried, but it was a great match up. Mustaine's style is just so different than Friedman's, messy vs. clean is the simplest way to explain it. And now with Chris Broderick it is the same way.

To address the 3-cord playing guys, there a lot of them that have caught my ear over the years. And I think the biggest influence over the past 20 years would have to be Kurt Cobain. Simple and sloppy, love it or hate it, it changed music forever.

I am tone deaf, and wish I had time to play more, but I agree that music it the key to the soul. There is a song for every mood you could be in that will just make your day better. If I hear 'December' by Only Living Witness (I hope more than one person knows who they are) everything else gets shut out of my mind for a few minutes.

As others have said, this is a great thread to get away from the LA, carbon, what wheel, how fast should I run threads.

---

Contemplating a multi-sport comeback

I was waiting for someone to mention Chris Broderick. He and Jeff Loomis together in Nevermore was one of the best guitar duos I've seen/heard, live or recorded.

---

___________________________________________

2021 races (hopefully!):
70.3 Memphis
70.3 North Carolina

but how about Paul Stanley? nobody jumps higher with high-platform leather boots than him! (insert pink font)
personally, I think John Petrucci is currently the best.

Great explanation. I've never understood the reasoning behind slower stuff having more feeling/soul either. Perhaps closing the eyes, while contorting your face makes all the difference!?!?

Some great musicians mentioned. One that I haven't seen listed is Mike Romeo from Symphony X - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWDvWICcQek

I'm not a Musicians A'hole, so no fancy explanation, but really dig his stuff.

Honorable mention for the "showmanship" alone - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ8ml7eENuI

Look at The Police [when they started that is, before Sting took over] ... you had three guys whose strongest suit was Jazz, playing Caribbean poly-rhythms, exploiting a market for the Punk look and producing 3-minute Pop songs

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I saw him when I was a wee lad. He opened for AC/DC. He blew me away. His sound was even louder than AC/DC if you believe that even possible.

---

http://www.fuelforendurance.com

OMG! Thanks for the upload! I saw that tour too. I'm a fan of this video...

Ytse Jam starts at 6:20 after Mangini's drum solo...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0IetJP7nVg


How did you get those seats? (besides paying for them) VIP?

I really like the video and audio quality of the video you uploaded. What recording setup did you use?

Mike Mangini is so freakin' badass.

I think I've seen DT 3 or 4 times... Score was one of them.

I had to google the name to find out who he was.

Never was a fan of hair metal, but still... now I feel old.

Thanks.

---

http://aclockworkmango.com

You've got to add Paco de Lucia and Django Reinhardt. I've seen Paco live a couple of times.

Here's a quote from The Wikipedia entry on Django--
Jerry Garcia as quoted in June 1985 in Frets Magazine ; "His technique is awesome! Even today, nobody has really come to the state that he was playing at. As good as players are, they haven’t gotten to where he is. There’s a lot of guys that play fast and a lot of guys that play clean, and the guitar has come a long way as far as speed and clarity go, but nobody plays with the whole fullness of expression that Django has. I mean, the combination of incredible speed – all the speed you could possibly want – but also the thing of every note have a specific personality. You don’t hear it. I really haven’t heard it anywhere but with Django".

Django Reinhardt is even more amazing when you realize he had only two good fingers on his fretboard hand.

---

I reject your reality and substitute my own!
Adam Savage

have you seen the documentary DT put together about the auditions for a new drummer? if not either check youtube or roadrunner records. i think theres three videos, each about 20 mins. they brought in i think 5 or 6 guys, lets see how good me memory is (mangini, marco minneman, thomas lang, aquiles preister, virgil donati, derek roddy, maybe one more)..it really is worth a watch and its amazing to see how all of them play completely differently. during the audition they did three things with each guy. first, they made them learn a few DT songs, second, they asked each guy to learn a line on the spot to something they had recently written, but the drummer never heard. and third they asked them to jam randomly...if you play close attention youll see the differences between the drummers when it comes to that and the comments from the band. it appears mangini had it all, though, personally i would have given it to marco minnemann....ive seen mangini play for steve vai a couple of times and hes an absolute beast, just a phenom. my comment on minnemann is just based on whats in the video..right now thomas lang is touring with paul gilbert...