Guitar Licks

Guitars, tips and great music discussions




You are here: Home / Archives for Guitars

Illness puts Yes tour on hold or does it

by

The super group YES, had to cancel their latest tour, due to asthma attacks that will sideline the bands lead vocalist Ian Anderson.

His physician told him that he just has to rest for six months after suffering an asthma attack. Respiratory problems are nothing to take lightly! I’ve seen what toll it can take on people personally … I work in a hospital … remember that SARs thing, I do?

Anyway, because of his health issue, Ian Anderson is “deeply disappointed” but realizes one’s health must take priority!

“You can’t ever really replace Jon Anderson, because he’s been such a force in the music business,” Squire said. “We look upon his replacement as more of an understudy.”

So how does one replace this little iconic powerhouse of a vocalist … you simple go and search on Youtube like everyone else does. Da, Da, enter Benoit David.

His band is called CLOSE TO THE EDGE as well as the symphonic rock band Mystery, is from Montreal Canada!

Chris Squire, the bands bass player and only other founding member of YES, and YES is back on tour again! Chris found this guy on Youtube with his YES tribute band playing Close to the Edge and just like that, YES is back on the road!

Chris admits that it’s impossible to replace the diminutive singer, but they can have an under study.

So decide for yourself, worthy or not worthy?

I sure as hell wouldn’t want to fill those shoes … no matter what his size is.

Keep on Jammin’




Paradise Skies Max Webster

by

This was, in my mind, Canada’s greatest Rock and Roll band of all time!

I think they had more in the tank then they let on.

This is a really weird video from a show called UK Gold. This was when the band was touring support of the Million Vacations album. So, for all you Max fans out there, Enjoy!

Keep on Jammin’ Max and the Maxa Machine!

Seven Ages of Rock

by

The BBC has produced one more gem of the documentary! This informative Rock and Roll documentary titled the Seven Ages of Rock was great to watch right from start to finish.

It was my wife’s birthday this past weekend and while at home eating her favorite Greek take-out food, we came across this amazing show that i just happened to tape earlier on in the week. The segment we took in was the We are the Champions section. It talked about, and with, some of the Arena Rock bands and how they achieved mastering this part of our R & R experience. The BBC brought us through it’s evolution of this period and how it shaped us morally and politically and it didn’t disappoint.

We both love all the bands of that era and the way they explored the sequence of it. Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Police, U2, Dire Straights, Kiss and to a lesser extent Springsteen. I realize I’ll take some heat for my comment about Springsteen from some of my readers, but that is for another future post.

This one hour doc was even making our puppy Midnight sit up and take notice (we’ll take any help to settle her down where we can get it!) It had all of the standard nostalgic rock doc footage, but it also brought us behind the scenes of the bands inner workings of their business dealings. The best and most insightful in this regard was from The Police’s Stewart Copeland.

The hats off best musical guitar lesson was from Mark Knopfler. He just casually picks up his trusty axe and shows us how he plays Money for Nothing from the 1985 album Brothers in Arms. That was just plain and simply amazing!

I’ve tried for years to figure out this song in many different ways, but I was never quite satisfied with my own end results. So when he picked up his Les Paul, and started showing us exactly how he plays this tune practically note for note, I almost died! So did my wife because we have a PVR (or TVo to my US readers) that allows me to go back and forth to pick apart any section of the video that is recorded with ease.

Having and using this piece of technology, is what helps in driving my wife up the wall and down the other side. The other is when I re-play the song for ever, because I am so annul in reproducing ANY song on guitar. If you have the ability to tape this part of the program and you honestly want to play this tune properly, them tape it! You WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED!

OR, just check this out!

The only bands that where noticeable absent in the segment was Pink Floyd and The Who. Thank God they were in the first two programs. Otherwise, we both give this one 2 thumbs up! And, if the situation presented itself, I’d get the DVD for my collection … and I can be quite tight with my money!

Keep on Jammin’

Aja from Steely Dan

by

The name of the song/album from Steely Dan titled Aja, is from a Korean women.

I’m not sure if I told you all before but some of my earliest exposure to Jazz guitar influences was from this fabulous band, Steely Dan and I owe a lot to this band in terms of my playing style. This is a little bit of music trivia that I found out while viewing youtube searching for Jackie Blue from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

First of all, my wife and I were watching this new show called Swingtown (go tot he bottom right for music samples). It’s about these couples from the 70’s, who were swingers, in the Chicago area. The music for this series is top notch, in our eyes! So while viewing the show, this song from the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (viewed by some to be a country version of Steely Dan) entitled Jackie Blue was playing. This song, like most of the songs on this show, just blew me right back to the 70’s during my childhood.

I remember this song as a comforting song, regardless of it’s content. During this part of the show, I picked up my acoustic and tried figuring it out. I was leaning towards a unplugged version of it and I soon nailed it very promptly.

Never perfectly happy in how I play songs, always looking for multiple ways to it, I looked in youtube to see if there was someone else who plays it in an unplugged style with no luck. Then in the Related Video section I found a video called Steely Dan – “Aja” The Making Of:

It was an interview with Walter Becker and Donald Fagen talking about their album Aja. As a kid, I was always interested in who that was on the front cover of it, this is when I found out who it finally was!

aja.jpg

Donald Fagen said that a high school friends older brother brother had went off to Korea and married this women, and her name was Aja. The couple later on moved back to the US. Donald Fagen thought that it was a very romantic image with a feeling of tranquility that comes with the name. Now after writing this particular song, he put her name to it, neat eh? AND she is the one on the front cover!

Another musical mystery solved!

Keep on Jammin’ everybody

How about those Yamaha audio mixing consoles

by

I’ve was talking to my buddy Rick from the now defunct G-Force Media, and we got to talking about Mixing equipment. He has this ancient Yamaha board and he swears by this thing! It’s very HUGE looking and kinda intimidating to sit down behind with tons of knobs everywhere on it.

As we were chatting on the phone he sent me this link that he found while searching online. He wanted to show me this company called hi-tech audio’s site. He is interested in getting one of these Yamaha Audio Mixing Consoles that was listed on the site. He says that he desperately needs a much smaller and flexible console to meet his needs of transporting it to and from gigs. I don’t blame him one bit, that puppy is heavy! The one he’s keen is the Yamaha LS9-32.

The first thing I noticed about the site was that it is very pleasing and easy on the eye as well as being quite easy to navigate. No pop ups and flashing lights to distract you from what your there to see. They specialize in Yamaha, Digidesign and Digico products, and Rick says they’re top shelf products. Who better to know that then Rick.

Hi-Tech Audio are Yamaha commercial audio/digital console/restocking and service dealers. They also seem to be a Digidesign Venue Dealer as well as dealers for the Digico D5 and D1. Doing some searching on the side, I was impressed by some of the line up that Digico has to offer. If I had a few extra bucks to throw around, then I’d make these guys rich. I’d also need a much bigger and more sound proof home to go with it.

The price for this particular board is well within his budget. I noticed that they also have in their Resource Center these digital Audio Training sections which I thought was neat! He even went as far as looking up some of this company’s clients and was impressed by what they did in terms of their products. He is one of those guys who actually reads the manuals (I must admit that I’m not one of those guys) and checks out a ton of forums online so the resource center may be of some interest to him. As he talked about the board, I decided to check out the rest of the site.

After talking with my friend about some of the pros of using Yamaha Mixing Consoles I stumbled upon one part of the site that discussed church sound systems. Oddly enough, my mother works at a church rectory and they are doing some major renovations to her church. While visiting my parents last weekend she brought up this topic and said that they are in the market for a new sound system and it just got my attention.

I know that in the case of Churches, simpler is better. The digital Audio Training will be a good selling point for the technically challenged church staff. The last time I went to see my mother at work, the video player’s screen kept on flashing “12:00” … and it’s been that way for years. Come on, some of us here must be guilty of this one! So after we got off the phone I sent the link off to mom and hopefully she can pass it off to head priest there for further viewing. Who knows, maybe they’ll get one of the Church audio systems that I came across.

Rick just sent off an e-mail to these guys and hopefully he’ll get prompt reply. Stay tuned for the results of his search and maybe I’ll get him to reply to this post for a great detailed analysis of his adventures with Hi-Tech Audio.

Keep on Jammin’

Max Webster coming off the moon

by

Just in case you have not heard of these guys, here is a little ditty and my old band Pylis played way back in the day.

It has everything you want in a tune to play live! It’s fun, difficult to play and most of all IT’S A CANADIAN BAND!!!!!

Enjoy!

Keep on Jammin’
Max Webster R.I.P.


The Performer tuning system by Transperformance

by

The Transperformance tuning system called the Performer, will make tuning your guitar on the fly very simple. It is an interesting dream of many guitarists, whose idea’s have finally become a reality.

I’ve been recently researching modern day guitar tuning technology and I have found some very different approaches in how to achieve this.

On my other blog, Guitar Licks and Tips, I have introduced some of you to the tuning system called Powertune technology from a German company called Tronical on Gibson’s Robot Guitar. This type of tuning system that I talk about there, can be added and removed later if desired. The Transperformance system cannot brag of such luxuries.

performer1.jpg There are 4 components to this system. They are the 1 touch tuning, the LCD readout, the tuner assembly and finally a foot switch. It has the mind boggling ability to hold up to 144 pre-set types of tunings, wow! It has the range of up to Tens of thousands of distinct tunings possible. But how many does one really need? Better way too many then not enough I guess?

The Performer does not manipulate the actual sound of your guitar. It works separately from the pick ups. It does require a 12 volt battery that lasts around 120 minutes though. I can not find the total weight of the product, but I am investigating further.

The testimonials are top notch don’t get me wrong but this thing sure looks heavy to me. If you’ve ever picked up a Les Paul then you may understand my train of thought. It can be used on Fenders, thank God, as they have shown on their site. I’ve never seen this product at all, so wish me luck in finding one here in town.

In later posts, I will break each individual component of this system to the best of my ability, so stay TUNED, ha!

Keep on Jammin’

Canada’s own Ken Greer

by

Ken Greer has to be the best Canadian guitarist/slide guitarist/keyboardist that has ever flown (for way too long in my eyes) under the radar that I know of! He certainly has to be the most underrated Canadian guitarist that I have ever heard. And I have my brother in-law to thank for this.

He has it all, he plays it all and he understands it ways we can only dream about. Ken Greer has that special something that we all strive for in our own playing approach. Seeing him play with Tom Cochrane was like seeing a wall of sound hit you right in the face. It was like going to a nice old church with an organ that has 75 foot pipes with all the stops out. We experienced what it must of been like for people when they were first exposed to Phil Spector’s revolutionary wall of sound.

They guy plays his slide like it is a freight train rolling through you head one moment, then he tickles the plastic ivory like my buddy Tony F. from my old Pylis days! He then will pick up his axe and then blast off with some back up rhythm guitar playing that makes you just shake your head … that’s what I did throughout his show with Tom Cochrane at the 2008 Canadian Open.

I’ve been trying with no real luck in finding some of his stuff on-line to show you so if you have anything on this guy then PLEASE send me a link! I just want to give you a little taste of what it was that we experienced that faithful night.

Keep on Jammin’

Tom Cochrane at the Canadian Open

by

Tom Cochrane and Red Rider were out of this world at the 2008 Canadian Open. They rekindled my love and deep appreciation for this band not only for their song writing ability but the level of musicianship to boot!

My wife’s brother called us a while ago and asked us if we wanted free tickets to the 2008 Canadian Open in Oakville (God bless this man). At first we were a little bit luke warm on the idea of watching a golf tournament, with the weather that we’ve been having here in southern Ontario this summer, until we found out that Tom Cochrane was playing a free show at the Canadian Open!

This guy is hands down my wife’s favorite band of all time. So with these tickets my wife had just received the best free tickets/concert that she ever could have asked for this year!

We arrived there right at the end of play that Saturday night to find out that nobody was around the stage at all! To say that this was our lucky day would be an understatement. The show had a general seating arrangement so we brought along our two seater foldable lawn chair just in case we could use it. With this in tow, we RAN to the front of the stage. I still couldn’t believe my eyes, nobody was there except the security guys! The beer tent was even around 50 feet behind us, mind you they were quite pricey but at that point who cared.

We were about 20 feet away from Tom Cochrane at worst and 15 feet at best throughout the show. He just rocked from the get go and just kept getting better as the set progressed.

Tom started out by singing Victory Day, then followed up with Big League, then Sinking like a Sunset. After that he did a song dedicated to his daughter Cody which I believe was called Northern Star, after that they did a slowed down version of Good Times, followed by Human Race, White Hot and Life is a Highway. They came back for an Encore and did Lunatic Fringe and ended with Boy inside the man.

The part of the show that I just couldn’t keep my mind off was the guitarist/slide/keyboardist named Ken Greer. The only thing that I will say about this guy was OMG, this guy is one !@#$%^& hell of a GREAT MUSICIAN! More to follow on this guy.

Tom Cochrane and Red Rider(Ken Greer), keep on Jammin’ for the love of GOD!

Amos Lee live rocks

by

First of all, Amos Lee is a guy who is a bit of an acquired taste, but when you get him, you really get him!

Second, I know I must apologize to my regular readers for not writing on this blog for ages, but it’s the summer time here folks!

The tickets we got for free and the added bonus were the seats. They were 1st balcony, 1st row center right above the sound board. It has been a while since we’ve both been out together and it couldn’t of been better.

His sound was that of many influences. Folk, Jazz, Dixie Land and Jazz were right there front from the start. The band that was with him complimented him perfectly. They seemed like they all were high school buddies, that just happened to stumble upon this thing called playing in a band and was enjoying every minute of it.

The drummer was simple but yet very tight. He also caught my wife’s musical eyes in that he plays the drums the other way from what she normally sees in other bands. The bass player reminded me of Billy Wyman in his stage presence. Great bassist, but seemed very, very relaxed on stage.

Now the keyboardist with Amos Lee was another story. He was the most colorful on stage. His sound was big and bouncy! His stage demeanor had the essence of Levon Helm, the drummer for The Band. He was just a grooving to everything and he knew when to fade in and out perfectly! Now for the man of the hour, Amos!

amos-lee.jpg

The style he plays is quite simple, most of the time, but he shows how to pull out all the stops at the drop of a hat. His voice took some time getting use to, but in the end he made quite the impression on all of us! The song that stood out in my eyes was Sweet Pea. When I was first deciding which free show to go to, it was this song that drew me towards seeing him. The way he plays this one live is just plain and simply amazing! To see what I mean, I highly recommend going out and seeing this guy live … I know you’ll won’t be disappointed.

Keep on Jammin’

Meta

Archives

Pages

Tags

Acoustic amp band bands Brantford Bruce Cockburn Canada Canadian concert Entertainment fender funny General guitar Guitar Equipment guitarist guitar player guitars Home house Humor humour instrument jammin jazz John Mayer keyboard Live Music musician Musicians play playing Progressive Rock Pylis rock RUSH Songs to play sound strings Technology Toronto tour Video YES