It’s been a week, so now time for my traditional review of the book I recently completed reading.  This particular piece of literature/documentary was given to me as a gift from my brother Ron due to the similarities of the  author’s late endeavor to learn the guitar and my own efforts to master the instrument.   The premise of this book is the chronicling of Will Hodgkinson’s commitment to performing a gig.  The catch is the author does not know how to play the guitar, but set the date of the live audience event around 6 months out.   Having lived (actually still living) through the hardships of understanding the fundamentals of the guitar, this particular book really hit home and if nothing else provided some badly needed therapy to know someone else out there has struggled as much as I have.   I must admit, I was impressed with his commitment to immerse himself not only into the efforts to learn enough about the guitar to perform at his gig, but also to go underneath the technique and travel throughout the music world to meet with pioneers in the guitar field – including a tour through the deep south of the US to get closer to the birthplace of the blues.  I am not sure if this book would appeal to an individual that couldn’t relate to the hardships of learning the guitar, but I found it a very entertaining and actually looking forward to reading his sequel (Song Man) also given to me by my brother. 

 Now on to those items that stuck with me after finally putting the book down:

• He happened to reference the band “The Black Keys”.  I keep hearing about this band, I think it is time to give them a listen
• He believes the most basic rule of music is if you take the root note of a scale and move two notes back you get to the relative minor.   – I personally think it is WWHWWWH 8^)
• Considers Dire Straits’ Making Movies a standard staple for European collections – I agree, Skateaway is one of my favorite songs
• The bare necessity consists of 4 chords with 1 of them being minor
• Apparently Carlos Alomar’s guitar is apparently horribly out of tune on David Bowie’s Young Americans song
• Technique without feeling is FLUFF
• Joni Mitchell gave up her child for adoption and split up with Graham Nash so she could be a superstar (sad since I don’t like her stuff anyway)
• Apparently one of the first things that Mississippi conjures to mind in a European is that it is considered the birthplace of the KKK
• Robert Johnson only taped 29 songs and there are only 2 photographs of him – although I am not sure he could have been photographed since he supposedly sold his soul to the Devil at the “Crossroads”
• Mick Jagger misheard a lyric of Robert Johnson and put a different interpretation on one of his songs on the Let It Bleed album (Love in Vain I think)
• Johnson was poisoned by a jealous husband
• Bruce Watson (founder of Fat Possum records) believes the best blues players come out Mississippi because it is a “sh*t hole)
• Les Paul invented modern recording techniques such as overdubbing and multi-tracking – also claims that he had his right arm set at an angle after a bad wreck to make it better for guitar playing (not sure I am buying that one)
• Apparently the English audience does not like crowd participation (likened to a root canal)
• Apparently Les Paul is all about the money now (autographs etc.) and isn’t worth actually seeing play anymore
• Had a very interesting discussion on the various pros and cons of various guitars – apparently Les Pauls are not the best at the “clean” setting
• The Stooges guitarist (James Williamson) is now married with two kids and working as an electronics executive – ah, life after punk – oh, and apparently Iggy is a drummer
• Apparently Alice Cooper got a lot of his ideas off of Iggy… that may be true, but I’d rather pay to see Alice (and I have) than anything from Iggy (and yes, technically I paid to see him at the ROAR -Revelations of Alternative Rock all day concert in Davenport, Iowa…. but we left before subjecting ourselves to him)
• The Stooges never did covers and considered the Stones as a big influence… at least we agree on something
• Apparently Will doesn’t mind engaging in a little “wrapped greenery” to get a good story
• Apparently John Entwistle (the Who) died doing lines off a hooker’s (intrigued, I tried to verify with the Wiki, but they apparently decided to leave that little detail off)
• More proof that if you commit to something, you can accomplish anything

look for the the recollection of the sequel in the coming month or so.