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May262008

Book Recollection: Guitar Man: A Six String Odyssey

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:

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Feb102008

Book Recollection: Slash

After two weeks from reading or listening to a book, I like to reflect back on what actually made it to long-term memory.   I am of the opinion that most pages in a book contain fluff, drivel and generally boring material.   However, every few pages, there is generally something there that lights my bulb or surprises me.  If that specific piece of information stays with me past a couple of weeks, then it was worth my time spent consuming the material.  Unfortunately, there are many books that I can’t even remember a single fact or quote – that equates to once serious waste of time.  Anyway, I figured it might be worthwhile to start putting some of these insights to paper (figuratively).  This will also give me a way to quickly look back and recall the key points in a book – besides, you never know how long the ol’ long term memory will stay intact – every snowboard half-pipe crash I take keeps knocking some stuff loose. 

So, two weeks ago I read the autobiography of Guns N Roses lead guitarist cleverly entitled “Slash”.  He happens(ed) to be one of the guitarists I admire(d) and thought I would gain some insights into what makes him such a good musician and how he goes about arranging his leads.  Well, I was wrong on that pre-assessment since there was little to no information on those two topics.  Some information did stick, but in general, I was disappointed.   Beyond the glorified heroin abuse, non-stop drinking and desire to smash other people’s things there really was not much else.  I realize this is the stereotypical rock star life and this is what their marketing sector embraces, but I have not read a book yet (any Rolling Stones book, Scar Tissue, Hammer of the Gods etc.) where the author thoroughly enjoyed the experience of dependency…. and at least lived to write about it).  As a public figure, I can’t help to think that making a formal statement against the bad aspects of this behavior would have a positive effect on the individuals that look up to them (and why people think these individuals are worth patterning their life after is whole different post). 

Anyway, like I said, there were some things that I remember:

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