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Frank Zappa on CNN?

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Oh boy, I wish that I was one of the lucky ones who were in the room when this went down!

Frank Zappa was the most underrated guitarist of all time in my eyes. His music would stretch your musical boundaries and open you mind about the social consciousness of the day.

At best he was a danger to the establishment, in their eyes that is!

To get a little glimpse into what he was all about check out this video. I must warn you, this is a very long video but it is worth it to watch it from start to finish.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Frank Zappa being interviewed on CNN:

I think my cousin Jeff looks a lot like him in his suit!

Keep on Jammin’

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An old friend just got a hold of me

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Isn’t it nice to have a dear old buddy e-mail you right out of the blue? It just happened to me the other day.

A guitar buddy of mine from Brantford wrote on my other site the other day and it really shocked me! When I saw his name I just about fell of the couch with my laptop!

I hung out with Scottie in the mid 80’s through to the mid 90’s. As a matter of fact he knew my Gibson RD Artist before he met me.

See my brother’s girlfriend at the time Caroline, played acoustic guitar and he let her borrow my electric guitar without telling me. I didn’t notice it missing because at the time I had just left my band Pylis and decided to take a leave of absence from guitar playing for a while. While guitar was with Caroline, her younger brother Mike had a friend who played acoustic guitar and had picked it up once in a while when he was at there house. Of coarse he feel in love with it. Many years later when we finally became friends, he was over at my house and he said that he played a guitar that looked exactly like it at his buddies home.

So that was the story, pretty neat eh?

I am waiting for him to replay back to my e-mail and hopefully will be brought back into his little loop of current musical achievements.

Scott loved playing a Cat Stevens and Neil Young type of guitar fingering and had a fabulous voice to go along with it! I loved showing him new types of techniques and ideas to enhance his sound, but he always seemed to be more of a puritan in that sense so it took me a while to figure out why he was stuck in the one genre.

Many years after trying to improve his playing in my eyes anyway, it finally dawned on me that this standard of playing was to be appreciated as much as the more technical approach to playing. This new found love of very simple guitar playing I attribute to my old buddy Scott!

Keep on Jammin’ Scott

Finally working with Rick

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I went to jam with Rick last night and it was just what I was looking for and much more.

As we were driving over to his home/studio he played me some of his demo stuff. As usual I was impressed but this one piece got my mind spinning in all different directions with these almost hidden ideas that I had locked away in my brain.

This was the style that I use to play in the old days of Pylis.

It has the keyboards front stage center the way I like it. I am the type of guitar player who loves to do some intricate background work while someone else takes the spot light. The only thing with this song is that there is someone else playing at the same caliber as myself that likes this same position in the tune. It has areas that are wide open to guitar interpretation that makes my mind spin and I’m loving every minute of it! I know I sound like Krammer from Seinfeld.

The second piece has this Rick Wakeman intro influence that ends up like a rockin’ rap type of feel to it. I know that I have not been exposed to this style before, but there is something in it that catches my attention in a very curious way. At this moment I have it looping through my mind and can’t stop it!

I will try to put some of it up on this site so you all can give me some input into what else I can bring to the piece. I will be looking forward to your insight.

Keep on Jammin’

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