King Crimson

Today was an interesting morning. As soon as I woke up I kept thinking about a certain King Crimson song. The song was Lament from their album Starless and Bible Black. It's a terrific record, as most of their early records and late records are. What makes that song in particular so interesting that I was reciting them in my head upon wake up?

Well, the song is, well, a lament of sorts. The song features some interesting lines. Here are some:

I guess I tried to show you how
I'd take the crowd with my guitar
And business men would clap their hands
And clip another fat cigar

 

But now it seems the bubble's burst
Although you know there was a time
When love songs gathered in my head
With poetry in every line

 

I like the way you look at me
You're laughing too down there inside
I took my chance and you took yours
You crewed my ship, we missed the tide

 

And strong men strove to hold the doors
While with my friends I passed the age
When people stomped on dirty floors
Before I trod the rock'n'roll stage

 

Those are all pretty damn good lines for vocals. Even in the 70s. And the music was topnotch art-rock with heavy feedback guitar and mellotron [a synth].  

So yeah those lines in particular really stood out to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can't escape the influence of King Crimson on my life. When I was 19 years old I would sit in the freezing basement in Wisconsin. I would invite my friend David over and we would smoke a lot of weed and blast progressive rock. But it was always King Crimson that was our favorite progressive band from England. 

 

There's something about King Crimson that makes them stand out apart from the other English art-rock bands from the 1970s. Robert Fripp's guitar playing and lead role in forming and keeping the band going through many permutations made them a much better band than say, ELP, Genesis, and even Yes. Fripp was a art-rock guitar god. He knew how to play any chord for any feeling. He was like a jazz guitarist in a rock band. He knew many great 'noise chords,' as I would call it, but he could always mellow out and play something that a nice jazz guitarist could play. I credit him for this day for helping me develop my guitar sound. 

 

 

What's also interesting is the fact that when my friend and I were listening to King Crimson stoned all those years ago is that we are both black kids. I know this might be kind of arrogant to think, [but I definitely believe this is true] but I actually believe that David and I were probably the only black kids [or at least part of a very select few] in America in the mid 2000s that listened to and loved King Crimson. That's actually truly remarkable. 

 

King Crimson is one of my favorite bands. I listened to them more than any other band from England, including those four lads from Liverpool [who they were inspired by of course]. Their legacy lives on. Fripp was and still is a monster and I credit him [and countless others] for inspiring me to make noise on the guitar. The art-rock thing died but its influence will live forever through indie rock and its noise variants.

 

As Pete Townsend [the guitarist from The Who] said about the first album, the critically acclaimed In the Court of the Crimson King, "an uncanny masterpiece."

Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen died on October 6th, 2020. The music world has been deeply saddened by his death, as have I. 

Eddie was one of those quintessential guitar players. You might not like Van Halen or heavy metal but the fact remains that he was one of the pivotal guitar gods of the 1980's. He played on Michael Jackson's Thriller. Through his influence, there was a guitar boom during that time and everybody wanted to shred the guitar, leading to great players like Randy Rhoads. Eddie is the best guitar hero of the 80s, without a doubt. His influences, ironically, also my influences, the 1960s-1970s classic/blues rock, is evident in his playing, and helped develop his classic hard rock, "brown sound," if you will. 

What is the brown sound? Well, it's that most perfect hard rocking loud distorted guitar tone that every rock guitarist goes for without necessarily trying to because it's so good so why change things up? Eddie perfected it with his own hands, guitar modifications, and guitar effects like the phase 90 and tube screamer stomp boxes, guitar pedals, and electronics.

A guitarist named Ronn from a classic rock band from the 70s, called Lightning [find them on YouTube, he's a killer guitar player], also told me about Eddie, "He plays licks from outer space, from Mars." Well, that certainly makes sense considering how blazing fast, bluesy, and melodic Eddie was. There was something otherworldly there. His guitar playing had everything; heavy rocking riffs, decent vocals, blistering melodic solos, and a good band to keep everything going. Not to mention the intensity of a Van Halen stage show performance. Might as well jump! He had it all and did it all. 

His passing is especially sad during the middle of COVID, where some 200,000 Americans have died due to the novel virus. Although he died from cancer, we will never really know if perhaps his death was 'covid related,' as many deaths are these days. His death is personal for me because when I was a teenager I was obsessed with all things guitar. And when I discovered Van Halen, it changed my life for a while. 

I could see that although heavy metal wasn't the kind of music my kind of people listen to, the music resonated with me because of the power of Eddie's crushing guitar sound and melodic fast solos. It wasn't so much the anthems [Jump, Panama, Runnin' with the Devil, Jamie's Cryin', Hot for Teacher] rather it was just the fact of the matter; the heavy guitar riffing saved my teenage soul. After hearing Eruption I went on to learn parts of it. And even later I learned all the scales and modes so I could shred the fret-board like Eddie. It was a good time. It's good to be young. 

I also had a Van Halen disc golf that I cherished because I loved the band so much. I became a great Frisbee golfer back around 2011 and took great care to never lose my Van Halen disc golf, no matter how many trees were in the park, day or night.

Now that I'm older I see that people like Eddie Van Halen are rare. They won't come again. There will never be another Eddie Van Halen. There will be others similar to him but they will never be able to capture that intrinsic something, that epic guitar god status that is sorely lacking in today's musical environment because rap and pop have taken over and rock guitar has taken a back seat since then. 

But his legacy isn't over. Even someone like me, a guitarist in his 30s, has been influenced by Eddie, and his playing lives on through guitar players like me, who learned from him, honored, and respected him, loving the music and learning from it. 

Yeah, it's just heavy metal but it was MY heavy metal. 

"I know, it's only rock and roll but I like it."

*Rest In Peace*

Punk show last night

Last night I went to a pretty sick show at the Sugar Mill Saloon. The show was sponsored by Demon Candy Promotions. I was around for three bands. All great. 

The first band was Kittenhead. They're a female-led group consisting of a white chick frontwoman singer, a black chick guitarist, an Asian chick bassist, and a white dude on drums. Talk about diversity! I actually haven't seen a band like that live before. The guitarist and bassist kept switching off instruments. They were proficient at guitar and bass, both of them. However, the Asian chick was the better guitarist. But the black chick was funkier. 

They reminded me of the 90s bands fronted by women like The Cars. But they had a more punk rock edge. The three girls sang vocals and sometimes they switched off between lead vocals. The black chick even had songs where she rapped. And she was good. And funky with her guitar playing. They weren't terrific or remarkable in any particular way. Rather, they were the perfect rock band. Perfect in the sense that you know that these musicians aren't remarkable on their own. However, when they come together as a band they are greater than the sum of their parts. Wowie zowie! 

The second band was called Rosemary Reyes. Loudest band I've ever heard in my life. The guitarist even told me outside the bar that he couldn't hear himself. "Did it sound good?" Sure did, buddy. Okay, first of all, this band is one of a kind and I will never see another band quite like it. For starters, the band is fronted by a 72-year-old woman! 

The guitarist was quite good. He was playing an old 1950s guitar, possibly a Silvertone from the looks of it. He had a Vox half stack setup. He had a great fuzzed-out guitar tone emanating throughout the place. Honestly, his guitar playing was carrying the whole band from start to finish. The old lady singing was doing a punk rock snarl throughout every song. I couldn't understand a word. It was all gibberish. So much for punk rock. BUT...the fact that she's fronting a punk band at that age is freaking inspiring. She's a true inspiration. Even though I wasn't a fan of her vocals she looked cool and even sounded cool. 

I was very impressed with the guitar player. He was playing punk rock so his guitar playing was limited to just hardcore rhythms, power chords, and open chords. He did do one solo but it was like maybe ten seconds long. But he made it sound so good. His guitar was an old 1950s model. It's quite fascinating how those old guitars from the 50s actually look futuristic like they could've been made in 2020. Those were the days. They were so loud. I've never seen a band play there that sounded so loud. It was quite good. The young drummer killed it with a lot of hardcore fills. The bassist was very good as well. Talk about fuzz tone.

The last band was Swords of Fatima. The group consists of a girl singing and playing guitar with just a drummer. Because it's just a duo it sounds more rock and roll, more visceral, more raw, more punk rock, maybe even more blues. I didn't stay for the whole set but the drummer was on point. And her guitar playing was great, especially her rhythms. 

It was late and I called it a night. A good show indeed. You can listen to these bands on YouTube but those videos aren't as good as the real, live, thing. Women in rock and roll are pretty damn cool. 

Ice Nine Kills Concert Plus Birthday

This weekend I celebrated my birthday. For two days straight. Saturday and Sunday. It was awesome! On Sunday, the actual day of my bday we went to Hurricane Harbor and went to a concert at the White Oak Music Hall right here in Encino. Here I'd like to discuss the concert.

The venue is pretty small and very loud. Not loud enough to pierce my ears so hard that they hurt for too long thankfully. But loud enough to sound deafening in that small venue. The first band that played had a lot of sound troubles. This became a trend as the night went on. They had some major feedback problems from one of the speakers and it cut into their vocals and stuff. It seemed cool that they had a hot girl singer doing clean vocals with a guy doing the screaming growly death metal stuff but the girl's cleans weren't very good. Out of tune mess. At least she was hot. XD

There was another band with a good growler but the clean vocals guy just had the most annoying nasally high pitched voice. If you have a high pitched voice you should stay focused on the melody and sing in tune. How people don't understand this is beyond me. Not the best singers that's for sure.

There were some people moshing in a small pit but it wasn't until later on that the pit got a little crazy. Remember, its a small place so you can't really mosh too hard without hurting someone. My friend got a little hurt by these two guys and his shoulder is a little fucked up still. Kinda funny but it must suck.

This was pretty weird but when the bands were done playing they played this post-bop jazz music pretty loudly. I thought it was strange that they playing jazz loudly to feverish metal fans during the setups. It would've been better if they played metal music, or just no music at all. However, I did enjoy it for a little while until I kept thinking that I was gonna arrive at the fourth floor. XD

The next important thing to take note on was this rap nu-metal band. They went pretty fucking hard. The rap with nu-metal thing has been done to death in the 90s so I wasn't impressed that they were playing a stale style of music. However, I was impressed with the singer. The rest of the band, not so much. The singer could do aggressive screaming and rap pretty well. However, with only a mediocre band and riffs he can only do so much.

None of the guitar players in any of these bands played guitar solos. Which begs the question, are they even good enough to play guitar solos? Or are guitar solos just not welcome in this style of metal? Has metal music taken a turn for the wimpy guitar worst, like the 90s alternate grunge era when it was frowned upon to be a long hair neoclassical guitar shredder? I feel like it has in some ways.

For example I think its great that some bands don't have solos. That's cool. But its always nice when a band has a guitarist who can deliver the goods in every form-and that has to include solos. I get it. Solo's aren't for everybody and not all fans like them. It's not commercial in today's musical market. But I still like them.

These kinds of bands that I saw all have a certain style that many other bands have. They play aggressive music but they all have clean vocals to go with the screaming. So its kinda emo but its also super heavy metal too. The music has a lot of breakdowns but nothing complicated to play, and nothing too memorable. It's not heavy on melody. It's a style of new metal-core I would say. The latest edition if you will. My friends dig these kinds of bands a lot. After seeing the best bands in this style at Warped Tour this summer I would say its pretty fun to see live. But I wouldn't really listen to it while relaxing at home. I have listened to some bands like Motionless in White and Sum 41 at home recently though.

There was also a lot of hot girls there. There was this short girl with black hair who was going fucking hard in the pit. She grabbed my friend's hand and threw him in the pit at one point. Pretty funny.

The headliner was Ice Nine Kills, this band we saw play back at the Warped Tour. They were the best band in terms of everything. The visual stage show, the sound (although they too had technical difficulties), and the music. Their breakdowns were super heavy and aggressive. They had a mascot there-someone wearing a Fox outfit carrying an axe (plastic axe). It was really funny because I was wearing my Starfox shirt my friend got me for my birthday and they were standing next to me looking at me. It looked like a girl's body in the Fox outfit but it could've been a guy just staring at me. Funny either way. 

Ice Nine slayed pretty hard. For a while here and there they made me feel like I was back at Warped Tour. It was a great feeling. Reliving my glory days of Warped Tour....The last song they played was a song I actually remembered from the Warped Tour. I headbanged pretty hard. It was awesome.

Although the other bands weren't that great I think Ice Nine Kills made up for that. They played a long set and were super professional. The White Oak venue is a pretty great place to see shows near my house and I'll most definitely go there again. Hope you all had a great weekend enjoying time with your family, friends, or co-workers. Take time throughout the week to listen to some great music, perhaps even see a show if you're free. Concerts are super fun!