Behind the wheels of steel.

[zotz]

Looks like I'm doing spinny things at Neon tonight.

In other news, there were a couple of quite nice articles in the Guardian this week. It used to have (by reputation, at least) the worst coverage of pop music among the broadsheets, but it seems to have picked up a lot since the days when a truly dunderheaded review of a Silverfish concert was the only thing ever to provoke me into writing them a letter (with "not for publication" on it, probably rather arrogantly). I think I first noticed this when they pulled of the coup of getting an interview with Nigel Blackwell.

Anyway, this week there was this article by Bernard Butler about playing guitar. Among other things, he says "I don't go into guitar shops often. They are notoriously full of arseholes." It's a good one. In the paper it had pictures of eight guitarists at the top. Only one was a woman, but that's probably something to moan about another time. Bert Jansch had an unidentifiable flat-top, Jack White something odd in red and white, Hendrix a Strat, Page a twin-neck Gibson . . . and the other four (Keef, Hynde, Marr and Butler himself) are all playing Telecasters. I wonder what happened to all those horrible poodlerock guitars with droopy pointy headstocks people bought so many of in the eighties? I know nevla owns a fair proportion of them, but where are the rest? I haven't seen an Ibanez Steve Vai in about ten years.

The other one was this piece about road songs, and looking for British ones in particular. I like it partly because it settles on Billy Bragg's version of Route 66 ("A13 - Trunk Road to the Sea") as the definitive example, and also mentions It's Immaterial's "Driving away from home", probably the best song about the M62 ever written.

Comments

[lsur.livejournal.com]

but felt a bit silly starting so late

amazing when 30 is considered late. It's especially irritating given that guitar magazines typically feature guitar icons from the 60s on the cover (Page, Hendrix, Dylan, Clapton, etc.) One day I'm gonna get my guitar and write a song about ageism :-)

[shaunotd.livejournal.com]

guitar icons from the 60s on the cover (Page, Hendrix, Dylan, Clapton, etc.)

Guitar icons from the 60's who were already hugely famous by the time they hit 30...if they lived that long. You'd be hard-pressed to find a famous guitarist who took up the instrument after the age of 20.

[zotz]

There's a strong tendency for people who are really good at anything to have taken it up early.

[lsur.livejournal.com]

I'm not totally convinced. For the most part it only requires motivation and then practice. It may be that maths and languages require an early start, in order to make use of the developing brain. But most things (including those two) can be acquired to a level which most people would consider either 'really good' or 'good enough', which is surely enough to cover rock guitar.

I just think that people are discouraged from even starting something if they are over the (arbitrary) age of, say, 30, which is a pity as they could achieve a lot if they only got started and put in a bit of practice for a while.

[zotz]

It's not a hard-and-fast thing - Gaugin was quite a late starter, wasn't he? - but it's definite tendency.

The thing about taking something up is you shouldn't specifically be doing it in the expectation of being worldbeating at any age.

[lsur.livejournal.com]

The world-beating thing is certainly misleading. Chances are, the phillistines won't take the slightest interest in you :-)