52 Guitars
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Paul Galbraith and his amazing 8-string guitar, nicknamed "the Brahms guitar," because Galbraith developed the idea in order to be able to transcribe and play a Brahms piano work more effectively. I wasn't able to find the Brahms piece on YouTube, but here is a beautiful Bach prelude. And the video, which seems to have…
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John Williams. Serious classical guitar aficionados may think this piece overexposed, but I'm going to bet that most readers of this blog haven't heard it that often. And it's very beautiful, as well as technically impressive: "Recuerdos de la Alhambra" ("Memories of the Alhambra"), by Francisco Tárrega. I mentioned last week that I had once…
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When I set out on this series, I didn't think about the quesiton of Lent. I generally either give up music entirely for Lent or cut way back on it, and this year I'm giving up pop music entirely. But it will mess up my plan if I shut this down for six weeks. So…
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The renowned flamenco/jazz guitarist Paco de Lucia died this past week. I don't have much acquaintance with his music, but what I've heard has been pretty impressive. So, in memoriam: I'm always struck by the sheer physical force of flamenco players (not that this is pure flamenco, exactly, but it's rooted in flamenco). Sometimes…
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Week 8? Already? Yes, unless I missed a week. The obvious next person to feature is Jimmy Page. (For the less pop-music-obsessed: Clapton, Beck, and Page were all members of the Yardbirds, in succession except for a brief overlap of Beck and Page.) But I half-intended to skip him. Why? Because most of his best-known…
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AllMusic.com sums up Jeff Beck's relative obscurity nicely: While he was as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck never achieved the same commercial success as any of those contemporaries, primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career. After Rod Stewart left…
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Well, this was sort of inevitable, after Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues": That's pretty much the definition of blues-rock, and probably my favorite single Cream track. As good as they were, much of their music, at least as it made its way onto records, seemed to lack something. This "Crossroads" is a live performance.…
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Robert Johnson: Cross Road Blues Everybody interested in the blues knows the story about the crossroads, but not everybody is interested in the blues, so, for you: there's a legend that Johnson met the devil at a certain crossroads and sold his soul in exchange for musical ability. And here's one of his most…
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When I thought "Time for a folk guitarist" the first name that popped into my head was John Fahey's. Then I thought, "Nah, it should be someone more authentically folk, not someone who came to the music from outside"; Fahey was a middle-class guy who discovered blues and country in his teens. But his presence was…
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Time to touch base in the jazz world: Joe Pass, "Blues in G". Next week, a folk guitarist, and after that whatever strikes my fancy from week to week. Ok, one more, somewhat livelier: I wish I could say that I understood this kind of improvisation. I appreciate the enormous skill, and I…
Light On Dark Water 