Music
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Allan Holdsworth Holdsworth follows Eric Johnson for one simple and musically irrelevant reason: I also heard him first on one of those thin floppy plastic recordings included in an issue of Guitar Player. Unlike Johnson, his recording didn't capture my attention. He seems to mainly work in jazz-rock fusion, which is not a genre that appeals…
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Eric Johnson As a perenially failing guitarist, I have occasionally over the years read Guitar Player magazine. I even subscribed to it for a few years in the mid-1990s or so, though I was always a little uneasy in doing so, as if one day I might get a letter saying "Inasmuch as our magazine is…
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Davy Graham You knew he would be next, didn't you? Well, no, I guess you didn't, but if you're familiar with British folky guitar players, you've probably heard of him. He's not that well known outside of that world, but he's very highly regarded within it, and is said to have been a big influence…
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John Renbourn Renbourn's name is associated with Bert Jansch's, not only because they worked together in Pentangle but because they were basically doing very similar things. Their voices even sound somewhat similar. Also, as with Jansch, I had a little trouble finding YouTube videos that emphasized his guitar work. This is in part because he…
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Bert Jansch It hasn't been very long (by my standard) since I wrote about Bert Jansch on the occasion of his death. That was less than three years ago, and I don't have a lot to add to it in the way of commentary, so please read it if you're interested. There are also a…
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I did listen to this over the weekend, as I had hoped to do. I loved it. Most of the first side is great, and it does have a kind of unity, though maybe that's an illusion created by the Sergeant-Pepper-style intro. "The Fool On the Hill" is as beautiful a tune as McCartney ever…
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Richard Thompson When I decided to do this series I immediately started a list of people I wanted to include, and I got up to about thirty or so entries about as fast as I could type. Richard Thompson's name was among them. But I've actually been sort of dreading the post on him–not because…
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I was going to say, about "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," that it's a sound that's sort of stereotypical for the blues in a movie or TV way. I know, it's not a blues at all, either musically or thematically–it's religious. But sonically it's the kind of thing a movie or TV…
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Blind Willie Johnson "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (I'll have a bit more to say about this and about the artist in a day or two, but since today is Holy Saturday I want it to stand alone for now.)
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For Holy Thursday, a very well-known setting of Psalm 51: I'm probably not going to post anything except, on Saturday. a guitar piece, between now and Sunday.
Light On Dark Water 