Guitar Licks and Tips

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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Sorry guys and gals, I just had to show you this one!

I hope you liked that!

Keep on Jammin’

Last Monday Paul McCartney returned to the theater in Paris where he and the rest of the Beatles make the crowd go wild 43 years ago.

This video clip includes vintage Beatle footage as well as some scenes from McCartney playing to an audience of 2000 in Paris. You’ll also learn how Paul feels about music downloads on the internet too. Check it out:

Keep on Jammin’

I went to see Saga play for perhaps the very last time in Toronto with the original band members at Jeff Healey’s Roadhouse, Oct 6th. Rick and I went to the show and I promised him a show that he would never forget and Saga certainly held up their part of the deal!

As you know I am a huge Saga fan from way back in the day and it was hard to see the front man for Canada’s best progressive rock band leave the nest. I respect his way in which he left the band and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

Michael is first and foremost a true gentleman. When you talk to him in person he is quite polite and you can tell that he is actually listening to everything that you say to him. He’s honestly not your typical rocker who has ego to burn. He is like a really cool big brother. If you can not get along with a guy like him then you’re probably the problem.

His album Clear should be a great album to hear when I pick it up next week. Here is a listing of the locations in Canada where you can find one.

So best of luck Mr Michael Sadler with your new journey and thank for all the great memories!

Truly, keep on Jammin’

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