Robin Trower

Robin is quite frankly one of the fathers of guitar. From fame with Procol Harum to great solo success with Bridge of Sighs and more.

I have this old memory of some good dirtbag friends of mine, playing with their pot on a Trower album (yes, album - deal with it).  I was a fan from the first note, way back when people were comparing him to Hendrix (an invalid comparison).

I saw Trower in the 80s, at a now-defunct venue in PA. Years later, I found myself at Glenside's Keswick Theater (never a bad seat) to see Robin again.

Opening was Jeffrey Gaines, a local guy. He was doing a great job at the unenviable task of opening for a legend. In the middle of a song he experienced a technical glitch and his guitar was no longer heard. Having gone through this, I felt horrible for the guy and started to applaud. It's possible this spread and wound up in the whole place applauding. Gaines smiled and thanked everyone for being so sweet to him. Go out and buy his music - it's worth it.

We were in the first row of fixed seats, which came out to be the fourth row. This was nice.

After a while, Robin came out.
And rocked the place nonstop for the night.

If an instrumental musician or accomplished guitarist translates past musicians to non-musicians, there's something special. There was something special that night, as Mrs. leftystrat watched in awe. Robin has gotten older and lost hair but that's all he lost. Mrs leftystrat said she picked up joy from him, and gratitude that people were coming out to see him do what he does best. The place was pretty crowded, if that's any indication. He seemed genuinely taken aback by the adulation.

He ran two Marshall half stacks and his signature model Fender Stratocaster all night - no changes. The 2 fellows with him did a great job, with the bassist handling most vocals. We didn't hear the vocals well, but that's not what we were there for. The gents were young.

I joked that they were carding at the door and if you were under 45, they wouldn't let you in. Old, fat, and bald was the order of the evening. It's possible that I fit into one of those categories.

Go see him. Buy the cds.

A note about tickets:
People hate ticketing agencies. I remember having to wait in line for tickets, not that I did. As soon as things got 'organized', they went to hell. The charges randomly piled on top of the ticket prices did nothing but skyrocket.

We were unlucky enough to have to purchase tickets through AXS, a national group of pirates. Oddly enough, the purchase went well, which is not my experience. This continued until they asked how I wanted to tickets: Rocket Blast or Will Call. I have no trouble with E-tickets, so I chose Blast. As soon as the transaction was through, I was informed I needed to install an app on my phone to get the tickets. WHAT?

No. I don't want to install an app to get tickets. I can't stand the apps I have now, plus the ridiculous rights this app demanded... there's no reason in hell this app needed to have info about my other accounts, plus the rest it wanted. I put in a service ticket, requesting E-tickets, like normal.  Oops - they have no E-tickets, but they'd be damn happy to leave them at Will Call (for only $6 each).

HUH?

There is a Web Convenience Fee of $15. Plus the ticket price. Plus $6 so I can collect the tickets without having to install an app.

NO.

Poor Mrs. leftystrat had to install the app. She said under no other circumstances would she do this: the app had a horrible reputation, which turned out to be well-deserved.

AXS can do whatever they want, but I'm going to look around and spend my money elsewhere, if at all possible. You should too - don't encourage this.

Why I'll Never Be A Great Jazz Guitarist

I have been staring intently at jazz guitar players for years.  I have seen them live, on video, on YouTube, and at guitar shows.  Aside from technique and years of experience, not to mention an ear for jazz, what do these guys have that I don't?

It's not like rock guitar, where the criteria are different.  In rock (and by extension, blues), it's all about the Guitar Faces.  Not the equipment, years of practice, or even a great groove - it's totally about the faces.  This was explained to me by an incredible but slightly odd electronic technician once and it took quite a while to get it.  My wife, on the other hand, got it right away - it's the faces, stupid!

If you don't believe me, check out Robin Trower, arguably the greatest living guitarist by faces alone.  Bonus for guitarists: dig the CBS Strat, the Marshalls, and the definitive use of the Univibe.

So today I came upon a random link and It finally hit me: jazz was going to be different than rock and roll.  It would not involve guitar faces at all.

The secret to jazz playing is entirely in the knobs.  It took way too long to put this together but I finally nailed it.  Watch any jazz guitarist and the first thing you notice is almost obsessive tweakage of the volume knob.  They might only move it 1/100th of a turn, but they allegedly hear something.... something that makes them play a bit, then go back to adjust the volume some more.

The audience never actually hears the effect of the volume knob but because this is jazz, trusts the player's instinct and takes on faith the aural effects thereof.

Back when I was doing sound and recording, someone asked me to turn down the SUCK knob.  We didn't actually have a suck knob but this birthed a tremendous idea: psychoacoustics.  Before you get your brain cells in a knot, this is not the psychoacoustics of the past twenty years or so, which deals with the perception of sound.

Or maybe it is - wtf do I know?  I would designate one knob as the psychoacoustic knob.  It did absolutely nothing and was connected to nothing. When a particularly picky band member would have me making minute adjustments to his instrument or headphone mix ad nauseum, I'd get aggravated and tweak the Psychoacoustic Knob, then smile and ask him didn't that sound better now.   The answer, in one hundred percent of cases, was yes.


WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED TODAY?

Nothing.  We learn nothing of value from this blog.  Ever.

That aside, we learned that the key to rock guitar is Guitar Faces.
We learned that the key to jazz guitar is Volume Knob Adjustment.
And we learned that no matter how bad they sound, you can't turn down the Suck Knob.