If You're Listening To Music Right Now III

Anyway, the guitar world is vast and beautiful. You can go down some fucking rabbit holes. Unfortunately it seems that when you come out of them you don’t remember any names.

But you know you are going deep into academic barroque guitar when you hear a constant inhaling from the guitarist, who is too much of a nerd to figure out how to edit it out. Lol, fuck, lemme see if I can find you one. Dudes be masters.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTa8WoOVRbw[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6A-kpVVJ1U[/youtube]

Paco de Lucia can suck my dick.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM8NqHzQ6i0[/youtube]

yeah all that’s good shit. had an old friend who turned me on to jazz fusion decades ago - back when i thought led zeppelin was the best it could get. this guy had thousands of CDs. that’s more than one thousand. and half of it was stuff you’d never hear on the radio. the number of phenomenal guitarists that aren’t well known is inexplicable, and the stuff blew me away… especially because i was just starting to fuck around with guitar on the side. i love the classical nylon string stuff in any form, but spent more time listening to the harder, faster stuff of that genre. i found de lucia through di meola and mclaughlin (two godfathers of jazz fusion), and in fact there is a uniqueness to de lucia’s style that isn’t typical to the traditional form he plays. a jazz fusion element which isn’t usually found in that style (strange chording and scales).

i’d have to say you haven’t heard enough of him to make an informed decision because i can’t imagine how/why you’d ‘hate him’. that video i posted isn’t a fraction of what he can do. i had to post it though so i could tell my carradine joke (he looks most like him in that one). but if we are going to play ‘who’s the most gangsta’ on the nylon strings, i’d wager to say paco would eat those guys. here’s some samples of his leads.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Mw2jyyHk0[/youtube]

Alright, I’ll leave you all alone now.

For your consideration and delight, the musical complexity of hardcore joropo.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyda_NiDHkc[/youtube]

I have tried at least 5 or 6 times to like Lucia. Because fuck, he’s Paco de Lucia.

There is skill involved in music, undoubtetly. But there are also things that just make you hate a person.

Excessive displays of florality with now depth, no direction, just “look at me, I’m a florenco guy with hairy chest.”

It’s like… You learn to appreciate far more sober things, simnpler arrangements that transmit more complex truths.

That’s why Bach is great. His music is complex and super polyphonioc and shit. But nothing is superfluous. If anything can be said about Bach, it’s that he’s TOO sober. Some times you just need Jimmy Page drawling on.

Same reason I never liked Jazz fusion. It’s just… There needs to be a point to what your doing.

The 50’s motherfucker. Thelonious. Bird. Fuck, Ellington. These fusion guys gotta lotta tricks, lor of “talent,” but it transmits nothing interesting to me. Lot of showing off or elevator vibes.

Anyway, I’m a shit talker. Whatever you need to listen to, even if it’s Lucia, to get you to the level you do have of music comprehension, fucking fine.

Blegh. Fucking Paco. Walking goddamn caricature he is.

the thing with guitar is, composition is impressive but it isn’t where you show your greatest skill… because all these masters know and play all the same standards. each of these guys in these last videos could read and play every bit of that composition. it’s the soloing that you look at. unlike the composition, each of these guys might not be able to play a particular lead that another can play. those 64th notes paco is finger picking, for example, are extremely difficult to pull off.

Right, showing off.

Sometimes, there is a reason they all play the same standard. That’s where you really prove your skill. Where you can really compare. No tricks. No pretty flowers. Concierto de fucking Aranjuez, play it. see what you got.

If I want skill for skill’s sake, I’ll listen to Chilean progressive death metal. But only for 10 minutes, then I’m like “what in the goddamn fuck is wrong with a central plot? I get it you’re cool, you only believe in endless progressions of increasingly complex musical structures. Ugh.”

ah jeez… they already got you. you spent so much time watching guitarists with big hair waving their guitars around on MTV, that you think all guitarists suffer the same complex. i can assure you paco is nothing like those clowns. he’s the real deal dude, the studious studio musician who comes on stage, sits his ass down in a chair, and performs an fucking exorcist on that guitar. no posing or posturing or jumping around. that’s amateur shit for rock stars.

Interesting, you helped me notice something. I do am a sucker for composition, virtuosity says basically nothing to me.

In my opinion, greatest bit of guitar music ever recorded. Feeling, heart, technique, complexity.

Four guitars. gtfoh.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avAUIf5ts9A[/youtube]

I mean musical showing off.

I can’t explain it man. It’s just the vibe he gives me. When I listen to him, not when I look at him.

It’s like… Blegh. He’s extremely talented, I see it. But extremely talented at fatuous flowery nonsense. It takes decades of work and study and subtle understanding of music to make something that bothers me at that level. I’m not saying he doesn’t know the guitar. He knows it enough to be supremely rude to it.

Wait, I thought I posted the whole album there for Quarterstaff. Apologies. Lemme try to remedy that. It’s really one single piece, the whole album. Hold on.

Hmm… They took down the whole album video. Here is the playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZCUBnhcm1w&list=PL9DFE94599E242DEC&index=2.

I respect your mastery and understanding of music. Doesn’t mean I have to respect your taste.

Fucking Paco de Lucia. And Jazz Fusion on top of it? Want virtuoso motherfucker? Find me the dude can play THIS.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXP84ijiLbg[/youtube]

wtf… i go looking for ‘passion, grace and fire’ played by di meola, mclaughlin and de lucia, and i find di meola playing that fucker by himself. well he plays the melody for a minute or two but then goes back into improv. listen to the studio version if… here i’ll just post it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkql5cZym0U[/youtube]

there was a thing between mclaughlin and di meola in the seventies; who was better was the big question, but it’s the kinda thing where masters are ambivalent toward each other in that respect. di meola is more text book while mclaughlin has a certain edgy nuance to his playing. but di meola is so perfect at it, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t deviate as much as mclaughlin. both of them are monsters.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np3Qr4SKlJU[/youtube]

p.s. your recent reply: paco isn’t showing off. he’s in that shit, feeling it… that’s not ‘oh wow look at me shred’. that’s ‘holy shit what a rush’.

Lol, I can’t. I listen to the first 6 plucks of the guitar and I’m already like Blegh.

I get it, this guy just wants me to know how good he is.

I can’t man. I wanted to do it, for you. But I just can’t.

The musical version of first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women is first you get the heart, then you get the composition, then you get the virtuosity. Like Coltrane did, Like Charles Mingus did.

I can’t stand dudes masturbating on stage.

Here’s what I can give you:

I understand, from a muscician’s side, how it can be a thrill to see a guy do things that shouldn’t be able to be done.

Like how true metal dudes think Malmsteen is a god. Fine, ok. But me, just a music lover, I listen to him and I’m like this is just corny.

Paco de Lucia is that x1000000000