it's time to get on with this.
I originally started this spastic blog with politics, news, and my muted outrage in mind. Over time, I've discovered that while my rage is less muted my will to pore over the daily news and other pertinent articles, process them, then spew here has waned. The three people who might actually read this already know what is really happening, how fucked up our country has become, and don't need me to understand that. When I started writing three years ago, just as the war was getting underway I could have been part of the alleged "blogosphere" had I the persistence. I did not, so Andrew Sullivan gets to be on TV, not me. :)
Tonight I want to talk about Jeff Beck . I had occasion recently to see a live show of his taped in Tokyo in 1999. I had pretty much given up on anything from Beck since somewhere in the 1970's when he was making extraordinary music incorporating ground breaking guitar playing. The meld was far more than much of the musical masturbation that passes for guitar technique these days, but it seemed to me his best days were long behind him. Then I encounter this unreleased DVD of a one night show recorded in Tokyo, backed by musicians I have never even heard of.
And there's Jeff, same hair he's had for 30 years, wielding a white Stratocaster and no pick. I thought the only modern electric rock guitarist left to play without one was Mark Knopfler . Nice to be wrong. The electric guitar is a difficult beast to tame and for rhythmic purposes, a pick can be a powerful tool. Beck plays brilliantly during this show, well in control of the music and his instrument, not skipping a beat or missing a note as tears through each piece. While his tone is certainly somewhat processed it is recognizably a Strat, and one in the hands of a master. From one phrase to the next it can go from singing to screaming but remain connected. Not all of the pieces played during the show appealed to me but I felt compelled to watch the entire thing just to see what he would do next, to hear the barely possible sounds come out of his guitar.
Beck was one of the "big three" English guitarists of the 1960's, alongside Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. All three of them were in the Yardbirds at one time or another but took rather different paths afterward. Beck's was the most divergent. Whilst Page made the Gibson Les Paul famous and invented a hundred now famous and familiar riffs, and Clapton made it safe for white men to play the blues and be really good at it, Beck rapidly moved off into less popular territory. After a few albums with Rod Stewart (Truth and Beckola) as lead singer (what a wasted talent he wound up being) that included the wildest rendition of "Jailhouse Rock" ever recorded, Jeff Beck spun himself off into the nebulous realm where jazz and electric music meet. His forays were not as relentless as say, John McLaughlin, nor were they intended to be some sort of spiritual machinery, but instead were examinations of how the guitar can be stretched into new territory and still be recognizable as an instrument. Beck played on those albums from the mid seventies as if he could barely contain the instrument in his hands, as if it were going to careen out of control and literally explode.
Aw, fuck. What the hell do I know.
Beck never achieved the fame of Led Zeppelin nor the reverence that surrounds Eric Clapton these days. Page can't play a lot of his own stuff any longer, not with the precision and energy he once had, and Clapton, while likely more technically perfect than ever, is dull as dishwater in recent years. So it was refreshing to see that one of them can not only still play, but can do so with energy and joy, right on the edge of chaos while still coming off as precise.
Like I said, some of the compositions didn't really do it for me, but Beck was utterly in his element.
Get these two records if you have any interest in what I'm talking about.
Blow By Blow
Wired
Next time maybe I'll write about the many virtues of belly button fuzz.
