Whenever, Wherever, No Matter What.

I'm here to talk about the people in our lives that will always be there for us no matter what. You're probably think friends? My spouse? No I'm talking parents, friends come and go and come on, we all know the divorce rate in North America alone, but parents will be with you from the day you're born to the time you die. I recently suffered a personal issue that tested the strength of my whole family, I'm not going to go into it but, as a young teenager I used to always think "man my 'rents are so dumb, they just don't understand what it's like, they're so old and uncool," well I have a new found respect for both my parents today. They proved to me that through thick and thin no matter what they will travel to the ends of the Earth to make sure that their baby boy their Logan is safe. This unconditional love has changed my selfish introverted ways, and I hope that reading this blog either A. inspires you as a youth to look at all your parents have done for you or B. as an adult keep in mind we know, and we love you too.

Technique For Techniques Sake

I recently read a comment on Youtube, I wonder if I can retype it verbatim, "I am glad to see  Heavy Metal breaking out of it's punk influences, with the jumping, screaming, and head banging. It will now drift more to the classical and jazz aspects of it's influences creating more technical pieces." I just wanted to know if I was the only one who thought of this as not such a good? I'm all for progressive music, Dream Theater and Between The Buried And Me are 2 of my favourite bands, but, we all need a break from the 14 minute long roller coaster songs that take you on an emotional ride that make you question every aspect of your being why are we here? What is my purpose? Ladies and gentlemen we have weed for that, Metal Heads don't want all Heavy Metal to be progressive, people are going to want that simplicity in their music just as in life nobody wants it too be complicate all the time, people want to drink a regular coffee black with 2 sugar (ahemm Starbucks) people want to sit on the couch get stoned and eat pizza pockets, it's a way of life. I recently started listening again to System Of A Down, before I had been listening to a lot of Devin Townsend, Watchtower, Nevermore, and SOAD is a break from all that. The song structure is simple, no huge time changes, and the guitar work is fairly straight forward and simple. Speaking of the guitar playing that brings me to my next point about the "evolution" of guitar playing. So many guitarists seem to have this obsession with the accumulation of all these techniques like legato, sweeping, tapping, alternate/economy picking, etc. Just ask yourself what musical void are you filling with all those techniques? You can write just as good songs with minimal guitar techniques as opposed to if you had all of them. Too many guitarists learn and use technique fro techniques sake, think of ACDC, Kiss, Scorpions, pretty simplistic song structure to a lot of their songs and they are much more successful then a lot of the bands out their that sweep and tap and shred the crap out of their instruments. Do want to know why? I'll tell you, it is because most non-guitarists only here this "wankity wank, wank, wank, wank wank wank." Only a guitar player (or a solo junky) listens to a song for the guitar, the majority of people in the world listen to music with no guitar in it so why should they go from their guitar-less music to a genre that is mostly guitar. Yeah ACDC, Kiss, Scorpions they had a lot of solos, but you could never accuse them of over playing, it fit and made sense. Now a days it's like a competition whoever has the most technique wins. So to conclude this rant I would like to persuade anyone that reads this to listen to the simple stuff again it bring backs memories and will give you a much needed break from some progressive mayhem. Oh and to the "Shredders" out there I'll leave you with this, there is a very fine line between an unmusical Shredder, and a guitarist who plays fast for the purpose of the song.