Item #46 - Take a Guitar Lesson

"Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?"
"I don't know."
"Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?"
"Put it up to eleven"
"Eleven. Exactly. "
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A set of random music-based lists, because there's just too much shit to cover in a single post about music, and because lists are so damn easy to write about and then talk about in the comments.

Top 3 Concerts

1. Sloan. Clutch Cargo's, Pontiac. 1-29-99. My favorite band, in a probably my favorite venue. They played for 2 hours. Then a break. Then a 30 minute encore. No opening band. Non-stop Sloan action . . . except for that one stop.
   
2. The Hives and The Mooney Suzuki. The Roxy, Boston. 6-11-02.  "Howlin" Pelle Almqvist from the Hives controlled the crowd like nobody I've ever seen. And I had never heard of the Mooney Suzuki before, but they were the one opening band I've seen where they finished and I said, "I must download their stuff tonight." A small venue that RAWKED.
   
3. Suicide Machines. Detroit. 2000? I may not be into punk as much as I once was, but the venue for this can't be ignored. A now-deceased radio station in Detroit used to occasionally have these concerts for maybe 20 people at a small studio, with a decently popular band (Suicide Machines were fairly big in Michigan, as far as punk goes. Bostonians, think of a less popular, less anoying Dropkick Murphys). I ended winning a radio contest to get in, so I went with my little sis. Loud punk rock in a 20 x 20 room with 20 people is pretty bad-ass.

More random/self-deprecating stuff after the jump

Top 3 Concerts I'm Most Ashamed to Admit Having Attended

1. Sugar Ray and Everlast. Detroit. 2-26-99. Even hear Sugar Ray's stuff before "I Just Wanna Fly"? It's WAY different, and it's actually a fairly distinct sounding hard rock. I can actually admit to thinking its pretty good. But, I went with the girlfriend at the time, who was more into the newer (AKA, 1999) Sugar Ray, and at the concert, OF COURSE they played nothing but the top 40 pop rock that made them money. The 2 things I distinctly remember though were Mark McGrath pulling the ultimate cheap crowd-ass-kissing trick and wearing a Red Wings jersey to play to the crowd, and them bringing out Kid Rock at some point, who then briefly pulled down his pants. No, not ass. Full frontal. Yup, I saw Kid Rick junk.
   
2. Limp Bizkit. Pontiac. 7-16-99.  No excuse. I've had some dark times before finding my muiscal way. Let's move on
3. Third Eye Blind, Our Lady Peace, Eve 6. Pontiac. 7-2-98.  I actually like the last 2 bands, but the part that I'm ashamed to admit is that I've only crowdsurfed once in my life . . . and it was during Third Eye Blind's set. If you're ever dragged to a concert you don't want to be at, make your own fun with some earplugs and crowdsurfing.

3 Most "Interesting" Concerts

1. Five Iron Frenzy. Boonies of Detroit. 11-2-99. During my ska phase, I went to this with my friend Hillary. I'm not all that big into lyrics, so the fact that Five Iron Frenzy was Christian ska band didn't matter one way or another to me. However, it did to 98% of the people at the concert. And by "people", I either mean all the 16 year olds that showed up with their church youth groups, or the chaperones that accompanied them. The opening act stopped several times during their set to have people in the crowd hold hands and give praise to the lord. Not my cup of tea (heathen!), but to each their own. 
2. Motley Crue & Scorpions. Pine Knob. 4-13-99. I went with some of my fellow all-boy Catholic-school bred suburbanites, and there were mullets, jorts and NASCAR paraphernalia as far as the eye could see. We were the 1%.
3. Up in Smoke Tour (Dre, Eminem, Snoop, Ice Cube, etc). Joe Louis Arena. 7-6-00. This tour had 2 stops on the Detroit area. One was at the Palace of Auburn Hills, deep in the heart of middle-to-upper class white suburbia. The other was at Joe Louis Arena in downtown Detroit. My preppy-ass friend Joe and I decided to attend the one downtown. I'm pretty sure he wore khakis. (Insert generic white-people-do-things-like-this, black-people-do-things-like-this joke here).

3 CD's that are still in my CD case in the basement because I made some mistakes and don't know how to just throw that crap out

1. Limp Bizkit, Significant Other. On RARE occasions I can still get in the mood to listen to Korn. However, no one should be in the mood to listen to Limp Bizkit after the year 2000. No wait. No one should be in the mood to listen to Limp Bizkit . . . yeah, that's more like it. (Fun fact of the day that will make you want to move to Canada - Fred Durst is currently developing a network sitcom. I'll give 1 guess as to what network it's with. Hint: it will probably have a laughtrack).
2. Spice Girls, Spice. I think I bought this from someone for $1. I paid $1 too much.
3. En Vogue, Funky Divas. This album . . . is not that funky. Frankly, that's false advertisement. I've got a lot of crap from the early days of CD's (I remember when I first got a CD player, my mom let me pick out 1 CD at Harmony House. The choice was between Boyz 2 Men and Color Me Badd. I chose Boyz 2 Men. I believe I made the right choice). This is probably the saddest of whats left of those early days. 

3 Manly Guilty Pleasure Songs that I Only List Because I Am Secure in My Heterosexuality

1. Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now
2. Madonna - Like a Prayer
3. Lionel Riche - All Night Long

1 Graph to Estimate My Formerly Changing Tastes

1 Playlist to Exemplify the Chart with Songs I Was Really into for a Given Year, whether I still Like Them or Not (with links!)

1. Kriss Kross - Jump (1992)
2. Nirvana - Lithium (1993)
3. Wu Tang Clan - Wu Tang Clan Ain't Nuthin to Fuck With (1994)
4. Green Day - Longview (1995)
5. Sloan - Snowsuit Sound (1996)
6. Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench (1997)
7. Less Than Jake - Happyman (1998)
8. Liz Phair - Supernova (1999)
9. The Clash - London Calling (2000)
   
10. Radiohead - Everything in its Right Place (2001)
    
11. The Strokes - Last Night (2002)
    
12. Elefant - Misfit (2003)
    
13. The Go! Team - Bottle Rocket (2004)
14. Bloc Party - Like Eating Glass (2005)
15. Franz Ferdinand - You're the Reason I'm Leaving (2006)
16. Spoon - The Underdog (2007)
    
17. LCD Soundsystem -  All My Friends (2008)
18. Passion Pit - Sleepyhead (2009)
19. Animal Collective - Fireworks (2010)
20. Childish Gambino - New Prince (2011)

So I guess all those lists are really a long way of saying that despite considering myself somewhat of a music snob this days (it comes with being a semi-hipster), I finally took my first guitar lesson, though I have been exposed to playing the guitar twice before.

Before heading back up to Ann Arbor for my sophomore year, my uncle gave me one of his guitars to take with me, so I could hopefully learn on my own during down time. I took it with me, fully expecting to practice an hour or 2 a week, so I could be seranading "social" girls by the end of the year. But, I got up to school and remembered that I like TV and soccer and beer much more than learning guitar by myself, so that went out the window.

The only other exposure? The game Rock Band of course. And while the drums seem like they could transfer over to the real world fairly well (the people I know who can actually drum can kick that game's ass), I don't think there are too many real world guitars consisting of 5 colored buttons. Thus, my vast array of Rock Band skills would be useless for the lesson . . . kind of.

So I went over to my friend Mary's place, and she was kind enough to teach me how to tune a guitar, and how to play enough chords to create something that kind of sort of resembled an actual song. 

Mary is actually pretty damn musically inclined. She plays guitar, but she's also a song writer. Sadly, she didn't let me take a video of the song she played, that she has both written and composed. In place of that video though, here she is in her post-work scrubs playing what I think is Auld Lang Syne (the New Year's Eve song) on a pan flute. I'm sure she'll appreciate this, especially since everyone knows guys are suckers for chicks that play pan flutes.

Before the lesson, I had sent Mary a few songs that I figured were slow enough and simple enough that I might have the slimmest chance of playing. After looking up the chords for some of those, we settled on Jesus Don't Want Me for a Sunbeam. Originally done by The Vaselines, you're more likely to know it from the Nirvana Unplugged album. Listen to the chords Kurt plays. Relatively simple, especially for someone who's greatest guitar moment up to this point had been beating Iron Maiden's Run to the Hills on Expert in Rock Band.

The song starts out with 3 chords being repeated in order for each verse - E, then D, then A. Each of those requires 3 fingers, like Easy mode on Rock Band, or like a freshman girl at (insert your rival school's name here). Then the 4 lines of the chorus end up even simpler, going, E-D, E-D, E-D, A. See? Simple enough that even after a couple beers, I could remember what the hell went where, and not sound like a complete clusterfuck. (Guitar nerds can see the full song chords here)

So, without further ado, my rock star debut, complete with woo'ing groupie.

So, ummm, not horrific, right? Kind of resembles the actual song, albeit much much slower. But for lesson #1? Hells yes, I'll take it. To see progress over the course of just 90 minutes was pretty amazing really, and made me want to learn some more (which I probably would, if my teacher weren't a world traveler juggling work and school). And as silly as it may sound, while my Rock Band guitar skills may not be a perfect representation of a real guitar, I think the get-into-the-zone hand-eye-coordination legitimately helped. So score another one for me becoming a father someday and being able to rationalize sticking the kid in front of a video game all day long. Man, my kid is going to be awesome.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Thanks to Mary for the lesson. An A+ teacher.
• Let's get some reader commenting going on here.  List
• Your favorite concert
• Your most embarrassing concert
• The most embarrassing CD you still have in your possession
• Your guilty pleasure song