Worst common guitar noise

[Len Cnut]

See I actually do agree with you on this, though we have to define what is "popular music." Is pop just top 40? Does it include modern rock that is popular?

I just mean like...popular music, the lot of it, what we listen to basically, most people on this forum, mainstream rock n roll stuff. And a lot of so called alternative shit too.

Part of the reason why guitar is such a featured instrument in pop music is because of how it sonically sits with drums, bass, vocals, and piano (among other instruments, but those are the most common). It's high mids and low trebles, and that freq. range is particularly pleasing to the ear. Is there music that features the bass as the focus? Yes. What about for vocals? Yes. And piano? Yes. Bass, yes? Etc. for every instrument. But guitar is guitar, that's just the way the instrument is, guitar has been prevalent in most styles of music since the ability to play electrically was developed in the 1930's. There is probably less guitar in modern pop music, compared to 30-40 years ago.

What i was getting at though is that it needs to evolve. The use of it in popular music is committed to a format thats kinda exhausted. There is less guitar in modern pop music, i agree and a lot of it is to do with over-use or abuse of a specific way of playing it.

I'm not convinced it has had "morbid focus" in modern pop music which has resulted in its detriment. There are a number of other musical/technological/business/cultural entities that I would attribute blame to when talking about the detriment of pop music. When I listen to top 40 radio, which is very very seldom, some songs have no guitar, or very minor uses of the instrument - which it seems to be is your suggestion. And I'm fine with that, I don't care what guitar is used for in pop music, I know I'm never going to really enjoy it.

Well it has resulted in it's detriment in that it's not used in popular music circles so much and rock n roll or rock music or whatever doesn't seem to've cottoned onto this idea yet. Think of all the guitar players that usually make up your average top ten, they all play in a similar sort of vein/style/format, they don't really do much with it in the framework of it being this dominant instrument in their music. Jimi Hendrix for example, is someone that did a lot with it to justify its prominence in a given piece of music. The folks of rock music circles give off the impression of people who have run out of ideas of what to do with it, whilst at the same time remaining committed to the same old formats. Nobody wants a guitar hero no more.

My comment to you was more meant in jest, as you and I seem to represent the polar opposite sides of the debate/argument/perspective on it.

Oh I understand, and i welcome the debate

I guess it went without saying that you were only really referring to pop music, but as a guitar player I still took offence. Lead guitar is the best god damn instrument out there, and hard rock/metal are its caretakers. Just like for you (I'm guessing based off your posts), hip-hop and rap is your musical salvation. Which as you know, those two styles have permeated modern pop far more than lead guitar has.

Listen, i LOVE guitar based music, i grew up on it, I have the utmost respect for good guitar players, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Son House, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Thunders, Thurston Moore, Bukka White, Robert Johnson Glenn Branca, Sly Dunbar, Johnny Marr, i could go on for days about guitar players and guitar based music i love and still miss out a great chunk of it...but the thing that made each one of those guitarists (with the possible except of Johnny Thunders ) is that, to a man, what made what they were doing with it so amazing was that they were REALLY inventive with it. True, some of them established the archetypes that I'm picking at here but at the same time thats kinda the point, they established them, they weren't the victims of them.

See this is where we diverge, you think metal and hard rock are it's caretakers, i think they are the ruiners of it and the genres that consolidating really lightweight cliches around it, everything that has been damaging to the guitar as an instrument and its being relevant in the current day is down to hard rock and metal.

Reggae, Funk, these things have done more for the guitar in the last 30 years in terms of pushing the instrument along than hard rock has for many many years and I say that because those genres did something a little different with it and gave the instrument a greater shelf life in the sphere of popular music.

I was also especially troubled by the fact that you used "lead." I hear very little lead guitar in modern pop, even Foo Fighters barely have what qualifies as lead guitar, especially in their older stuff. And I don't solely define lead as "solos."

I should've been more clear there, I mean lead instrument as in the instrument that makes up the bulk of the music, i mean bass and drums is pretty much just like...the foundations. With all due respect to bass players in rock music (cuz there have been some fucking monsters) no one listens to the fuckin' bass in rock music generally, it's just a low rumbling that accentuates the rhythm of the drums, the guitar, the electric guitar on top is kinda what the bulk of the music is.

As far as modern rock goes, which I think is what you're second paragraph is referring to. I agree wholeheartedly. But that's not even close to the entire picture. The current styles of music that have interesting and innovative guitar playing in them, are generally nowhere near the spotlight. And if you (or the casual listener) heard them, they probably wouldn't immediately be able to enjoy them. The reason being? Innovative guitar playing has evolved over the past 50 years. In 1960 playing a solo at 150bpm in pentatonic minor was innovative. In 2015, playing a solo/riff at 200bpm in mixolydian b2 b6 then modulating to Ionian (major scale) is closer to what's considered innovative. The problem is that the latter innovation is far less accessible to the public in regards to listening pleasure.

This I could entertain as an idea, perhaps they are out there and I'm just not hearing them.

I was talking to this with a friend the other day, about guitar players and which one of the old school you could take and place them in a contemporary context and have them make it work, suprisingly one of the best ones we could come up with was Keith Richards and the reason for that is he understands that the guitar is part of a piece, Keith gives you the feeling of someone who fits his guitar playing around what the music is and kinda helps to push it along, like a cross between lead and rhythm playing, the fact that he's an onnery old bastard that would rather choke on his fathers ashes than entertain most modern musical formats is a matter of his personality but uh , yeah, he's a great example. People just wanting it as this dominant instrument in a given piece of music kinda damage it's position both today and looking into the future with it.

And y'know what, those are the talented guitar players to me. the guitar has a place in any and every single musical format out there...the fact that it isn't prominent so much is specifically down to the kind of abuse of it thats occured by the people who bear the standard for hard rock/metal etc.

Soul music has guitar in it, your old Motown stuff etc...but it doesn't beat you over the head with it, it's used with subtlty and style and to serve the music, not to fit this archetype of the great guitar God or worse still, the scruffy shoe-gazing student noodler.

Y'know what i think? I think American black people should be forced by the government to start playing guitars again And specifically American too

[magisme]

I remember when my younger brother first started playing guitar he thought Malmsteen was cool for like a month. He brought me into his room and told me I had to hear it. I smiled politely, but all I was thinking was, "OK. I guess it's fast."

[Rovim]

Go away.

what about that piece of wood and plastic with 6 strings that makes it so indivisible from popular music? The truth is it isn't and all this morbid focus on it has been to the extreme detriment of popular music. Don't get me wrong, i love guitar based music but the world should change too to avoid popular music becoming more and more like the preserve of the cultural equivalent of trainspotters.

90% of guitar based music about nowadays is a load of fuckin' shit, chiefly because it's become a really tired format...and not cuz you can't do more with it but because of the mentalities of the communities that surround players of the instrument and the standards they've set. And it's difficult to change something like that until you put the bastard down, go out and use your imagination and create something new and then perhaps figure out how you can factor it into that, otherwise you're just gonna keep churning out the same kind of shite, which is what is happening.

What? lol no. Still many talented guitar players that you know... make it the center of the song or taking a lot of space to go into more detail melodically through the guitar yet still maintain the integrity of the song.

Like the new John Frusciante album for example. He finds cool and fresh things to do with his guitars on that one and there are plenty other guitar players that do that.

You just need to look for the good shit. Bucket also does his thing and it's like nothing else out there and some of it is great.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Rovim

[Len Cnut]

Frusciante is the exception to the rule.

[Rovim]

Frusciante is the exception to the rule.

What a talent. Unbelievable.

[Len Cnut]

Frusciante is the exception to the rule.

What a talent. Unbelievable.

What i like about him is you want prodigious fuckin' talent? You got it, you want him to get in a rock band context? You got it. You want him to write songs, you want him to get funky, you want him to get bluesy? All of it, he can do all of it and most importantly, he can actually do it in the context of actual songs and in a band context, meshing with other players, instead of just these instrumental passages that are all about him and his guitar. It's all well and going conveying emotion in an instrumental passage, thats something in and of itself...but then to do that in a song, where the lyrics etc inform that emotion or dictate its emotion, THAT shit is talent to me. A lot of people can just do a really emotional instrumental piece when there's lots of bends etc and they really lean into it and hey, maybe even make you feel shit but when you got a song and the guitarist then has to serve that song or take it somewhere higher, in the way Slash does with SCOM, THATS the fuckin' shit...cuz you can't blag, it's either gonna work or it's gonna fall flat on it's face and it works like a motherfucker when Frusciante does it.

REALLY REALLY rate that guy, he's kinda my archetype of what a good modern guitarist should be. He can do the lot but it never feels clinical in his hands. I'm suspicious of guitar players that can only get down when it's just them or their guitar playing that is the whole song. Like you get these people that go 'Buckethead can play such emotional stuff, just check this out!' and it'll be Bucket doing some amazing emotional bluesy solo piece. And it's like alright, cool, i can see the value in that. But thats kinda just like waking up in the morning, knowing your blues and just cranking some shit out and it being of a value to where it can convey some kinda emotion...but loads and loads and loads of guitarists can do that...when you get it in a song and work it in in that context is when you're doing something special.

Buckets an awful example to use because he really can crank em out even in a song context, listen to TWAT and tell me Bucket can't convey emotion, was just using his name to fill a gap cuz i can't think of any wankbag instrumentalist players offhand. Sorry Bucket

Edited June 22, 2015 by Len B'stard

[Rovim]

Frusciante is the exception to the rule.

What a talent. Unbelievable.

What i like about him is you want prodigious fuckin' talent? You got it, you want him to get in a rock band context? You got it. You want him to write songs, you want him to get funky, you want him to get bluesy? All of it, he can do all of it and most importantly, he can actually do it in the context of actual songs and in a band context, meshing with other players, instead of just these instrumental passages that are all about him and his guitar. It's all well and going conveying emotion in an instrumental passage, thats something in and of itself...but then to do that in a song, where the lyrics etc inform that emotion or dictate its emotion, THAT shit is talent to me. A lot of people can just do a really emotional instrumental piece when there's lots of bends etc and they really lean into it and hey, maybe even make you feel shit but when you got a song and the guitarist then has to serve that song or take it somewhere higher, in the way Slash does with SCOM, THATS the fuckin' shit...cuz you can't blag, it's either gonna work or it's gonna fall flat on it's face and it works like a motherfucker when Frusciante does it.

REALLY REALLY rate that guy, he's kinda my archetype of what a good modern guitarist should be. He can do the lot but it never feels clinical in his hands. I'm suspicious of guitar players that can only get down when it's just them or their guitar playing that is the whole song.

They're 2 different things. Different abilities or talents I suppose. There are many types of guitar players. Some can fit a guitar oriented musical concept perfectly to a song and make it much better.

Others just say it differently, more like on it's own. The musical guitar idea is enough to be the only thing the song is focused on and it has expressed everything that was there to express. If it's good, the musical direction is never lost and it keeps developing. I guess like a classical piece.

Then there are people like John that can do both and he did. He is obviously influenced by long instrumental guitar pieces like Maggot Brain for example.

[Len Cnut]

Doing both is the thing, i think. Makes you well rounded. Each has it's own value but to be able to do both, that, to me, is a guitar player.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Len B'stard

[OmarBradley]

What i was getting at though is that it needs to evolve. The use of it in popular music is committed to a format thats kinda exhausted. There is less guitar in modern pop music, i agree and a lot of it is to do with over-use or abuse of a specific way of playing it.

Well, OK. But, what does that sound like? What's the mystery evolution? I get you're saying pop guitar has been exhausted, and needs new innovation. But, that's the issue - that will never happen. IMO, all of the innovation there is to do in pop music for guitar, is done; book closed - mostly rock too TBH, metal and experimental styles (like Frusciante) is where the innovation is happening, and will continue to. Guitar innovation happened in the 60's, 70's, and 80's and then sort of stopped for a reason. The instrument was essentially only invented in the 30's, and then it didn't really get mass appeal until the 50's.

Well it has resulted in it's detriment in that it's not used in popular music circles so much and rock n roll or rock music or whatever doesn't seem to've cottoned onto this idea yet. Think of all the guitar players that usually make up your average top ten, they all play in a similar sort of vein/style/format, they don't really do much with it in the framework of it being this dominant instrument in their music. Jimi Hendrix for example, is someone that did a lot with it to justify its prominence in a given piece of music. The folks of rock music circles give off the impression of people who have run out of ideas of what to do with it, whilst at the same time remaining committed to the same old formats. Nobody wants a guitar hero no more.

I think I misread this section in your first post, I took it as you were saying that guitar has contributed to the detriment of modern pop, whereas now I'm reading it as you're saying pop contributed to the detriment of guitar? Or the fact that it's not used innovatively in pop has contributed to the detriment of pop?

Agreed, most casual listeners will name the same 5-10 players in their "best " lists. And every time I see it, I nail 'em for doing so. I'd argue that Jimmy Page used the guitar just as, if not more innovatively than Hendrix, but anyway I agree with your point there. But the bulk of music enthusiasts will never understand our argument, the bulk of music enthusiasts listen to 1 style. Usually either pop, or rock, or classical, or jazz. Despite the overwhelming number of people who claim to have an eclectic taste, it's rare that someone would listen to all 4 (or more). When you do listen to them all, you can see the argument that the normal top X lists are dumb. But that's not likely to happen for most people. And it can't be forced.

Listen, i LOVE guitar based music, i grew up on it, I have the utmost respect for good guitar players, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Son House, Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Johnny Thunders, Thurston Moore, Bukka White, Robert Johnson Glenn Branca, Sly Dunbar, Johnny Marr, i could go on for days about guitar players and guitar based music i love and still miss out a great chunk of it...but the thing that made each one of those guitarists (with the possible except of Johnny Thunders ) is that, to a man, what made what they were doing with it so amazing was that they were REALLY inventive with it. True, some of them established the archetypes that I'm picking at here but at the same time thats kinda the point, they established them, they weren't the victims of them.

See this is where we diverge, you think metal and hard rock are it's caretakers, i think they are the ruiners of it and the genres that consolidating really lightweight cliches around it, everything that has been damaging to the guitar as an instrument and its being relevant in the current day is down to hard rock and metal.

Reggae, Funk, these things have done more for the guitar in the last 30 years in terms of pushing the instrument along than hard rock has for many many years and I say that because those genres did something a little different with it and gave the instrument a greater shelf life in the sphere of popular music.

Yes, funk/reggae guitar has permeated pop music far moreso than hard rock/metal guitar has. That's stylistic though, funk/reggae get along with pop/rap/hip hop/"R&B." Metal and hard rock don't really get along with the pop genres that well. There are some exceptions, but most aren't that good. Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys are really the only two popular classic bands to successfully mix rock with a major pop genre. Some would say Linkin Park too, but I don't know them too well.

Compare that to how many modern top 40/pop songs have reggae/funk elements in them. A huge amount; that Bruno Mars song comes to mind, and more would come to mind if I was up to date on current pop.

I guess you can say, "Okay great, so funk/reggae have done it better - hey you hard rock/metal, figure out how to do it too!" It doesn't work like that. As the proverbial saying goes: it wasn't meant to be.

I should've been more clear there, I mean lead instrument as in the instrument that makes up the bulk of the music, i mean bass and drums is pretty much just like...the foundations. With all due respect to bass players in rock music (cuz there have been some fucking monsters) no one listens to the fuckin' bass in rock music generally, it's just a low rumbling that accentuates the rhythm of the drums, the guitar, the electric guitar on top is kinda what the bulk of the music is.

Yeah I was nitpicking. And don't worry, as a rock/metal guitar player I take no offence in slights towards the bass - I generally encourage it.

This I could entertain as an idea, perhaps they are out there and I'm just not hearing them.

I was talking to this with a friend the other day, about guitar players and which one of the old school you could take and place them in a contemporary context and have them make it work, suprisingly one of the best ones we could come up with was Keith Richards and the reason for that is he understands that the guitar is part of a piece, Keith gives you the feeling of someone who fits his guitar playing around what the music is and kinda helps to push it along, like a cross between lead and rhythm playing, the fact that he's an onnery old bastard that would rather choke on his fathers ashes than entertain most modern musical formats is a matter of his personality but uh , yeah, he's a great example. People just wanting it as this dominant instrument in a given piece of music kinda damage it's position both today and looking into the future with it.

Yeah, but a lot of people don't feel that the guitar should just be a bystander to the song, and that's why so many people listen to rock/metal. Early rock has as you say, was more of a joint effort, but tbh by the time the mid-60's rolled around, guitar was leading what you heard as blues and pop culminated in rock. It's not my fault Keith never decided to practice and get as good as his contemporaries.

You and I will always see Keith fundamentally different. I see him as a guy who kinda learned the instrument his own way (which I did too), but then he didn't really take it any further. You can argue that he was trying to fit the music, I'm of the opinion he just wasn't as talented as his cohorts (Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Mayall, Alvin Lee, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I love early Stones, everything from the beginning to about 1975 is just great. And Keith's style is absolutely central as to why the Stones sounded how they did - and I wouldn't change it if I were given the option to. This is probably why the Stones are still so huge, they're music is way poppier than it sounds (not talking about 80's and on Stones, as that's more obviously pop oriented).

And y'know what, those are the talented guitar players to me. the guitar has a place in any and every single musical format out there...the fact that it isn't prominent so much is specifically down to the kind of abuse of it thats occured by the people who bear the standard for hard rock/metal etc.

Soul music has guitar in it, your old Motown stuff etc...but it doesn't beat you over the head with it, it's used with subtlty and style and to serve the music, not to fit this archetype of the great guitar God or worse still, the scruffy shoe-gazing student noodler.

Y'know what i think? I think American black people should be forced by the government to start playing guitars again And specifically American too

But not everyone is interested in what you're saying, people want cool riffs and solos. So you're saying the guitar isn't prominent in most music styles because of the abuse of hard rock/metal? And that's because metal/hard rock has failed to innovate (according to you)? Or failed to innovate into pop music?

Yeah, soul and Motown have guitar in them. And the guitar is subtle and non-overwhelming............ because that's the nature of the style. Would you have a hard rock/metal song with the main riff being played by a tuba? If you did, it wouldn't be hard rock/metal anymore. Serving the music for hard rock/metal is done by making the guitar one of the main focuses. That's the nature of the style. Hard rock/metal is the style of guitar gods/scruffy noodlers. Richards was the exception, not the norm.

Even though it was a joke, what do you think the result would be if American black people took up the guitar in droves? They would what? Solve the mystery of making guitar innovative again in regards to pop? Doubt it, that's what they did with reggae/funk 40 years ago. Like I said in my last post - IMO all of the innovation that you want has already happened. If you want modern guitar innovation, check out thrash/metal/experimental.

[Towelie]

The notion that guitar music lacks appeal in 2015 because it's failed to remain innovative is absurd.

The reason why guitar music has become a niche genre is largely due to record labels opting to reduce production costs by investing in cheap computer-made muzak fronted by talentless sluts like Rhianna and then shoving this dog shit down our throats until you have a generation of kids who don't know any different. Major labels have refused to put in the time, effort and money to find new and exciting guitar bands who write their own shit for a long time now. It's no coincidence that as soon as the big cheeses stopped pumping major money into guitar bands mainstream radio stopped promoting rock music and public interest in the genre started to wane.

The vast majority of music consumers don't seek out new talent for themselves, they are lazy and unsophisticated and their music taste is dictated by whatever is currently being pushed by mainstream media.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Towelie

[Len Cnut]

Well, OK. But, what does that sound like? What's the mystery evolution? I get you're saying pop guitar has been exhausted, and needs new innovation. But, that's the issue - that will never happen. IMO, all of the innovation there is to do in pop music for guitar, is done; book closed - mostly rock too TBH, metal and experimental styles (like Frusciante) is where the innovation is happening, and will continue to. Guitar innovation happened in the 60's, 70's, and 80's and then sort of stopped for a reason. The instrument was essentially only invented in the 30's, and then it didn't really get mass appeal until the 50's.

Shame. (and i mean that seriously, not flippantly).

Yes, funk/reggae guitar has permeated pop music far moreso than hard rock/metal guitar has. That's stylistic though, funk/reggae get along with pop/rap/hip hop/"R&B." Metal and hard rock don't really get along with the pop genres that well. There are some exceptions, but most aren't that good. Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys are really the only two popular classic bands to successfully mix rock with a major pop genre. Some would say Linkin Park too, but I don't know them too well.

Compare that to how many modern top 40/pop songs have reggae/funk elements in them. A huge amount; that Bruno Mars song comes to mind, and more would come to mind if I was up to date on current pop.

I guess you can say, "Okay great, so funk/reggae have done it better - hey you hard rock/metal, figure out how to do it too!" It doesn't work like that. As the proverbial saying goes: it wasn't meant to be.

I don't think it just wasn't meant to be though, i think it was made not to be by certain attitudes. And thats even more of a shame.

Yeah, but a lot of people don't feel that the guitar should just be a bystander to the song, and that's why so many people listen to rock/metal.

Well clearly not enough people feel that as it's this sort of attitude thats got us where we are with the guitar. I mean, it's not a competition between bass, drums and guitar, they're all three of em working towards the same ends and in greater or lesser degrees and, to the benefit of the piece of music at hand one or more can be accentuated to make the song work better, it's nothing to cry about, a great guitarist doesn't have to prove how great he is every time, y'know, stick a spotlight on him and let him stroll up front and let people catch a nap for 20 mins while he proves how much time he spent incarcerated in his bedroom, it's tiresome.

You and I will always see Keith fundamentally different. I see him as a guy who kinda learned the instrument his own way (which I did too), but then he didn't really take it any further. You can argue that he was trying to fit the music, I'm of the opinion he just wasn't as talented as his cohorts (Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Mayall, Alvin Lee, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I love early Stones, everything from the beginning to about 1975 is just great. And Keith's style is absolutely central as to why the Stones sounded how they did - and I wouldn't change it if I were given the option to. This is probably why the Stones are still so huge, they're music is way poppier than it sounds (not talking about 80's and on Stones, as that's more obviously pop oriented).

So The Stones were massive, are massive to this day, you agree that they are an amazing band, and that Keith Richards was central to that band being amazing...but Keith still gets demerit marks based on the fact that he doesn't push the guitar to the forefront or rather he doesn't have the requisite talent and/or inclinaton to make the guitar overbearing in a given piece, to put it at the forefront? Do you see how silly that sounds?

Tell me, The Stones in the studio in the 60s, they're banging out Satisfaction or Jumping Jack Flash or one of the other bangers they made back then, my mate Omars in there with his guitar, what do you do 'hang on Mick, one sec, crackin' track you got there, love it, proper quality...y'know what'd make it better though? Give Keith a fuckin' violin bow and a Les Paul and some acid!'

I do not agree that Keith is less talented than the aforementioned, i just think he sought to do other things, it's like asking your star striker why he's crap in defence, cuz it's not what he does.

But not everyone is interested in what you're saying, people want cool riffs and solos. So you're saying the guitar isn't prominent in most music styles because of the abuse of hard rock/metal? And that's because metal/hard rock has failed to innovate (according to you)? Or failed to innovate into pop music?

That and the surrounding image of THE guitar player was kinda taken over by rock. And made a cartoon of.

Yeah, soul and Motown have guitar in them. And the guitar is subtle and non-overwhelming............ because that's the nature of the style. Would you have a hard rock/metal song with the main riff being played by a tuba? If you did, it wouldn't be hard rock/metal anymore. Serving the music for hard rock/metal is done by making the guitar one of the main focuses. That's the nature of the style. Hard rock/metal is the style of guitar gods/scruffy noodlers. Richards was the exception, not the norm.

Probably explains why the exception did exceptional things and made exceptional music. People like Keith intrinsically understand that this thing called rock n roll (this craaaaaaaaaaay-zee thing ) is directly related to styles like soul and Motown, those things are the actual productive evolutionary step on from rock n roll, musically substantial, that led somewhere, rock n roll, in terms of like...Ike Turner doing Rocket 88 and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Bo Diddley, Soul and Motown are the logical step on from that, they are the heirs of rock n roll and to understand that is to understand the essence of that shit and The Stones understood that and thats why they have endured, hard rock is just that with all the groove and zip and style and panache removed to make it dense and clinical and eventually redundant.

Like Ginger Baker said, Heavy Metal should've been aborted. And 'Hard Rock', ugh, I'm not even sure what that is. Everything good and worthwhile and substantial that came from music went from that rock n roll to soul to funk to reggae to hip hop vein, that hard rock shit is a fuckin' dead end for trainspotters if you asked me. How do you get better at a thing? When you run out of ideas just do it faster and faster and faster and faster and louder and louder....and call it prodigious talent. And worse still, to then look down on these people like Keith who feel the music in their bones and know how to kinda glide in and around straight time, that almost Jazz, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus sort of louche cool, to know how to put what like fill or run of notes or pick out a chord that accentuates the rhythm and creates an overall collaborative piece of music where the playing meshes together, THAT is performance not 'give Nigel the 5 second notice, it's his turn for solo next!', it's just SOOOOO unmusical. (i like how i drew a parrallel between Coltrane and Monk and them, these supreme soloists Shut up, different kinda music, you know what i meant! )

Another reason that this don't happen anymore, i think, is that a lot of nowadays guitarists learn in their rooms instead of onstage, a lot of what Soul and Funk and the Keith style requires of an artist is a sort of onstage musical rapport with your fellow players, that protean ability to kinda think on your feet and through doing a lot of that, you learn to really feel the music.

Even though it was a joke, what do you think the result would be if American black people took up the guitar in droves? They would what? Solve the mystery of making guitar innovative again in regards to pop? Doubt it, that's what they did with reggae/funk 40 years ago. Like I said in my last post - IMO all of the innovation that you want has already happened. If you want modern guitar innovation, check out thrash/metal/experimental.

I'm immediately suspicious of any genre named 'experimental' or that has that word in it. Almost every substantial musical innovation (i say substantial a lot, what i mean by that is one of substance, one that led somewhere) was a happy accident.

[DR DOOM]

What's your opinion of EVH Len?

[dalsh327]

The notion that guitar music lacks appeal in 2015 because it's failed to remain innovative is absurd.

The reason why guitar music has become a niche genre is largely due to record labels opting to reduce production costs by investing in cheap computer-made muzak fronted by talentless sluts like Rhianna and then shoving this dog shit down our throats until you have a generation of kids who don't know any different. Major labels have refused to put in the time, effort and money to find new and exciting guitar bands who write their own shit for a long time now. It's no coincidence that as soon as the big cheeses stopped pumping major money into guitar bands mainstream radio stopped promoting rock music and public interest in the genre started to wane.

The vast majority of music consumers don't seek out new talent for themselves, they are lazy and unsophisticated and their music taste is dictated by whatever is currently being pushed by mainstream media.

The problem is that you have a small group of producers and songwriters dominating the pop world and putting their songs out with whoever's hot at the moment but there's still a lot of word of mouth artists that make it.

[Len Cnut]

Well I'd be a fool to say he wasn't talented, exceptionally talented even, at what he does but it doesnt really speak to me in any way if I'm honest although I've not heard any of his stuff for many many years.

[DR DOOM]

Well I'd be a fool to say he wasn't talented, exceptionally talented even, at what he does but it doesnt really speak to me in any way if I'm honest although I've not heard any of his stuff for many many years.

Cool, thanks.

For what it's worth, I agree with most of what you're saying in this thread, yet also somehow disagree.

[Len Cnut]

Well I'd be a fool to say he wasn't talented, exceptionally talented even, at what he does but it doesnt really speak to me in any way if I'm honest although I've not heard any of his stuff for many many years.

Cool, thanks.

For what it's worth, I agree with most of what you're saying in this thread, yet also somehow disagree.

Some of it's fuckin' ignorant to be honest, I was sort of veering between statement of what i percieve to be fact and slipping some personal opinion in there, you can't just totally devalue hard rock and metal (tempting though it may be, particularly with the latter, the greasy bastards ), why does a musical genre suddenly lack validity because it didn't lead onto another monumental genre of a similar vein, thats bollocks, metal has a value in and of itself and the creativity therein.

I was more sort of challenging this notion that metal and hard rock are the heirs to blues and rock n roll cuz i don't think they are, in fact i know they're not, soul, funk etc are evolutions of rock n roll, Metal and hard rock are kind of a degrading of it and going off in a different direction, soul, funk etc took the core elements of rock n roll that made it cool, that made it swing, that made it put a firework up your bottom and ran with em. I percieve more value in this because firstly it sounds a lot better, the proof is in the pudding, i have yet to hear any hard rock, ANY hard rock whatsoever that stands up to shit like James Brown or Motown in terms of just the quality of the music. And secondly because it was fertile, it led to other things...and not just duff sub-genres but substantial evolutionary leaps.

Bands like The Stones, and I'm not even their biggest fan, REALLY understood rock n roll, you can see it in their choice of covers, it's all Marvin Gaye and Ain't to Proud to Beg by The Temptations, these people were there at the back end of rock n roll in America and weren't led by record store categorisations and kind of saw the two different offshoots of where rock n roll was going, where you got the whiteboys taking it over into their own thing which is hard rock and The Who and all those sorts of bands and then they way in which the core music was evolving for the black people that it came from, which was into Soul and Funk and all that. It appears that the mimics, the copyists took the rock n roll label and designed it in their own image and gave it it's own archetypes whereas the people it originally came from weren't as precious about the label as they were with the music they were making, i hear more of the core of rock n roll in soul and funk etc than i do in any hard rock. Or perhaps it was just a case of rock n roll kind of came up, in terms of came to world attention, on the backs of white folks so by the time they were done with it the shit didn't mean what it originally did, didn't resemble what it originally did so they just moved on.

Little Richard is one of the kings of Rock n Roll and James Brown is the godfather of soul and James Brown got his start being a Little Richard impersonator and, more than that, SOUNDS a shitload like Richard...yet when James Brown does it it's soul and funk and when Little Richard did it it was rock n roll. The line ups on those rock n roll tours ended up having people who basically were Soul music people, Wilson Pickett and all that, Junior Walker, which is why i resent this idea that rock n roll in the 70s was Peter Frampton and The Stones and all that. There's a musical difference too, don't get me wrong but there's more than a few really glaring similarities.

This is why Jimi Hendrix was the fuckin' lad, cuz he took the good bits from the whiteboys and the good bit from the black lads (well, everything from the fuckin' black guys really) and made this fuckin' mental music of the sort I've never heard anything really like...approach. There's a lot to the qualities of hard rock and metal too, I'd have to be a bit of a retard to sit around loving the early punk like i do and not seeing certain sonic parrallels with metal (i didn't say that, you didn't read it and if you repeat it i'll have you shot by Islamists )

I guess it's all about who sells it to ya and how, thats what dictates what music ends up being but if you look closely the reality is always obvious. Another idea I resent, one thats very popular over here, is that America had forgotten about the blues and it had just become lost in their history and no one gave a shit about it until a bunch of skinny whiteboys from England showed it to the world again, thats bollocks, the blues weren't dead or forgotten by America, it had just evolved but it's core elements still existed in what the various folks of rock n roll were up to, white America didn't give a shit one way or the other and black America weren't really getting heard but the idea that it was like 'forgotten' is a load of bollocks and it's just a bunch of people from England trying to make themselves more important in rock n roll history than they actually are.

It's the same with The Beatles and their blowing up and The British Invasion bringing rock n roll back to life, thats bollocks too. They try to make out like rock n roll came in the 50s then Elvis went to the army and it all became about Dream Lover and Connie Francis and it was dead til The British Invasion bought it back to life, but the core artists existed still, it's just by virtue of being black they weren't getting a lot of respect. But again, as with The Stones, look at the taste of The Beatles, the stuff they chose to cover, a great deal of it was like, soul music. Cuz thats what the core music had become, that was the logical evolutionary step of rock n roll...and it literally is evolutionary cuz Soul music is slightly more complex than rock n roll, in it's drumming patterns, in the way it propels rhythm.

And thats basically what I'm getting at the blues, rock n roll, jazz, soul, all these genres are basically evolutionary steps of each other, you can see the evolution clearly, where your blues shuffle mutated into the jazz swing, from whence comes the uptempo rhythms of rock n roll...which then kinda evolved into the slightly more complex rhythms of soul, they fit, they make sense in each others context...hard rock is like a bum note on that scale, it doesn't fit, those others make sense as a progression...hard rock does not fit in that.

And, to get back to my original point (i had a point somewhere, didn't I? ), the above musics are made to make you move, thats the fuckin' point of them, the emphasis is on rhythm in almost all of them and a proper rock n roller has to have an understanding of that and has to realise that that is when he is doing his job well, when he serves that rhythm to the fullest...and that is not done by endless fuckin' guitar noodling and out there spaced out prog rock rambling, it's not the 'me me me' show, even with your 8 piece RnB combos, it served to propel the rhythm, Omar was suggesting up there that this was sort of like marginalising the guitar but it's not, it's understanding it as a component of an overall piece and when thats done correctly it is fucking breaktaking. It's something to do with the human animals propensity for showing off i think, the idea that the guitar just HAS to be central focus, at the expense of just about all else.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Len B'stard

[Metal Matt]

Not being tasteful is the worst common guitar noise. Play whats right for the song. If that means John Petrucci, then great. If it means John Mayer, then do that. Then basically chetefakap.

[Iron MikeyJ]

I HATE scratching noises on the acoustic guitar. It usually happens when players play a lot of bar chords, but if you hear that scratch non stop its dreadful. To me it's laziness, lift up your fingers enough to make it go away. Most pros don't have them on any recordings, but I will say this, Slash has one in the first VR album. I forget the name of the song, it's one of the slower acoustic type numbers. I actually really liked the song, but the scratching noise just plain ruined it for me. I'm not mentioning Slash to pick on him, but he should have done better than that IMO. If I was the producer I would have made him do it over and over until no scratching could be heard. It completely ruined that song. Its the only profesional recording I can think of with scratching on it, usually you hear a lot of it by jerk offs around a camp fire.

[Rovim]

I don't agree with all of it and I don't feel like discussing it but great post. Worth the full read.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Rovim

[OmarBradley]

We're quickly devolving into the same points we always use for the same argument we always have, and I don't feel typing that much again, so I'm going to try to be brief .

Well clearly not enough people feel that as it's this sort of attitude thats got us where we are with the guitar. I mean, it's not a competition between bass, drums and guitar, they're all three of em working towards the same ends and in greater or lesser degrees and, to the benefit of the piece of music at hand one or more can be accentuated to make the song work better, it's nothing to cry about, a great guitarist doesn't have to prove how great he is every time, y'know, stick a spotlight on him and let him stroll up front and let people catch a nap for 20 mins while he proves how much time he spent incarcerated in his bedroom, it's tiresome.

I hate the concept of the 10+/- minute solo during a concert, for any instrument. The thing is though, with rock/metal, the piece of music often originates from the guitar. The guitar player brings in a series of riffs/progressions, and that's then formatted into the song. That is how a lot of rock/metal music is written. So given that formula.... it's naturally going to sound guitar driven, as it should. Not to say this is always how it goes.

With the Stones, I moreso get the feeling that Mick walked into the room and said, "I've got these great lyrics/melody in my head, let me sing/read some for you," and then Keith would play a few riffs under them to see what worked and what didn't. Bill Wyman even wrote the Jumpin' Jack Flash riff .

So The Stones were massive, are massive to this day, you agree that they are an amazing band, and that Keith Richards was central to that band being amazing...but Keith still gets demerit marks based on the fact that he doesn't push the guitar to the forefront or rather he doesn't have the requisite talent and/or inclinaton to make the guitar overbearing in a given piece, to put it at the forefront? Do you see how silly that sounds?

Tell me, The Stones in the studio in the 60s, they're banging out Satisfaction or Jumping Jack Flash or one of the other bangers they made back then, my mate Omars in there with his guitar, what do you do 'hang on Mick, one sec, crackin' track you got there, love it, proper quality...y'know what'd make it better though? Give Keith a fuckin' violin bow and a Les Paul and some acid!'

I do not agree that Keith is less talented than the aforementioned, i just think he sought to do other things, it's like asking your star striker why he's crap in defence, cuz it's not what he does.

Basically, I love Keith's playing, but I call it what it is: it fit the song/music, but didn't do much as far as experimenting with what the guitar can really do in a rock n' roll setting. I'm not faulting him for that, I'm not saying he's a bad player or deserves less popularity/recognition than Jimmy Page, or Dave Mustaine, or Paul Gilbert, or Tony MacAlpine. But I am saying, those players were more inventive with the instrument. That's fact, that's the way it is, I'm not giving Keith a demerit for it. His influence on the Stones is a large part of why they sound like they do, so it does seem natural to say, "Well, even if he didn't play fancy scales and had a similar arsenal of riffs that he commonly fell back on... he still significantly contributed to one of the most popular/greatest rock n' roll bands to have existed and wrote some really catcht licks - and that fact makes him great." I just don't subscribe to that. It's a minority opinion I maintain, and most rock fans would actually be agreeing with you. Though one thing to Keith's credit: he did experiment with quite a few alternate tunings.

It's like Steven Adler, is he a great drummer? No. Was he the best drummer for GNR? Probably. Can I get over the fact that Steven was nothing exceptional, but the right guy for the job, and still call GNR my favorite band to this day? Yup.

That and the surrounding image of THE guitar player was kinda taken over by rock. And made a cartoon of.

Agree there, especially with modern rock/modern pop rock. It's atrocious, DJ Ashba is an example we are all too familiar with. Shinedown, Breaking Benjamin, Halestorm, Like A Storm, etc.. The worst part is, they're trying so hard to be the 70's/80's rock band, but they're often coming up short in regards to quality of musicianship because as you said, it's a recycled cartoon but it's done even worse than the original. That's why I love Buckcherry so much, they know what they are: a rock band from the late 90's which likes to talk about their past years doing drugs and crashing cars; they stay out of the spotlight, they put out a good or better album every 2-3 years, and pretty much constantly tour in between. There's no frills, no trying too hard, they're just a rock band, and they're never going to play Madison Square Garden or the O2, or have a quadruple platinum record and they know it - there's no illusions of conquering the world or becoming the best, because that's not what it's about. So few modern bands act like that.

Probably explains why the exception did exceptional things and made exceptional music. People like Keith intrinsically understand that this thing called rock n roll (this craaaaaaaaaaay-zee thing ) is directly related to styles like soul and Motown, those things are the actual productive evolutionary step on from rock n roll, musically substantial, that led somewhere, rock n roll, in terms of like...Ike Turner doing Rocket 88 and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Bo Diddley, Soul and Motown are the logical step on from that, they are the heirs of rock n roll and to understand that is to understand the essence of that shit and The Stones understood that and thats why they have endured, hard rock is just that with all the groove and zip and style and panache removed to make it dense and clinical and eventually redundant.

Like Ginger Baker said, Heavy Metal should've been aborted. And 'Hard Rock', ugh, I'm not even sure what that is. Everything good and worthwhile and substantial that came from music went from that rock n roll to soul to funk to reggae to hip hop vein, that hard rock shit is a fuckin' dead end for trainspotters if you asked me. How do you get better at a thing? When you run out of ideas just do it faster and faster and faster and faster and louder and louder....and call it prodigious talent. And worse still, to then look down on these people like Keith who feel the music in their bones and know how to kinda glide in and around straight time, that almost Jazz, Coltrane, Monk, Mingus sort of louche cool, to know how to put what like fill or run of notes or pick out a chord that accentuates the rhythm and creates an overall collaborative piece of music where the playing meshes together, THAT is performance not 'give Nigel the 5 second notice, it's his turn for solo next!', it's just SOOOOO unmusical. (i like how i drew a parrallel between Coltrane and Monk and them, these supreme soloists Shut up, different kinda music, you know what i meant! )

Another reason that this don't happen anymore, i think, is that a lot of nowadays guitarists learn in their rooms instead of onstage, a lot of what Soul and Funk and the Keith style requires of an artist is a sort of onstage musical rapport with your fellow players, that protean ability to kinda think on your feet and through doing a lot of that, you learn to really feel the music.

Hard rock is what happened when rock began to develop itself farther from blues, soul, motown, 50's rock n' roll, etc.. Slash is hard rock. GNR is hard rock. A lot of Led Zeppelin, Steelheart, Tesla, Triumph, Van Halen, etc. are hard rock. I'm going to try and loosely define it for you, but it is unavoidable to overgeneralize given the diversity of acts within these styles. Hard rock is rock, but more guitar drive, slightly "heavier," often a bit faster, and includes more solos: your nightmare basically.

Metal is that, but on steroids + sometimes harsher vocals.

Music's gotten heavier since its inception thousands of years ago. It's gotten louder, faster, and more in your face as time has gone on. From medieval monks, to the Baroque composers, to the New Orleans jazz cats, to the dancing tunes of Chuck Berry, to the headbanging Led Zeppelin and on and on and on.... there's been a few sideways exceptions, like Delta blues right in between jazz and rock n' roll, but mostly it's been a linear progression.

I disagree with the last paragraph about where guitarists are learning. It's always been a mix of onstage and in the home and jamming with others offstage.

I'm immediately suspicious of any genre named 'experimental' or that has that word in it. Almost every substantial musical innovation (i say substantial a lot, what i mean by that is one of substance, one that led somewhere) was a happy accident.

I'm not a fan of really any modern experimental music, but a lot of people in my generation are.

Edited June 24, 2015 by OmarBradley

[Len Cnut]

Hard rock is what happened when rock began to develop itself farther from blues, soul, motown, 50's rock n' roll, etc.. Slash is hard rock. GNR is hard rock. A lot of Led Zeppelin, Steelheart, Tesla, Triumph, Van Halen, etc. are hard rock. I'm going to try and loosely define it for you, but it is unavoidable to overgeneralize given the diversity of acts within these styles. Hard rock is rock, but more guitar drive, slightly "heavier," often a bit faster, and includes more solos: your nightmare basically.

Metal is that, but on steroids + sometimes harsher vocals.

Music's gotten heavier since its inception thousands of years ago. It's gotten louder, faster, and more in your face as time has gone on. From medieval monks, to the Baroque composers, to the New Orleans jazz cats, to the dancing tunes of Chuck Berry, to the headbanging Led Zeppelin and on and on and on.... there's been a few sideways exceptions, like Delta blues right in between jazz and rock n' roll, but mostly it's been a linear progression.

I'm going to try and be brief too cuz God love me, i don't half go on sometimes

But i don't think thats any kind of evolution whatsoever. Heavier, faster, slower, thats not actually change anything to the format is it, thats just turning it up or slowing down or speeding up, it's just people who missed the trick basically, missed the trick and didn't clock on what was actually good about that music and just made a dumber version of it by draining away all the style in the nuances and subtlties and making it more thick. There is literally no progression there, it's a bluff. "lets make the solos longer"...how is that any kind of an evolution, if anything it's just like...an elaboration.

Metal basically started cuz a bunch of pissheads from Birmingham wanted to play like Cream but didn't have an ounce of the talent required

[Rovim]

Hard rock is what happened when rock began to develop itself farther from blues, soul, motown, 50's rock n' roll, etc.. Slash is hard rock. GNR is hard rock. A lot of Led Zeppelin, Steelheart, Tesla, Triumph, Van Halen, etc. are hard rock. I'm going to try and loosely define it for you, but it is unavoidable to overgeneralize given the diversity of acts within these styles. Hard rock is rock, but more guitar drive, slightly "heavier," often a bit faster, and includes more solos: your nightmare basically.

Metal is that, but on steroids + sometimes harsher vocals.

Music's gotten heavier since its inception thousands of years ago. It's gotten louder, faster, and more in your face as time has gone on. From medieval monks, to the Baroque composers, to the New Orleans jazz cats, to the dancing tunes of Chuck Berry, to the headbanging Led Zeppelin and on and on and on.... there's been a few sideways exceptions, like Delta blues right in between jazz and rock n' roll, but mostly it's been a linear progression.

I'm going to try and be brief too cuz God love me, i don't half go on sometimes

But i don't think thats any kind of evolution whatsoever. Heavier, faster, slower, thats not actually change anything to the format is it, thats just turning it up or slowing down or speeding up, it's just people who missed the trick basically, missed the trick and didn't clock on what was actually good about that music and just made a dumber version of it by draining away all the style in the nuances and subtlties and making it more thick. There is literally no progression there, it's a bluff. "lets make the solos longer"...how is that any kind of an evolution, if anything it's just like...an elaboration.

Metal basically started cuz a bunch of pissheads from Birmingham wanted to play like Cream but didn't have an ounce of the talent required

Ginger Baker did say Bonham and Moon couldn't swing a sack of shit. I like them but it's funny and I like him the best.

[Len Cnut]

Hard rock is what happened when rock began to develop itself farther from blues, soul, motown, 50's rock n' roll, etc.. Slash is hard rock. GNR is hard rock. A lot of Led Zeppelin, Steelheart, Tesla, Triumph, Van Halen, etc. are hard rock. I'm going to try and loosely define it for you, but it is unavoidable to overgeneralize given the diversity of acts within these styles. Hard rock is rock, but more guitar drive, slightly "heavier," often a bit faster, and includes more solos: your nightmare basically.

Metal is that, but on steroids + sometimes harsher vocals.

Music's gotten heavier since its inception thousands of years ago. It's gotten louder, faster, and more in your face as time has gone on. From medieval monks, to the Baroque composers, to the New Orleans jazz cats, to the dancing tunes of Chuck Berry, to the headbanging Led Zeppelin and on and on and on.... there's been a few sideways exceptions, like Delta blues right in between jazz and rock n' roll, but mostly it's been a linear progression.

I'm going to try and be brief too cuz God love me, i don't half go on sometimes

But i don't think thats any kind of evolution whatsoever. Heavier, faster, slower, thats not actually change anything to the format is it, thats just turning it up or slowing down or speeding up, it's just people who missed the trick basically, missed the trick and didn't clock on what was actually good about that music and just made a dumber version of it by draining away all the style in the nuances and subtlties and making it more thick. There is literally no progression there, it's a bluff. "lets make the solos longer"...how is that any kind of an evolution, if anything it's just like...an elaboration.

Metal basically started cuz a bunch of pissheads from Birmingham wanted to play like Cream but didn't have an ounce of the talent required

Ginger Baker did say Bonham and Moon couldn't swing a sack of shit. I like them but it's funny and I like him the best.

And he's right, they couldn't. And i love Moon and I'm saying that, Moon was fantastic because he was just fucking mental and he was attempting to do something unique within the thing he was doing but he wasn't really a drummer in the way Max Roach or Ginger Baker were drummers, Moon was a supreme show off and was trying to drum in the most show offey, flashy, push-to-the-front-of-the-queue kind of way as possible and just happened to be in a band that had enough space in what was being done between The Ox and Townshend to accomodate him.

[OmarBradley]

Hard rock is what happened when rock began to develop itself farther from blues, soul, motown, 50's rock n' roll, etc.. Slash is hard rock. GNR is hard rock. A lot of Led Zeppelin, Steelheart, Tesla, Triumph, Van Halen, etc. are hard rock. I'm going to try and loosely define it for you, but it is unavoidable to overgeneralize given the diversity of acts within these styles. Hard rock is rock, but more guitar drive, slightly "heavier," often a bit faster, and includes more solos: your nightmare basically.

Metal is that, but on steroids + sometimes harsher vocals.

Music's gotten heavier since its inception thousands of years ago. It's gotten louder, faster, and more in your face as time has gone on. From medieval monks, to the Baroque composers, to the New Orleans jazz cats, to the dancing tunes of Chuck Berry, to the headbanging Led Zeppelin and on and on and on.... there's been a few sideways exceptions, like Delta blues right in between jazz and rock n' roll, but mostly it's been a linear progression.

I'm going to try and be brief too cuz God love me, i don't half go on sometimes

But i don't think thats any kind of evolution whatsoever. Heavier, faster, slower, thats not actually change anything to the format is it, thats just turning it up or slowing down or speeding up, it's just people who missed the trick basically, missed the trick and didn't clock on what was actually good about that music and just made a dumber version of it by draining away all the style in the nuances and subtlties and making it more thick. There is literally no progression there, it's a bluff. "lets make the solos longer"...how is that any kind of an evolution, if anything it's just like...an elaboration.

Metal basically started cuz a bunch of pissheads from Birmingham wanted to play like Cream but didn't have an ounce of the talent required

Even Jimmy Page's music got heavier as time went by.... listen to Outrider, or The Firm, or the stuff he was doing during Page & Plant. It's not a cop out, it's how it naturally goes. It evolves. To you it's not an evolution, it's pissing on the greatness of the original - but to a lot of people, it's the next step. Again I ask, where should it have gone? If not hard rock/metal? Where was 50's/60's rock n' roll to go in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010?

Interesting that you capitalized "god," I did not know you had such respect for the almighty.

And yeah Rovim, I wanted to mention the Ginger thing, I remembered he said something dumb about Zepp and the Who, couldn't remember exactly what.

[Rovim]

And yeah Rovim, I wanted to mention the Ginger thing, I remembered he said something dumb about Zepp and the Who, couldn't remember exactly what.

It wasn't dumb though imo. I strive to remember everything Ginger says cause most of it is true, funny, or both.

Edited June 24, 2015 by Rovim