MEDIA REVIEWS
BOOK
The process for warming up before a gig
or practice session is different for everyone.
Depending on your strengths and weak-nesses, it might even change everyday. Jazz
guitarist Pat Metheny recently released a
book of guitar etudes that outlines what
his typical pre-gig routine entails. During
a summer tour of Italy in 2010, Metheny
set up a small recorder, documented his
process, and then transcribed 14 improvised
pieces to create this book.
Each etude is presented in both tab and
standard notation without any commentary
or direction from the author. Since these are
improvised, they are looser in format than a
typical etude book. Each exercise flows freely between various keys and scales, and in
some cases time signatures. Metheny’s goal
here was to demonstrate how to move freely
around the instrument without becoming
locked into a specific idea.
When you play through these etudes,
you really get a sense of how Metheny
views the fretboard and connects ideas. In
“Exercise 10 (Pescara),” you can see how
a master improviser can take a simple G
major triad and turn it into a melodic
string-skipping exercise that moves through
several different keys and patterns. The
majority of the exercises focus on moving
around the fretboard and connecting ideas
with a series of eighth-notes. A few are
presented with
some direction
when it comes to
the picking hand,
but most are left
without any indication of tempo
or feel. This
addition could
add to the effectiveness of the
etudes because everyone thinks, articulates,
and plays differently at various tempos.
Nearly any guitarist will be able to cherry-pick a few ideas from Guitar Etudes, but
for Metheny fans this will be the next best
thing to sitting in his practice room before
a gig. —Jason Shadrick
Kenny Vaughan
V
Sugar Hill
The sound of Bakersfield honky tonk—
with its punchy Telecaster twang, strong
backbeat, and stripped-down instrumentation—permeates V, Kenny Vaughan’s debut
solo album. One of Nashville’s most celebrated session guitarists, Vaughan has added
his snappy lines to records by Lucinda
Williams, Rodney Crowell, Tim O’Brien,
Marshall Chapman, the Sweethearts of the
Rodeo, and dozens of other country and
Americana artists. Fans of Vaughan’s vibey
picking have been waiting for years for him
to step out on his own.
For the last
decade, Vaughan
has played
with Marty
Stuart and
His Fabulous
Superlatives,
and the road-hardened
band backs Vaughan on all but one of the
album’s tracks. It’s a treat to hear Vaughan
and Stuart trade snarling Tele licks, which
Vaughan says they played through silverface Princetons. If you can imagine Don
Rich and Clarence White dueling in the
studio, you have a pretty good idea of
what’s in store on V. In fact, Stuart owns
White’s original B-bender Tele and plays
the bejesus out of it on “Country Music
Got a Hold on Me” and “Stay Outta My
Dreams,” two songs that pay homage to
Buck Owens and the Buckaroos.
But V isn’t all Bakersfield: In two
instrumentals, “Mysterium” and “Minuit
Sur La Plage,” Vaughan salutes Duane
Eddy and Hank Marvin, and he even dips
into B.B. King’s bag of tricks in “Okolona
Tennessee.” Guitar-centric solo albums
can sound so dang serious, but happily
this is not the case with V, which delivers superb picking in the context of fun
songs, toe-tapping grooves, and unapologetically retro tones. If whining Teles and
the occasional thwack of flatwounds run
through slapback echo rock your world,
you’re in for a treat. —Andy Ellis
MUST-HEAR TRACK: “Country Music Got
a Hold on Me”
DVD
Iggy and the Stooges
Raw Power Live
MVD Visual
Just about every ’60s
legend that hit the
road over the last few decades, from the
Stones to the Who, could have taken a lesson from the Stooges. When the original
lineup that made The Stooges and Funhouse
was resurrected (with Minutemen bassist Mike Watt in the place of the deceased
Dave Alexander) in 2003, they were nearly
as savage as they’d ever been. With no horn
sections, no backup singers, and no auxiliary
keyboard army to dilute the energy, at their
rippingest the Stooges are contenders for the
best rock ’n’ roll band to ever take the stage.
By 2010, original guitarist Ron Asheton,
the forever-reigning king of psych-punk
guitar, had passed away. But James
Williamson, who took over the guitar
throne for Asheton for the band’s most
famous album, 1972’s Raw Power, was back
in the fold. And in September 2010, the
band performed the record in its entirety
at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in
Monticello, New York.
That performance is captured on Iggy
and the Stooges, Raw Power Live. And while
the DVD doesn’t quite capture the crazed
electricity in the building that night, it’s a
study in how vital a band can remain when
they shed the glitz and strip things to their
essence. The centerpiece is, needless to say,
the impossibly ageless Iggy, who despite
what looks like a nasty limp at times,
throws himself at the crowd and at and off
of monitor towers like a berserker under
a voodoo spell. Mike Watt and original
Stooge drummer Scott Asheton add up to
an amphetamine steamroller on most tunes,
and a scary low-and-slow-riding Cadillac
junker in others, including the smoldering
set highlight “I Need Somebody.”
The DVD includes fan interviews that
reveal a thoughtfully reflective Iggy, Scott,
and Asheton talking about making Raw
Power, and the aspirations of assimilating free
jazz, electric blues, and primitive instrumen-
tation that brought the band together before
they evolved into one of the most brutally
rockin’ combos of all time. —Charles Saufley
MUST-HEAR TRACK: “Your Pretty Face is
Going to Hell”
