Another prompt for me this week was “Classics”

Thankfully, this can apply to almost anything that has any history. When it comes to guitar and music in general, the classics are usually what inspire new players. When new players pick up the instrument, chances are they aspire to play the songs of the greats, which eventually they will find many of are quite easy to play. For some people, wearing the tee shirts of their favorite bands are not enough anymore, and then beg for a guitar come birthday-time. Guitar Hero just doesn’t cut the bill for some young’uns, and suddenly they feel compelled to replay Metallica, Led Zeppelin or AC/DC tunes on their Wal-Mart guitars in a robotic fashion. Whether these kind of kids make anything of themselves in the guitar department is beyond me. The point is though, that the classics are what keep the arts alive. 

I wasn’t much different in my endeavors. I had always heard of Led Zeppelin, but it wasn’t until I started listening to them out of leisure had I already been playing guitar for about a year. The Lemon Song, Moby Dick, Black Dog; all proper rock n’ roll, and I had to know how to play it. When I was younger, my mom was in a marriage with a guitar instructor and virtuoso that has lived in Maryville a decent length of time now. Later on when he heard I had started playing, he insisted I visit to jam with. The guy charges $20 an hour for lessons, and I basically got about three sessions, bullshit free, and learned more than I had chasing tablatures online prior. I should also note that Dave Reeves has been legally blind for a large portion of his life, and yet he plays guitar with more skill than I have ever seen from anyone else in person. This is where I learned all of the classics I carry in my bag of tricks today, and where I learned I could play Stairway to Heaven about ten times faster than it needs to be played.

Eventually I grew bored of the idea of playing other people’s music to a T. If I cover a song, first I’ll try and sound as close to the recording as I can, but after I can do that I will usually not play it the same way ever again. Never forget the classics.

This week I'm blogging in hot on the topic of privacy. This is important when y’all are playing guitars like me. Now, I’m not much of a songwriter, but when I’m playing and singing, it’s difficult to follow through without a little bit of privacy. It’s kind of interesting to me where the meekness comes from, but it’s just about the same anywhere you go. Playing guitar is one thing, but when someone starts singing, the atmosphere changes. This change is amplified tenfold when your audience is female. If you mess up, you may just wish you had a little more time in private to practice. Thankfully, I'm not making music for the ladies anyway.

Privacy is not quite as important to me regarding guitar as it is to my lesser known talent, if I may call it that. Beatboxing, yo! I can almost guarantee everyone reading this acts differently when they are completely alone (and out of earshot.) Sometimes when someone leaves, your brain just kind of goes, “YES! I GET TO BE WEIRD NOW.” And beatboxing is that kind of weird I don’t necessarily want everyone listening in on, because yes, sometimes these sounds are quite silly to an untrained ear. It’s the instrument I can always practice, because everywhere I go, my mouth follows. 
Call it a fisherman’s tale sort of scenario, but I’m not lying when I say my best beatboxes are done when I’m the only one hearing them. A good portion of those seshes are spent within the wonderful acoustic range that is my shower. Privacy can be bittersweet. It leaves you time to yourself, but the time you spend on yourself may not be able escape the very privacy your skills were planted in. Soon enough I’ll post a sound clip or something. I need to just bug my apartment so I can record all these sounds I find difficult to recreate in front of a microphone. But for now, if you don’t mind, I’d like some privacy, alright Weebly?

This is the third and last super bowl commercial I'm taking a whack at. All of these posts in response to these commercials make me feel like an cynic, but the reality is I love talking about bad ads as much as I do good ones. Okay, lesssgo!!!

So a lot of people in ‘Murica drink Budweiser. I’d say a majority aren’t even in favor of drinking the original Budweiser brand anymore. (In fact, Bud Light has outsold Budweiser for quite some time now.) There’s just something that makes me cringe when I hear something like, “Alright, I’ll be right back. What should I get?”
“Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm… Something really good, like Bud Light!”
1. Take palm
2. Apply to face

Every year I hear some sort of correlation between a breed of horse called a Clydesdale and a breed of beer called Budweiser. Surely there is some sort of rich connection steeped in tear jerking history between the two things, but I have yet to educate myself any further on the subject. There’s probably a good chance people that enjoyed this commercial couldn’t tell you the connection either. Commercials aren’t always about understanding every nook and cran though, so I’m not trying to dog on that aspect too much.

Landslide. By Stevie Nicks. Oh. my. God, I just about lost it. Why does this song crack me up so much? Possibly because the first association I made with it was from an episode of South Park in which Stan Marsh is fighting a cynical stage in his life where everything he sees, hears and tastes is literally shit. The fact that I made this relation probably has something to say about my take on popular culture blips like this one. Here’s a clip:

Without getting off-topic too much, personally I couldn’t get the full emotional brunt of this commercial simply because I was thinking of a million different things; as per usual when I see advertisements. My train of thought got a little off track…

• Guy raises a horse and loves it to death.
• Probably makes some good cash by selling it to Budweiser, despite gracious offers from the glue factory down the interstate.
• Many moons and delicious refreshing Budweisers later, this guy sees a shotgun-to-the-endzone chance of seeing his horse in Chicago.
• Goes to Chicago.
• Sees a horse in the crowd of nearly-identical stallions which is without a doubt the one he bottle fed back in the day.
• Drives away.
• Horse terrifies parade-goers when it steps out of line and breaks free of its reigns, galloping down a suspiciously desolate Chicago street.
• The guy is reunited with his horse. Now what?

And don’t forget, this is to sell beer. I don’t see Pabst Blue Ribbon reuniting horse breeders with their one particularly special Clydesdale out the dozen other thoroughbred goldmines. To be fair, the team at ArchRival Lincoln is busy helping to define PBR very successfully in a youth culture that drinks the shit out of their beer all-of-a-sudden. All in all, people will probably say this was the most touching commercial out of them all. There’s no shame in admitting that it probably was. The thing I forget is that commercials don’t have to make sense. And if you dished out for a Superbowl air slot then hell, tell the love story of a man and his ex-stallion.

Good on Budweiser. Someone’s gotta pay for Stevie Nicks’ retirement.