And these are our "artists" today:
No guitar playing skills required. Just a big mouth and lots of profanity.
Posted on 06/22/2017 4:29:03 PM PDT by Drew68
The convention couldn’t sound less rock-and-roll — the National Association of Music Merchants Show. But when the doors open at the Anaheim Convention Center, people stream in to scour rows of Fenders, Les Pauls and the oddball, custom-built creations such as the 5-foot-4-inch mermaid guitar crafted of 15 kinds of wood.
Standing in the center of the biggest, six-string candy store in the United States, you can almost believe all is well within the guitar world.
Except if, like George Gruhn, you know better. The 71-year-old Nashville dealer has sold guitars to Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Walking through NAMM with Gruhn is like shadowing Bill Belichick at the NFL Scouting Combine. There is great love for the product and great skepticism. What others might see as a boom — the seemingly endless line of dealers showcasing instruments — Gruhn sees as two trains on a collision course.
“There are more makers now than ever before in the history of the instrument, but the market is not growing,” Gruhn says in a voice that flutters between a groan and a grumble. “I’m not all doomsday, but this — this is not sustainable.”
The numbers back him up. In the past decade, electric guitar sales have plummeted, from about 1.5 million sold annually to just over 1 million. The two biggest companies, Gibson and Fender, are in debt, and a third, PRS Guitars, had to cut staff and expand production of cheaper guitars. In April, Moody’s downgraded Guitar Center, the largest chain retailer, as it faces $1.6 billion in debt. And at Sweetwater.com, the online retailer, a brand-new, interest-free Fender can be had for as little as $8 a month.
What worries Gruhn is not simply that profits are down. That happens in business.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Nobody plays reeeeal guitar anymore, Dad...
Who would you recommend I listen to? I love folk and bluegrass.
Thanks!
Ed
Thanks!
I’ll check them out.
Ed
Very cool, thanks, Bug!
One of my favorite records is Deep Purple and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Simply magnificent!
Ed
I saw Steppenwolf in Oregon, amazing show...John Kay was magnificent!
How cool for you to have opened for them!
Ed
Acoustic pianos are also slowing in sales, but not in China.
So their kids get the discipline and the concentration, especially under the classical canon.
And these are our "artists" today:
No guitar playing skills required. Just a big mouth and lots of profanity.
I thank God I didn’t have Interwebs when I was growing up.
At the age of 14 I picked up a guitar and it instantly became one of the great loves of my life.
There were many summer nights I fell asleep with it in my arms only to be awakened by feedback from the amp and the scratchy sound of a needle that had reached the end of the record I was trying to learn.
I was one of those lucky devils (maybe not) who spent most of the 80’s with long hair, small waist and an axe to grind (heh) and was able to get most of the wild out of my soul before old age crept in.
I do find it funny that most of my metal-head/rocker friends have become quite Conservative in our old age despite the Hell-raising we engaged in!
Sometime in the middle of 2011, the EPA or some derivative thereof raided Gibson’s Nashville factory and confiscated all the rosewood claiming it was endangered or protected species or some such crap. The rosewood was intended to be used for making the fretboards. Of course the Chinese are the largest consumers of rosewood because they just love furniture made out of it. How many Gibson fretboards could be made from the wood needed for one rosewood dining room table or “China” cabinet? The upshot for Gibson was that in order to finish the instruments in the production schedule, they had to substitute another wood and chose “Torrified Maple” which was just maple that was baked to a darker finish. Most all instruments affected were the bottom end Les Pauls. Last winter I had a Jones for a P-90 guitar and there was a nice looking 2011 Studio in Honeyburst at a local used shop that I saw on their website. I went to the shop to play it and loved the neck shape, the pickups, the tone and volume controls and the light weight. But something was off about the feel of the fretboard which looked like rosewood but felt rough like unsanded barn siding. I asked the kid at the counter and he said it was rosewood. I borrowed their magnifying glass and damned if it wasn’t baked maple. A total deal killer. I wrote down the serial number of that guitar and got the date of manufacture info from a website and sure enough it was dated October of 2011. A couple of months after the raid. If they would have knocked a couple of hundred off the price, I would have bought it and taken it to a local luthier guru and had the board replaced with rosewood or, my favorite, ebony.
Yup. Last night I spent the evening testing a hotplate to see if it would be hot enough to heat a bullet mould to 450 degrees.
Nope. Back to the drawing board. Had a blast.
Backing bands for Rap, Hip Hop and pop don’t offer a guitarist opportunity for a unique sound meaning it doesn’t matter if one is playing a cheap mexican made Fender or a custom Gibson. It all sounds the same—crap.
” Phil Keaggy”
I watched Phil Keaggy do a workshop at a church years ago.
The experience was so overwhelming that my immediate response was to want to throw my guitars in the trash and never play again.
No one could ever be that good.
“Jaw dropping. The man is just impossibly good.”
Indeed. Mind blowingly good.
Also true if you are talking about this Eddy.
They were on their reunion tour 76, and we were kind of dismissive, but they were tight and very pro and had a great show.
On my computer, I have 17,345 songs with a total playing time of 46 days 18 hours, 5 minutes. Everything from old blues, to big band, to 'classic' rock, to modern alternative. If I want to, I can pretty much spend all day listening to nothing but songs that are exactly 3:33 in length. There's still plenty of new music being produced, if you're willing to slog through dreck, you can find some groups that are really producing some fine stuff.
What ticks me off is that modern copyright law has pretty much done away with the concept of the public domain. By now, the vast majority of my music should be in the public domain. Dark Side of the Moon is 45 years old! The entirety of the Beatles catalog should be in the public domain by now. It's sad that we've let our government become the best that Disney's money can buy.
Well,you've got me beat.About 15 years ago I discovered CD-Rs (I'm a computer dunce).I also discovered that our regional library district allows you to search their huge collection by keyword,etc.
As a result I was able to amass a collection of about 5,500 songs...about 90% of which are from the 50's (my parents' music,some of which I love) and the 60's (my generation).It took a while...and involved a number of visits to various libraries in my area.
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