Play a girl's guitar and get YouTube-famous instantly?
This is something I wrote on social media, but it's worth a mention here because it makes a good point:
I have seen metal players with enough balls to tear up a Hello Kitty Squier. But I have *never* seen any metal player with the balls to tear it up on a Daisy Rock Debutante. If you want to become YouTube instant-metal-famous, do a drop-B riff on a Daisy Rock Debutante "Peppermint" or "Butterfly" and oh yes, you'll get noticed. Remember, there's no such thing as bad publicity. If you want to get famous on YouTube fast, play a "girl's guitar". Always works. :)
In all seriousness, the YouTube audience does like stupid videos. If you as a guitar player take the most "girly" guitar you can find, like a Squier Hello Kitty or like instrument that's decidedly "girly" and post YouTube videos of you playing it, you're basically guaranteeing yourself views just based on how "unmanly" the guitar you're playing is.
The crazy part is that yes, this does work. If you want fast exposure for yourself on YouTube as a guitar player, get a "girl's guitar" and play some metal on it. It will get you some views. Probably a lot of them.
Was the music of Eric Clapton any good in the 1980s?
1980s era Eric Clapton music gets kind of a bad reputation because many say that the 80s was when he released his worst music.
Well, I disagree with that. Clapton did in fact release some good stuff during the 1980s decade, it sold well for the most part and the fact of the matter is that the hit songs he had back then weren't "bad" at all.
Yeah, I will admit that you do hear a lot of synthesizer stuff from 80s Clapton, but bear in mind everyone was doing that at the time. Synths were huge in the 80s, having replaced the rock organs of the 70s. That was "the sound" back then, and at the time it was new and fresh, so you heard it a lot.
Clapton was very busy in the 1980s and the guy's music was everywhere. It was even in the movie Back to the Future from 1985 with the song Heaven is One Step Away; you can hear this on the Back to the Future Soundtrack CD.
In the 1980s, Clapton released five albums (I told you the guy was busy!), Another Ticket, Money and Cigarettes, Behind the Sun, August and Journeyman. The worst of the 5 was Money and Cigarettes, as it didn't even go silver, never mind gold. The best of the 5 is Journeyman.
I'm not saying all of Clapton's stuff during the 80s was great, but there were several great songs he released during that time. Songs like Forever Man, It's in the Way That You Use It, Pretending, and so on. That's all good stuff.
The failure of the Fender Blacktop series (and what Fender could have done to prevent it)
On the Guitar Center web site today...
...the Fender Blacktop Series has now officially fallen to Mexican-made Stratocaster prices.
Blacktop was an attempt by Fender to come out with some new and interesting guitars. Unfortunately, people just aren't buying them.
What Fender did that was wrong with the Blacktop series was introduce the guitar at a price that was too high. Had they priced it like the Fender Marauder (which is still lower than a Blacktop even with the GC discount), the guitar would have sold a lot better.
Guitar buyers by nature hate change and pretty much don't like anything that strays away from the traditional Stratocaster or Telecaster design, however they can be swayed to try something new if the price is right, and unfortunately Fender keeps fumbling this up time and time again.
For example, if the Fender Cyclone makes a reappearance (it was last made in the early 2000s), the street price of that guitar should be the same as the Mexican Stratocaster. If it were American made, then yeah I could see it having a street price of $799. But if Mexican or Asian-made, it should be $399.
And as far as color choices go, Fender should go back to what they did before and use car finishes, such as Ford's "School Bus Yellow" on the 2013 Mustang. If Fender wants ideas for different paints players would like, well, just look to what the car makers are using. Fender did this before and should do it again, because it works.
When a player sees a new Cyclone on the rack at the same price as the Mexican Strat sitting next to it, yeah he'd pick up the Cyclone just based on the price tag alone. And he'd probably love it and buy it shortly thereafter. And his friends would see it and they'd want one too, and get one.
Hopefully for 2013 Fender will wise up and start treating the prices of new models differently, because if they don't, all they'll ever be selling are Strats and Teles.
Why doesn't the tone control work for the bridge-only pickup selection on a Stratocaster?
On the majority of Stratocaster guitars whether made by Fender or by Squier, when you select the bridge pickup alone, neither of the tone controls affect the sound. The bridge pickup is "always on 10" no matter what you do with either tone knob. However the tone controls do work for the other four switch positions.
Does this mean your Stratocaster guitar is defective?
No.
It was designed that way by Mr. Fender himself, as in Leo Fender, the guy whom Fender guitars are named after.
What Leo wanted with the Stratocaster is a pickup position that sounded similar to a steel guitar; something that really, really stood out with a somewhat piercing and shrill sound (typical for pedal steel guitars of the time). Thus, the bridge pickup selection has no tone control wired to it whatsoever.
Do all Strats have no tone control for the bridge-alone selection?
No. There have been several models of Stratocasters over the years that do in fact use the Tone 2 knob (the one near the bottom of the guitar) to affect the bridge-only pickup selection. For example, several American Strats in the 1990s featured what were called TBX tone controls, and many that were delivered with TBX (if not all of them) did have tone control for the bridge-only pickup setting.
Do you need TBX for bridge-alone tone control? No. All it takes to get tone control on the bridge-alone setting it to solder a very small wire between two terminals.
On a Stratocaster 5-way switch, there are four terminals on top and four on the bottom. One side of the switch is wired to connect the pickups. The other side connects your master volume and two tone controls. Simply solder a little wire between the Tone 2 terminal and that open terminal, and ta-da, you've got tone control for the bridge-alone pickup selection.
If all of this sounds too scary to do on your own, every good guitar tech knows how to do this ridiculously simple modification. In other words, yes you can afford to pay a tech to do this because it hardly takes any time or effort to do.
sweet freedom
There are some songs from certain time periods that say a ton of about a decade. Sweet Freedom by Michael McDonald is one of them.
This song is from the soundtrack to the movie Running Scared from 1986, of which the soundtrack can be acquired separately. This song is also Michael McDonald's last top 10 hit he ever penned.
The video for this song is from a bygone era where video production could be silly and still work. The video features McDonald himself and Blily Crystal and Gregory Hines from the movie. This was considered a big deal because the video had to be shot completely outside of the film. The actors probably agreed to be in the video without being paid, because back then music videos were still very new (only 5 years old) and people at the time thought they were nothing but a fad that would die out quickly. They obviously didn't.
When I recently rediscovered this song, I COULD NOT STOP LISTENING TO IT. I literally listened to the song at least 5 or 10 times in a row because it's just so frickin' catchy. I mean, yeah, it's very electronic in its sound, but what a sound it is. There's just something about it that hooks you right in and keeps you there.
The funny part is that Sweet Freedom sounds like a ton of other songs that were around at the time. I'm not sure of the synth that was used (probably a Korg?), but there were a lot of similar-sounding songs on the charts - especially in movie soundtracks.
I was 11 years old in 1986, and I remember when this song hit the charts and seemed to just stay there forever. The song sticks in my mind just that much.
Another funny thing is that I've never seen Running Scared.
Yeah, I'm going to watch it just because of Sweet Freedom. :)