Rock out with your...

Summer, typically, is the time for outdoor stadium concerts, and for good reason.  I’ve been gushing about the Grateful Dead shows and their inclusion of Trey Anastasio which got me thinking about my favorite guitarists.  So, for you, here’s a list of my top 5 rock guitarists of all time:

5. Eric Clapton – Dude has had a huge career, but before we get into that, this rating is purely his time with Cream, with maybe a little big with Derek and the Dominoes.  Tons of people play guitar, Clapton during his early years was the guitar.  And, with his cohorts in crime, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, no rock trip (with maybe the exception of Rush) made more sound.  Dudes wailed, and Clapton took them places with lead guitar, weaving in and out of blues riffs, that would be copied for years to come.

Suggested disk/s: Disraeli Gears.  You already know “Strange Brew” and “Sunshine of Your Love.”  Fill out your knowledge with “Tales of Great Ulysees” and “SWLABR”

4. Frank Zappa – Speed.  So, yeah, he was super strange…but I would argue that he brought to rock what many classical composers brought to their medium.  Much of his music was highly orchestrated and perfection required.  Also, dude shredded a mean guitar.  Very few players could cram as many notes into a line with the precision that Zappa had. 

Suggested disk/s: Gotta go with Hot Rats on this one.  It skews towards jazz…is largely instrumental, and has some incredible guitar solos (along with some honking and shrieking as progressive/acid jazz lends itself to).

3. Duane Allman – Two words: Eric Clapton.  At the time that the Layla disk dropped, Clapton had already tied up all loose ends with Baker and Bruce.  He was an established rock guitar god.  So, where do you go when you need a guitar solo for the titular track?  You go to Duane Allman, because, in so many ways, he did for slide guitar what Dizzy Gillespie did for trumpet…he put that shit on the map.  Just ask his little brother Greg.  And, by late 1971, more than Greg’s voice, Duane singlehandedly defined the sound of southern jam rock on one of the best classic rock albums, Eat a Peach.

Suggested disk/s: The aforementioned as well as the live album The Fillmore Concerts

2. Jimmy Page – Dude just used a bow on his guitar!  Drop the mic.  Done.  There’s not a hard rock/heavy metal guitar player who doesn’t owe a debt to Jimmy Page.  There are too many songs to mention, but the Led Zeppelin catalogue is rife with memorable guitar hooks and blistering solos and improvisation.  While sometimes seen as ostentatious and excessive, there is something superbly impressive about the dude who brings the canon to the water balloon fight in the form of the double-necked Gibson EDS-1275 used on the masterful “Stairway to Heaven.”

Suggested disk/s: Buy it all; start with Zep I-IV and then grab Houses of the Holy, and Physical Graffiti.  If you’re still hungry, grab Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda.  Boom, you now own it all!

1. Jimi Hendrix – Best rock and roll guitarist of all time.  As reported by Matt Snow for Mojo Magazine:

On January 11, 1967, the [Jimi Hendrix Experience] conquered London when they appeared at The Bag O'Nails nightclub. In attendance that night were John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Brian Epstein, Lulu, the Hollies, Small Faces, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Donovan, Georgie Fame, Denny Laine, Terry Reid, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton, who rarely missed any of Hendrix's London gigs. Townshend admitted, "[Jimi] changed the whole sound of electric guitar and turned the rock world upside down". Clapton agreed: "after Pete Townshend and I went to see him play, I thought that was it, the game was up for all of us, we may as well pack it in."

Suggested disk/s: Start with the Experience Catalogue.  Lots of short tunes that are/were largely radio friendly.  Then, grab Band of Gypsys and the posthumous Valleys of Neptune along with the Isle of Wight live album.  Put on headphones so that, when your mind is blown, it doesn’t go all over the place.

Honorable mentions include:

Jerry Garcia – hugely talented musician who had a knack of connecting with the audience in big and small venues

George Harrison – extremely emotional guitar playing which allowed for some of the Beatles most introspective songs to be written without getting silly/crazy (a la Lennon).

Trey Anastasio – because this is my blog and the guy can play as well as anybody.  Hell, he just learned the entire Dead catalogue so that he can play them once!  Respect!

Pressed Joe

Here’s the thing, I bitched and moaned about how terrible K-Cups are for the world, but I didn’t rightfully give you instructions on how to live without.  So, without further ado, here’s how you make a perfectly great cup of coffee (even at work).

First, go buy yourself one of these: Bodum Chambord 4-CupFrench Press Coffee Maker.  This thing makes coffee magic!  The proverbial coffee money shot.  And, with a little hot water, some freshly coarsely ground coffee and 4 minutes, PRESTO, you’ve got a steaming cuppa joe!

Second, coffee.  For all French Presses you’ll need a coarse grind so as to not clog the metal filter as you press it.  Can you press coffee with store-bought, ground beans?  Yes, but with greater degree of frustration (and slightly harder to clean).  That said, I prefer a medium to dark roasted bean.  There are many options about how to get them from bean to grind.  Personally, I prefer to grind my own using the KitchenAid BCG111OB Blade Coffee Grinder.  Using a pulse technique, it allows for all the beans to get down to the blades and get the correct particle size on the grinds.  An alternative to that is to store grind it when purchased.  This is getting increasingly harder to do as some ShopRite’s I’ve been in don’t even offer beans.  Therefore, hit the Trader Joes for some affordable and environmentally friendly beans, and use the grinder in store to get that coarse grind going.  In a pinch, you can get over to any StarBucks and they’ll do it for you when asked. 

Third, take two heaping scoops (approx. 3-4 tablespoons) and drop that into the bottom of the carafe.  You need hot, but not boiling water for this.  At a properly adjusted water cooler, you can get steaming, I’m-going-to-burn-myself water…but in this modern age, you can just as easily nuke a cup for about 3 minutes.  Make sure you nuke slightly more water than coffee you want to drink as some of that will be absorbed by the grinds.

Then, slowly add the water, carefully stirring to ensure that all the grinds are soaked.  Let it sit for no less than 4 minutes, and press. Ta Dah! You’ve made yourself a fantastic cup of coffee.  Treat it kindly with a drop of full fat half & half.  DO NOT put any of that International Delight crap in it…you’ll ruin a perfectly good cup of coffee!  If you’re going to shorten your life, make sure you do it with natural ingredients and not chemicals. 

Why is it better?  It’s richer, and creamier.  In fact, there’s a slightly lighter brown foam that forms at the top while it’s brewing.  It’s referred to as the crema, and it’s a combination of gas being released from fresh beans and natural coffee oils which contribute to the persistence of flavor and texture of a brew.  Now, to be honest, while delicious, this is the part that will kill you.  Literally.  The crema, and brewing coffee like this, tends to allow the drinker to ingest more natural coffee oils which have the bad LDL cholesterol.  But, in the name of a great cup of coffee, is it worth it?  I think so.

Video Dead

Still on a high from the Fare Thee Well shows.  I don’t really know how exactly to describe it, but, in short, it was awesome.  It was 70,000+ people per night all getting along and there for the music.  That’s not counting the innumerable who hit theaters for the simulcast or went the pay-per-view/YouTube route.  Right, Google, for pay, allowed you to stream it from YouTube.  Cool stuff. 

Naturally, like any person who follows a jam band, I wanted the music ASAP, so that I could hear it again.  I like to think that Phish was the first to really get that right.  Initially, you could buy the show you just saw from a site called www.livephish.com.  There was a guy from www.Nugs.net, who was a fan, who brought the music you saw in a live show to your desktop in a week.  Now it’s closer to within a couple of hours from when the show ended.  Amazing.  The Nugs dude also had quite a collection of Dead music you could sample for free.  Thanks, man.

Would something similar be set up for these Dead shows?  Having Trey involved raised my expectations.  However, news is that both audio and video won’t be commercially available until November in time for the Christmas rush.  OK, that’s fine…but I want it now.  Oh, gods of Google, reward me for being a decent (not perfect) human being, and provide me with the entertainment I so desire!  And the gods listened…and they were pleased, and low, a Torrent was made available around a week after the shows, containing not one, not two, but all three nights, in HD, ripped from a Verizon pay-per-view feed.

And it was good.

But, there’s a ton of ethical questions that come up when these “finds” are “found.”  Is it stealing?  Yes…not only from the Dead who plan to monetize these shows, but also, likely, from Verizon who broadcast it.  Will having the video feed from these shows impact my intent on buying a copy for myself?  No.  This feed is a placeholder for a better version that comes in true Blu-ray HD and 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound audio and added features/interviews, etc.  It will be purchased by either myself or my family, and then, from those disks, I can rip myself a copy using Handbreak or something similar (use Google my friends).  Isn’t that also stealing?  That’s a gray area.  I would guess that legally, the Dead would prefer you to buy two copies.  Is it theft when you take a DVD and make a back-up, or run-copy for yourself?  Gray.  Why?  Because you’re clearly circumventing the protections put on those disks to prevent precisely that (see: Better mousetrap).  But, in my mind, and this may not hold up in a court of law, I’ve already bought it, and damned if I will be restricted to what device I want to watch it on, be it DVD/TV, laptop, or tablet computer. 

I don’t condone theft.  But, at the same time, I think that, as technology changes, and people’s consumption of art changes, the industries which make that art also need to change.  It’s imbecilic to have a business model which says “we’ve always done it that way, and so, instead of changing to meet our consumer’s needs, let’s sue the ones who bring about change.”  Digital media is here to stay.  And, like iTunes proved, if you make things more easily accessible and affordable (easier to buy than steal; see: HBO Go/HBO Now), you might be able to wring out some coin in a system where trading intellectual property is fairly easy, and isn’t going away.  To paraphrase Frank Zappa, “Media recordings aren’t dead, they just smell funny.”