Off: Is Rock Guitar Dead?

[Ted Jackson jr. 6L6]

 From:          "BREVARD, Adrian R." <abrevard at SHL.COM>

> Got a real intersting response from a lurker who also happens to play
> lead guitar.  Some of his thoughts I'll share here.
>
> >It seems that the punk attitude has once again become popular--little or no
> >solos. They are thought to be self-indulgent, I think, and not sincere. I
> >don't know why. I think solos (leads) can be just as moving for the
> >listener as for the musician. Never understood that.
> >C
>
> Thats the thing that bothers me.  The new music seems to frown on the
> solo, seeing them as unnecesarry or self indulgent.  I tend to look at a
> great solo as an ingredient that helps define a song.  What would Reaper
> be like without Buck's solo?  A good song maybe, but it certainly would
> not have the same feeling.
>
> DW> "So they say. But this is hardly a *new* phenomena -this has been
> the way of playing rockmusic since Nirvana's big break-through in -91. I
> think it's good that the bands dare to question what is a essential a
> part of the music and what that is not.
>
Goes back further than that.  Punk movement in the 70s eschewed
soloing.  But not all alternative music is solo-less.  Pearl Jam,
Soundgarden and Alice in Chains all feature solos, and i like them a
lot.  I see the non-soloing thing as a rebellion against hair band
excess.  But also it reflects the fact that a lot of alternative guys
picked up the instrument more as a songwriting tool than a platform
for soloing.  And it's cool that these guys formed bands before they
were highly proficient [technically, anyway] to play a lot of lead,
so they just wrote songs that didn't have lead playing.  And the
formula worked, so why change anything?
theo

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