Category Archives: Popular Culture

Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Tony Rice

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We have lost a legend of acoustic flat-picking guitar.

It’s late, but more thoughts tomorrow, with personal remembrances.

[Sunday-morning update]

I saw him live several times. The first time, I think, was with the Grisman Quintet at McCabes in Santa Monica. He was later replaced in the band by fiddling prodigy Mark O’Connor, who is/was also an amazing guitarist. But the most memorable concert I saw him in was at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, about thirty years ago. It wasn’t just him, but Norman Blake and Doc Watson. It was like a pantheon of the flatpicking guitar gods.

He was an amazing innovator, in folk, bluegrass, and jazz, often integrating them. He picked up the fallen torch of Clarence White after he was killed in an auto accident while loading gear after a concert in Palmdale, CA. He bought White’s guitar, a Martin herringbone D-28 with an enlarged sound hole (the fretboard hung out over it), that gave it a unique tone. I wonder who will play it now?

[Update Sunday evening]

I was introduced to the music of Tony Rice in 1978 by a friend when I was living in Tucson (a philosophy major at the U of A, who was a great guitarist, who later went to work on AI at Los Alamos), but who while he loved the bluegrass (he loved Doc Watson, and did a hell of a version of Tennessee Stud), never got the jazz. I got the jazz.

Tony knew, in standard tuning, where every note was on the keyfretboard, and how to combine them for jazz chords, which is a hell of a lot harder to do on six strings than eighty eight.

[Update Thursday afternoon]

An elegy from Chris Eldridge.

[Bumped]

General, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Silent Night

4 Comments

…by Gabriella.

She recorded this a couple weeks ago. I love the little harmonic at the end of the stanza, and the ones at the end of the song.

If you go all the way to the end, it segues into her amazing cover of Sultans of Swing, that she did a couple months ago. She’s getting a unique sound on that one with steel strings on a classical guitar (usually they’re nylon). They’re probably light ones, because of the weaker neck, but it also makes it easier for her to bend them. I like the brushes with the left hand. You have to appreciate that she’s playing both guitar parts from the Dire Straits version simultaneously on a single instrument. It’s clearly an open tuning, probably DADFAD.

Business, Economics, Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

California

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The totalitarian state.

If it seceded, we’d be out of here ASAP, because the Constitution is the only thing holding these fascists back.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Is California at peak progressive? I hope so.

[Bumped]

[Thursday-morning update]

The slow, painful death of California.

[Late-morning update]

Mike Solana: Extract, or die.

When I first saw the title, I thought it would be about the need of the state to utilize its energy resources. But nope. It’s an excoriation of San Francisco’s government.

[Christmas-morning update]

Rural CA to Newsom: “Kiss our ass.”

All I want for Christmas is a citizens’ revolt against tyranny. As Mike Rowe says, safety third.

[Update a few minutes later]

In the state just to the north, patriots are starting to water the tree of liberty.