Freebird Sucks

A quick little music note. I haven't been into big guitar solos at all for awhile. I can't explain why not, I just haven't. And I understand that bands like Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters and people like Stevie Ray Vaughn are extremely talented, I'm just not interested in their art. Those people, to me at least, are like painters who paint these amazingly realistic-looking still-lifes where you could just reach out and grab that apple and eat it. They are technical geniuses. They've studied and practiced their craft and are easily among the most skilled people in the world at what they do. But to me, a realistic-looking still-life is a boring painting. A really dull piece of art. And then you look at a Monet expressionism still-life (did he even do still-lifes? If not, you can imagine what it would look like) and, I mean, you're not going to think it's a real framed apple, but it's so much more interesting and, in a way, even more apple-y.

And so lately I've been feeling that these well-put-together guitar solos in the middle of songs are still-life apples.

Except the other day "Marquee Moon" by Television came on mu ipod. It's gotta be around 11 minutes or so, and there are two huge guitar solos in it where Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd sort of duel back and forth. It's so brittle and thin and meandering... and it's brilliant. I'm not smart enough or musically intuitive enough to really know why it's so good or why I respond so much to it -- especially when it's at a time when I'm bored with most (what I perceive to be) ostentatious solos.

I spoke to the man down at the tracks,
And I asked him how he don't go mad,
He said: "Look here, junior, don't you be so happy,
And for Heaven's sake, don't you be so sad."

But dammit if that song doesn't always put me so happy.