A few months ago, we had a look at the documentary called Gitaarjongens, or Guitar Dudes in my translation. It turned out to be the best read CaparSongs blog so far (see: casparcritique: gitaarjongens, guitar-dudes). In the blog, Caspar promissed to critique the accompanying live show. So, finally, here it is!
In the documentary we saw how initiator Henny Vrienten went on a road trip to visit Holland's most prominent guitar players, and had them talk about their passion for the six-string. Caspar was pleased with the result and gave the doc four stars. The same 12 players were united in the Royal Amsterdam theater called Carré to give a show totally dedicated to the guitar. This is a great idea, but when Caspar looked at the film he realized that no matter how good the idea, to make it work requires a lot more than just talent on stage.
The show starts off without much introduction, so why rootsrocker Daniël Lohues plays While my Guitar Gently Weeps, we don't have a clue. But remember Daniël, playing a Beatles song with Eric Clapton on solo guitar is one tough act to follow. After that, Anne Soldaat gets on stage. Lately Soldaat has produced a great solo CD aptly called 'Anne Soldaat', and Caspar and his family saw a nice show at Paradiso earlier this year. But what he produces on Guitar Dudes is just awful. He chose to play Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young. Great song, but I just wondered if anyone ever thought about arranging a little bit. Now we get three voices that do not sound comfortable together, with Soldaat twisting his voice into a high squeaking sound. Someone told the drummer to keep on using his toms throughout the song, which keeps the drive out of the song. The way the song ends is just embarrasing. Maybe a string broke, or something, and things like this can happen, but if I'd been Anne Soldaat, I'd have my contribution withdrawn from the production. One particular TV presenter keeps on calling Anne the best guitarist of the Netherlands, but this cannot be seriously considered.
Luckily the average age of the participants drops a little when Pablo van der Poel gets on stage. I saw Pablo play live last year with his teenage band DeWolff. In this case 'teenage' stands for the average age of the band members, and not their choice of inspiration. They play heavy rock, as played in the seventies by the likes of Led Zep. Absolutely great and highly recommended!! Anyway, Pablo says that he was asked to play the first song he knew how to play. And then we understand better why the first two players played the songs they did. Pablo decided to play Whole Lotta Love, with multi-instrumentalist Fay Lovsky on vocals. To be honest, they give a nice show, and make it difficult to decide who's best, which is in itself a little painful; shouldn't the guitar be the star of the show?
Lovsky stays on the stage for a duet with Jazz guitarist Anton Goudsmit. They give a great version of the song Ernesto, with Fay also using the mysterious Theremin instrument. But I don't think Goudsmit needs any company, he manages on his own. Great play!
Next is Harry Sacksioni. The man with four hands, or so it seems, when he plays solo. He used to do that a lot, but this time the band follows swiftly, and unfortunately Sacksioni's acoustic guitar sound is hardly heard anymore. Nice solo by the way of J.B. Meyers. Sacksioni also plays a song together with Jan Hendriks that is very funny, aparently, because all people on the stage laugh a lot!?
As you might have picked up already, Caspar is not too impressed so far. Luckily, we have some great names from the past ahead of us... First of them is Rudy de Queljoe. Maybe his name is not very well known, but he has played in some legendary bands in the sixties and seventies, such as Brainbox, and Massada. He plays a great rock song, and in the guitar parts he is accompanied by legendary Jan Akkerman. They manage to play the house down, and finally the band sounds like a true band. Akkerman stays on and plays a beautyful song solo, which I didn't recognize, nor was it's name mentioned in the film, or otherwise. It might very well have been an improvisation, which is far from the idea of playing your first song, of course. Just remember to tune your guitar next time before you start, Jan ;-).
As we saw in the documentary, it took Vrienten a long time and a lot of effort to get Eelco Gelling to participate in the project. But there he is, in Carré, with his old, dirty Gibson Les Paul around his neck. Together with his friend Akkerman, he plays a nice blues, and just to see him on stage again makes watching the show worthwile. Because, I'll be straight with you, even the appearance of George Kooymans as the last of the artists on stage, doesn't make the show legendary. George stays by the book and plays the first song he ever learned: Tom Dooley. Which is nice, because it was also Vrienten's first song, but it doesn't result in the mind blowing show Caspar would like to have seen when he heard about the line-up for the night.
So, all in all, Caspar thought it was nice, but kept on wondering why is wasn't as great as it might have been with such great artists around. I guess it was in the conceptual thinking. Having people play the first song they learned sounds nice, but it doens't work if not everyone sticks to it. Wouldn't it have been more interesting if one guitarist would have introduced the next one? Shouldn't Vrienten have strongly advised on what songs to play, to get a good play list? Or, why not make sections around types of guitar, and technique? A last point of critique from my part is that a lot more could have done in the arrangements. It looked a bit too much like friends getting together in a studio on a Saturday afternoon. But, you don't have to hire the Carré for that, would you? I must say, I had greater hopes for this production, but I can't make it more than two stars, out of five.
Showing posts with label Guitars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Guitars. Show all posts
Casparcritique: Gitaarjongens (Guitar dudes)
If you want to get a guitarist talk guitar, the best question to start of is: what was your first guitar, and what song was the first one you learned to play? I remember my first guitar well. It was an old, rambling Hondo (see picture). I bought it when I was about 15, I guess, with money my grandmother had given me for my birthday. I got it from my high school friend Jos, a six-string afficionado in his own right, whose first guitar was an Epiphone by Gibson. One of the pickups of my Hondo was held in place by a piece of electric wire, but still it worked well in enough to perform live with the cover band I was in soon after.
Henny Vrienten, legendary musician from the band Doe Maar, and solo work, made a documentary around these two simple questions. He put them to 12 of the best guitar players from the Netherlands. Now, it is important to understand that Vrienten is not a documentary maker, but as much a guitar lover as any of the guitarists portraited in the film. We sense this little unease when Vrienten first visits George Kooymans, guitarist and songwriter of the Golden Earring. Kooymans, one of the few Dutch guys known internationally, lives in a big mansion stuffed with dozens of guitars, all classics, some of them never played on. Vrienten follows Kooymans through the house with his tongue on his shoes, impressed by the collection, but hardly able to do his job as interviewer.
What follows next is nothing less than a road movie through the Dutch landscape, when Vrienten knocks on doors of, mostly very humbly living, guitarists. Most of us opiniated music friends and lovers have their list ready of personal favourites, but let's not get into that. Henny Vrienten made the choice for us and comes up with a great selection of players throughout the decades. He travels to the deep East where he meets roots rocker Daniël Lohues, to the notorious musical village of Volendam to see internationally acclaimed Jan Akkerman (Focus!), and the more city folks like Arthur Ebeling, Anton Goudsmit, and Anne Soldaat. They're all asked what their first guitar looked like and what it meant to them. Especially the seniors, the pioneers from times when Rock 'n Roll was still the devil's music, have good stories to tell. Some of their families didn't have enough money to buy a guitar. Jan Akkerman bought a second hand one on the flea market. When his parents saw that he wasn't going to do without it anymore, they finally managed to buy a new one. All twelve of them, though, remember the moment they picked up a guitar for the first time, and they knew that this was going to be a life fulfilling pastime.
As I mentioned earlier, in the beginning of the film, I thought Henny Vrienten was still a bit struggling with his various parts to play. As a sort of tension span throughout the film, though, he tries to get hold of the legendary Eelco Gelling. Gelling has had a long history of drug abuse and for periods of time he seems to have vanished from earth. At the end of the film, quite obviously from a documentary's perspective, Vrienten tracks him down. What follows is a heart warming scene when Vrienten interviews him. But this time not as a guitar fetishist, or documentary maker, but something in between. He manages to touch Gelling and have him talk about his Gibson from the bottom of his heart. For me, this scene wrapped up the film. You sense that Vrienten has made the full circle, from the special guitar shack Kooymans has got in his garden, to the one-room, run-down apartment where Gelling lives, to discover what binds these two extremes is the love for the six string. (Curiously, the two extremes played together in the Golden Earring in the seventies.)
It is hard to make it in the Netherlands as a guitar player, but what great fun we have playing and talking guitar amongst ourselves. Gitaarjongens (which I'd like to translate as Guitar Dudes), documents key stories in the Dutch musical landscape in a very enjoyable way. Next time I'll shed my lights on the concert the guys put up in honor of the magical instrument. 4 stars out of 5!
Casparcritique #9: interviewing John Frusciante (1994)
It was May 1993, the biggest popfestival of the Netherlands (at the time) Pinkpop was on it's way, and I was watching it on the telly. One band called Thelonious Monster got on stage and within no time the singer did all sorts of crazy stuff. Trying to cellotape his gitarist, lying on the floor pretending to be dead (or something like that), and finally he climbed into the high side of the stage on top of the speaker boxes. About to break his leg when he fell of, I just remember thinking what kind of drugs he would be on, and remembering absolutely nothing from the music itself.
Shortly after, VPRO television aired an interview they did with former Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante. He had left the band about two years before and hadn't been seen for some time. Immediately you realize why: the man was completely addicted to heroin. Now that I watch the interview again, I realize that back then I was just absorbed by what horrors drugs do to really talented men, that I just didn't pay attention to what they were saying, or the music they were making. Frusciante talks about leaving the band and makes complete sense explaining the reasons why. He talks about Kurt Cobain's death, and calling him stupid for not wanting to see his child grow up. I mean, he is completely lucid, intelligent and straight forward about things.The music he still composes sounds lost in space, off tune, lacks structuring. This way, the documentary is essential stuff for anyone interested in, let's say, rock music from the eigthies, or drug abuse in the music scene.
A real treat of watching the interview comes after as a sort of a bonus track. The interviewer discovers that Frusciante contributed to a short movie made by the singer of the band Butthole Surfers, and a young actor called Johnny Depp. The movie is called Stuff, and is basically a filmed tour around a completely messy, chaotic house, that apparently burnt down shortly after the movie was made. What I enjoyed about it, was that Frusciante's music all of a sudden makes complete sense! It fits like a glove when the camera swings through piles of dirt, slowmotion filming of the graffiti on the walls and ending up filming Frusciante lying on a couch thinking about what it would be like being dead, flowing around space and his words in his scrap book making sense, finally.
Bram van Splunteren is the journalist from VPRO who documented RHCP already in the 80'ties, he made this interview with Frusciante, and afterwards, with Frusciante back in the group doing the stadium tours he so detested, he again filmed and interviewed the band. This way he has become the axis filmmaker on the band. You can watch his own compilation on youtube. But my suggestion is to watch the Frusciante interview still available on www.hollanddoc.nl. My rating would be 4 out of 5, and a half for the bonus track!
Shortly after, VPRO television aired an interview they did with former Red Hot Chili Pepper John Frusciante. He had left the band about two years before and hadn't been seen for some time. Immediately you realize why: the man was completely addicted to heroin. Now that I watch the interview again, I realize that back then I was just absorbed by what horrors drugs do to really talented men, that I just didn't pay attention to what they were saying, or the music they were making. Frusciante talks about leaving the band and makes complete sense explaining the reasons why. He talks about Kurt Cobain's death, and calling him stupid for not wanting to see his child grow up. I mean, he is completely lucid, intelligent and straight forward about things.The music he still composes sounds lost in space, off tune, lacks structuring. This way, the documentary is essential stuff for anyone interested in, let's say, rock music from the eigthies, or drug abuse in the music scene.
A real treat of watching the interview comes after as a sort of a bonus track. The interviewer discovers that Frusciante contributed to a short movie made by the singer of the band Butthole Surfers, and a young actor called Johnny Depp. The movie is called Stuff, and is basically a filmed tour around a completely messy, chaotic house, that apparently burnt down shortly after the movie was made. What I enjoyed about it, was that Frusciante's music all of a sudden makes complete sense! It fits like a glove when the camera swings through piles of dirt, slowmotion filming of the graffiti on the walls and ending up filming Frusciante lying on a couch thinking about what it would be like being dead, flowing around space and his words in his scrap book making sense, finally.
Bram van Splunteren is the journalist from VPRO who documented RHCP already in the 80'ties, he made this interview with Frusciante, and afterwards, with Frusciante back in the group doing the stadium tours he so detested, he again filmed and interviewed the band. This way he has become the axis filmmaker on the band. You can watch his own compilation on youtube. But my suggestion is to watch the Frusciante interview still available on www.hollanddoc.nl. My rating would be 4 out of 5, and a half for the bonus track!
blogphoto #2: hardware (toys for boys)
Second, there is the 4-string Cavaquinho. This traditional Samba-instrument from Brazil I got as a present when leaving a former employer. It comes from a social project in Manaus, Amazonia, where young and usually underprivileged kids master the art of luthier. All wood is certified to come from waste wood. That means that the whole instrument carries a certification from the FSC, the Forest Stewardship Council, pretty cool!!!
The telecaster is not a real one, I must admit. The mark it carries is Chevy, founded at the end of the eighties, at the time when I bought it anew. Even though the people starting the brand were both American and Korean, it's production facilities were in Korea. Later the brandname was changed to Chery, then Cheri, because of (obvious) law suits. At the mid-nineties the brand stopped producing all togethere, which is sort of a shame; I mean in the early years they made great guitars!!
Back in the eighties I must admit to have bought it largely because of the red flamed top and golden hardware, and not so much because of the sound, or playability. But I must say that even though I changed the settings a bit, for example putting in a Seymour Duncan pick up, it has surpised me by the quality of the sound. I'm just still a bit unhappy with the light coloured neck. Maybe I'll change it to a real Fender, with a dark fretboard.
Lastly, on the right, my big love: the Fender Jazz Bass. Made in the USA in 1996, the fiftiest birthday of the Fender brand. I got it from Solon's Guitar Garage in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It is just too bad I don't get to play it often. It does have a spectacular sound, heavy, but detailed. Combined with the tube amplifier you see at the back of the picture, it is magic!
So there you have it. This is my collection, coming from Italy, Korea, Brazil and the USA. My fingers just love to cuddle those multicultural strings...
ps. the amplifiers at the back are a Roland Cube 60 (robust machine, works when, and wherever), and a Fender Studio. A tube amp with appr. 200 watt power (if you change the tubes to new ones, probably).
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