Re: trying to get beyond Fripp

[Trevor Bajus <nyfac2@nyfac.com>]

> In fact, most mainstream guitarists sound so much like other mainstream
> guitarists that they are all hard to tell apart, but then this is taken 
>for
> granted and doesn't feel like a problem - this is what you do if you play
> mainstream rock after all, you *want* to sound like mainstream.
> 
> Our problem is that Fripp's style is so unique and so easy to recognize -
> every young guitarist who loves his playing, and internalizes some of it,
> will very likely "sound like Fripp" to some extent. In my youth <g> I had
> no problem with that because it was so exotic that few people recognized 
>my
> playing as Fripp influenced. Today it's different - sometimes I hate it
> because it feels so silly. What's the point of sounding like somebody 
>else
> after all? But it's so hard to stop falling into these habits and to find
> one's own unique playing style - to be so original that noone instantly
> comes and says, "hey, that sounds just like Bill Frisell".

This has got to be one of the most over-quoted aphorisms in the known 
universe, but it is 
one of those onions of wisdom that keeps being revealed to again and 
again: Good artists 
are influenced by their heros, but great artists steal from them (or 
something to that effect 
(Picasso I think?)).

When I listen to any of the recordings I have made I can hear an evolution 
as time goes by, 
but I think that there are fundamentals that have never really changed 
from the first day that 
I started shronking out chords from my first tele (although I can tune it 
now.)  This 
sensibilty has had my many influences grafted on to it, but when I listen 
to ambient stuff 
I've done, art-core stuff I've done, even my blues-ish stuff, I think (any 
MANY have 
disagreed with me) that I sound like the same guitarist.

Every musician you have ever heard has influenced you, in one way or 
another, either 
positively or negatively.  We have obviously have all heard a lot of 
Fripp's work.  It has to 
have made some kind of impact.  (Maybe I'm alone in this, but people have 
said to me that 
I sound a bit like Fripp at times, especially when I am ripping off Marc 
Ribot.)

An original sound/style/whatever is a synthesis and recombination of 
thousands of 
elements- mine are people like Fripp, Neil Young, Thurston Moore, Lou 
Reed, Page 
Hamilton, and just about everything I have every heard on 4AD and Discord 
Records, not 
to mention Ornette Coleman, Marc Ribot, Charlie Parker,- but I have a 
fairly distinctive 
style.  But you CAN hear my influences.  

One thing I can say with fair certainty is that if you hear a musician 
that sounds like no-one 
else, you haven't her/his record collection.

I find it hard to believe that most of us here haven't been influenced by 
Fripp in some 
fundamental way.  I have, and there is only one Crimson record that I can 
stomach 
listening to.

I don't play any licks that haven't been played in some form or another 
somewhere else 
before.  My style (and I would hypothisize most of yours too) comes from 
the way you 
combine your influences.  

Once I put a band wanted ad in the Voice saying my influences were Neil 
Young, Ornette 
Coleman and Sonic Youth.  After seeing the ad in print I thought 'geez, I 
should have 
picked more diverse influences'.  

I don't know if I am making any sense here- I think I am trying to address 
too many thing 
at once after a day that has been too long.  Sorry.

> (Never whistle while you pee)

Always good advice, this.


Trevor