| Then I'm going to Hawaii!
Yes Roy Buchanan, as we've talked about, Samba, took the guitar and the whole audience to the moon and back with that song. Just a Tele and a Vibroverb.... or was it a Vibrolux? I didn't see any pedals. Combo amp. He had all his amp knobs set to 10 - by pulling off the knobs and setting them where he wanted them - very clever way to remember your settings and obfuscate for prying eyes. Amp facing backwards on stage. All things considered, he is my favorite electric guitar player of all time. But like just about all of the really great improv artists, you had to see it live. The recordings are good and help remember, but the persona onstage was something occasionally immortal.
Depending on my own mood, all songs - when seen in the light of mortality and human effort - the transience of it all - can be sad at certain times. But some songs just stomp on the accelerator and put me in that place within a measure or two.
I think it's all about the heart, in the listener, the player and, when the stars align, both.
richard sales
On Jan 7, 2009, at 12:28 PM, samba - wrote: Roy Buchanan's The Messiah Will Come Again ,is one of the most emotional guitar solos ever. Roy said,(not about that tune in particular) that he used to close his eyes and say help me help me help me while playing certain passages. Robbie Robertson,who also learned some stuff from Roy,spoke of holding his breath to get feeling into some parts. On sentiment,emotion maudlin etc. I consider Sentiment to connote nostalgia for past emotions, which is a bit different than registering a spontaneous emotional response in the present. Both are part of the artists tools for evoking emotion. Maudlin has the connotation of emotional over response,wallowing in it. It's the sort of thing Anglo Saxons were likely tolabel latin cultures with It's certainly traditional in the more northern climates where survival was tougher,for the cultures to be more emotionally reserved,while those closer to the equator were more epxressive. In many places culture is more effected by media ,economics and eduction now than climate. Still I've been in places in te N. Midwest where folks that are good friends are uncomfortable if one stands close than 3 or 4 feet from them,and lived in Hawaii where people will kiss people they're just meeting on the cheek.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Ludwig Wittgenstein
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