Chatting on the phone with oxymoron of many things under the sun, earlier today, the subject of Pearl Jam's first record came up, and what a splash it made on the culture at the time. This is still Harrogate's favorite song off of Ten. And the performance shows why, as great as their records are, Pearl Jam will always be known more as a live band than anything else. Sometimes listening to Pearl Jam live, Harrogate thinks that it may not get any better on the live guitar, than Mike McCready.
4 comments:
Two things:
Behind-the-head guitar playing? Seriously. I thought PJ was a grunge band, not some over-the-top hairband with showy guitar solos. Yngwie Malmsteem, anyone?
Second, why does the bass player get his own rug?
Note the label update. ;-)
I like it the new label. I like it a lot.
My father-in-law bought a G3 concert DVD a year or two ago. (G3 stands for "Guitar 3," I think. It's a concert that Vai and Satriani put on. They always have a guest guitarist with them. I guess otherwise it would be G2.)
Yngwie is the guest on the one my FIL purchased. I watched it with him when I was visiting.
Vai is a quite a showman, but Ynwie up'd him at every turn, playing behind his head and swinging his guitar around his body. It was quite entertaining.
But despite his mad skills, Yngwie has no sense of Kairos. At one point, the trio slowed things down a bit and went into a ballad. Even then Yngwie couldn't stop the extravagance, throwing his guitar around his back at least a half dozen times.
It was ridiculous. It'd be like Gene Simon's blowing a fireball during Peter Criss's performance of "Beth." Not really the time, you know.
Harrogate totally sees your point. And this sense of Kairos, too, enables us to draw the key distinction between Yngwie and Mike McCready.
The latter can get real subdued and stripped down when he needs to. What McCready is doing in this clip, however, is arguing that "Porch," being what it is, necessitates Shenanigans.
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