Word: guitar
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...years by both in their use of him as a producer and collaborator. The spandexed sybarites in Aerosmith have never been much for tradition, which makes their blues obsession more subversive and dynamic. On the surface they churn out big, dumb power ballads, but Joe Perry's wailing guitar lines and Steven Tyler's lyrics ("I was cryin' when I met you/Now I'm tryin' to forget you") would have Leadbelly nodding in recognition...
Clapton and Aerosmith both know their blues, but playing blues classics convincingly is another matter. Clapton sets the bigger challenge for himself on Me and Mr. Johnson by covering 14 tracks by Robert Johnson, the most miserable Mississippian ever to strum a guitar. When he died, Johnson was 27 and had only 29 songs to his name. Clapton says those recordings (which are just Johnson and his Gibson L-1, no accompaniment) are the finest music ever made, which leads to a conceptual dilemma: if Clapton mimics Johnson's superior minimalism, he has added nothing; if he tinkers, he risks...
Johnson would have appreciated the double bind, but it's hard to guess what he'd make of Me and Mr. Johnson. Clapton adds a full band and as much as two minutes in length to some of Johnson's songs. The guitar playing is predictably spectacular, but in stretching the songs Clapton strips them of their intensity. His vocals don't help matters. He's ecstatic to be covering his idol, but his exuberance increases the disconnection between the music and the material. Johnson was one dark dude; when he sang, "There's a hellhound on my trail...
...your own musical stylings by plugging in a keyboard, microphone or guitar. Apple is selling a $99 keyboard that plugs directly into the computer via a USB connection, and a $149 amp for guitar, bass, microphone and keyboard with midi connections. There are some 50 software instruments in GarageBand and an additional 100 in Jam Pack. And if you flub the recording off beat, even with the built-in metronome? Not to worry...
...Pynchon). One year, a splendid season of every Samuel Beckett play cued a longish essay; the next, the packaging of musical shorts from the 30s and 40s. And there was the week when all the grownups were on vacation and I assigned myself a page on a Hawaiian steel-guitar virtuoso of the 1920s. For goodness? sake, why? Because I liked...