Review Rodeo: It Might Get Loud
Mini-blog: Don’t mean to bump Rob’s world cup post but I’ve been wanting to post some reviews. Especially to keep the front page updated for the month of shadoweyes. I’ve got a lot of stuff I can talk about and hopefully this week I’m more productive than last week which had pretty much floored me.
I’ve been in contact with Leonard recently and he’s been turning me onto some new music. I’ve especially been digging this video. Which is as fun to shred to than bon jovi.
It’s very glamour which is not something I’m sure I know how I feel about. Hopefully I can get around to reviewing some albums.
It Might Get Loud: Imagine you’re back in high school, sitting in the cafeteria at lunchtime. The vice principal announces over the intercom 3 new initiatives to raise school spirit and fight student apathy: 1) additional study hall period on day of your choosing (with you so far) 2) hourly stretch breaks (uh…) 3) hip new school colors fuschia, orange peel, and slate (facepalm).
This is basically how I respond to the guitarists chosen to participate in It Might Get Loud. A brief summary: a documentary chronicling a meeting-of-the-minds of three famous guitar players, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. Biographical segments and interviews with each subject are edited together with a jam session (if you can call it that) with all three present. In a certain sense, the film is exactly what you’d expect knowing that it’s made by the people behind An Inconvenient Truth–a browbeating, pious look at rock music viewed with the cloudy prism of boomer nostalgia. Dumb all around, the Jack White segments are particularly heinous. Not only does he dress up like he thinks he’s still in Cold Mountain but his entire demeanor and everything he says comes off as cover-up-your-eyes embarrassingly contrived. And he’s so full of himself over ideas that have been exhaustively explored in the pages Rolling Stones and other cultural monoliths. Seriously, you’re authentic because you like roots music?
This is not a movie for people who are into guitar. While I can understand deference given to someone like Jimmy Page, none of the three are really shredders. They are primarily known for their songwriting I would say as opposed to their technique. And that’s fine. The only reason I even bring it up is that the jam sessions, which should be the saving grace, are just completely boring. My point being that, even if technically accomplished metal and shred guitarists like Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen aren’t celebrated by the middlebrow hippies for which the director is aiming, you could at least sit them down in a room with their instruments and expect to hear something interesting.
July 12th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
I haven’t seen “It Might Get Loud,” but I might take issue with your characterization of Jimmy Page as not a “shredder,” though I suppose this depends on what your definition of “shredding” entails. What is “shredding,” for you?
While the Edge and Jack White are certainly not “shredders” – nor do they try to be – Page’s style of play at its best is certainly technically skilled, fluid, powerful and solidly grounded in blues and rock traditions. To me, these four criteria (technical skill, ease of play, power, ability to dialogue with tradition, while occasionally departing from it) are the hallmarks of a good traditional rock guitarist.
Sure, Page might not be able to cram as many notes into a guitar run as some players, but I think that he unquestionably rocks harder (and is more technically skilled) than either the Edge or White – see Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying” for evidence. As for the Edge, I appreciate his style of play – it’s often very pretty, as in the introduction to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” and occasionally fiery, as in his blistering solo on “The Fly.” And I think it’s healthy to have a self-professed traditionalist (White) around, even if as you say, he spouts off some fairly pretentious stuff in this documentary. While boomer nostalgia likely saw this project to fruition, I wouldn’t throw the baby (Page, good guitar playing) out with the bath water (poorly executed documentary).
July 12th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
rob, after giving it some thought, I would have to say that, in general, I would say that shredding begins where somebody starts talking about terms like muscle memory. a level of technique that requires at times 10 hours a day practicing.
I sometimes find it very hard to write at length. But I was trying to distinguish Page from Edge and White as definitely being the most skilled. And I think he definitely inspired a generation of shred. This may just be a matter of my own opinion but I’ve never found Page’s solos to be very inspiring and imo his playing is somewhat noisy see for example the intro to dazed and confused from song remains the same, basic blues/pentatonic soloing has never been enough for me and I really don’t think of that as shredding. I respect Page a lot as a songwriter and also for acoustic playing which is where I think he’s the best. when I think of zeppelin I don’t really think of solos so much as songs like going to california, when the levee breaks, and no quarter.
similarly I agree edge is pretty good as a songwriter especially with early u2 and even some of the pop era stuff.
I don’t have a problem saying jack white is a failure on every level. I could’ve gotten into it more but it goes far beyond just being pretentious. he just comes off as a raving egomaniac in this documentary. it might get loud is available streaming on netflix so it’s not a huge commitment if you have netflix. it’d be impossible for me to overstate how mind numbingly idiotic pretty much everything he does is.
my major problem with the documentary, though, is that it feels like woodstock 95 part 2. it’s the kind of thing that started to turn me off to music. at times it seems like the entire entertainment press is wedded to this orwellian narrative of the history of pop and rock music.
July 13th, 2010 at 1:35 am
mark,
i had the misfortune of seeing some of this i think on a plane or something. you can imagine me squirming in my seat with embarrassment whenever white was on screen. you have to imagine page and edge just sitting there: “i’m not getting paid enough to put up with this.” very richard-hell-reading-his-lyrics-as-poetry.
i guess i can understand where the creators got the idea to use page/edge/white as “older/old/new” traditional rock guitarists. but yeah, expecting jam gold from a group of whom i’d only expect one (page) to be a decent jam guitarist seems like a bad idea. reminds me of a song i heard on the radio in vermont where in the middle of the song someone yells out “30 minute bongo solooooooooo!” and then that’s what happened. like you could see how bad that would be from a mile away, throwing up the signpost didn’t help.
July 13th, 2010 at 10:13 am
zach, I feel for you. was that a studio track with the bongo solo
July 13th, 2010 at 11:19 am
i think it was a live bootleg but i honestly don’t remember.
July 14th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Mark – is there a specific musical vocabulary/genre identity for shredding? By way of comparison, I mentioned that Page’s solos are rooted in blues and rock traditions – they provide the grounding, so to speak, for his solos, just like the blues (and earlier jazz traditions) provide the grounding for John Coltrane or other jazz sax soloists. Is shredding grounded to any degree in defined musical traditions? Presumably since we’re talking about soloing on electric guitar (?), shredding is going to bear some resemblance to rock/metal styles and structures…
July 16th, 2010 at 10:03 am
I tend to think of shredding as really advanced technique. but it mostly seems to be associated with glam metal and neoclassical metal. but it’s hard to say. most people would probably consider page to be a shredder, it’s just I’ve personally never really responded to his soloing. I guess it’s in a lot of ways a matter of opinion, but for me it’s like the late seventies eighties generation up to the present.