What have you got?
Feb 152013
Feb 142013
One’s go-to Valentine’s Day song on a particular Valentine’s Day is subject to change. I’ve been humming “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” the last few days. I’ve always loved that song. I love how everything seems suspended while the arrangement slowly crescendos. Love can feel that way. Very romantic, if you ask this typically not romantic guy.
Yesterday my wife and I had an excellent lunch at Del Posto in New York. As we sat down and the waitstaff fussed with our napkins and water glasses the piano player played “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Nice!
Feb 132013
Wah. Wah-wah wah-wah wha. Wah wah-wah-wha wah wah…
As 2000 Man wrote in his suggestion to conduct this discussion, “It was cool to talk through your guitar way before it was cool to Auto Tune!”
The Talk Box, I was amazed to learn, is almost as old as your youthful-looking Moderator (“But you don’t look a day over 47!” a colleague recently told me). Pedal-steel guitarist Pete Drake introduced this effects box that does stuff those of you more technically minded will better understand if you read about it for yourself, here. Such effects go back to the ’30s, which you can also read about on the effects’ Wikipedia page. Fascinating stuff that will go on my long list of “Things I Couldn’t Have Invented If I Had a Million Years to Think About Them.”
The Talk Box came into my world—and likely yours—in the 1970s, that glorious decade of extraneous technological developments. There are probably a dozen strong candidates for the Best Use of the Guitar Talk Box that I am forgetting, so you may write-in an “Other” candidate. The nominees and the RTH People’s Poll follow…after the jump!
Feb 122013
Wings Over Nashville!
Wings over Nashville! Paul, Linda and the band when they were living on Curly Putman, Jr’s farm in the summer of 1974.
Feb 122013
It’s time we determine—once and for all—the Greatest Key Change Deployed at the End of a Song Because It’s Going Nowhere. “Greatest” is defined here as “you know what? That schlock arranger’s trick actually works in this song, and it’s genuinely better for it.”
I was reminded of this on my way into work, when “Living On a Prayer” came on the radio, and I found myself waiting for the schlock key change moment near the end of the song, which occurs here (sneak ahead to the 3:23 mark):
Is there best use of this trick? I’m not sure. I need your help!
This is an open-entry discussion. Make your case. We will tabulate/assess the winner on February 28, 2013.
Feb 122013
Kind of makes you rethink the brains behind Boston, doesn’t it?
Feb 122013
