Collecting guitars is overrated.

I fell into the trap of this collector mentality about 25 years ago.  My old assistant Jenn penned a phrase.  Whenever we got a new guitar she’d say ‘you boys and your Hot Wheels’…

For me it began in the early days of having a dream to possess all the instruments I ever wanted.  This is back when I had a single electric, single acoustic, single drum machine, in a single apartment… and oh yeah, I was single!

But all this time later, I wish I’d have made a single guitar my own.  Like f’ing SRV.  Like BB.  Jimi, Jimmy, Keith, Bruce, Bo Diddley, Alvin Lee, i’m just thinking off the top of my head, but there are more.  Rory!  ha.

Collecting things like cars and guitars, you gotta house ’em.  You gotta care for them too.  Keep them strung, tuned, in temperature controlled environments.  But beyond all that, they become a little like jelly beans.  All of them are good, but not one stands out.

I bet cars are this way too.  Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld have hundreds of cars.  They all need to be started, gassed, oiled, replacement gassed after 6 months, driven, stored… I mean if you’re rich enough I guess, but it still sounds like one major pain in the ass to me.  I’d rather just go and enjoy a car show at the local park on any given Sunday.  Even go to a dealer’s showroom and test drive it.  That’s about how long you will enjoy one of your 100 cars.

Anyway, the signature you create by becoming one with your main axe, a tool, but one you have perfected… is meaningful!

And it’s like Jeff Porcaro used to say about all the new digital toys coming out one after the other… he’d pause with comedic timing and go “… so… got any tunes?”

A lot of different emotions surface with this documentary.  At the center, it’s a light-hearted affair, but so is the music.  None of these songs were about politics or war.  Probably why it was such a part of our lives.

Funny too, to be around long enough and see how sheep-ish the public can be, venomously aiming to humiliate and destroy something at the time of it’s creation, to decades later acting like ‘oh yeah well I always loved them’.  This is where a Black Mirror video recall would be such sweet revenge.

As an earlier example, I hear so many acknowledge The Carpenters for their song and arrangement genius today, not to mention Karen’s perfect vocals. But if you’re old enough to remember, they were absolutely slayed by the press, and by media in general at the time of their run.  It’s hard to even imagine living in the music world with that kind of hate and vitriol.  They were not the cool kids, but instead had to perform on sterile, vapid TV variety shows alongside a vaudevillian array of acts like The Osmonds, polka dancers, jugglers and ventriloquists.

I remember a female DJ on an LA rock radio station even saying at the time of Karen Carpenter’s death, something to the effect of  ‘If I made music like that I wouldn’t be able to eat either’. That’s how bad a time it was for bands like The Carpenters, Bread, ABBA… It was torture to be outside of Jann Wenner’s highly coveted critic darlings, and if you didn’t make that list, you at least had to be considered ‘rock’, i.e., Journey, Boston, KISS etc.  You didn’t get critic love, but you sold seats and records.

And that’s what’s so gratifying about this DOCKumentary and newfound celebration, even with it’s backhanded compliment title. None of these bands were uttered by Rolling Stone, Robert Hilburn, Robert Christgau or any other high priest music critic.  Instead these ‘writers’ preached to us how much this music sucked.  Not one of these unmusical geniuses ever pointed out to it’s readers that a guitar-great like Steve Lukather could be playing on all those masterful hit records at one time while in a hit band, or that a background session singer as ubiquitous as Michael McDonald could also be writing, cowriting and singing hits of his own.

But musicians knew. Average people who loved to be uplifted by music knew, too.

So beyond being long overdue, it’s also nice to see it as this giant, rising middle finger to the rock media of it’s time, because this music continues to live and thrive while it’s the critics and their darlings who are passé now. Bob Dylan, U2, Nick Cave & PJ Harvey with all their merits, are not what people play when they want to have a good time. We’ll let that certain tribe of critics and pretentious music supervisors continue to push these artists as though they represented our daily lives, but in truth they did not.  Radio was king, and radio played upbeat songs and heartfelt ballads.  Yes, hacks [deleted] were abundant, as it always has been, and sometimes hard to endure, but the originals were true greats.

So put on the Yacht Rock playlist and watch the party come to life. Cheers to some well deserved acknowledgment for all these brilliant musicians and artists.  They took a licking and keep on ticking.

Cheers, Jude

We have 2 winners! 

Winner of the autographed ‘A View From 3rd Street’ LP is: RocknWalkn

Winner of ‘Start The Car’ CD in long box: Rockfan

Congratulations to you both! Please PM this website with your address so we can get these out right away.  Rockfan, please let us know if you want the long box autographed or sealed.  Sealed has it’s own merits and to autograph would would mean is has to be opened.

Until the next one… Cheers all!