Bakers Dozen is one of my favorite online features, and it has been the source of some great music recommendations. This particular Bakers Dozen is titled "The Reinvention Of The Guitar in 13 Albums", although some of Reynolds' choices are compilation tracks, EP's, and (in one case) a Youtube video of a live Bo Diddley performance from the 1980's.
I decided to assemble a mix from "The Reinvention Of The Guitar" (without realizing that the author had already created a Youtube playlist of his selections).
In my defense, his playlist includes three dozen songs, whereas mine is just 13. He shortened the Bo Diddley video that begins his Baker's Dozen, and I shortened one of the lengthy guitar pieces from the reissue of Allan Bryant's 1977 album Space Guitars.
Here's a cool thing about Simon Reynolds (who once wrote that he will never stop blogging): he creates a blog to organize his thoughts, links, and overflow material as he works on a new book. You can go back to the first month of his blog for Still In A Dream to get an idea of how the ideas for the book were conceived, and how they evolved. His comments on his Bakers Dozen choices are also worth reading.
ELSEWHERE ON THE BLOG: three sets of instrumentals with some fiendishly inventive guitar work -- compiled by me, Richard, and readers like you!
Reinvention Of The Guitar: https://pixeldrain.com/u/hshUW3Dh
ReplyDeleteA confession: this playlist won't fit on a CD unless you delete a track. I recommend dispensing with "Space Storm" (track 7).
Your nominations for other musicians who "reinvented" the guitar (with song recommendations) are welcome!
PS - in the description of his Youtube playlist, Reynolds writes:
Delete"The most interesting musicians of the late 80s and early 90s hungered to do something new while simultaneously being acutely conscious of history. Their music was in dialogue with the 60s and – increasingly, as we head into the 90s – in dialogue with early 70s rock. When I started writing Still In A Dream, listening again to the records I had raved about when I wrote for Melody Maker, what struck me was how selective groups like Loop, Dinosaur Jr. and Butthole Surfers were in their understanding of pre-punk. They focused on the noisiest and most chaotic groups of the 60s and early 70s: The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, aspects of Hendrix, Black Sabbath, the wilder side of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
"Vast swathes of pre-punk still remained off limits: anything that was too flower power, too steeped in the blues… folk rock, Soft Machine and the Canterbury sound…. anything on a path towards the proggy or sophisto or fusion sounds of the 70s. Even though pre-punk excess and majesty was steadily getting rehabilitated, there was squeamishness still about the overtly virtuoso."
PPS - in writing about Royal Trux for his Bakers Dozen, Reynolds comments that he considers some albums "singular" and others "sessionable". Twin Infinitives is a singular Royal Trux album. It's a landmark, but you can't listen to it all day long. It's like a triple IPA with a high ABV. By contrast, Cats And Dogs is a sessionable Royal Trux album, one that you could put on repeat while working your way through a six pack of lager, or knocking back a few pints at the pub with your mates.
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