BOYS! IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS! HOW TO PLAY LEAD AND RHYTHM GUITAR AT THE SAME TIME

"BLUE" JIMMY:  GUITAR SLINGER

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY: You can tell a lot about a bluesman from their guitar style.  
For example, if they play a whole lotta slide guitar, they probably came from the Mississippi Delta or the south side of Chicago or were at least influenced by players from that region.  If they do a whole lotta fingerpicking, they probably hail from the Eastern Seaboard.  If they play a whole lotta jazzy chords and licks, the West Coast was their home.  

BD OZZY:  If they play damn loud through a big amplifier, they probably came up playing in raunchy, disorderly roadhouses where they had to fight to be heard.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  And if they sound like two fellas playing at the same time, they probably spent time playing out on the street for tips with just them and one guitar and no one else to back them up.  Players in this style include Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins and Snooks Eaglin, guitar players who sat on street corners and played a mix of blues, old favorites and novelty songs to earn a living while competing with other performers for the attention of people passing by.  If you couldn't play lead, rhythm, percussion and sound effects all at once on one guitar, you didn't get no money.

BD OZZY:  No whiskey and no women!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  The example in the video is a Texas shuffle combining riffs from a couple of my original songs.  I could've easily played the whole thing on acoustic guitar but this time around I played it on a Fender Stratocaster through a Marshall amp turned way down so you could hear all the pick and finger and string noise.  I'm playing it in the key of E and I'm using a lot of open string lead licks and sliding partial and full chords to get that street corner sound. If you see me on the street, please throw some change in my guitar case.

BD OZZY:  And a swig of whiskey for me!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!

HOW TO PLAY LIKE HOUND DOG TAYLOR

"BLUE" JIMMY:  SLIDEWINDER

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Theodore Roosevelt Hound Dog Taylor was a bluesman extraordinaire who influenced pretty much everyone who put a slide on their finger and tried to make Hawaiian noises on a guitar.  Born in Natchez, Mississippi with six fingers on each hand, he took Elmore James' style of slamming slide guitar, played it louder and harder and put out a series of albums and live shows that drove big Afro and bell bottom audiences into a frenzy mostly in the 70's.

BD OZZY:  Together with his band The Houserockers, made up of Brewer Phillips on second guitar and Ted Harvey on drums, they literally rocked houses down and were a huge influence on George Thorogood, whose band The Destroyers were modeled after Taylor's band.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  His buck-toothed grin and between-song jive made him a favorite with the audience even though no one could understand a word he was saying.  Then he would take a sip of Canadian Club, put a slide made from the leg of a kitchen chair on his finger and peel the paint off the walls with a cheap, pawn shop guitar through an amp about to melt down with ear-splitting distortion.  The example in the video is played on an Eastwood electric/resonator guitar through a 100 watt Marshall MG series amp on full gain using a tapered, heavy brass slide and a thumb pick.  I'm not sure what tuning Hound Dog played in but the example is in open E tuning which will always give you that electrified delta sound.

BD OZZY:  Skull and glass a whiskey optional.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Copy it as best you can and then take it somewhere with your own style.  That's how Hound Dog would've told you.

BD OZZY:  Maybe someday they'll write on your gravestone what Hound Dog wanted on his:  "He couldn't play s**t, but he sure made it sound good!"

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!

BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON: BLUESMAN OR EXORCIST?

"BLUE" JIMMY:  BLUES SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:  One of the most mysterious figures in the history of The Blues is Blind Willie Johnson.  If you ain't never heard Blind Willie Johnson, there's probably a piece of your soul that's never been moved yet.

BD OZZY:  Pretty much everything that's known about BWJ was researched and written about in a book published in 1959 by a man named Samuel Charters entitled "The Country Blues."  It's acknowledged as the first scholarly work ever written about The Blues.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  BWJs scary, otherworldly slide guitar playing with perfect pitch and intonation has never been equaled -- ever.  When God done made BWJ he said, "that's enough!"  His total recorded output is only about 90 minutes but that's all it takes, brother.  

BD OZZY:  Tracks like "Nobody's Fault But Mine" (where have you heard that before) and "God Moves On The Water" (about the sinking of The Titanic) were enough to make BWJ a legend,

 but then he done and made "Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)", three minutes and twenty seconds of pure, recorded exorcism!  If you got a bad spirit living in your home, play this tune and your house will be cleansed!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Amen!  These old, scratchy recordings make you realize that The Blues comes from a life lived hard and nasty. BWJ roamed the streets of Beaumont, Texas playing for pocket change most of his life, getting messed with by the cops and then when his house burned down he slept on a wet mattress in the ruins until he got sick from pneumonia and died because the local hospital wouldn't admit a black, blind man.  "Blind folks has a hard time ..." his wife said after he died.

BD OZZY:  Que Gacha!

"BLUE" JIMMY:   Next time you think your life is too hard, listen to the recordings of Blind Willie Johnson and realize how good you got it with your comfortable life.  Blind Willie didn't play The Blues -- He lived them.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY:  Wow!  Wow!

 

LAY OFF THE WEED!!!

"BLUE" JIMMY: SELF-RIGHTEOUS, POMPOUS, HARD MUSIC CRITIC

BLIND DOG OZZY:  NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA

"BLUE" JIMMY:   I was miles away, playing some serious late night blues on Friday night when I glanced up at the TV and saw some dirty, bearded, old hippie howling into a microphone on Jay Leno.  I hit the mute button out of curiosity and realized I was seeing Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes with his latest project called Chris Robinson Brotherhood.  Good Christ on his Holy Throne of Glory!  What happened to you brother?  

BD OZZY:  Is that the guy always picking up cigarette butts behind the liquor store?

"BLUE" JIMMY:  No man, The Black Crowes; the band that played loud, Classic Hard Rock and partied while the rest of the world were clutching their Nirvana albums and cutting themselves --  That's their singer.

BD OZZY: No way, guey!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Yes, way, guey,  I couldn't believe it either.  T'was a time when this man could sing like Rod Stewart singing Paul Rodgers at Steve Marriot's birthday party.  There he is, looking like a guy tossed out of a Grateful Dead show for being too stoned, singing mild jam rock boogie and pretending to play guitar.  Compare this to the Black Crowes "Sting Me" performance (on youtube) from '92 on Jay Leno.

BD OZZY:  &%*@!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Let this be a lesson to you, young boys, keep to the beer&whiskey and lay off the weed, or you'll wake up one morning and find yourself selling incense and veggie burritos at a Phish parking lot.


"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!


BD OZZY:  Wow! Wow!

FENDER STRATOCASTER: THE DEVIL'S AXE

"BLUE" JIMMY: Fender Bender

BLIND DOG OZZY:  Neurotic Chihuahua

When Leo Fender and his cohorts invented the Fender Stratocaster guitar, they probably never envisioned Jimi Hendrix making outer space noises with it or Ritchie Blackmore launching it like a Zulu spear across the stage or Yngwie Malmsteen ripping through scales intended for virtuoso concert violinists or Stevie Ray Vaughan wielding it like a sawed-off Texas shotgun.

BD OZZY:  But when they invented that badass plank of wood they threw in some extra mojo to insure that it would be wrecking speakers and ears well beyond the 1950's.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  And it looks great -- shaped like a big-leg nude woman!

BD OZZY:  Que Rico!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Unlike other guitars, when you strap on the Strat, it forces you to play hard and funky and nasty -- like you got no choice.

BD OZZY:  I chewed on one once.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  And it still has teeth marks, mutt.  But there ain't no way I could write a whole history of the Strat in this small space.  If you want that, check out "The Stratocaster Chronicles" by Tom Wheeler with forward by Eric Clapton.  It's 280 pages long and has color photos of every kind of Strat plus every player in history who ever busted a high E on a Strat.  

BD OZZY:  Leo Fender was smart but the real genius was the guy who invented replacement guitar strings -- there's where all the money is!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  What I wanna do here is just share some of my favorite Strat moments on recordings.  This is just a sampling, man:

• "The Wedge" and "Miserlou" by Dick Dale
• "Jam on a Monday Morning " by Buddy Guy
• "All My Love" by Otis Rush
• "Space Guitar" by Johnny "Guitar" Watson
• "Pusherman" by Curtis Mayfield
• "Band of Gypsies" album by Jimi Hendrix
• "From the Cradle" album by Eric Clapton
• "Irish Tour" album by Rory Gallagher
• "Bridge of Sighs" album by Robin Trower
• "Highway Star" (Made in Japan version) by Ritchie Blackmore/Deep Purple
• "The Sails of Charon" by Uli Roth/Scorpions
• "Far Beyond the Sun" by Yngwie Malmsteen
• "See the Light" album by Jeff Healey
• "What's the Word?" album by Jimmy Vaughan/Fabulous Thunderbirds
• "Porchlight" by Robert Cray
• "Fear of the Dark" by Iron Maiden

• "Texas Flood" album and "Little Wing" by Stevie Ray Vaughan

Some of my favorite onstage Strat tricks include: hitting a pick harmonic and pressing behind the nut; rolling the knobs for a wah pedal sound (stolen from Rory Gallagher); overdriving the neck pickup to make it sound like a vintage Les Paul (stolen from Clapton); picking behind the nut and shaking the whammy bar (stolen from Guitar Shorty); picking two strings in unison; bending the high E string all the way to the low E string (stolen from Buddy Guy); shimmering an entire chord with the whammy bar (stolen from Dick Dale); switching from the neck pickup to the bridge pickup in the middle of a solo (stolen from Ritchie Blackmore); bending the neck for divebomb effects (stolen from Jake E Lee); hitting a note and dragging the toggle switch back and forth to create echo; pounding the Strat's body and manipulating the feedback with the whammy bar (stolen from Hendrix).  Well, I could go on for days about the Fender Stratocaster but this is a blog not a book.  Have an unsafe and insane Fourth of July weekend and check out the photo of me torching myself with fireworks!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY:  Wow! Wow!

THE BATTLE OF HOLLYWOOD

"BLUE" JIMMY:  CERTIFIED BLUESMAN CHEAP BEER TASTER

BLIND DOG OZZY: NEUROTIC CHIHUAHUA 

"BLUE" JIMMY: I'm starting to see Guns N Roses mania man!  They get inducted into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame this year  and Slash gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next month.

BD OZZY:  Little flat-chested girls wearing GNR t-shirts never realizing their moms probably shot up with Axel Rose in an alley somewhere on The Strip.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  It's getting a little out of hand brother, Rolling Stone magazine's Top 100  Guitarists of All Time ranks Slash above Leslie West, T-Bone Walker and Robert Johnson!

BD OZZY: Que lastima!

"BLUE" JIMMY:   They were a good, solid band but like the Sex Pistols, all their notoriety came from just one debut album,  "Appetite For Destruction."

BD OZZY:  After that, it was all "November Rain" and movie soundtrack music.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  For my beer money, the real Kings of Hollywood were and still are, L.A. Guns, The Hollywood Vampires!

BD OZZY:  Most people don't know that GNR were an offshoot of L.A Guns.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  And their new album, "Hollywood Forever" sounds like they never left the Sunset Strip since '88.  It reminds me of the time I woke up clueless and hungover at the Sunset Motel and had a ten dollar bill left in my pocket.  I could either use it for the cab ride home or buy some beer.  Needless to say, I was stuck in Hollywood for a while.

BD OZZY:  I walked home.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  You have four legs f****r!

BD OZZY:  The album kicks off with "Hollywood Forever" roaring like a runaway train through your speakers as the song pledges allegiance to the decadence and ruin of our favorite town, capped off with a Stacey Blades guitar solo that would make Michael Schenker drop his pick in frustration.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Dude!

BD OZZY:  The song titles say it all, "You Better Not Love Me,"  "Eel Pie," "Vine St. Shimmy," "Dirty Black Night," "Crazy Tango," let you know where this album is going musically and I especially like the way they steal the riff from Tesla's "Rock Me To The Top" for the heroin nod off ballad "Sweet Mystery."

"BLUE" JIMMY:  You caught that too!  I also dig how Phil Lewis sings "Arana Negra" entirely in white boy Spanish.

BD OZZY:  Como No!

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Even though Tracii Guns still tours with his own version of L.A Guns, this is the band that stays true to the roots of L.A. hard rock -- guitars in your face, heavy bass & drums and cigarettes and whiskey vocals singing odes to the town that even Jesus couldn't save.

"BLUE" JIMMY:  Sake's Alive!

BD OZZY: Wow! Wow!