Fargo Rock City and the Imperfect Art

In addition to 'Geek to Guitar Hero' (written by Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick) I mentioned earlier in the year, I have read a few more music related books. I actually read 'Fargo Rock City' because its author, Chuck Klosterman, was recommended by Skolnick. The main subject was "hair metal" (made popular in the 80s by bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Guns 'N Roses, and the genre is my "guilty pleasure") However, it's not purely about analyzing the genre. Instead, it's interwined with his personal experience growing up in rural USA. It's more about why a rural kid like him enjoyed the music and how hair metal became part of his life. I actually like to write in this style, i.e., how I like some pieces of music or musicians from a non-technical standpoint. I won't give a 10 to this book because he's kinda contradicting himself: on one hand this book is supposed to point out the value of hair metal. On the other, he kept saying how silly this genre was, e.g. how boring the guitar solo were. Nevertheless, it was a good read for my recent trip. And I learned a few good albums: 
- Vinnie Vincent Invasion. Vincent was the guitarist of KISS and this was the first album of his own band. Even though KISS was a big name (Skolnick idolized the band!) I've never really listened to them. Their most popular song, "I wanna rock 'n roll all night", was bubblegum pop to me. Well, maybe KISS was better than I thought or Vincent got much better after he left, this album rocks! His guitar was OVER the top but he could play! Looks like I wasn't the only one influenced by Mr. Klosterman. Check out this review (and from the comment section you could also see a lot of detractors. Maybe I'm a sucker for shredding even if it's mindless)
- Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dreams. One of my former bandmates wanna cover Smashing Pumpkins and at that point the only song I've heard of was 1979, which sounded too pop to me. If I've heard of this album, I would have agreed with him. They could play heavy too.
- Korn, the Paradigm Shift. It's released just now in 2013 so of course it's not mentioned in the book which was written much earlier. The book did have a chapter about heavy music after hair metal and grunge died off and mentioned Korn. The most interesting fact was that members of Korn denied influences by rock/metal pioneers, which could be true. Anyway, I think Korn was over the hill after they released the "Best of" album. Subsequent ones have never been able to match that level of quality. However, each of their albums after that certainly have their moments. I mean, I usually listen to the whole album once: enjoying it instead of stopping in the middle! This one I will listen to a few more times for sure.

I picked up this book, The Imperfect Art:  Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture by Ted Gioia, from a 2nd hand book store in the summer. Just like the title, his book was also imperfect. He was fixated on a few ideas that he repeated over and over. Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed reading the book and those were good points. They might not "deserve" a whole book though. Obviously, the main idea is that jazz is imperfect because of its nature: most of the performances have improvisation. Melodies and harmonies were made up on the spot and thus the musicians didn't get a chance to "perfect" those parts. Another thing I recall from the book was to dismiss the notion that being primitive made good music. It's a myth that early jazz musicians wasn't formally trained and couldn't read music and that made them good. That I learned long time ago. Hey, I wasn't formally trained and couldn't read music (a while back) and that didn't make me good musician!

Looking forward to reading more music related books in the coming year.

A Jim Hall story

The great jazz guitarist Jim Hall passed away last week. It was a sad day for all jazz guitarists, musicians and listeners in general. And I have a small story to share: years ago I lived in Manhattan and went to jazz performances whenever I can, which means 3-4 times a week. I made a friend during a show at Smoke (in uptown) on a week night, probably a Monday as I remember not much people were in the audience. If you know me, it should be very surprising that I would become friend with a complete stranger at a public place. Well, that's one of those rare occasion. Turned out we have the same name. I worked at a bank while he was a lawyer. Both of us loved jazz guitar. Both of us played too. He had way more experiences than I did but he stopped at that time because of carpal tunnel while I just started from scratch, knowing nothing about guitar playing, let alone jazz. We went to shows together from time to time before I moved. He told me his biggest influence was Jim Hall. What's so great about Jim Hall's playing? It's best explained by another guitarist Rez Abbasi on this NPR show. His playing is not dazzling like Pat Metheny or Stanley Jordan. Instead, his brilliance is quite subtle: you gotta listen to how he interplayed with others, like Bill Evans, Ron Carter, Sonny Rollins. In fact, Hall's playing got so highly praised that I bought Sonny Rollin's "The Bridge" LP, which was literally in heavy rotation on my turntable.

RIP.