Guitar Feature Albums: S/D

I was listening to a Jerry Reed and Chet Atkins record and was thinking about how I liked it and hated it at the same time - amazing guitar playing and yet something was unbearably bland and corny about it. This got me thinking about the phenomenon of the "guitar record" - a record where the guitar playing is the entire point, and whether there are any genuinely good ones. And whether that's a paradoxical question, because maybe a "good" guitar record would cease to *just* be a guitar record, and a "guitar record" by definition can't be a "good record." I know some people swear by Friday Night in San Francisco, e.g., and I would consider that a guitarist record, but I hate it. And yet, I would not consider Mahavishnu Orchestra records to be "guitar feature" records even though they heavily feature the guitar, because I enjoy the compositions and group dynamics and not just the guitar playing for its own sake. Anyway, I put it to all of you.

I would consider a "Guitar Feature Album" to meet the following characteristics
1) The guitarist(s)'s name is the artist name or is in the artist name
2) The album does not have any top 20 singles
3) The artist's primary fan base seems to be musos
4) The guitar playing itself seems to take priority over composition/songwriting

I would also exclude straight ahead jazz records with a guitarist as leader as well as solo guitar records.

Don't know about any good ones, but here's a bad one:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61yx92yPGkL._AC_SX466_.jpg

And whether that's a paradoxical question, because maybe a "good" guitar record would cease to *just* be a guitar record, and a "guitar record" by definition can't be a "good record."

With respect, this seems OTM, based on how you're defining it.

oh well then, I guess we can either lock thread or just shit on some shitty guitar albums

are you excluding jazz & solo stuff because that would make it too easy

*sigh*

I like Surfing With the Alien by Joe Satriani

Steve Vai's Flex-Able is likewise pretty fun/well-done AFAIR

is the malmsteen concerto as hilarious as in execution as the cover art / general concept suggests

You guys fuck with Bonamassa? Fixed the Blues, imho

I think posting cover art would definitely be a good secondary use of this thread

Actually, it occurs to me that Gabor Szabo's records might be a rare example of guitar feature records that are also good records.

most Mick Barr albums fall into this i think. but i love em.

God I used to listen to a lot of these in high school, terrible rock muso shredder records, I would shudder to hear them now.

I feel like these need to be post-1980 as well.

I think there are 70s records that fit the bill for sure.

I've never heard this, but what else can it be?

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/w50AAOSwViVf3D7V/s-l500.jpg

where do guys like Rory Gallagher or Robin Trower fit in? They made good records and obv had vox but also I think their primary thing was being guitar heroes

Uli Jon Roth anyone? Never heard him tbh.

Trower's not a "guitar hero," though, at least not how I think of him (and I love his stuff). His thing is minimal, subdued electric blues. The first record I thought of when I saw this thread was this one, which I bought in high school and never made it all the way through:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81mGVCYWA8L.jpg

It's fine, and he's very good at what he does, but man, how anybody can listen to more than five minutes of this without nodding off is beyond me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XMULMTpehI

Uli Jon Roth anyone? Never heard him tbh.

― Are Animated Dads Getting Hotter? (Tom D.), Tuesday, May 18, 2021 1:48 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

me and cbesinger went to see him a few years ago at a sports bar and it was fucking nuts

Guy Mann-Dude to thread

The first one of these that crossed my radar screen is the Eric Johnson record with "Cliffs of Dover" on it. The album turns out to have been called Ah Via Musicom but who cares, really?

He will forever be mister "Cliffs of Dover" and for that he should dwell in ignominy forever. For approximately five days, a few hundred non-musos were kinda okay with it being on the radio. Most of them quickly tired of it.

Still much beloved of musos

i like Jeff beck’s 70s stuff and some of his 80s stuff (some of flash, jeff beck’s guitar shop) also Danny gatton owns fuck you, redneck jazz explosion for life!!!!!

seriously, 99 elma st is not where it’s at, try the live stuff with buddy emmons

is Cliffs of Dover basically the K-Ci and Jojo melody song?

That Danny Gatton track sounds a little like somebody running their index finger up and down their lips really fast and doing that "bibbly bibbly bibbly" thing

How about acoustic flamenco shredder albums with a sexy long-haired guy on the cover that used to get played in bookstores, do they count?

Gatton was someone I knew of back in high school because I grew up in DC and he was kind of revered locally (he died right around when I started high school and guitar lessons). My guitar teacher talked about him a lot. People often said stuff like "he was one of the greatest guitarists ever and he could play anything, he only wasn't more famous because they could never figure out where he fit into the music industry" as though being one of the greatest guitar players ever necessarily means that you should be as famous as Jimi Hendrix or something, rather than the Hendrixes of the world being the exceptions among "great" guitar players because they also had the total package of showmanship, songwriting, an "act" and being the right thing at the right moment.

lol yeah idk why anyone would think his music could be huge, he was kinda playing old timey music when other players were surfing with aliens off the cliffs of dover and stuff

my dad would absolutely love danny gatton, he constantly brings up dudes that belong in this thread.

i took him to see tinsley ellis, the show was honestly fun

I like one Joe Satriani track and it's this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivl7p_QBzwI

This entire Gatton obit is basically what I said above
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1994/10/06/gatton-dead-of-gunshot-wound/b1cfae12-39d5-4e13-a19f-ea9f4a599254/

Does the entire career of Caspar Brötzmann Massaker fit into the premise of this thread?
1) The guitarist(s)'s name is the artist name or is in the artist name - CHECK
2) The album does not have any top 20 singles - MOST CERTAINLY NOT
3) The artist's primary fan base seems to be musos - PRETTY MUCH, IN A WIRE MAGAZINE READER KIND OF WAY
4) The guitar playing itself seems to take priority over composition/songwriting - KINDA

Also it's not jazz or solo recordings.

Roy Buchanan>>>>>>>>>>>>>Danny Gatton

tough week for the Caspar Broztmann Massaker!

I love Brötzmann (pere et fils) but his stuff is absolutely for the Wire-reading division of the guitar-dork universe. The same people who, presumably, buy Lee Ranaldo solo albums.

Tommy Bolin fits here I think?

Buchanan seems like he had a lot of stuff that was early Peter Green (think Albatross) influenced...definitely better than most of his ilk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deeBQZ8Aklc

It's often noted that this phenomenon skews heavily male. In recent years I feel like there has been a proliferation of muso female guitarists on instagram and youtube and I wonder if that translates to more female fans of guitarists' guitarists.

Kaki King is definitely in that zone, does interesting stuff, stays just on the good side of the interesting/guitar wank line

in the classic era, Jennifer Batten (played with Michael Jackson live) was the one of the few woman I remember being featured a lot in guitar mags

Flammende Herzen by Michael Rother.

I like Arianna Powell a lot but she is pretty much a pure session/supporting guitarist so far in her career afaict. VAVA is someone whose guitar playing I love and is clearly trying to be also a songwriter/artist/not-just-a-guitar-player, but her material kind of misses for me. Similarly Madison Cunningham. Great guitar player whose playing transcends just being "impressive" but yet I can't really imagine making it through an album of her.

Doesn't uh...ahem, St Vincent fit this category?

*ducks*

Subject to Change by Jimmy Herring is pretty good for a muso wank record.

Flammende Herzen by Michael Rother.

Not at all. There's a couple of tracks that are based around keyboards for a start. Anyway I don't see how Michael Rother doesn't fits the criteria.

... oops, came out wrong, Michael Rother does not fit the criteria for the thread.

Agree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEbf44jFhRE

better with a trio, but I enjoy his playing solo. Chet and Jerry fucking rule imo.

#4 doesn't apply here. But it doesn't to chet and jerry, either. Suppose you take arrangement over songwriting.

It's often noted that this phenomenon skews heavily male. In recent years I feel like there has been a proliferation of muso female guitarists on instagram and youtube and I wonder if that translates to more female fans of guitarists' guitarists.

Sarah Longfield = classic, actually (Bandcamp URL = https://sarahshreds.bandcamp.com so I'm p sure she counts). I bought Disparity recently but there's good stuff on Collapse/Expand as well.

I think it's mostly solo, though?

Cosmic solo Americana guitar instrumentalism not exactly a new concept (see also; that guy John Fahey), but this rools: https://marisaanderson.bandcamp.com/album/traditional-and-public-domain-songs-2
Also, if we could allow black people's jazz albums, I would list Sonny Sharrock's solo Guitar:
https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/album/guitar and several others on bandcamp, of you don't mind non-solo, incl. the Sonny Sharrock Band's Seize The Rainbow, also Ask The Ages, and (as team player) w Material and Last Exit.
Several, maybe all Caspar Brotzmann Massaker albums have been reissued fairly recently, but my fave is still
https://casparbrotzmannmassakersl.bandcamp.com/album/black-axis

I mean, if we're allowing classical, jazz, fingerstyle, and improv guitar albums, I've got a few hundred to list.

feel OP about Me and Jerry allows at least some of those things.

feel like we have to exclude anything even vaguely American Primitive or it will just become another thread about that

but then it becomes CAD's guitar mag thread

Yeah--threads like this are all about exclusion, paring it down. The Big Bad Rock Guitar of Glen Campbell is all instrumental, if I recall correctly. Chester and Lester too---zzzz

The Ventures.

Santo and Johnny. The Challengers. Dick Dale. (in order of increasing likes)

but then it becomes CAD's guitar mag thread

― If you value Vox, we have an axe (Sufjan Grafton), Tuesday, May 18, 2021 10:55 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i have skimmed it over and this is my thread : )

Jody Harris/Robert Quine, Escape https://sorcererrecords.bandcamp.com/album/escape

Robert Quine/Fred Maher, Basic

Tom Verlaine, Warm and Cool

^^ those are all actually "good"/Search

see also: the two Robert Fripp/Andy Summers albums, which also rule

Do Henry Kaiser's "song-based" albums count? Even when he's playing covers, it's all about the gtr (and not of general interest otherwise).

all about the gtr

Speaking of...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WjwU5Dlca1Y/S_gqIV2a91I/AAAAAAAAAq4/K1DgXVh2Pqc/s1600/501447276_2d633ddc19.jpg

Feb 15, 2013 — Of course there is J.D. Considine's three letter review of GTR's album in Musician magazine: GTR - SHT. Yes, he got some furious responses to that one. Noted in Steve Hoffman Forums, re Most Brutal Reviews (do we have a thread for that)

Jeff Gilbert of Guitar World's review of Grave's Extremely Rotten Live was merely "Yes, it is". but SHT is better.

Possibly my favorite Xgau moment:

Sigur Ros: ( ) [MCA, 2002]
?_;@$.is C

Mention of Santo and Johnny made me think Link Wray is definitely in the "S" category except that he wasn't really an "album" guy in the most important part of his career.

Yeah, to me, he's most effectively a song guy, even when not singing: the guitar is means to an end, building a mood and glimpse of something just up or off the road.

Lots of good stuff in his archive.org stash. incl. tracks from awes The Link Wray Runble, released in mid-70s and never in its entirety on CD. although some of it is on the Guitar Preachercollection of 70s tracks (but also, yeah, Link Wray Rocks on Bear Family, and the Norton comps, Rhino etc. got the hot singles)
]

I love that 70's stuff

I don't remember how I learned about the below… it was put out during the end of my time in the NY music mag biz, but it wasn't through any of the guitar mag people I knew, although I'm sure they knew of this young lady… I think Steve Vai had a hand in her career… obviously someone said "give her a Kelly Clarkson/Avril style song, and then let her show her stuff"…it didn't take and then she got a job with Alice Cooper…and I see that she was somehow associated with MJ… but it bears noting that guitar mag guys, like the commenters on Greta Van Fleet YT videos, often feel like the universe has cheated them, much less the young people who will never experience "real music," by the absence of traditional musicianship, guitars etc etc in mass culture… this orianthi tune was probably conceived as sneaking real music in through the back door of Dr Luke/Max Martin-style conveyor belt shit, although lord knows Luke and Max had shit tons of pop metal DNA in their wurks…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu1aQvm5MrU

^I still hear that song sometimes, not sure where (grocery stores?). It's a pretty good specimen of its type.

(I love that trick of ending a song with a mellowed-out rehash of the chorus - it never gets old for me, lol. Wonder when it was first used.)

I'm actually not sure I even really think of that kind of shredding as "traditional musicianship" tbh, although I guess it is a tradition of its own at this point.

Bagging on Eric Johnson, one might want to consider that the purple one himself was a fan of his music. Prince helped get him a record contract.

I can see not liking that music, but Eric Johnson's music has a bit more musically going on to it than your average Shrapnel artist.

XP Thanks to dow for the heads-up that the Harris/Quine album now has a Bandcamp page for its reissue!

Didn't realized how bothered I am by the word "pickin'"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jXsD7K65PA

Robert Cray is an interesting case - there were some features of how he was packaged that approach "guitar feature" territory, but he had legit hits, non-muso fans, and some decidedly good singing and songwriting.