I love good music as you probably do also. It's one of those
things in life that speaks about us in ways that’s sometimes hard to put into
words. I think a little bit of who we are can be defined by the music style we
listen to and the importance or lack of the same we give it.
I would ask you one favor before you either leave or continue this page, is
that you consider your own personal music likes and dislikes, how it comforts
you in those sometimes much needed quiet moments at the end of a hectic day at
work, how certain styles of music completely bore or annoy you, and then try to
realize, everybody is different and on their way to someday settling in on that
"perfect
sound" that only you can appreciate.
This is my feeble attempt to describe how my settling in process finally
arrived in a person I consider the greatest musician on the planet today that
plays my favorite all time instrument - The Electric Guitar.
My story begins when I believe I was about 9 years old in the fourth grade in 1963. You I’m sure have heard the same thing over and over again. There was this little four-piece band from Liverpool and - you’re right, The Beatles. The rest is history, but, my parents and my Aunt and Uncle Fred and Jean Mesquit were listening to all types of music back then. In fact, it turned out that my grandfather Ken's five brothers were all accomplished musicians during the hay ‘day of the Big Band era also. So, I suppose you could say that music became very important to me at a tender age and continues to this day. Uncle Fred could always be heard singing around the house all types of great tunes and he had a wonderful voice.
The next thing I knew, all of us boys in grammar school were doing the Beatle hair look thing in the school bathrooms during recess to try and impress the girls. Whew!
My mother was one that enjoyed Tommy Dorsey and the big bands because she was a terrific dancer with all the classic floor moves that seemed so fluidic and smooth, all the men wanted to dance with her. My father never danced though, and he didn’t mind if mom enjoyed herself on the floor because she was so great to watch, a pure natural. When we were kids, believe it or not, she would wake us up for school playing the record to the tune of "Green Onions" by Booker "T" and the MGs! She also loved Wes Montgomery and his silky-smooth guitar riffs that seemed to relax her. I know if mom were here today, and you asked her who her favorite musician was, it would be Wes.
Later on she actually appreciated groups like, The Alan Parsons Project, Pink Floyd, Brazil 66 and of course, Neil Diamond the Jazz Singer. Then she used her dancing talent to teach others in Western and Ballroom Swing dancing and competed all over California to her enjoyment. Mom was a great influence on us kids and I shall always cherish those moments her and I listening to great music together.
Now dad listened to a whole different type of music. He used to bring home new stuff all the time. For a while he was bringing Bill Cosby into our home and we all busted guts every night, and when company came over, dad would have to break out Bill and before you knew it, everybody was on the floor shedding tears of laughter. Then he brought home this radical guitar sounding stuff that seemed at that time rebellious, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones and his Surf Guitar. Wow, that was different, and he used to turn it up loud. Our nearest neighbor was a mile away so you could blow the windows out if you wanted to. Then he bought a new album called "Los Indios Tabajaras, Always in my Heart". This was another style of play that had us kids realizing a new style of guitar play, one that was Acoustic and beautiful in tone. The story then was, two young Indians from Brazil were brought into RCA Victors studios from the jungle to cut an album. The boys had learned to play a rudimentary, primitive style along with their tribal songs the story goes, making their way to the marketplaces of Rio de Janeiro. I have heard through the years since that this was a marketing ploy on the public to sell records. Their sound is captivating and has stayed with me all these years. Maria Elena was their breakthrough hit album in 1963.
Then dad introduced us to "The Ventures" with Walk Don't Run, a fantastic album that was the beginning of what I thought the electric guitar ought to sound like with a R&R flavor. He bought almost all of their music back then, but the one titled "Outer Limits" was totally cool. It had a Hot Rod on the cover overlooking the Los Angeles city lights below and the stars above that conveyed a new frontier in music sound. And because of the records’ spacey reverb tone, it put us in a mood of total musical enjoyment. I think I wore that record out to the point of destroying it beyond recognition.
Up to this point and at the age of around fourteen, I'm pretty much engrained in the belief that the electric guitar was all I wanted to hear, and it had to be well done at that. My older cousin Freddy Mesquit Jr., by now had taken up electric guitar lessons and would play around the family with his hollow-body Gibson starburst beauty. He was quite good and loved to play the blues along with a harmonica, and he even taught me a few pointers on that harp. Well, this just entrenched me further into Guitardom!
Then, something again, totally from left field and new came into the Johnson home via their eldest son, me. It was 1969. They came like a storm in high gear with no brakes. Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page. It was my fault, I talked mom into letting me buy the ZOSO (LZ IV) album much to her dislike and worry as to what dad would think. I told her I would only listen to it alone while dad was out of town. That worked and I bought it for I think $3.00, brought the record home with a new excitement and curiosity. Well my little deal with mom didn’t last too long as I wanted to hear Jimmy's guitar constantly and when dad finally heard it one day as he walked into the house he said and I'll always remember the expression on his face, "What the heck is that NOISE!" He then proceeded to instruct me how to listen to this noisy so-called music with people around, low, low, low but not off. He always appreciated music for music's sake.
The rest is history now for us teenagers that opted for this style of play, they became probably the greatest Rock Band the world has ever seen. And my little brother, how did Led Zeppelin affect him? At first, he didn’t care for it at all, but soon he realized, this is really different and cool stuff. He also became a Zep-a-holic. All my fault. In fact, the Zepp actually produced a cut titled “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” on the 1976 album Presence. How ironic…
<<< The Revolutionary ZOSO IV Album
I left home in 1973 joining the US Navy to avoid going to Vietnam in the Army draft. Stationed in Virginia I continued searching out new R&R talent and settled on some groups like Robin Trower, ZZ Top, Mahogany Rush, Deep Purple, Supertramp and Kansas to name a few. Robin Trower and Mahogany Rush emerged as my favorites.
Then in 1975, another little band, three piece this time and yet unknown without much radio play to speak of attracted my eye and my ear. Enter "RUSH". My roommate Jack from Texas, a die-hard ZZ Top fan and I lived in the Navy base barracks at the time. He asked me if I had heard Rush yet. I said a little bit and that they sounded new and had a vocalist that had the highest and cleanest controlled voice I had heard yet, plus the guitar sounded really tough. So, I went out and bought their new album. It was "Fly By Night". Alex Lifeson suddenly overwhelmed me with his technical and sustaining tonal wizardry that Jack and I were "Rushisized" forever. Then guys would stop by our room wanting to hear this new sound and we all had a good time of it.
I was discharged from the Navy in 1977 and came home to California with my Hi-Fi equipment and record collection in tow. My brother Mark had a ball going through all those albums, some he had never heard of. So, he and his friends enjoyed a lot of new music as I did playing it for them. This is getting long winded but bear with me because what happened next in 1990 was what I think my grandest growth step in a long run of guitar music that has lasted with an artist of extraordinary talent to date! Mark was about to introduce me to someone equally as profound as Led Zeppelin was to him and I some 21 years earlier.
Now, by this time there was nobody greater than Jimi Hendrix, Frank Marino, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top and my old favorite, Robin Trower. I was now requiring large doses of technical guitar notation with a bunch of tempo changes that required the utmost talent, similar to the Flamenco type intensity and punch of Paco de Lucia.
After 29 years of critical listening and scrutiny of many lead guitarists and great instrumental groups, this is the man I most adore in the music world, bar none! I will try to put into those words I mentioned in the beginning the best way I know how, what this artist does for me and I hope someday for some of you.
Bye the way, we’re talking about Instrumental Rock n Roll & Jazz Fusion. And whatever you do..."DON'T LET HIS LOOKS FOOL YOU".
I had also been listening and learning about classical non-amplified orchestral music when in 1990, my brother Mark brought over a 1978 record titled "What If" by Dixie Dregs. The opening cut called "Cruise Control" immediately blew me away! I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I felt that vibe, you know when you experience something that fits just perfectly, and you don't want to let it go? It was exactly the way Led Zeppelin felt to me some 13 years earlier, and also how I felt when I heard Robin Trower for the first time, but with a MAXIMUM-PUNCH! This was Special! WOW, this guy is AWESOME!
Then came into the house all the Dixie Dregs albums with their melding of the keyboard, amplified violin of Jerry Goodman, and Steve’s Ernie Ball Guitar that I've not heard anyone since play this way. Steve was and is the most technical and proficient guitarist I have ever heard, and I've listened to a ton!
The Ernie Ball Steve Morse Guitar
Later in 1990, I went with Mark to see Steve play Acoustic guitar with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia at the outdoor amphitheater on the San Diego State University campus. The concert was billed as the Passion, Grace & Fire Tour. I was overwhelmed with the show but especially how Steve showed himself and his stringed wizardry equal and sometimes better in clean speed and agility to the two greats. Well now, I'm completely immersed in Steve Morse's play, nothing else will do.
I then discovered the "Steve Morse Band" formed in 1983. They soon became my main dose of music to the present, and from which I judge all other guitar talent. I now consider Steve Morse "The best overall guitarist in the World". I'll tell you why.
But first, I want to acknowledge some others that might be considered on the same playing field and I love them all. Eric Clapton, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Donald Felder, Alex Lifeson, Eddie Van Halen (for the Brown sound), Al Di Meola, and Stevie Ray Vaughn. You’re probably wondering about Jimi Hendrix, where's he at EJ? I have to put him in a class all by himself, there will never be another Jimi, and for that matter, Steve Morse puts him there also. So, there you go.
Now this is quite a group you might say, or you may not. How can Steve Morse be compared or even elevated above these great front men especially if I've never heard of him?
Well here you have it..............go to his website, www.stevemorse.com and you'll find out why. Read through the reviews and his e-mail responses to his fans and there will be revealed to you a real special man. And what’s really great about him is that he's a dedicated husband and father to his family.
In part I am paraphrasing another writer here, but I think Steve's play is so varied and with so much vision that I compare him before his time. He has a patented "double plucking" technique that has never been done before in all the years of my music experience. Also, in his arsenal of fret-board annihilation, he does a "power chord chop/mute" that is out of this world. I mean, nobody even tries to do this one much less record it to perfection.
On "Stressfest", Steve is careful to temper his grungier moments
with the kind of intelligence, taste and finesse that have been his trademark
from the beginning of his celebrated career. His acoustic work on
"Delicate Balance", a duet with bassist Dave LaRue,
reflects an ongoing love of classical music, specifically the logical moving
harmonies and brilliant contortioned lines heard in Bach and Handel. Then on
the other side of the coin is "Live to Ride", an all-out Rock 'n'
Boogie that rivals ZZ Top for sheer raunchy abandon.
In a career spanning five decades, Steve Morse has earned a reputation as a
meticulous craftsman, unerring perfectionist in the studio and chopmeister of
the highest order. And while he has been thrust into the popular spotlight on
occasion, first with Kansas and now with Deep
Purple, he is first and foremost regarded in industry
circles as "The musicians musician, the guitarists guitarist", the
premier player of instrumental rock after Jeff Beck.
An unassuming, soft spoken guitar hero, his precision cross-picking over Bach influenced lines confounds those novice guitarists in the audience who hope to glean a few of his secrets by seeing him play live with Deep Purple or The Steve Morse Band. His sheer string-bending intensity and mind-boggling speed on solo's tends to intimidate the best of them. And yet, in spite of all the accolades he has received over his illustrious career, Morse still considers himself a student of the instrument. "Every good guitarist that I know is constantly learning", he says. "The more you know, the better off you are, is how I look at it".
No matter how complex his music may become, full of moving harmonies and dizzying flurries of 64th notes, he is still firmly rooted in the basics. As he's said, "I was a kid when I first started fooling around on the guitar. I first picked it up because I was excited about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and all that, and I suppose that’s always gonna be there for me".
On top of all of this, Steve has become something of a guitar god having been inducted into Guitar Players Gallery of greats in 1986 after five consecutive years of winning the magazines Best Overall Guitarist Poll!
In the end, Steve Morse basically plays for the art and passion of music and those qualities of an artist is what most interests me overall, the music.
That’s my story, I'm glad you stuck it out with me and my obvious prejudice of Steve Morse. I'm hoping I made a small impact on your thinking about excellence in electric guitar play and that you go out today and buy some of Steve’s music, sit down for an afternoon with a cup of coffee and engulf yourself in some of the most impactful and beautifully executed tones and notes you will ever hear on a guitar. THEY WILL GROW ON YOU, BELIEVE ME!..........."EJ"
The Legendary Dixie Dregs WHAT IF ALBUM...
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