Jimi Hendrix Live (sort of)

It took a while to actually notice Jimi Hendrix. He didn't get frequent airplay. One experience that was very helpful was a performance given by Rudy Pacarro, Jr. at one of our high school (Punahou) assemblies. Rudy was the lead guitarist for a garage band called Sagittarius and the Vegetable Confusion. He played a Fender Stratocaster with the Andy Warhol banana decal from the Velvet Underground and Nico's album applied to the front.

Rudy played several of the cuts from Hendrix's Are You Experienced? album. I have to say that hearing Jimi's music live (even at the hand of a cover artist like Rudy) brought out the power of the music.

Even though all I owned at the time was an acoustic guitar, I realized I needed to learn how to play like Jimi. (No, duh. Me and every other guitarist!) The first step was learning the Blues Box. In its most basic form, it works very nicely over the key of E minor and its relative major, G major. This meant that with very little effort I could do a lead accompaniment to songs in both of these keys, and with a little adaptation, do the same for songs in the keys of A minor and C major. That actually covers quite a bit of material.

Next Installment: Using the Blues Box

All The Basic Guitar Chords

One of the reasons guitar is such a popular instrument is that a person can sound decent after only a week of study. A 2 or 3 chord accompaniment to a folk tune has even a rank beginner sounding reasonably good. It is mainly a matter of strength, toughness and agility in the the fingers.

Follow this link to a diagram of common guitar chords. Print it out and then use a highlighter to mark the chords you know.

Rather than playing through all of them as a boring exercise, it is much easier to learn them as part of learning songs. House of the Rising Sun, maybe?

Am C D F Am C E E Am C D F Am E Am E 

Discovering Dylan

My interest in Bob Dylan arose naturally out of a combination of revolutionary romance and my interest in guitar. His music was fairly easy to cover if you were a rudimentary acoustic guitarist with a second-rate voice. 1967 was the year Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits came out, and my buddies and I worked out how to play about half of the tunes on it. *

1. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"
2. "Blowin' in the Wind" *
   
3. "The Times They Are A-Changin'" *
4. "It Ain't Me Babe" *
   
5. "Like a Rolling Stone" *
   
6. "Mr. Tambourine Man" *
   
7. "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
8. "I Want You"
9. "Positively 4th Street"
10. "Just Like a Woman"

The really cool thing about Dylan was that he was folky without being ornate. While there was a certain amount of skill involved in replicating the finger-picking patterns heard in music by The Byrds or Peter Paul and Mary, this wasn't necessary to cover Dylan tunes. Since the essence of Dylan was in his lyrics, all one needed to do was to sing the lyrics with conviction and minimal accompaniment and one could pull it off. It helped that the accompaniment itself consisted of basic chords.

Blowin' in the Wind

G C G Em
How many roads must a man walk down
G C G D
Before they call him a man?
G C G Em
How many seas must a white dove sail
G C D
Before she sleeps in the sand?

G C G Em
How many times must the cannon balls fly
G C D
Before they're forever banned?

C D G Em
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
C D G
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

G C G Em
How many years must a mountain exist
G C G D
Before it is washed to the sea?
G C G Em
How many years can some people exist
G C D
Before they're allowed to be free?

G C G Em
How many times can a man turn his head
G C D
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

C D G Em
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
C D G
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

G C G Em
How many times must a man look up
G C G D
Before he can see the sky?
G C G Em
How many ears must one man have
G C D
Before he can hear people cry?

G C G Em
How many deaths will it take till he knows
G C D
That too many people have died?

C D G Em
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
C D Em
The answer is blowin' in the wind.
C D G Em
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
C D C G (C G)
The answer is blowin' in the wind.....

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Thank you!

Next Installment: All The Basic Guitar Chords

1967 Revolutionary Romance Part I

It was about this time that I became aware of "The Establishment" and knew that to be a part of it was a bad idea. Consequently, my taste in music tended to accompany this anti-establishment stance. Not all the music was particularly militant, but if it seemed to carry either a certain kind of feeling then it was "my" music. This taste was irrespective of genre. Some of the songs from this collection included:

• I Can See For Miles by The Who
• I Dig Rock And Roll Music by Peter, Paul and Mary
• The Beat Goes On by Sonny and Cher
• White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane
• Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group
• Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out) the the Hombres
• Carrie Ann by the Hollies
• Dedicated To The One I Love by the Mama's and The Papa's
• Penny Lane by the Beatles
• Higher And Higher by Jackie Wilson
• San Francisco by Scott McKenzie
• A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum
• Somebody To Love and White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane
• For What It's Worth by the Buffalo Springfield
• Ruby Tuesday by the The Rolling Stones
• Come On Down To My Boat by Every Mothers' Son
• I Was Made To Love Her by Stevie Wonder
• Respect by Aretha Franklin
• I Think We're Alone Now by Tommy James and The Shondells
• The Letter by the Box Tops
• Light My Fire by The Doors
• Ode To Billie Joe by Bobby Gentry

It was also the year Jimi Hendrix put out Are You Experienced? The songs didn't get a whole lot of airplay at first, except for Purple Haze and The Wind Cries Mary. When I first heard his music, I recognized that Jimi was already way out in front of all the other musicians I admired.

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Next Installment: Discovering Dylan

1967 Continued - High School

The year of the Summer of Love was the same year I took a paper route, and became a freshman in high school.

Having a paper route had a number of secondary implications. All of the paper boys smoked and had bicycles with banana seats. We explored the storm drains and could navigate more than a mile underground all the way from Manoa Stream to a manhole cover within half a block of my house. Having a paper route also meant I had more independence. Since it was the morning paper and I needed to wake up before dawn, I slept in a converted workshop space off of the garage so as not to awaken the rest of the family. It also meant I had a little money and could come and go as I pleased. It was also the year the shit hit the fan both societally and in my family life.

We got a new Chaplain at school, and he was a bit of a romantic revolutionary. Although he had been at the top of his class at divinity school, he idolized the courage and convictions of Daniel Berrigan protesting the Vietnam War. The Chaplain's Discussion Group turned from bible study to something that would sometimes resemble an encounter group and at other times resemble multimedia immersions. (These were slide shows and movies running simultaneously with music and commentary in the background.) It was the same year I went to Catechism class and got confirmed as an Episcopalian.

I had a scholarship job in the audiovisual center and as a consequence discovered and managed to watch a substantial amount of the films in the library.

There was a picnic table under a tree in the quad and taking a cue from Arlo Guthrie's song, Alice's Restaurant, my non-conformist friends and I affectionately dubbed it the Group W Bench. Between classes we could be found there, trading guitar licks and trying to get around to doing our homework.

All of this fueled what I could refer to as a romantic notion of the hippie counter-culture. At the tender young age of 14 I romanticized everything about it; marijuana and LSD, the revolutionary fervor, the clothing, the movies and the jargon. I hadn't the chance to experience it for myself at that point, but I was hungry for it, and so were my friends. On the home front, my stepfather was growing progressively more abusive and consequently I felt justified and even self-righteous about breaking rules.

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Thank you!

Next Installment: 1967 Revolutionary Romance Part I