Acoustica

On the way back from Fort Lee, I stopped by the Park City Mall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and picked up Grateful Dead’s Reckoning album, the acoustic live album paired up with Dead Set – which I’d bought a few years ago mainly because it has “Brokedown Palace”, a great tune from American Beauty. 

This was my second attempt to listen to this album, the first was in high school in Paris in the early 1980s.  At that time I plunked down the vinyl, preparing to hear some totally bad-ass music.   I mean, with a name like Grateful Dead and a skull and crossbones on the cover, and an album called Reckoning, we’re talking melting your face off like “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, right?

WRONG.   I couldn’t even get through “Dire Wolf”, the first song, before I took it off in disgust.  What the hell is this???   I gave the album to my buddy Sean C, and that was it for the Dead for a long, long time.   It wasn’t until Anthem of the Sun, which sounds Duane Allmann-y, that I could finally digest the acid country of the Dead.   This must have been in the early 00’s.   Yet I even saw GD w/Jerry Garcia in 1992 and 1995, so go figure.

This time around?  Well, I survived all the way to the last track, “Ripple” (also from American Beauty), though the “Bird Song” on here is underwhelming compared to the Fillmore East show in 1971 with the Beach Boys.  “Dire Wolf” is still not my favorite: “please….don’t murder me!”  Hardly a good theme song for the Stark family. 

As of right now, I have several electric guitars and no acoustics, not even a 12 string.  I really don’t like playing acoustic guitars.  A bulky body and super high action?  No thanks.  I can select clean channel on the Marshall and the neck pickup on an electric, turn on the chorus pedal, and that’s the sound I need.  Authentic?  Maybe not.  But it’s right.  And face-melting distortion is a footswitch away.  Acoustic guitars became mostly obsolete when Fender brought out the Broadcaster/No-Caster/Telecaster in 1948. 

I really do not like acoustic sets.  Let me articulate further with some examples.

Scorpions.  They did an acoustic album, Acoustica, AND an unplugged show in Athens, Greece fairly recently for MTV.   No sign of Michael or Uli, but Rudy pulled out his acoustic Flying V.  The highlight was “Born To Touch Your Feelings”, from Taken By Force.  Boring? No.  Tolerable?  Sure.  Exciting – and as good as the Wacken show with Uli Roth?  No way in Hell. 

Tesla.  Their Five Man Acoustical Jam (1990) started this nonsense way back when.  A few songs, like “Signs” and “Truckin” were OK, but mostly they butchered their awesome electric songs by making them acoustic.  Which is even more baffling because they’re named after Mr. Electric himself, Nikola Tesla.  Brian Wheat claims they resisted the idea, but apparently someone prevailed.  Fortunately they’ve been 100% electric since then, so Tesla himself can stop spinning in his grave, providing alternating current somehow.

Led Zeppelin III.  Tolerable.  The songs are… OK.  My favorite on here is “Since I’ve Been Loving You” – electric – and of the other two electrics, “Out on the Tiles” sucks a whole herd of donkeys, whereas “Immigrant Song” is …OK.  I like the Viking theme.  Granted, Page’s acoustic stuff is what makes Zeppelin so well-rounded, but I can take it in small doses only: the intro to “Stairway”, “Ten Years Gone”, etc., not a barrage of folk songs like III.

Alice In Chains.  Jerry Cantrell has some rare skill:  he can write original acoustic stuff that doesn’t suck.  SAP and Jar of Flies are both albums (EPs, sorry) which I listen to as often as any of their electric stuff.

Ultimately I find acoustic guitars boring and pretentious.   Remember that scene in the movie “Animal House”, where the guy on stairs sings, “I gave my love a cherry, that had…no…pit…” and Bluto (Belushi) comes by and smashes his guitar?  To me anyone with an acoustic guitar is “that guy”, and my inclination is the same as Bluto’s.  Don’t be “that guy”.