G3: The Sausage Party

As a member of the "old school" of rock guitarists, I cut my teeth on players such as Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and of course Eric Clapton. Later, when I still cared, I favored guitarists such as Phil Manzanera, Mick Ronson and Chris Spedding. So when my buddy Srini won two tickets to see the latest incarnation of the G3 tour, I thought "what the heck, it's guitar playing, right?" and last Friday went to the show at the Warner Theater.

As someone who has written my fair share of tunes, the tension between the needs of the song and need of some lead guitarists to strut their stuff is a given. Taken to the extreme you get extended guitar noodling with little or no real musical content, i.e. melody, arrangement, dynamics, you know the drill. So in a nutshell the G3 deal was just that, 3 hours of nonstop guitar noodling. Play a few chords, lay out a mood over a few measures and then it's get down to business time. Solo, more solo, additional solo, final solo along with a guitar flourish ending. Rinse, repeat. Occasionaly you might think, "well this is sounding interesting," and then it was back to full blown solo time. Nonetheless, the event did spawn a few interesting ideas.

First, we know there are 32nd and 64th notes, but are there 128th, 256th or even a 512th note? And if there were a 512th note, could you even hear it? Srini was not willing to discount the existence of a 512th note, but admitted that actually hearing one may not be a provable theorem. Next there was the issue of the sausage party. For the most part the crowd was decidedly male. A sprinkling of a few girlfriends and wives here and there and the occasional girrl shred fan, but mostly a "guy thing." Overheard while standing in the mile long line for the men's room after the Paul Gilbert set: "Ya know in Europe all the guys like to play soccer for fun, but here in the USA we play guitar." You betcha!

And what is it with these tired guitar god moves, such as the one Petrucci used where he'd put one foot up on the stage monitor and throw his head back? This move was then followed by a serious look at the crowd, almost as if he was looking for an acknowledgement of his guitar playing prowness. Looked like a cry for help in a way. The whole "guitar as a penis" metaphor kept getting loaded in my mind as I gazed upon the stage. The strutting, the posturing, the constantly playing on the 12th fret or higher. (Another question, could you have a 26-fret guitar or could you approximate playing that high if you could intonate over the neck humbucker? I don't know, just a thought).

So I think we need to invent a new gesture for these times. We have over the course of history used the middle finger and it's meaning is well known and immutable. The V-sign, once meant victory but morphed during my childhood to mean peace. Then, later incarnations of the rock generation used the index and pinky finger to express, well I'm not sure: I think either the devil or "you are bad!" As in you are so good you are bad. I think after seeing the G3 show, we need a fourth hand gesture. Here's how it would work. Hold your thumb and forefinger as if you are grasping a wine cork (or something similar in length). That's it. It's the universal sign for: "YOUR DICK IS REALLY THIS SMALL!"