last week i bought the 40th anniversary woodstock boxed set.. and yesterday had my first chance to sit down and re-watch the 4 hours of the movie.

i was a little disappointed that the bert sommer performance wasn’t included. easily the best tune played at woodstock. i can only assume it was RIAA executive feepers that had some problem with the rights. goobye RIAA (you DO know that you’re on your way out right?) none of us will be sorry to see you go.

after watching the who do “summertime blues” again, i can definitely say they’re version sucks dead bunnies…loud. sorry pete it doesn’t need electric guitars and wrong notes. or the stupid voice of boris the snorter (in joke for you who fans), or even pete’s reedy vocals. T.REX still does the best version of the song.

and my favorite gripe about woodstock? jimi “pretentious wanker” hendrix. i read some where that he would only appear at woodstock if he played last. pretentious wankers are like that. so what does he do, goes out there and plays with his teeth. you take his guitar pedals out of the picture and half the uploads on youtube sound better than he does. if you ask me the funtwo kid can play circles around jimi hendrix. how old was that kid when he made that? if you don’t buy that,then at least yngwie malmsteen, stevie ray vaughan or steve vai can.

AND….AND my favorite part? he didn’t play for half a million people (or whatever the final number turned out to be) he played to about 165. ok i didn’t actually count the number of heads, but if you take a look at that scene in film, you an see it’s not too many more than a thousand people. they’re all crowded to the front of the stage with a wasteland behind them.

looks good on you, you poser. pretentious wanker. how he got to be in the guitar hero category is beyond me.

anyway, the real tragedy of the movie is definitely the missing bert sommer tune, then it’s jimi hendrix.

here’s some guitarists that play better than hendrix: ritchie blackmore, rik emmett, eddie van halen (another wanker, but he can play guitar, oh, and eddie, you didn’t have to turn your back during solo’s, turns out you didn’t invent the hammer ons or pull offs), jonny lang, kenny wayne shephard, steve lukather, paul gilbert, trevor rabin, lawson rollins, dave murray, adrian smith, alan shacklock, or this guy. don’t know who he is, but he plays better than jimi hendrix.

at least the piano/keybaord slots are safe, your choices are keith emerson, rick wakeman, ken hensely, or jon lord. my vote’s for rick wakeman, this is why. and so is this.

anyway rant over. i’ve been thinking about doing a podcast about music. only two real hurdles in the way, can’t play any music without writing cheques to the RIAA. and my audience. anybody NOT musically informed. that would be pretty much anybody who didn’t know the connection between babe ruth (the band), fleetwood mac, and whitesnake. or never heard of those groups to start with. or ever heard of slik, hawkwind, blodwyn pig, or RDM (yes, that’s a ‘D’).

when i first saw the game i thought someone who could play guitar (for real) wouldn’t find it very much fun. i figured it was for air guitar wannabe’s

i had the occasion to play guitar hero II at an office christmas party. i had a blast. like everyone who picks up that toy guitar/controller for the first time, i sucked at the game, but it only took a few tries at Strutter (“as made famous by KISS” <snirk>) and Woman (as made famous by Wolfmother <double snirk>) and i started getting the hang of it.

i can think of 3 improvements that would make the game better. license the real songs so they can lose the “as made famous by”. get rid of that raised line on the yellow button, you have a tendency to “lean” on those buttons and you will get a blister on your finger if you play for any length of time…

last, license (regardless of the cost) at LEAST the following songs:

smoke on the water (this one is a no brainer)

bang a gong

whole lotta love

it IS called guitar here after all…

i can think of 3 or 4 other things that would be great additions to the guitar hero franchise (frankly, i’d be suprised if they hadn’t thought of them already), but i’ll just wait for game company to contact me

the game is worth the price, you get a lot of game play for your dollar.

one thing i forgot to mention last blog is that the new Babe Ruth album is the very first album i’ve bought electronically. i’m not sure it would eventually be available in cd format but i didn’t want to wait.

i’ve heard it a few times now and at first i thought the album would have fit between First Base and Amar Caballero, but now i think between Amar and Babe Ruth (the self titled 3rd album)

There’s no mistaking it for another band though. it sounds like babe ruth…

thinking of music, it seemed like huey lewis and the news disappeared. not that i listen to the radio much anymore but i don’t miss that band at all… there’s a whole slew of ’80’s bands i don’t miss.

as far as i’m concerned with the exception of a few albums in ‘84 and maybe half a dozen since then, music was pretty much over when disco became popular in ‘78.

i’ll go out on a limb and say the best music every produced was easily between ‘67 up to and including ‘77.

babe ruth has been one of my favorite bands for a long time.

every few months i’d check this “bobby shred” web site which seemed to have the scoop one what was going on with the band.

when i found out they were releasing a new album it was a bit of a thrill.

to ground this for people who are musically uninformed and believe me if you were born after ‘77 you probably fit into that category unless you went out of your way to find music from the 10 years or so before you were born.

anyway meatloaf’s 1984 album (you know when you were 7 years old?) “dead ringers” was produced by alan shacklock…who also happens to be the original guitarist for babe ruth.

the album work for the first babe ruth album was done by roger dean who also did a lot of yes album covers, you were probably 5 or 6  when “owner of a lonely heart came out” if you’ve heard of yes at all. roger dean  also did a few uriah heep covers.

to ground this even further, this was back when a band had to trash a hotel room for street cred. you know, instead of killing cops like the rap morons of today have to do to make it in the industry.

so… if you want to hear some great music check them out. if you were born after ‘77  AND like music from the early ’70’s AND  you feel like you really missed out…well you did. i kinda feel sorry for you… good news though: the cd’s are readily available for that era. sure you could download the music off your favorite p2p infrastructure but you’d be missing out on some great album artwork…