Great way to start a Monday. Members of the UK band Little Comets play a track from their upcoming album, In Search of Elusive Little Comets, on one guitar. Close your eyes and you’ll never know it’s not a full band. Obviously the band knows how to promote themselves. Congrats! (via ReelSEO)

Little Comets: Site + Facebook + MySpace + Twitter + YouTube

Compiled by Gregg Miner and a host of contributors, the encyclopedia lists manufacturers, distributors, inventors, builders, and brands.

by guitarist Igor Prsnyakov.

What better way to pay tribute to Michael Jackson from a guitar blog. A solo guitar rendition of the classic ‘Man in the Mirror’. Just beautifully played!

Bluegrass Library is a collection of videos on YouTube from past television shows, including the following clips from Nashville Now (1983-93) of  The Nashville Network (now Spike), hosted by Ralph Emery, is on YouTube. There are some incredible – burning hot! – pieces of music in this collection. 

The first one features a list of who’s who of Bluegrass in one place - Chet Atkins, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Mark O’Connor, David Grisman, & Rob Wasserman. That’s a bluegrass dream team!

Here is a two and a half minute great-balls-of-fire piece with Jerry Douglas and Bela Fleck.

Shane Speal rocking out on his Cigar Box Guitar. [via BoingBoing]

Also check out a few video clips from the doc Songs Inside The Box.

The wunder-kid does it again! And I was just talking about the song.

Hotel California: As played by Sungha Jung.

I’ll never forget the part in Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of  Cairo where Mia Farrow accompanies Jeff Daniels with a Ukulele in a store. It made Farrow very cool to me. Some people have taken the Ukulele and shed a new light on it. Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a good example. So is Brittni Paiva.

Then there’s someone like Jake Shimabukuro, who is a rock star. He writes originals that makes you question your knowledge of what could be done on the Ukulele. There’s a lesson to be learned there: you go against the crowd with the instrument you love to play and the music you love to listen to – you can’t go wrong. Dedication is just not about practicing your craft. It’s how you embrace your relationship with your principal instrument, no matter how much the two of you look odd together, and tell everyone “This is my instrument, and we are gonna make music no matter what.” Think about it: is it any different than announcing your love for someone? And it’s not just about an unusual partnership with an ‘odd’ instrument. To announce your venture/journey with the coolest instrument in the world will also have its critics – same ones who always have a ‘practical’ solution to your life. It’s not easy, I’ll admit, to step up and tell others how you feel about someone, some decision, or career. But if your heart and gut is collaborating on that – it will have an impact on those around you, mind you, both positive and negative.

Once you’ve done that, you’ve stepped into the cool zone. And people can’t resist cool.

I’m in no way suggesting, nor do I know enough about him to do so, that Shimabukuro was anything but encouraged to pursue a career with the Ukulele. All that matters is, this guy most likely than not encouraged some kid(s) to shop for a Ukulele, walking right past the guitar section. That’s pretty cool, I don’t care who you are.

Related:

Ukulele Chord Finder

I’ll admit I didn’t know who he was until now. It was because Furtherton from Guitars and Life posted about Graham’s death. It was also because I’d read a guest post by Furtherton on Jemsite. I was there because the awesome Ava invited me to do a guest post for Jemsite – I like that blog.

It doesn’t quite end there. I went digging and found this video at Stephen’s blog, who found the following video and says this at the end of the post:

Did you hear what he did in the opening bars? That’s “Stairway to Heaven”, that is.

Talk about an ‘oh shit’ moment. You listen to this and tell me. I’d also suggest paying close attention to :20.

Graham popularized the DADGAD tuning according to Wikiepedia. He influenced legions of guitar players, of them Jimmy Page, Bert Jansch, and Richard Thompson’s names spring up more. If you listen to the samples posted at the end of this article you can recognize this style coming out of some of your favorite guitar players from the 60s and 70s.

Sometimes, we look at the obvious places for the obvious answers. When we do that, we miss out on something this, a comment by Eric from London, for this Songfacts page on the Zeppelin song ‘Black Mountain Side’

White Summer is an almost note for note thieving rip off of Davey Graham’s DADGAD classic ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ (DADGAD is not ‘celtic’ tuning but is Davey Graham’s own tuning developed to play with North African Oud players) Black Mountainside is not a tweaked White Summer – it is an almost note for note thieving rip off of Black Waterside by Bert Jansch – its in DADGAD but Bert plays it in dropped D (big deal of a change). Bert used to live with Anne Briggs and she taught him the song and the melody but not the guitar piece – that is Bert’s alone (Anne Briggs just plays an arpegiated D chord) So to say that Page is the best acoustic player for these tunes is like saying a kid who plays Steve Vai in a guitar shop is the best – anyone can be derivative and play covers, apparently only Pagey can stick his name on the tune and not get sued (but when you rip off folk geniuses who don’t make much money you don’t really expect to be sued.) In short Jansch = genius – Page = magpie
- Eric, London, England

You know Bert Jansch, right? But who is this Annie Briggs? I asked that too.

But that means what? Is Eric from London correct? Graham’s website does indeed say he invented DADGAD. But Yehia from Cairo goes back a little further:

There’s about 10 seconds on ‘White Summer’ which is a total rip-off from an Egyptian folklore tune (played on Semsemia). You can hear it right when Bonzo stops his first bit (around 2:12 to 2:23). All folklore songs from a town called Ismailia in Egypt are based around this very riff. Cool live track, though. Quite long but always entertaining. - Yehia, Cairo, Egypt

The plot thickens.

Before we get busy pointing fingers, influences work in mysterious ways. When you’re influenced by someone’s music, his/her/their riffs, licks, phrases will somehow find your way into your next creations. There’s little chance after listening to a lot of Gershwin I’ll be inspired to write a Megadeth song. You’ll be astounded, or maybe not, by the heavy influence of Graham’s playing on Jimmy Page’s.

Here we haven’t had a chance to ask Mr. Graham what his thoughts are on this influence thingy. Well, let’s see what we dug up here. By the way, Graham during the opening minutes plays ‘She Moved Through The Fair’

It all ties up somehow doesn’t it. Graham, the Oud. Curiously, though, the opening of that song in question doesn’t at all remind me of ‘White Summer.’ Rather it instantly made me think of the intro to…’Over the Hills And Far Away.’ Oh no? Go to :53 above. Now listen to this.

Mmmm. Still, we’re not saying anyone ripped off anyone because if we play that game, it will never end. Instead it’s better to simply say that Davy Graham’s influence is deeper than he ever was famous. At the beginning of the piece above, the man in the garden says (why can’t they have a chyron on these videos?) …  “we all latched on to what Davy did.”

Amen.

Davy Graham [Bio] [Site] [[MySpace] [Interview]

To Ava: All the above wouldn’t have been here tonight if you hadn’t emailed me about writing for Jemsite. You just gave me the biggest push towards the Bluegrass-and-me connection. Thank you! Of course, you guys too: Furtherton and Stephen.

The 1934 Rodgers and Hart classic, by the great Tommy Emmanuel.