Mr. Dave

Exactly. you don't need to be playinga million notes an hour going up and down endless scales & arpeggios to be good. I sometimes think this is lost on guys like Steve Vai, although as you say some of his work is great, I loved watching him play in Frank Zappa's band and I bought 'Passion & Warfare' which in places I found kind of overblown and a bit too busy for it's own good. A bit too much technicality and lacking emotion, whereas Billy Gibbons has this briliantly dirty guitar sound and it's full of soul & emotion. I remember watching a documentary about blues and more modern artists were describing their American peers, mainly from the Mississipi delta. Keith Richards was talking about B.B King and saying how he was economical with his notes but he always hit the right note at the right time. I sort of feel like that about Billy Gibbons too.

Nice To see ZZTop returning to their guitar-based roots for this album. I love Billy Gibbons' playing for his technique, playing mannerism and tone, I rank him among the best, even if he's not as technical as Satriani, Vai, etc.

Another electronic group I happened across, 'Dreamstate Logic'

One particular love of mine next to guitar-based rock/blues/jazz is electronic music. NOT commercial dance music, though I suppose you could dance to some of it. Nothing can pound on my chest or shake a floor quite like the low bass from an analogue synth, I was a bit shocked the first time I plugged a Roland Alpha-Juno 2 I used to own into an amp, omg, so powerful. I don't do drugs any more but I can still get pretty 'disassociated' on some electronic music like Klaus Schulze / Tangerine dream & others. On my internet musings I came across this chap called Madis. His sound is a little more modern & rhythmic than earlier synth outfits but he still knows his way around sythesizers very nicely. He's done some 'remixes' or re-performances of some Jean-Michael Jarre pieces that he's taken in his own direction and there's plenty of his own material at his You Tube Page. This piece where he plays a laser harp is good, my only criticism is his compositions could be longer in duration, as the older outfits did. his you tube main page: https://www.youtube.com/user/DonMadis87/videos

Turn it UP

Also trailing behind somewhat with this but I have at least already bought it. Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons is oddly enough led by a chap called Phil Campbell, who spent 31 years playing guitar for Motorhead. After Lemmy's Death at the end of 2015 Motorhead ceased to exist and shortly thereafter Phil formed this band, and all the other band members except the vocalist are his sons, but as they were born in wedlock apparently Phil's missus wasn't too impressed with the band name. Really great energetic hard rock, but it's been taken in a different direction to Motorhead. I love it to bits

I know I'm somewhat behind the curve with this album but I stumbled into it on You Tube and it blew my socks off. Great southern-flavoured hard rock.

Hawkwind's live double album 'Space Ritual' from Lemmy's days with them. I used to own it on vinyl with this 6-panel fold-out sleeve, this tiny pic doesn't do it justice. It'd be worth a fair bit these days. I'd been feeling nostalgic as Lemmy's autobiography 'White Line Fever' arrived in the post today, I'm already about a third of my way into it; it's been very enlightening about the '60s band scene in the UK from someone who was there. Great Hawkwind album and it's easy to hear Lemmy's unique style of bass playing already emerging.

Well after someone mentioned Steve Jones I went on You Tube and found a Pistols gig from 2007 at Brixton Academy with their original bassist Glen Matlock. I ended up sitting up into the morning watching the gig, bloody great

It must sound a bit daft but I heard a fair bit of Talking Heads stuff during the '80s, but never actually saw them on the TV or in person. They're very different to the mental image I'd formed of them, not in a bad way, but I was starting to wheeze a bit watching that performance. I heard them on the radio a lot back then and liked what I heard at the time but most of what I bought in the 80s was Pink Floyd, Hawkwind or Frank Zappa OMG to think what that vinyl would be worth now.

What an album, especially 'Destiny' and 'In The Waiting Line', absolute masterpieces.

This may look like an odd choice but their arrangement & performance of Allegri's 'Miserere Mei, Deus' is the best I've ever heard, almost tear inducing. There's also a brilliant arrangement of Barber's 'Agnus Dei'. Also some excellent pieces by Faure, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Bruckner & others. Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea (I'm allowed to say that I'm British) and you have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to this but it's timelessly great music and beautifully performed. Can't knock that.

Especially the tracks 'Cool #9' and 'Luminous Flesh Giants' but I've been playing this album a lot the last few days. I've loved Joe Satriani's music since a friend put 'flying In a Blue Dream' on in my car a few days after it's release and I thought 'well bugger me this is good, how did I miss this?'

This arrived in the post yesterday. There isn't a bad track on it, easily their best album. I used to own it on green transparent vinyl, which was how the first few thousand copies were pressed. I only learned last week that their original guitarist 'Fast Eddie' Clarke died in January 2018, meaning all of the 3 original band members are no longer with us. That made me feel old. I used to be a huge fan of Lemmy back in my teens, as much for his time with Hawkwind as Motorhead. I remember standing in a shivery huddle all night long with some other fans outside the Apollo Theatre which was in a very rough part of Manchester (England) to get a front row ticket for their 3rd album 'Bomber' tour. I was 14 and my parents were not at all impressed. When the band came on, there was a big surge toward the stage and I ended up getting pushed away to the right and I spent the entire gig with my arms on the stage and their left-side (from their side) P.A. stack about 24-36 inches from my face. I had a very high-pitched noise in my ears for 2 days after the gig, bleddy great.