Well fuck it. Anyone want to buy all my gear?

[Saul Goodman]

 

[Hbom]

Hey Saul. Don't worry about it. He's pretty good, but I'll bet you're taller.

[svl]

Don't quit because of that kid. Quit because of THIS kid...
 

 

 

[beezerboy]

don't worry.... crappy managers, sleezy girlfriends, drugs and booze will kill them off by time the hit puberty

[LucSulla]

For what it's worth, having chops is a pretty nice thing for the Rock 'n' Rolls, but it has never, ever been more important than being cool. 

After all, It is a popular art form evolved in the Deep South from years and years of research and development into best practices in encouraging people to fuck via soundwaves and words.

[Saul Goodman]

8 hours ago, beezerboy said:

don't worry.... crappy managers, sleezy girlfriends, drugs and booze will kill them off by time the hit puberty

Yeah, I missed my chance and have thought from time to time I would have enjoyed touring Europe with a band I was in around 1980. But then I think I probably would have joined the 27 club. The guys still alive from that band are now maintenance workers at an apartment complex and looking old. I have no regrets how things turned out for me.

[diablo175]

Them youngins is all talented and good but would they have the stamina to endure the better part of a life time of disappointment, playing in their bedroom or basement, tirelessly hacking away at the same old shit?  

 

[velorush]

Virtuosic playing inspires me! The only time in 61 years I have been convinced I should absolutely quite was seeing Shawn Lane live with the Willys back in 1986. The fraternity hired them for a fundraiser. They only got to play three songs before the police shut the whole thing down, but in those three songs I was convinced he said all that ever needed to be said on guitar.

I wasn't defeated at all - I was satisfied. Nothing more needed to be said.

This was about how it went down and two of the three songs they did that night (and yes, 1986 VHS to digital leaves a lot to be desired):

Watching that video it seems awfully meedly meedly, but being in the room standing right in front of him was different matter altogether. 

I do remember a night probably eight or so years earlier (I wasn't driving yet) my dad and his buddies going to the local AMVETS to see (what was left of) Black Oak Arkansas with 'some 15-year-old kid' virtuoso guitar player... 

[Saul Goodman]

20 hours ago, velorush said:

Virtuosic playing inspires me! The only time in 61 years I have been convinced I should absolutely quite was seeing Shawn Lane live with the Willys back in 1986. The fraternity hired them for a fundraiser. They only got to play three songs before the police shut the whole thing down, but in those three songs I was convinced he said all that ever needed to be said on guitar.

I wasn't defeated at all - I was satisfied. Nothing more needed to be said.

This was about how it went down and two of the three songs they did that night (and yes, 1986 VHS to digital leaves a lot to be desired):

Watching that video it seems awfully meedly meedly, but being in the room standing right in front of him was different matter altogether. 

I do remember a night probably eight or so years earlier (I wasn't driving yet) my dad and his buddies going to the local AMVETS to see (what was left of) Black Oak Arkansas with 'some 15-year-old kid' virtuoso guitar player... 

Interesting you bring up Shawn Lane. I was texting my friend from Memphis, Lynn Burk, not long ago and mentioned that I was a fan of Black Oak Arkansas as a kid. This triggered him because he grew up with shawn. He blames Jim Dandy and the others in the band for Shawn's demise and he sent me this video link. (In case you missed my post about Lynn, I bought a Cali Tweed from him when he was closing his music store and retiring and we became fast friends.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmy3zKBRsg8

[velorush]

3 hours ago, Saul Goodman said:

He blames Jim Dandy and the others in the band for Shawn's demise and he sent me this video link.

Fantastic tribute video.

Shawn Lane died of Cushing's Syndrome, a result of persistent treatment of Psoriasis with Hydrocortisone. Can't imagine Jim Dandy et.al. were at all a positive influence on a young Shawn, but neither can I conceive of any plausible connection between BOA and Psoriasis. 

If you look at video from the BOA period and compare that Shawn Lane to the Shawn Lane of the 80's and 90's, you see the massive weight gain that was a side effect of the hydrocortisone. Very tragic all around.

Don't know if anyone else picked up his solo album BITD, but I was greatly disappointed at how little guitar was on there. It was basically a piano / keyboard album. My guess was he was bored with guitar and maybe keys provided a more complete musical expression.  

[Saul Goodman]

3 hours ago, velorush said:

Fantastic tribute video.

Shawn Lane died of Cushing's Syndrome, a result of persistent treatment of Psoriasis with Hydrocortisone. Can't imagine Jim Dandy et.al. were at all a positive influence on a young Shawn, but neither can I conceive of any plausible connection between BOA and Psoriasis. 

If you look at video from the BOA period and compare that Shawn Lane to the Shawn Lane of the 80's and 90's, you see the massive weight gain that was a side effect of the hydrocortisone. Very tragic all around.

Don't know if anyone else picked up his solo album BITD, but I was greatly disappointed at how little guitar was on there. It was basically a piano / keyboard album. My guess was he was bored with guitar and maybe keys provided a more complete musical expression.  

My friend, Lynn's words, "Yeah, that piece of shit, Jim Dandy and most of those guys live here in Memphis. They fucked up Shawn turning him onto drugs and all kinds of shit." We were talking about how the guitar "speak" around there is. I mentioned Guthrie Trapp and how with every chord he plays he says something like, "It's a D minished 7th over 9 which is actually a 12 augmented......" I said my eyes just glaze over and within a few minutes I turn it off. I can't watch Guthrie Trapp now even when he doesn't speak. Then he asked if I had ever heard of Shawn, the greatest guitar player to walk the earth, he never speaks like that. Just shows up and plays. I told him I'd look him up. I guess Wiki mentioned BOA so my next text to Lynn was how much I liked BOA as a kid. That triggered him into the opening sentence in this paragraph. I didn't reply and didn't bring it up again because he's obviously pissed about something in the past. I didn't ask about the "drugs and other shit," but assumed it was what took out Shawn. 

So apparently there's something between Lynn, Shawn, and BOA that according to what you wrote doesn't have anything to do with his death. If it was Psoriasis then I would rather die of a drug overdose for sure. Just choke on my vomit and call it a day. Either way, very sad. 

[LucSulla]

I play so much like me at this point, that great players really don't bother me that much. I could be better at what I can do had I practiced more (or if I did now), but I still wouldn't sound like Shawn Lane. My brain and ear don't naturally go to the same musical solutions. I do go some of the same places in my head that Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Gilbert and/or Randy Rhoads go, and while I'm certainly not the player those guys are, their solos don't confuse me. The logic of their phrasing is more natural to me, so when I occasionally work through one of their solos for fun, I always come away thinking, "I could probably do that with a little patience and discipline. My fingers want to do that; they just don't want to do it that fast or clean."

EVH, Steve Vai - even Dean DeLeo! - those guys tie me up because I don't hear it like they do. Marcus King does that sometimes.- he has some simple jazz licks that are just completely out of my vocabulary. The latter two I can do if I have to through sheer repetition and memory. EVH I love because I actually like trying to look at a neck like he did because it's so weird. Once you start crawling inside of it, there is a logic there too, but it's so different. Steve Vai, I'd never bother with because his music doesn't speak much to me. Slash and Jimmy Page trip me up a bit too because they have this 1950s, Chuck Berry kinda major/minor pentatonic thing in their playing and transition in and out of it so cool. I bet there are guys on this site who don't consider themselves great players but can do that kind of thing all day long and run circles around me when it comes to that style. I never really learned it and only realized I liked it years later. Still kinda suck at it.

I enjoy working through Satriani and Uli Jon Roth stuff from time to time too. Those are two players that take solos places where I would like to go myself because I can hear the phrasing but don't know how. UJR has really helped a lot with understanding how Phrygian dominant, diminished scales, and harmonic minor all fit together and how to apply such that I can improv through them. 

I guess this is all to say that it's good to have players who inspire you, but I think the best thing to take from them and perhaps envy is not their chops but that they found a voice and developed into to such a degree. You're trying to get out what's in your head via a guitar, not what was in Tosin Abasi's or Yngwei Malmsteen's head. How well you can do that is really the only yardstick worth measuring yourself by. 

[Brooks]

On 10/7/2025 at 11:12 PM, LucSulla said:

Having chops is a pretty nice thing for the Rock 'n' Rolls, but it has never, ever been more important than being cool. 

 

Sig worthy.

[Kerry Marchman]

Don't sweat it, Saul. AI will take all their jobs....