Hey BVW, would you please gift us with a sample of your tasty guitar work? Many music fans admired the EVH‘s guitar playing, but now that he’s no longer with us, there’s a job opening for guitar god. Since you shared a little about how innovative your playing is, you may be the one.
NOTE - In case your record company, or marketing team or band mates block you from posting your work - as backup, would you please just re-tell your entire history regarding the times you’ve seen Blue Oyster Cult in concert?
So, even the BOC post wadded your thong the wrong way, eh?
Wow.
I hate to be this unkind, but is there a woman in your life who has witnessed this sort of behavior from you? Does she
actually let you touch her after seeing such petty, sissified conduct? If so, one must assume she's a dependent torso like in Boxing Helena or something.
Perhaps my view is just slanted, 'cuz my old lady wouldn't let anyone touch her unless he's extremely impressive in intellectual and emotional balance. Rest assured she was very happy to cross paths with me, LOL.
A bit of history. My grandmother was a loony hoarder and compulsive mail shopper. She joined that record and tape club thing not really knowing what she was doing. The first thing they sent, year 1980, was VH Women and Children First, a truly spectacular album. That album, plus getting shot by a scuzzwad criminal-wielded 7mm magnum rifle at the ripe old age of 12, changed my life forever and turned me from a very good jock/QB into an even better rock and roll freak.
Best thing that ever happened to me. Even as I write this, the injury, aggravated yet again at the ramp yesterday, hurts like bloody hell, but I wouldn't change it for the world. For the record, I've been disabled since age 12, but have never drawn a penny from it. Despite being a total oxycontin case, the last prescription I've filled was during the Reagan administration and two years after the injury and the bad news that I'd never walk well again, if at all, I beat the pants off future NBA All-Star and #1 biggest contract holder Larry Johnson at one-on-one. Devoted rehab can work wonders.
In all fairness, though, that prescription was filled during Reagan's SECOND term, though.
The last time I even took OTC meds was a good 5 years ago.
So, as you may imagine, the EVH thing was very significant to me. Was just launching the boat into Leafy Branch at Fork from a friend's ramp when I got the text. I think the bad news actually shut down the bite. Smart fish.
Two skills are of utmost importance to me. One is to be a
great bass angler. The other is to be a
great musician, composer, arranger, and engineer like, say Steven Wilson, the smartest man alive.
After over 40 years of experience, I've managed neither. I'm merely adequate-to-low-end advanced at both. I've given lessons to kids who blew my doors off after 5 months even though I got my first guitar in 1980. I should be SUPERB; alas, it hasn't happened. Same with bass fishing - I'm proficient, but when I look at how great anglers perform, it's clear I'm a rank amateur.
Still, I'm much like Steven Wilson, really....just with a lobotomy and two smashed hands. Some things I'm utterly brilliant at. Other things, not so much. With other things still, I'm an incompetent clod. So goes life. If I'm great at something, I'll freely express it. If I suck, I'll do the same. That's the only way to live.
These are significant, disheartening failures to me, yet I'm having a blast doing both, and that's what really matters.
Perhaps I'll break through those walls at some point, but I've so many hobbies (deep sky astrophotography is the latest one) and pursue so much fun in the world that it's hard to become elite at any one thing other than the things I was seemingly born elite at - writing, reading, talking, listening, driving steerable machines, and pleasing female minds and bodies.
How tragic it is that our life spans are so devilishly short to hinder mastery of everything.
There are much, much better things to which to listen than my work, I'm sad to say. But, all I have to do is look to my left at a long den wall holding one of the largest Paul Reed Smith guitar collections in the world and it all feels nice again.
There. Feel better, buttercup? Am I wess fweatening to you now?
I'll close with a relevant photo of a good friend of mine having dinner on my still-pristine shirt from the VH 1980 Invasion Tour, an event that forever changed my life. Over 500 shows later, the monster rolls on - getting better and better. Well, it was before the world came to an end.