Did I owe you an E string?

Owe me an E string.

Let's get you another guitar.

This episode we start with the first guitar trends that ever transpired.

And of course, it has to happen when guitars actually exist.

So we're starting in the 50s.

We're excluding acoustic instruments.

We're talking, I guess.

Suppose electric guitar.

Trends.

We're not librarians.

Yes, I'm sorry.

As Billy Givens would say.

There's no Be quiet sign in here.

So the first thing that happened, that was a trend in the guitar community.

They didn't just play the guitar.

They dressed like they were prom kings when they were going to play the guitar.

And this is this is not something that you see necessarily anymore when people are dressed to the nines and tuxedos and doing these certain performances.

But this was a trend where it was almost just as important to look the part as you were playing the part.

And I think that there's still iterations of this today.

Yeah, this trend is still going on.

From what I gather when I watch that footage, everything was a little bit more like luxurious.

Like even look at the guitars, they're playing like 3-3 fives.

Think about like B.B.

King, all those Blues guys and these rockabilly dudes.

If somebody's wearing a suit, but they're rocking, then there's it's just like a really cool contrast.

So I like this, this trend that.

Trend with me is cool but your suit better fit right because look at me saying.

This 50s era was also, as you mentioned, a very jazz centric era.

Blues was coming through but jazz was still the dominant form of guitar playing.

I would say, you know, Blues was breaking in, but jazz is what set the foundation and as a result, these jazz cats, jazzers, what do you what do you call a jazz?

Jazz musicians maybe look down on Nats, these jazz, these jazz cats look down on people who weren't on their technical level and who didn't agree with their tonal preferences, which they you know, they're great musicians.

They have extreme facility, can read music most of the time.

So these are people who truly believe that they should be able to keep the gate of what guitar tone is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, more power to them.

I get, I get that the the attitude that you have to have to be a mother fucker.

As they say in the in the biz, if you if you are crowned a mother fucker, that means you can play and I'll listen to you.

Also food for thought, like I was reading a lot about like Les Paul, like not the guitars but the actual guy Les Paul.

And his preference was as clean of a sound as possible.

So he actually wasn't a huge fan of like humbuckers like the humbucker pickups because interesting.

He said that it would break up too much, so he preferred the low impedance pickups.

Hence why like those Les Paul recording models that you'll see like in the early 70s have those specific low impedance pickups because Les felt like that was a closer to a super clear direct sound.

So it's really funny that you bring that up because that brings in the fat of like, OK, cool, let's think about it.

Amps were starting to come out, electric guitars were happening and people were realizing, man, if you turn it up, it starts to like get a little bit.

Wait a minute.

Yeah.

There's a little.

Bacon is it?

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, it's getting a little hot in here.

You know the tubes are starting to heat up.

I wanna read you a quote from Barney Kessel who is an incredible jazz musician session.

He was the first call for any music session, primarily jazz in in that 50s era.

But he said the fact that any man would go out on stage and set fire to his guitar or urinate on his guitar, there's nothing in that that makes me admire it.

I can't get past the disrespect shown the instrument.

Well, so it's just a certain mindset of that specific genre of musician, which was the only genre that people could consume, you know, other than classical music, I would say.

Yeah, And it brings up another point.

Like, you know, I remember like, I went to Berkeley for like a semester and a half, but I even remember a lot of the jazz heads there.

You know, if you even had a certain look or a certain guitar, you were already like scoffed because I think notoriously for jazz, especially like and it started kind of in this era, it was a lot about the conformist of you play semi hollow body guitars.

The tone is what it is.

And it's like you don't deviate from that.

The way the way that you set yourself apart as a jazzer is is harmonically, you know.

So like a lot of times I like that quote.

It's like I remember hearing quotes about Hendrix when he first came out and people were watching Hendrix do his thing and they're saying like, you know, this is the worst thing we've ever seen.

Like I even heard a quote that Leo Fender said do not send him guitars because he's he's literally ruining them, you know?

So you sit there and you go, man, it's, it's crazy how when you look back at things like that and how how polite guitar really was then compared to now think about like this headless like 9.

Strings Could you dare piss on a guitar?

Don't put the volume up a little bit.

Oh my God, you know, it's the devil.

It's like it's just funny to see and really, you know, like 7, well now it's been like 70 plus years.

You know how how much it's changed?

It's changed a lot as that brings us into the 60s.

For electric guitar, we have the British Invasion.

Oh yeah, it's many different bands you could cite there, but Clapton, Rolling Stones, etcetera.

This is distorted guitar coming to prominence.

There were some other things that going on as far as trends go.

However, beyond the cool guitar stuff that we tend to gravitate towards is like the beginning of rock'n'roll.

People were putting their guitar is pretty high.

Oh yeah, buddy.

There was there was this high strap syndrome, which you could say is a jazz thing.

So this is like sort of a fight back against the jazz cats from the Blues Peeps.

Yeah, yeah.

It's.

Like, why is your guitar so high?

Why is your tone so clean?

Why don't you put it lower and rock out a little more, maybe play some less notes, less chords?

Yeah, Yeah.

So it was like a direct rebuttal to the entire 50s mindset of you got to be clean and pro to and string your guitar up high.

You're a professional.

Come on, play music for the people to now I'm going to dress all I want.

I'm going to swing it low.

I'm going to play with distortion and messed up sounds you.

Know what's funny is like now that you're, you're saying that, which I totally agree with you.

It's like you think about the culture trends, right?

And in the 60s when it started to become like more liberating to dress how you want and break the mold.

Next thing you know, all the sudden you're hearing the Stones and you're seeing The Beatles with the haircuts and stuff.

And also in the guitars start to get a little lower or, you know, you hear the OR The Who, everything starts to get a little raunchier.

And it's funny to watch.

You can see like, a natural progression from like, 50s into, like, the early 60s.

They're still keeping it together.

But then all of a sudden, 6667, yeah, it's starting to get a little psychedelic.

And as you get into those later 60s you mentioned, The Who guitar destruction really becomes a showmanship thing.

So we went from the wearing the nice suits and prancing around to now fully destroying the entire stage.

And people still to this day, I think that trend happens.

I think you have to have a certain prominence in the rock community to smash a guitar.

I think that's where we've come to is like, some people are okay to smash guitars on, other people are not right.

So there's some sort of credibility that you have to have in order to smash a guitar, apparently.

But it's interesting to see who gets bent out of shape and why.

Well, and about.

Who?

And also, it's like the art of the smashing the guitar.

Like this is just my personal take on it.

Like when Hendrix did it at Isle of Wight, when he burned the guitar, you know, he had the lighter fluid and he goes to burn the guitar go completely over the top right.

And those first original people that did it, like a Hendrix or when Pete Townsend started to do it, you were like, wow, like, this is insane because it was matching the intensity of the music and it was matching the intensity of the era and the intensity of what we were actually seeing.

Like there was a good one that I heard.

You'll have to look at if you're listening or watching.

But Pete Townsend, you know, he started to get sick of breaking the guitars because he said when he first did it, it was out of passion.

And it was like, you know, he would leave it feeding back and it was broken on the ground and just walk away.

But one time he said he picked up a Strat that was like magic.

I think he said it was, like, 56.

And somebody said when he picked it up, yeah, that has direct lineage to Buddy Holly.

Like, that was one of Buddy Holly's strats.

And Pete was playing the gig, and he was loving.

And he said that there was a guy in the front row screaming at him the whole gig.

Smash it.

Smash it.

And he's like, man, these people aren't even here.

This guy's not even here for the music.

He just wants to see me smash the guitar.

And Pete was like, I'm not going to smash this guitar.

And at the end of the night he was so pissed off and frustrated about this one guy he just said fuck it and he smashes it.

He said that was the one guitar on the whole planet he said he wished he hadn't smashed.

Buddy Holly's guitar to boot, the original one of the original 50s guys just probably saying like, oh, you should button up your shirt and no doubt strap up your strap and don't smash anything.

Don't surely don't urinate on it.

But yeah, that's too bad.

There was also, there was also this trend, which I've done my research and I really do believe that the mean term Blues lawyer when it comes to guitar owners who maybe have a different career that allows them financial freedom to potentially purchase guitars they may not otherwise buy because they aren't they're skill set, they're what have you, whatever you want to say why they shouldn't have this guitar.

It set this trend in the 60s where I I credit this to Clapton because he has multiple guitar tones named the woman tone.

What was the other one?

The Beano tone.

Oh yeah.

People would hear this and they knew that Clapton was playing a certain rig, maybe a Les Paul or whatever you want to say, whatever they thought he was playing.

And people would go out and get these Les Pauls and, you know, maybe turn down the tone knob and be like, well, now I should sound like Clapton.

And this is the first.

I don't even think Hendricks had this effect on people.

Like no one went out and be like, I'm going to go buy a Strat and flip it over.

I think Clapton might have been one of the first ones who had the power to get the Blues lawyers out.

Even if they didn't have the skills to play anything like Clapton.

He compelled them to get this gaudy, expensive thing in the form of a guitar, which I don't think people did before this.

I agree with you.

And I think that when people hear, like you said, like the birth of the Blues lawyer, a Les Paul into a Marshall, you hear that playing Blues.

And the thing with that Blues guitar sound, I feel like on a simple term is it's a lot easier to decipher compared to, let's say, Hendrix, where Hendrix would have these streams of like subconsciousness of this craziness with Eric, when you heard him go, everyone could go, maybe I could do that.

Yeah, yeah, everything's, everything's articulated as opposed to a Hendrix thing.

That would just be like.

100% I think that's what it was.

These people that were kids then, you know, say they got their jobs, they figured out their life path and then all of a sudden I want the guitar Eric used.

And then it's like Les Paul's are like at now where they are at half $1,000,000 whatever for originals.

As we move on to the 70s, yeah.

Oh, here we go.

We get into some real heavy metal in rock'n'roll, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, A/C, DCI don't think the word or the phrase guitar God was yet used.

Some Hendrix headlines, maybe some clap.

I mean, Clapton was named God, but the concept guitar God, right?

There has to be multiple of these.

So if there's just, you know, the first couple, Hendrix or Clapton, we're using them as our proxies here.

They weren't guitar gods because there were no guitar gods necessarily before them.

At least they were not named as guitar gods.

So the term guitar God I think came about in the 70s when people were like, actually, we now have these guitar gods that we're starting to recognize.

You can only be one if people didn't have access to you.

I think that's the common denominator of all this stuff is we have so much access to people now, it's almost impossible for them to be behind a veil of mystery as these previous rock stars were.

And so it made them much more of an enigma to the layperson where you'd only see them a little clip here on TV or you would hear about them or read about them or see pictures.

So that's the nuts and bolts reason why guitar gods aren't as prominent or not named as they were in the past.

But some people reject the concept entirely.

How do you feel about the the term Guitar God?

I love it.

I love it.

It's almost like thinking about your favorite athletes in a way.

And it's like, you know, or like like a superstar.

It's like to me, the term guitar God is, is the same for the thing we love guitars as it would be for like, you know, an MVP athlete or, or someone that is absolutely on a completely another level, not only technical but creative wise.

That's the big thing I think a guitar God is dubbed with is I think like you said, after Clapton and Hendrix, it was like the lid came off and getting into the 70s.

We're in like the full like rock and heavy swing.

So like Sabbath is coming out, Zeppelin.

I mean these these monster bands, Pink Floyd.

But also what was happening was sounds were getting zoned in.

So it was like, OK, cool.

Like guitars were getting heavier like bands were getting.

We were zoning in on like what it was to the defining sounds of rock.

The term guitar God to me just really is someone that is in a league of their own, you know, on an individual level.

And I think that's what it's all about regardless of era or genre.

It's that creativity spark and being in a league of your own.

So like I love the term guitar God because it just it's, it just makes what we love and it amplifies it a little more.

And I think a guitar God also has a signature lick that every guitar player tries to learn 100.

Percent lick or riff.

There's something that they've contributed that has become like part of our Bible, our Scripture.

It's written in.

You could take the eruption tapping lick.

You could take the.

Let's see if we can figure this out.

What is the Neil Shawn thing?

Yeah, dude, I just remember being like, I don't care about anything else, but I definitely want to learn that little piece.

And just like that I'm like, I'm all in on journey and anything Neil Shawn plays because he gave me that.

Yep.

And that was, I'm sure you have a lick like that.

My goodness, I I mean I have a million licks like that, but like even like breaking it down more is there's guitar gods and then there's like the eternal guitar gods because then.

That's why I'm saying gods and demigods.

I don't know what.

Yeah, the eternal guitar.

Gods like the Eternals because like, that's like literally when you hear.

So you think about like Stairway or Free Bird on the radio, there's like 7 minute solos in the 70s and then you talk about these jazz kind of fusion dudes and they made it OK for the guitar to become its own voice, almost literally like a singing voice, right?

So I think what's especially crazy about the 70s when you look back at it is of course there was this rock and this, this birth of all of that.

But it's the offshoot stuff too, like, you know, the jazz fusion stuff like jazz rock, Southern rock, Blues rock, like everything was just kind of like, it was like a spider web starting here with this big rock thing.

And it was just like all of these universes that were being built at the same time.

And that leads us into the 80s quite nicely.

I think it started in the 80s and it's the term shred boy shred which has taken on a life of its own following along that jazz trend of looking the part that you are playing.

So these jazz guys in the 50s are playing these very regal, very pompously up nosed beautiful jazz stylings and they looked like they could be doing something like that in the way they were dressed.

And that came to reflect itself most notably in the 80s with the tight leather, the big hair, the pointy guitars, the high gain, all of the energy that you could possibly muster up, yes, came out in that time.

So do you think that this was a natural explosion or do you think it was always there and somebody unlocked it in particular?

It's almost like, you know, you can sight back to Hendrix and then sight back to Eddie, Eddie, the key to all of that guitar shred.

But here's what I think too, is like in the 80s, everything just got bigger.

Bigger hair, bigger guitar tones, technology.

Now people are starting to play more digital gear.

You know, there's still a huge wave of what was happening in the 70s being carried over.

But what I noticed was the crop of player when it got to the 80s was so good technically.

Like you had to be outstanding because at this point, I feel like guitar was a very, very common thing that a lot of young people were picking up.

So, you know, people were starting to get to this Olympian style thing where it was like I every town would have like it's super shredder, you know, and like you think about guys that were coming out this time.

I mean even young guys like Paul Gilbert, Van Halen, Envy, George Lynch, all of the Aussie.

Steve Vai just said Vai Sach.

Randy Rhodes, you know, like the talent level for technique was blistering and it's almost as if it's like steel, sharpened steel.

Everyone is so good and so technically great that it was like more is more like the invite thing.

And I think that's a beautiful thing that happened because in the 70s I feel like everything was a little bit more loosey goosey.

And it was like, you know, Oh yeah, just play the way you want to play.

And you know, like, of course there was a lot of Stinger, you know, guitar playing.

But once the 80s came around, it was like, we don't mess around anymore.

We are as high performance as possible.

And we're like as as little clothes and Hairspray.

And then you get the the whole vibe of the 80s, which is the guitars.

They started to change drastically.

Man, well, if you didn't have the ability to do a dive bomb, you might as well not join a band.

Seriously, if you don't have a Floyd Rose on there, then just stop where you are.

We're going to do something that we've never seen before, I think is where the sentiment came from.

It wasn't like, how can we make this as big as possible?

I think it was just naturally bigger and people were moving in that direction.

OK, so I had this, I had lunch with a friend recently.

He had a really good point.

He goes, Jared, you know, like when I watch you play and when you do your thing, you know, you do your thing.

But like, it's very 70s, sixties.

You like that Blues rock bass thing.

And it's like, yeah, you know, because it's like I feel like as guitar players, like it kind of works hand to hand with what you're talking about, what you listen to and what you come up on is like your diet of what you become.

And of course, there's variations and you can, you know, branch out and do your thing.

But he said something that kind of stuck with me.

He grew up playing guitar, mid 90s, right?

Started really listening to bands in the late 80s.

And he said that what he heard on the radio was not Hendricks and Clapton and Dwayne Allman, and that he was hearing Eddie Van Halen and he was hearing Rat, and he was hearing the 80s sound.

And he put it really simply where he just said to me, he's like, yeah, you know, I like Hendrix.

I like Jimmy Page.

He's like, that stuff's cool.

He goes.

But if you were to like, you know, equate that to, let's say, the X Games, you know, Jimi Hendrix was basically doing an Ollie or he was, you know, doing a, you know, a front front nose grind.

Whereas in the 80s, Eddie Van Halen and Warren Demartini and these guys were doing double backflips.

And he's like, and to me, he goes, I'm more impressed with the guys doing the double backflips.

And I and my, my, I said right back to him now.

I said, yeah, but there wouldn't be double backflips if.

And he goes, well, yeah, but now you're arguing like a lineage thing.

And he's like, I didn't say I didn't like those guys.

He's saying, but it's just where they took it, so I think.

I would say Hendrix was at least doing kick flips.

Dude, I got.

I kind of got.

Mad.

When he said it, because I was over there, come on, I was over there and I was like, you're saying Hendrix doesn't, you know, like an Ollie?

And I'm like, he like wrote the book.

But when you think about it, dude, in a certain way, he's not.

No, it's the IT the logic, the analogy is sound.

Yes, and it's it's a fun debate.

I always love having it because there's no right answer.

It's really what you're more passionate about.

What again, like you said, when did you discover this?

At what formative time?

And I'll die on the Hendrickson.

Yeah, you know, You know, it's like I'll die on that hill.

But when he when he said I went OK, I get it.

Yes, I, I don't, I don't, I disagree, but I don't dismiss, if that makes sense.

So as we moved out of the 80s, a real departure from pretty much everything we've talked about so far in this episode.

This is probably the biggest pivot I've in the guitar, electric Guitar World, where everything seemed to be going to this mountaintop and we don't even know what's at the top of the mountain, but we know it's really fast and really loud.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And grunge happens and everything gets slower.

It's still loud, but it's not fast sounds that are coming out of the guitar that are 60s esque, I suppose you could say sighting back to that kind of noise, offensive guitar sound.

And so in that regard, I get it.

But I don't really have a huge explanation for why all that progress of technicality and showmanship sort of just got halted, other than the fact that Kurt Cobain, you know, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, the grunge movement really was that special to completely mute essentially all other popular music around it in the rock world.

OK, so here's my take on it.

One thing we didn't talk about in like the mid to late 70s is like punk rock, which is almost and and I don't and it's not even like we missed and we just, you know, our brains are on the same track.

Lowest of the guitar straps by.

The lowest of the low.

To be below.

Your knees.

But I think there's this thing about what started to happen with punk rock where it was like anti authority.

You know, it's anti everything.

It's like take your rules and shove it.

I feel like moving forward with the 80s rock and 80s guitar, it got so over the top and it got such, it was like a character of itself to the point where like, you know when these bands would come out and they were so glammed up, basically everyone got thrown into a blender and it started to be like, OK, fast lead guitar.

And then it was like how much?

When is enough, enough?

And I think that grunge started to become the calling, just as punk kind of did, where it was like, man, guitar solos are lame.

Or like, you know, like take your, you know, over produced music and shove it because, you know, we're wearing flannels, I feel like.

Grunge kids were just lazy and didn't want to practice the shred.

That hey, I think there was a lot of that and I think a lot of it too.

Was it happens that they were actually musical masters in their own right?

I'm obviously kidding, but.

No, no, no.

But I think.

It's a real thing, like, hey, I don't want to learn to do that and stop saying I have to or I'm not a good guitar player.

You know what?

Fuck you, I'm going to write this.

Yes.

And it doesn't matter if it's even in tune.

Like it doesn't matter.

It's about my attitude, my aggression and my art, which I think is healthy and good.

I completely agree.

And also though, it's like when you start to peel back the layers of what was really making those guitar tones and like, you know, you think about like some of these bands like Kim Thale and and Soundgarden, Jerry Cantrell is like a master of his craft.

And I'm not sitting here to bat for him.

But when you start to peel it back, you go, you know, years later, what was the grunge thing all about?

You're like, OK, cool.

They were like, we ain't doing that shit.

Some would argue that grunge was the death of all guitar.

The 2000s, of course.

Y2K brought the new Millennium, yeah, and things started to go into the digital realm.

Y2K equals Internet and all sorts of technology that arise from being able to communicate with people across the globe and record things with tools that we never had access to for the entirety of humanity right up until this point.

So Internet coming into effect and this message board forum culture to where for the first time US guitar nerds could get together in a place I'll be at the Internet and make noise at each other.

That wasn't guitar, it was actually opinions which are way louder than guitar I've learned.

So the opinions of people were flying at an all time high.

And thus, as we know with the Internet, people form their opinions based on others opinions.

You know, you read something and it becomes your entire existence, which is very easy to do if you find someone whose thoughts resonate with you.

You know, maybe it just helps you double down on your own opinions.

But this was an era in the 2000s where I think things started getting a little angry and mean in the guitar community.

The trend of people sharing their opinions on guitar playing and what was good and what wasn't, I feel like everyone got a voice.

Cyber bullying, especially with guitar.

So before that bands or guitar players, there was way there was people were elusive and you're like, dude, what did he use?

And someone goes, oh, well, he did an interview with guitar player magazine where he said he used a, you know, ADS one with a vox wah wah.

And then you go wow, man.

So you hang on that, but then all of a sudden there's this forum, real time message board where it's like, no, he was this with this and this.

And then this is also not totally, but the birth of the misinformation about guitar stuff, which is the Internet, yes, which is the Internet Because then people say, oh, well, this is the year you want or this.

And then you go, well, why?

You know, they call it the information age, but there's massive amounts of misinformation, right?

Which is honestly kind of part of the fun of when it comes to guitar where nothing matters, That's it's not that serious.

People, people speculating about another guitar player's rig.

I could read pages.

Oh my God, how did he do that?

Oh, oh, you think he used a Vox?

Oh, no, it was two of these different brown amps, but they're not Vox.

But there was Avi.

Don't know.

Man, I've even gotten to talk to some of my favorite guitar players and I'd say, what did you use on that?

And they go, oh, I can't remember.

It's like, actually it didn't matter.

Or they go, oh, it was a stock, it was a really crappy stock, JCM 800.

And you're like, that's all I get.

I want, I want a treasure chest, man I wanted.

It to be the stuff that I just bought.

Exactly but.

This also this is a very important 10 year stretch because I feel like while we could have talked about guitar pedals in this sixties, 70s, definitely it's of course the 80s with synthesizers coming through technology trends.

I don't think really really became a communal thing than in the thousands when people started really again using the message boards to go back.

So not only rediscover old gear, but myself, I had a POD XT.

Oh, here we go.

The Line 6 Potter, that baby sent me into, you know, hyperdrive as far as like what guitar tone could because I had always just plugged into a little Fender hot rod.

Maybe I had a Boss Metal Zone, but it wasn't like I got to get guitar pedals until this era of like, well, you need it for this to sound like this.

And people started sharing their thoughts like that.

And I feel like this is the era where that trend really took off.

Well also like I 1st pick up picked up a guitar in like 2003, 2004 and I specifically remember my friend had a line 6 Spyder.

I didn't know anything about guitars or guitar amps, but he had this amp that when you twisted the dial it would have all these different sounds.

Reds and greens.

Insane mode and all that, right?

And I remember like we'd put on insane mode and we're like, whoa, like that's the sound of heavy metal because you don't know any different.

And I think if you're like me, let's say you started playing and like you where it was like, you know, early 2000s or after the in the modeling age, you started to I, I didn't know what a real plexi sounded.

I didn't care.

It was like, I have a line 6 or a pod and this gives me all the sounds in one.

So it's almost like also it's scary because you know, I look in this room right now and I'm, I'm seeing Marshalls and, and you know, there's all these different boutique and great tube amps.

But at that time, you know, when that's all you knew, it was kind of wild because like your sound palette started with that.

It's almost like starting with McDonald's and you're like, well, have you ever had like a really good steak?

And you're like, why would I?

I had a MC rib dude?

Like, why?

What am I going to do here?

This is delicious.

Yeah, this is delicious, man.

Nutritious.

You're like, dude, there's so much more.

A couple of genres which I think we're really important for guitar and creative sub trends is emo and pop punk, because we we talked about the 70s punk, but pop punk and emo, that guitar culture that really got a lot of people starting to play guitar almost in a grunge way.

But I felt like it was a little bit, you know, that genre is a little bit more guitar forward and technical and 100%, you know, with the palm muting in the in the fast tempo and.

Yeah, I remember so many great guitar players.

I was that kid that was going back finding clapped in in the 70s stuff for some reason.

I, it was probably because of like my dad or whatever, but I gravitated towards that guitar sound.

I was like, this is awesome.

So I just went for that.

And then I found Blues and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

But a lot of the kids that I knew that played guitar, they were doing that kind of, you know, emo.

They were all great guitar players.

Like they had to be of a certain ilk.

And they're playing fast and downstrokes, palm muting, yeah, you know, stacked chords, things that I had no idea what they were doing.

So it's a you're right, dude.

There.

It did bring a sense back of like, you know, the technicality.

Guitar straps very low and that's your owner all, all of the 2000s way low straps.

You couldn't find a a high strap insight in that era.

But then we got to the 2000 tens.

There's so many places to start, but we have to start with the onset of social media.

Yes, Basically took the whole gear forum thing of the 90s and early thousands and put it on steroids times a million because not only can you share your opinions now, but you can see what other people are doing.

This episode is about guitar trends.

The trends they fly through our community faster.

Sometimes I miss trends these days too.

I used Facebook video before I use YouTube.

Fun fact.

Nice.

But this, this social media, which social media actually used to be short form, right?

YouTube, like these horizontal videos that you're watching an hour of right now.

If you had a YouTube video longer than 15 or 20 seconds, don't even bother posting it and it'll get 2 views and going viral.

It was either that or two views, bringing them back to guitar.

Guitar players could now start sharing their techniques and sharing.

Not only that, we could post illegally DVDs online and and pirate things and and find out what our guitar heroes were doing to get the sounds and then we could find out what gear they were using through these videos.

So the onset of video and and technology and social media being the great equalizer of bringing people together, that has essentially set every trend since and helped us discover old ones and figure out what's wrong with them or see them repeat themselves again.

Well, man, yeah, you nailed it.

When I started to play guitar, the only way I can really say it is I remember the one of the first things I did to try and learn was I would go look at up tabs online and it'd be like 03034, you know?

And it'd be like this.

And I'd be like reading it like how do I play this exactly?

And I remember going, OK, cool, this is as good as I'll get it.

But more modern times, man, it's like I'll see young players now.

I didn't grow up with YouTube.

I wasn't on a computer really when I was learning.

I would have a literal boom box with CDs and I was learning like that and these new ish players go on a computer and they can watch someone do something and they can literally sit there and rewind it back and forth or like amazing slow downer.

Yes, things like that where all the sudden you have so many tools that no one before you had.

And I think that that's a really, really amazing way to just put it all together so much, so quick.

You know, there's older generations say, well, we didn't have this, we didn't have this.

Yeah, no shit you didn't have it.

But they do now and people are using that to its fullest extent.

Can have its own way of messing with someone though.

Whereas previous generations or even generations like ours, it's like I had to learn how to play on stage with the older musicians and that's I would learn, you know, things I was reading in Guitar World or whatever.

And if I had an instructional instructional DVD, but I was still in the like learning, oh, that's how we played that.

OK, cool.

But all of a sudden the lid was off when you could go online and watch everything.

And then it's like, Oh my God, man, we're in a completely new era.

And the trend of the phrase bedroom guitarist became a real.

It used to be an insult but it's how I started my career.

I I literally set up a camera in my bedroom and filmed my first guitar lesson that I would later turn into my app guitar super system and it led to 10s of thousands of students.

But I just literally set up my camera in my bedroom, Clicked record.

I had a tapestry hang up behind because I thought it looked awesome.

Yeah, you're like, dude, this looks sick, bro.

It was like a, you know, 360P video.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Just one angle.

I'm pretty sure I was given the the correct information.

It just wasn't pretty.

And that's a bedroom guitarist, I suppose, even though it's just a guitarist.

Like where do you want me to go?

Do you want me to go like to the basement?

Do you want me to be a basement guitar?

Like every the term bedroom guitarist being used in a derogatory way I always resented because first of all, I didn't know kids to be in a bandwidth and there weren't music.

I went to a small school and and so I was a bedroom guitarist.

That's where I learned.

And I think the problem comes into play when you get out of the bedroom and you can't like play with other people.

I think that's generally what the term means in a derogatory way, but just being a bedroom guitar, it's like that's not a bad thing.

If you play guitar in your house and just hang out in your room and play and that's your joy, it shouldn't be looked down upon it.

Never, man.

And, and even, you know, for me, it's like I've started the same way.

I was a absolute bedroom.

And then when it got too loud in the bedroom, I would go out in the garage and then we had a shed.

So I ended up going to the shed.

You were a shed guitar.

I was a shedder, dude.

Yeah.

But I'm shedding.

That's where they get the shed.

Yeah, the woodshed for practicing.

The way I like to look at guitar, especially nowadays, is we're all on the same Rd.

no matter if you like it or not.

Some people are just a little further down the path, or some people went off the trail a little bit and they're coming back on.

That's all it is because you're going to see a kid that you would say right now he's just a bedroom guitar player.

And in five years, that kid could be smoking guitar player, you know, because they're sitting in their bedroom learning, loving what we love and applying.

It anybody ever calls you a bedroom guitar player just be like yeah, I mean your mom's bedroom is pretty nice.

We had a lot of time US bedroom guitarist to look on the Internet and find out about gear as we had you know LED up to in our previous decade there.

But this is fully on.

We are on now two 10s, twenty 10s where boutique amps and boutique gear really, really became the hot trend.

This is the lowest line 6 has ever been is the 2000 tens where everyone was like, dude, line 6, get that out of here.

I need at least a bit $34,000 head.

I need a 410, not A-412-A410 with greenbacks.

OK, Ultimate peak of tone snobbery.

I think.

I think we've actually gotten better and people have cooled it a little bit, but this was like the most boutique amp companies.

I know this personally because I've worked with many of them.

So many boutique companies coming out of nowhere.

It's just like, hey, I have this hand wired $5000 amp from the UK.

Would you like to give it a shot?

Like, OK.

And now I feel like a lot of these boutique amps maybe just sitting around as ornaments.

You make a great point.

But not to diminish my love for them, but this was a very, very interesting trend that came out, I think due to the popularity of having more access to guitar players and being like, oh, they're really obsessed with old TS nines.

Maybe we can make a new TS-9 clone.

And maybe that led to what you know JHS is proliferated the the clon cloning and and all the clone pedals that exist today.

I think you're right.

And also I think for a while there was so much boutique stuff, and there still is that flies under the radar.

But I had no idea what any of it was at a point because I was like, I've never heard of it so much.

But I think that a lot of those, a lot of companies we know now like JHS or some of these smaller named companies that aren't these massive corporations that are doing amazing things now started at that point.

And then their products started to speak for themselves.

And then now those are companies that we just kind of assimilate.

Like, you know, whether that's.

I'm looking at your amps over here, Victory Amps, Bogner, Supro, or bringing these names back.

But when it comes down to it, I think you're right.

There was an era.

It was like a gold rush of boutique where it was like everybody and anybody was making an amp selling it for $3800 or $5000 people.

Were buying it.

Yeah, people were buying.

It it's like, yeah, I have this 100 Watt 2 bed for my bedroom and.

The biggest problem, I think with all that, man, is we started to forget what it was all about once Boutique started to really kick off, which was like, yeah, but like, doesn't really sound that much better just because somebody hand built it and, you know, and Scranton.

I have an 8 string guitar.

It's upstairs in my closet.

I'll.

Have to bust that out.

Yeah, well, that'll be a different episode.

It wasn't metal music that came out with extended range guitars.

It was something else.

I know gent is a word that we throw around but this sound, this industrial massive sound that was born of extended range guitars I think was sort of like AY 2K like thousands thing of like we are in the future.

This is the slickest, sexiest, non human thing that I can make.

Fan frets or like the the advancement of pick pickups or it's it's really wild to watch people that are obviously creative beyond a doubt take these kind of things and and make them morph them into their own to make music with.

It's it's really wild.

Bands like Polyphia, they were like the trending guitar band for I would say 2019 going into 2020 when that song GOAT came out.

I feel like that was the anthem for a lot of people who like this genre of music.

Where, oh wow, we can do it like this.

And Tim is one of the few guitar players that I've listened to in that genre who really feels authentic and human despite all of the, you know, flashiness, for lack of a better word.

Speed, control, precision definitely paved the way that I think I would be interested to know because this is the only era I've really been an adult in.

All these other ones we've been talking about, I've either had my head down or been a kid, so I don't know how.

Like the first time I heard Led Zeppelin, they'd already been out for 30 years.

Super just like unhinged, but it's precise.

It's technical beyond belief.

Where, where does it go after this?

Does it go back to like super old school?

Well, Jared, I'm glad you asked because I do have 1 little segment here.

This is the 20 thirties so.

Oh, the 20?

Just for full transparency, I I scoped out a couple notes just for this episode.

I'm going to do that from time to time.

But let's say the twenty 30s come around.

Where is guitar going to be?

We've gone through all the decades of electric guitar trends.

So here's here's my thought.

There could be AI assisted bands A.

100%.

I think that that could actually happen to where we don't want tracks anymore, right?

We don't want people faking playing to tracks.

We don't want that.

But AI is going to become, as it already is, a tool for people in text and video and art.

It's going to become human and tactile.

There will be like physical AI bots.

Real time AII.

Think there there's going to be musical versions of those and they're going to be something that people can collaborate with, whether it's just like a little computer on your desk that helps you bounce ideas.

This is this is the doom and you want to talk about doom and gloom.

This is something that I don't want to happen, but I can see tools being developed.

And again, we're talking about trends, not like this will be the world.

All these trends came and went.

So the trend of AII think is going to culminate by 20-30 and we're either going to do the grunge thing and be like no more of this anywhere in music, maybe no more short form videos, maybe you can't overlay recording.

You know how who knows how we will adjust our our gatekeeping abilities for who can share things and what we believe in all this?

Because I think there will come a time where we can't really believe what we're seeing, even if what we're seeing isn't even that impressive.

I completely agree.

You know, fake their situation, which is the one great equalizer of social media is you can't just be a great player.

You have to have some something to your personality.

You have to have something going for you Where you get your brand off the table beyond your skills.

It's just the way it is.

There's too many people out there potentially.

AI has the ability to impact this stuff.

I don't think there's any more technology we can really develop beyond that.

Like as far as pedals, guitars, amps.

Like I don't see any big time trends like the boutique amp thing happening or I got to get a clon.

We already did that.

I just really, I think it's going to be about composition and collaboration.

Hopefully that's with humans, but I suspect there could be some robotic involvement.

Well, yeah, and you think about it like that, like you even just said like, oh, we already did the clon thing and stuff.

It's like I don't see right now the twenty 30s us lusting for gear that's happening right now.

And I don't that's not a dig on gear that's happening right now, but it's just like, you know, we kept going back for the sounds of yesteryear and now we're getting so, so many years away from that that it's like those trends have already come and gone.

So it's like IA 100% agree with the AI overlords, man.

Like I know people at this moment that are sitting in a room writing songs with AI.

They're literally and I've seen it many times.

It doesn't seem satisfying.

It doesn't, but it seems as if the world in a lot of ways, and especially in the Guitar World, we want things to be as easy as possible, as streamlined as possible.

So when we're learning guitar and it's not a dig, but it's just the way it is.

It's like, you know, back in the day, people go, oh, we had to slow down the record.

You know, now we can literally go on the computer and or.

You know, we can slow down our fingers and make it look like we're playing.

It yeah exactly.

Now we now we can literally don't even need to know how to play so.

Thanks, Giacomo.

Thanks, dude.

I think it's very important though, and I think you're right.

I think there might just be like an absolute like rebellion against it where there's going to be these players, you know, I think even like Jack White and like that kind of tactic of like, it's like the more real, the more human elements the better.

And I think that that always wins.

Yeah, I do too.

Regardless of any of the decades you spoke about, that always wins dude.

The humanity behind it.

Yes, authenticity.

I think my favorite trend of this past few years.

People are understanding finally that there are disingenuous people on social media and on the Internet and portraying themselves in ways that maybe not be in the viewers best interests.

It's always in the best interest of the person posting it and so we are starting to become educated about this and as a result that will trick it down into the music industry where you have to be yourself.

There's nothing worse than somebody who's faking their art.

And if you want to be an entertainer, that's cool.

Create the biggest, most lip sync backing track show you possibly can.

Just make sure you're billed as an entertainer.

The musicians of the world who will lead us into the next decade in the future are the ones who put in the time and the energy to hone their craft and are great.

That trend will never go away.

Somebody has to be great in order to be on top.

What's more important is that artists deliver something worth consuming and not just another up cool, flip my phone.

Cool.

It's got to be more than that.

It's got.

To be something that makes people stop.

And I think that I don't know what that is.

If I knew, I would make it.

But the only thing that I know is true is the ingredients of that have to be authenticity and humanity and talent, skill, time dedicated to a craft.

That's what we want to see.

That's never going away.

And in the electric guitar or acoustic guitar, any musical world.

Just.

Being able to play your stuff and and present it out of yourself and without any enhancement or changes.

Because, news flash, as we've learned, you actually don't need a lot of enhancement to sound better than you are.

Hey, flash forward to 2030.

We're both super bald in like Star Trek outfits.

Just like.

Holding laser guitars.