Music Week ©

My uses for YouTube can be put into five categories:

1. Listening to music
2. Watching big wave surfing videos
3. Watching clips from Training Day
4. Watching crazy poker hands
5. Watching this scene from Game of Thrones

But I probably spend more time on Category #1 than the other four combined, so it is with great pride that I welcome you to Notes from a Prudent Man's first annual Music Week© !!

Each day I will link to a song I've obsessed over on YouTube. (or something along those lines)

If your chair has a seat belt, I'd suggest getting a new chair.

I was watching Californication (a show not good enough to watch at home, but perfect for passing time at work [for those of you with jobs like mine]) and heard a song that caught my attention. I googled the chorus and learned it was a cover of an old Blind Faith song from '69 called Can't Find My Way Home. (Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton's old band -- I was unfamiliar with their band.)

I went on youtube and found this acoustic recording by Winwood that I preferred to the studio version or any of the concert recordings with Clapton. (If you're in Clapton's band, at what point do you get sick of suffering through his guitar solos night after night?) (At what point is one of his bandmates going to stop playing and walk over to the mic and say, "Fuck! Enough!! Enouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh!!! We get it! The first 30 seconds are great, the next 30 are decent -- tolerable at worst -- but after that it's just annoying."

Anyway, if you like the song, you'll be happy to know that I've listened to umpteen covers and will link to my two favorites for your listening pleasure:

1. Yoichi Aoyama and the BM's - This might be my favorite version of the song, including the Winwood acoustic.

and

2. STYX - I've never listened to STYX, so I was surprised to hear the tone of this guy's voice. I like when they zoom out at 2:02 and you can see that the singer has had a long career and drank a lot of beer and eaten a lot of steak dinners, but is not quite ready to hang up the tight pants. (And he sure as hell doesn't need that belt.)


Notes on the Winwood acoustic version:  

He's in drop C tuning. Can musicians hear that and know it's drop C? (From watching his hands I could tell it was dropped tuning, but I dropped it to D and strummed the first chord with him and had the "oh wow" moment.) 

Disclaimer: the following theory is not based on any science or even a google search to see if other people agree with it, but here it is anyway: I think tuning a guitar down will make a cheap guitar sound slightly better. Maybe the lower frequencies are less effected by the cheap woods, I don't know, but I left my guitar in drop C (or open C, I don't know the proper name) for months after I played along with Woody on youtube.

Guitar playing readers, please feel free to chime in on this theory.


(the over under on Music Week posts is 3.5)