The secret to the recent burst of Hawaiian erotomania?

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

There has been a little unfurling of confessions to Hawaiian-obsession here lately, and it answers a question I've had about a very large percentage of steel guitar music. And that was: any kind of steel guitar, whether lap, console, pedal, dobro, whatever, is capable of being played in such a way that slow, single notes can be absolutely gorgeous, wistful, joyous, forlorn... and that seems to escape the attention of a huge majority of steel guitarists! Or perhaps it's just the music machine, which certainly does seem to push flash over substance and rewards look-at-me "virtuosity" with most attention. So steel guitarists wishing to park their psyche under the "success" banner just naturally laud the speedfreaks, imitate them and only the blues (Sacred Steel) guys even dare sound "pretty" or "slow"... that is, except for these secretive Hawaii-heads who have been hiding this stuff from me for so long!

My own hopscotching nature is partially to blame, I went from Allman slide guitar to Miles/Mahavishnu fusion slide guitar (doesn't work worth a hoot BTW) then to pedal steel with a loaded 5+5 C6th armament, and only now "backwards" to the caveman gear; and although even there there's been "improvements" from an S-6 to S-8s and D-8's and S-12's and D-8's and T-8's and Q-8's and D-10's and 12's that are capable of playing chords that are harder to even name than to learn; and all along, really putting the Bobo-crank to just one single note in the right way, at the right time, may actually be a finer deed than spewing out two hundred and sixteen 64th notes!

And, I even knew that, I just forget sometimes.... Now, I do believe that musicians who, through years of hard work, have developed the capacity to play like hair-on-fire speedfreaks are also, in general ones who can play slow best - but they don't get many props for doing so, except for tricky chord work. Can you whistle or hum "Sleepwalk?" Or just about any tune off of the Vanduras CD? OK, now hum Emmon's solo in "Witches Brew" off of "Live 77." Hmmm. Idea

David Knutson · From: Cowichan Valley, Canada

Well said, David. I like the "hair on fire" image.

For me it's largely about texture in a song. I can bluff out a decent solo and hold my own when my turn comes around in a jam, but what I really like is the feeling that I'm doing just the right thing while the singer is singing. One well placed note or short phrase can bring more impact to the song and actually focus more attention on the singer. That's what being a side player is about IMHO.

Also, I've never really been good at speed.

Ron Whitfield · From: Kaaawa, Hawaii, USA

One of many things Jerry Byrd said that helped inspire and encourage me was that it took more skill to play slowly with emotion than to play fast. I too am no good at speed, so going the other route really helped, and that's usually the stuff I like best any way.

Speedy West is a great example of the two extremes, I find his slow emotive tunes to be way more enjoyable than his famed craziness. Unfortunately, there's not enuf examples of him really milking it, for my tastes.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

The early players like Sol Hoopii and King Bennie were on fire. These guys had the chops that people marveled at and, yet, could also play beautifully.

I am more attracted to music that the average listener would consider to be atonal noise. I'm a huge fan of Schoenberg and Berg and I love outside experimental music, particularly 60s and 70s jazz. I know that as I get closer to what I hear in my head, I will undoubtedly turn many people off with what I play. That doesn't bother me at all.

But no matter how far out I go, I will always love me some Hawaiian music and it will always be a part of whatever I do in some remote way.
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

David, what you said at the end of your second paragraph sums it up perfectly for me. I am so far past giving a rat's left ball how fast anyone plays, or how abstruse their harmonies are, that it's not even funny. Having started as a 12-year old with music of the Baroque, worked my way through a teen obsession with prog rock, then plunged into a multi-decadal journey through everything from bossa to Afro-Cuban to fusion, reggae to psychedelic funk to Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, and other artists as "out" as you can go - I find at the end of it all that a beautiful, memorable song that touches the heart is the sweetest, deepest musical expression I can find.

A lyric that speaks to some personal experience or perception of life, or a melody that surprisingly brings a tear to my eye - that is what it's all about now. Which - with all due amazement after a life spent in pursuit of "difference" - I guess puts me in the solid majority of everyday music lovers after all. Smile

Bill McCloskey · Posted 11 Jan 2013 9:06 pm

Funny this post should come along right now. I've recently have been overwhelmed by hawaiian music recently. It has always been there, but for some reason, I've had a door opening revelation about it and can't get enough. Haven't had that feeling in quite a while.

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

I'm pretty late to the lap steel party. In terms of serious steel studies, I haven't been playing for very long at all. I've played standards on guitar and tenor banjo for 30 years. (Gershwin, Kern, etc.) When I decided to give lap steel a serious shot, I figured I'd end up doing those same tunes on steel. I do some of those tunes on steel, but most of the tunes I play on steel are Hawaiian. Those songs sound amazing on steel, and they have all of same properties that I love in the American Songbook stuff that I play on guitar and tenor: lush melodies, a great sense of space, and the abilities to raise the hairs on the 52 year-old arms of a life-long cynic even after all these years.

Sincerely
Tony L.

Jim Pitman · From: Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA

Well put David.
I have an appreciation for the soulful well thought out single note melody.
For example listen to David Lindley without distortion and you realize he is so rooted in Hawaiin style steel.
Also listen to the sacred steelers emulate the human voice.
As far as PSG goes look at Loyd Green. Not a speedy technician but perhaps the most soulful white man still on the planet.

David Matzenik · From: Cairns, on the Coral Sea

Thanks David for a most interesting thread. It seems that speed and time fascinate musicians as much as physicists. One form of the Hawaiian music I especially enjoy is the hot swing of people like Andy Iona. If you take his version of Maui Girl, the tempo is quite fast ala Django. I think it is 2/4 with the rhythm guitars playing 8 to the bar. But it could be thought of as a fast 4/4 which all stresses the ‘tongue-twister’ nature of the song. “Kiwi a ka, kiwi a ka, kiwi mai. Kiwi kiwi pawali e.” Andy’s solo is sedate by comparison to the backing and quite melodic creating a great counterpoint.

I think it is not uncommon for young virtuosi to become carried away with their own ability and the exuberance of youth. It also must be admitted that a lot of Charlie Parker’s bebop convolutions would never have materialized if not fueled by heroin. Live recordings of acid-rockers in the early seventies gave way to the extended heavy metal guitar solos of later decades and they were mind-numbingly self-indulgent.

Most important to me is an interesting chord progression. The era of such song writing seems to have passed. There are probably a number of reasons why tonal quality and expressiveness have been usurped. Obviously, Hip-Hop/Rap and Punk Rock allow people with little knowledge or technique to get up before an audience and collect the adulation that was once reserved for people who had put quite a lot of effort into their art form. Speed of delivery easily disguises shallowness.

In this shallowness I think we see a wider aesthetic at play. Since World War 2, song-writing, fiction, graphic art, and cinema have all advanced a cynical view of life. Of course it is much easy to be negative than positive. Conventional wisdom tells us we must represent life as it really is, so music and art must be hectic because life is hectic. I cannot agree. Life is a choice we make, but in the case of the cynics it is something they have been sold or caught like a virus. I reject aesthetic cynicism without qualification and, like St George, would slay it where ever it raises its ugly head.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother.

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

David, we are so much on the same page it ain't funny. My wife did a fine arts program in University, and she was under tremendous pressure from her profs to create work that represented e.g. sexual abuse and the subjugation of women, environmental concerns, leftist politics, and the entire canon of political correctness. She, however, entered the program because of a passion for color, and for landscapes - and consequently had to endure a lot of harsh (and idiotic in my opinion) criticism and low grades. She has sold a lot of work since those days, which IMO is cause for hope. Smile

And let's face it folks: someone had to decide that it was the proper job of the artist to be cynical, to be society's critic and to eschew beauty in favor of a dark vision of reality; and not just dark reality but often as seamy and depressing as possible. It is, in other words, an opinion that this is the proper job of the artist, and we do not need to give it any more weight than we do any other opinion. Personally I think journalists already do such a bang-up job of feeding us a steady diet of blood, I can't think why anyone would try to compete.

Jean-Sebastien Gauthier · From: Quebec, Canada

Bravo!

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

As Paul Gauguin said:

L'histoire de l'art moderne est aussi l'histoire de la perte progressive de l'art public. L'art a de plus en plus la préoccupation de l'artiste et la perplexité du public.

(The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.)

Who am I to argue with Gauguin? Wink

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Gaughin also said this: "It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block."

That much, I agree with!
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links

Norman Markowitz · From: Santa Cruz, California

The single, sustained, piercing notes of Feet Rogers on "Kanaka Waiwai" with The Sons Of Hawai'i almost brought me to tears the first time I heard it. So much emotion and such purity.

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

I love great Hawaiian music, and I also love great hip hop, punk rock, bebop, post bop, bluegrass, 12 tone compositions, and every other style. My key word here is "great." It's not the style I like. It's the greatness. Every style of music has produced some truly great stuff, and that's the stuff to which I'm going to listen. I'd rather hear great hip hop than mediocre Western swing or Hawaiian music any day. For me, it's not an either/or thing. I want to listen to the best of everything.

Tony L.

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

As a painter, I'm sure my wife would agree with that remark Mike. Smile

Tony, everyone approaches the way they spend their time pursuing music differently, and as a guy well into mid-life I have made the decision to limit what I pursue; it all takes time, and time is the most precious commodity we have. My brother has a great saying: "this isn't your practice life." Given that I know I have a limited amount of time to pursue recorded music - never mind record, archive, and listen - I avoid all forms of music for which I don't care to do the necessary research, separating the great from the dross, whether it's punk or bebop or hip-hop or what I like to call "robot alien hamster-dance music" (you know, synthetic pitch-corrected bubblegum synth-pop). In any case, I have heard all these other styles, and plenty of 'em. Why go backward in hope of finding something I missed, or worse, spend precious time and money on potential dogs? I am aging; I am sentimental; I don't need new. New doesn't interest me.

So, by restricting myself, I am saving an enormous amount of time, money, and energy. I already KNOW I will loathe 99.9% of what's out there anyway, and will love most of the western swing and Hawaiian, so hey presto! - I still have time left over for work, my family, playing music, chores, exercise.

Win-win situation all around. Smile

Tony Lombardo · From: Alabama, USA

'Very cool Mike. I get what you're saying, and I definitely respect that sentiment.

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

great thread -
I will certainly count myself in and agree with everyone. i think the benefit of all this is getting this great music back out in circulation.

i like Mike's comments, and, since i've just reached the 40 year decade, i totally understand that at this point in life, i just dont have the free time and resources to check everything out as a musician would/should...which is different, imo, than a pure listener who can bounce around at random. I was talking with Paul Franklin last year at the Dallas show, and he mentioned Buddy Emmons' theory of "you have to have a big rake" which was, you have to listen to a wide range, but you also have to keep the "trash" out of your head. this was pretty straight forward 50 years ago - but there is a lot to filter out these days...and hey, everyone has their options and i never critic anyones listening - even if i have to leave the room.
its odd how as we age, we start to filter more and more. i clearly recall as a zit faced teenager, if you could play Jimmy Page's "Heartbreaker" solo, that was "it" - then if you could pull off Van Halens "Eruption" - those were the "tests" of if you could really play. if it wasnt on the radio, or in Guitar Player mag, i didnt know about it. i am so lucky, looking back now that by the time I was 20 someone gave me a Django tape and i never picked up an electric rock guitar again. that one tape opened my ears to the greatest musical era of all time, and to this day, i rarely listen to anything post-60's. the new bands i do like are often the retro based like the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Hot Club of Cowtown, etc. But like the Django tape, the Hawaiian music was totally off my radar for 20 years.
_________________
'65 Sho-Bud D-10 Permanent • '54 Fender Dual-8 • Clinesmith T-8 • '38 Ric Bakelite • '92 Emmons D-10 Legrande II

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

I have been lucky too Jerome! Found a great mentor in funk and jazz at age 17, lived in a community with a public library that would literally order any LP you wanted no matter how obscure, moved to a city where I hoped I could indulge my fascination with Latin American music with like-minded players and then finding them...it all helped expand my horizons. And now I want/need those horizons to shrink! Mr. Green

But whatever works for each of us, eh?

P.S. just discovered Hot Club of Cowtown myself a week ago!

Jerome Hawkes · From: Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA

speaking of new bands & the Hawaiian renaissance
if you guys dont know about this great young band, check them out:
http://www.sweethollywaiians.com/?lang=en

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3A_CAPo5nM&hl=ja&gl=JP
_________________
'65 Sho-Bud D-10 Permanent • '54 Fender Dual-8 • Clinesmith T-8 • '38 Ric Bakelite • '92 Emmons D-10 Legrande II

Rick Collins · From: Claremont , CA USA

"Brevity is the soul of wit."
Never, have I heard anyone say they do not like Hawaiian music.

Clayton Pashka · From: Ontario, Canada

I couldn't agree more! While I've just recently started to dabble in steel guitar I have been playing guitar for 25 yrs. To tell you the truth, the flashy guys aren't that impressive. Listen to David Gilmore from Pink Floyd, smooth hands and always the perfect note to create the desired emotion.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

It is kind of funny the way these things work in cycles. You see a lot of folks who in their younger days were into Punk Rock and Rockabilly and stuff like that later settling in to Western Swing, Hawaiian, and even Hot Jazz.

I was exposed to a lot of music when I was young and I was serious student of music, too, so beyond the usual guitar geekery and Heavy Metal, I never got too much into the Punk side of things. I don't know if I can specifically put my finger on when I first fell in love with Hawaiian music, but I do recall the Don Ho Show (and no, I don't think that was the catalyst). More likely than not, it was Gabby Pahinui in the 70s.
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links

Mike Anderson · From: British Columbia, Canada

Mike, you are so far beyond me in terms of skill and understanding. You very clearly mastered the old tricone styles - the videos of you with the Moonlighters is all the proof anyone needs, and your understanding of Hawaiian steel is undisputed.

I know we don't see eye to eye on some things, but I hope you don't think I'm trying to get under your skin; only a total schmuck would fail to grant you the respect you so rightfully deserve. So slip me some of that solid bop, gate! Mr. Green

Forum Index > Steel Without Pedals	Goto page 1, 2 Next	Next oldest topic :: Next newest topic