A few years ago I'm watching a video called the "G3 Tour". It was a flashy audio assault by three of the most technically proficient guitarist to ever touch a fretboard, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. These guys are fast! These guys know every scale...infact, Vai actually made up some new modes (music talk)! You ask any guitarist who the best whom ever lived and these 3 will always pop up in someone's list. At the end of the show they all three came out for a 3-man jam to really give the audience something to remember. What did they play? Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World". Huh? A song by perhaps the world's least proficient guitarist? They picked that song because sometimes simple is better...and because it rocked. The audience went wild. Three of the best guitarist in the world jam to a simple 3 chord progression. That's what I want my photography to be. Well crafted, but simple enough to stand the test of time. No matter what flash comes and goes, I want to make art that will communicate effectively in 30 years. That's me, that old song that you just can't turn down. Don't stop believing!
My old guitar teacher saw G3 when they hit Houston. Billy Gibbons came out as a surprise and blew all three of them away - with about a quarter as many notes!
ReplyDeleteFlashy is cute, but rockin' will forever be cool.