06.22.12
Grenade Day
Today the Grenades feature salutes American equating of merciless finger dexterity with quality. YouTube makes the giant weenie roast of the vanities easy, furnishing thousands of home videos of young people playing guitar along to their favorite heavy metal wanking tunes, proof of triumph in the culture of lickspittle.
Great minds work here. Everyone picks the same tunes to wank off on. Why not? With the music playing in the background as one wanks few care if you’re just another robot in a herd of at least one hundred thousand. If you’re strong enough to tolerate more than a minute of the samples of “the best” you’ll find the YouTube virtuosos often skip parts and flub notes when they think the record is covering them. And virtually none of them have the personality to even look at the camera, if they put their head in the video at all. But, boy, take note they shot themselves in HD!
Modern technology, like the iPhone in the kickoff video, abets. It is specifically made so you can play along with your favorite wanking tune, dub into it, and instantly upload to YouTube.
All in five minutes or less. You can easily see why iJunk, much like Facebook, makes the lame to see and the blind to talk.
A couple decades ago many ninnies said all the tech infrastructure would power democracy of expression. A DD Blog No-Prize for you if you can explain without smirking how the amplification and greasing of witless imitation until it drowns everything else out fits into it. Because make no mistake, YouTube’s Google-powered search specifically rewards slavish rote copying. Video-makers depend on it.
So here we go! (You can rate the excellence of the grenades by the amount of time they take you to wish to poke the player in the eye with a blunt stick. The shorter, the better.)
More bootlicking for iJunk.
This, a very special composite video, showing girls are just as pitiless and rote as guys. That’s progress of some kind. Hang around, if you can, to 3:34, where one of the lasses puts the pick in her mouth during the drum solo.
It’s in HD!
Totally ear-splitting and tinny but over half a million views. I couldn’t get that in ten years.
The same tune, just less ear-splitting. About now you’re wishing Eric Johnson had been run over by a car when he was ten.
A dog barks in this one. How long did it take for you to wish it had savagely attacked him?
Right now you’re wondering who should be killed for writing “Canon Rock.” It is gratifying to know it has not made him successful, only mindlessly imitated by stupid people and children. 50,000 versions on YouTube.
Mark Smollin said,
June 22, 2012 at 12:04 pm
I see you are a fan of Doctor Ironbeard
Chuck said,
June 23, 2012 at 10:29 am
If you’re a bassist, words probably do not describe the nausea felt when the Pachelbel Kanon is requested. Curious that no one’s every done a takeoff on the gigue that accompanies the canon, which is (only a bit) more interesting.
(Interesting–Firefox spelling correction suggests “bellyache” for “Pachelbel”…)
George Smith said,
June 24, 2012 at 9:32 am
While selecting these I noticed that there was also too many to mention ‘best bass solo’ videos, from children with instruments as big as they were all the way to adulthood. If I’d included any of them everyone’s browsers would have hung. As it is I trimmed a couple today — and may just sub links later — to make the loads quicker. These things give the machine a headache just as bad as everyone else.
bonze blayk said,
June 25, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Up front: I’ll admit that I kind of enjoyed seeing these WORLD’S BEST GIRL GUITARISTS “getting it on!”, despite feeling that they “have a thing or two to learn about True Guitar Tone”?
“IN back”, though, I’m not sure that you’re getting that a lot of these solo-wankfests are Virtual Auditions, and that part of the reason these get posted is because (some of) these kids are (probably) interested in connecting with other musicians?
And finally, I think I’m a lot less irritated by this kind of stuff than you are, Dick, because I just kill it if I’m not finding it at least “tolerable”.
“It’s me again!”
– bonzie anne
PS: I must confess I find “Canon Rock” kind of annoying; it’s a rather banal chord progression, embroidered with filigrees of melodic pretension. That’s OK, I guess, but for comparison, here’s Richie Blackmore… improvising a lead over “Gates of Babylon”.
It’s melodramatic and all, and maybe not “timeless music”, but I still enjoy it – because it connects on an emotional level (and Richie’s Got Tone!).
I guess I just have the feeling that if there’s gonna be wanking going on… don’t we deserve an orgasm? ;-)
George Smith said,
June 26, 2012 at 8:51 am
Well, that’s just it. It was Ritchie Blackmore, not thousands of nerd YouTube kids shooting HD videos with out even a single thought of personality or cleverness. I keep emphasizing how they virtually cannot look at the camera, or worse, just show the midsection. They seem to have convinced themselves that people get bowled over by just seeing the hands and pants, which aren’t even choice, by Blackmore standards. If these are meant as auditions, these people are the most feeble lot. Those who would recruit from such videos are equally feeble which, perhaps explains why some old bands looking for replacements for the old famous guitarist who hates them or doesn’t look so hot anymore, always wind up with faceless losers.
don’t we deserve an orgasm? ;-)
Pretty much. Or at least only a semi-duff faked one.