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Yes, Tzara, some of his works are among my best too, out of 20th century repertoire!
 
Ah the banjo; that twang and bite, that clear and rounded notational sound, that hollow ring in the overall tone.
While many see it as a funny instrument, even so far as being nothing more than a punchline or a derogatory indication of the player or those who enjoy it being a backwoods hick, I have to disagree utterly and with great disdain to such a dismissal. The ol' five string is a venerable, versatile, and vivacious instrument that can be used as a simple accentuation for a song or as a key element. It can be strummed in simple chords or just have plain yet pleasant riffs plucked out, or it can be whaled upon as the lead sound in a high energy, high skill frenzy of musical mayhem.
When played with the multi-finger plucking that has become fairly customary, it produces a more or less unique vibe to the music that is instantly recognizable when coupled with the sound produced by the instrument itself. When strummed or plucked like a guitar or other similar instrument it gives a distinct, biting sound that grabs the attention and demands the listener lean in for a spell. Well, it does for me, at any rate.

So, then, here we are: a few tunes on banjo that I dig particularly. You may like them, you may hate them, you may think I've mixed up my meds in a somewhat brain-damaging manner for liking them; but I don't particularly care, and you can't deny one simple fact: these songs are definitely being played on banjo.

Earl Scruggs and a slew of others at the Camp Spring Bluegrass Festival 1971 absolutely shredding Foggy Mountain Breakdown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJOIqmlI65Y

Ralph Stanley laying it down with Clinch Mountain Backstep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur7cXcU5Nlk

And just for fun, here's Rob Scallon, a rather talented guy, playing a song that's close to my heart on the banjo: Battery by Metallica. He plays it with plectrum picking instead of finger plucking, because of course he does, and the solos are played with some distortion, but it's still an interesting take on the song in my opinion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liBhu8DBzEQ

Rob also has banjo covers of Angel Of Death and Raining Blood by Slayer, but the solos by Kerry King on those songs are, well, poor, to put it politely. Mr. King likes to play feedback wails and to masturbate his tremelo arm instead of playing actual solos, so the music don't really translate to a banjo. So thanks for that Kerry.
 
I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed. I enjoyed all examples, thanks for the offering.
Of course the finger picking technique is adopted on the 5 string instrument so as to bring out the melody with the thumb over the finger arpeggio.
Here is an example of how we use the four string version as a solo lead instrument (or at least we used to) in Eastern Mediterranean tradition (with a plectrum and tuned as a mandola).
The recording is from 1933 of the rebetiko song "Lachanades" meaning "The Pick-Pockets"
by Rebetiko composer Vangelis Papazoglou (unfortunately no wikipedia reference apart from this).
Tablatures and various parts of my transcription of the song can be found here
 
pelegrino said:
I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed. I enjoyed all examples, thanks for the offering.
Of course the finger picking technique is adopted on the 5 string instrument so as to bring out the melody with the thumb over the finger arpeggio.
Click to expand...


It makes me happy to hear I'm not the only one who feels that way. While I was on Camp Lejeune I got to hear banjos every now and again (it being North Carolina and all); but even there, the people who played them treated them as a kind of a joke instrument.
There were a couple guys in the barracks on base who played, and they would bust one out every now and again during the big ass barbecues and building parties that happened every now and again, or whenever the party happened to be around their room in the building.
It was always like 'hey y'all, check this out!' and the guy would play a couple songs, and then everyone would laugh, more so than they were whistling, clapping, and cheering. Like it was just a joke. Like playing a kazoo or a slide whistle or something like that.
I always loved hearing it when someone (typically it was a southern guy, though there was one girl, in the building for a while, from Colorado who could pluck that thing like her ass was on fire and her hair was catching) would jam some bluegrass or blues on a four or five string. The last time I got to hear banjo music before the barracks was when I was a little kid and my grandparents would take me and my older brother with them to the Dixieland Jazz festivals all over California when we were little kids.
From those festivals, I'd always seen banjo as a real, no-bullshit, awesome instrument (because it is one). Then as a I got a older, I saw the rest of the world treating it as an indication of inbred hicks or as a shortcut for a punchline, and I've never understood why.
My metalhead buddies laughed about it when I told them I wanted to learn how to play banjo, of course; but then I played them some of my grandpa's old tapes from the jazz festivals to show them the shredding that goes down with jazz, bluegrass, and blues banjo. After that they didn't really laugh about it, and the guy that was doing the most in teaching me how to play guitar was wanting to learn banjo as well, and made a few copies of some of my grandpa's old tapes. A guy that idolized Tony Iommi, Dave Mustaine, and Ritchie Blackmore was suddenly taking time at music store to pluck around on the one banjo they always had hanging on the guitar wall every time he went in to buy strings.

I gotta say, I LOVE "Lachanades" and have put it into several of my playlists. The hopping, lilting walk of it gets my toes tapping and then some, dude. The little hops between simple and more complex picking patterns as he climbs up and down is awesome, and gives that little spark of musical joy that hits just right, when you hear one of those riffs that tickles you in just the right way, and is always so hard to find.
A lot of the banjo I've listened to over the years has been American folk, blues, bluegrass, Dixieland jazz, and stuff like that, with very little outside of that spectrum. I haven't had the chance to hear music from other regions/cultures/genres/eras, and getting the chance to hear an Eastern Mediterranean flavor with the instrument is not only a real treat to the ears, but a welcome step in having a point to start at in terms of looking around for more music to enjoy, you know? I didn't know that the music of the Mediterranean included the banjo at all, much less what it sounded like.
I guess I figured the closest it would get would be mandolin, lute, oud, or instruments like that. Hearing a fourstring playing in a Mediterranean tradition is simply awesome, and has secured itself as my musical task for the day. I'll be looking around for more music along those lines to feed the new aural hunger I have now.

I have the site you linked bookmarked, and I'll be digging around in it today to try to find the tabs, but I can't read Greek (I think it's Greek, at any rate; please correct me if I'm wrong. I've tried to learn a couple languages over the years, but my brain is kind of dumb and treats other languages the same way it treats math: with a blank stare, a little drool falling from a slack jaw, a finger up it's nose, and a slow and droning 'aaaaahh-wwaaaaahhh??' seeping out of its pitifully limited word-hole), so I'll be looking by-guess-and-by-gosh, as my grandma used to say.

I know we don't often agree or see eye-to-eye musically pelegrino (I don't know if your name here is supposed to be capitalized or not, so I do what I do when in doubt; copy/paste to avoid spelling, spacing, capitalization errors), and I'm really stoked to find some common ground between us that we can agree on. I know you have a lot more knowledge than me in the way of musical history and theory (most of the people here do. I'm just a headbanger who likes to listen to tunes and read up on stuff that interests me, with little understanding of how it actually works), and even if I'm a dick about it from time to time, I still read what you write about music, because I want to know more.
I like a lot of the music you post on here, and some of it falls a little flat for me, but that's just the way it is in the world. Seeing that there is something that we both can agree on musically, that speaks to us despite differences in musical taste or culture; it's something that makes me happy. Rock on, dude \m/

wD
 
Forbidden - A terrific and oft overlooked thrash band, with only five studio albums to their name. They have plenty of songs that seem purpose-built to rifle through the brains and veins of the listener, but this one is one of my favorites. It's the one that gave me the idea for the avatar I use here (simple and plain as it is; I'm no good when it comes to drawing on a computer), and is a song that I often find myself listening to when I'm trying to decide what to listen to for the day. This is Through Eyes Of Glass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KtWNarhqjg
 
wakingDown said:
Forbidden - A terrific and oft overlooked thrash band, with only five studio albums to their name. They have plenty of songs that seem purpose-built to rifle through the brains and veins of the listener, but this one is one of my favorites. It's the one that gave me the idea for the avatar I use here (simple and plain as it is; I'm no good when it comes to drawing on a computer), and is a song that I often find myself listening to when I'm trying to decide what to listen to for the day. This is Through Eyes Of Glass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KtWNarhqjg
Click to expand...

Not thrash, but I am currently watching a killer boot of a pro-shot Judas Priest show from Chile in '05.

I am watching my own copy, but this is a YouTube clip of Touch of Evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phs-DM85tis
 
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Found some good stuff. Well, I think it's good anyways. Check this guy out; he plays a bunch of stuff on guitar, doing percussion while he plays and sings. He does a pretty good cover of Seasons In The Abyss by Slayer (barring a flub on the lyrics at the end where he gets to giggling, but oh well; the tune still sounds great and he does the solo plenty of justice for playing it on an acoustic guitar, while still keeping the base note of the rhythm guitar running during the lead guitar's solo, for the most part), but the one that really gets me pumped is his version of Megadeth's Killing Is My Business... And Business Is Good! where he really shows what he can do with a challenging song while still having fun.
Eschewing the solos, he plays the song through with the same building and releasing sense of urgency and intensity that the original has, all with impressive and wildly abundant skill, and a charmingly light take on the performance of the vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3bxMnXLQBk

Up next is Camille and Kennerly, twins who play harp duets; and man, these two ladies can rock a harp. Their covers of rock and metal songs are just awesome. They turn heavy to heavenly and make it look simple and nearly zen-like in the process. I would suggest digging through any and all of their videos as they all kick copious amounts of ass; but I'm putting up two of my favorites from them. The first is them playing One from Metallica, the both of them playing it on a single harp. It's an amazingly well-built and unique take on a legendary thrash song that moves from somber to sinister to savage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhOhGhq0e54

The other is a cover of The Animals' version of The House Of The Rising Sun. Simple, elegant, straightforward, and a joy to listen to. Nothing fancy or complex, just good tunes done right. I really like this one and find myself listening to it more than a lot of the heavier covers. Give it a go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIdpmq-i91E
 
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Wanda Landowska -- a goddess with a steel-framed harpsichord:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKunRRke0xQ&nohtml5=False

67613-004-AD166039.jpg
 
Here's a good one, the original and the remastered version from Dave's perfectionist-spasm in '04. Slow, quiet, and atmospheric, Dawn Patrol is Mr. Mustaine's grim outlook on society's endless capability to turn a blind eye to the world crumbling around it.

Here's the original from 1990's Rust In Peace:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZRA7hKO-I&nohtml5=False

And the remaster from from 04:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE7xlBFJ6ro&nohtml5=False

I include both because to me, they both have a slightly different feel to them, a slightly different direction due to how the song is handled.

Here's the lyrics, in case you're interested:

'Thermal count is rising
In perpetual writhing
The primordial ooze
And the sanity they lose

Awakened in the morning
To more air pollution warnings
Still we sleepwalk off to work
While our nervous systems jerk

Pretending not to notice
How history had forebode us
With the green house in effect
Our environment was wrecked

Now I can only laugh
As I read our epitaph
We end our lives as moles
In the dark of dawn patrol'

enjoy
wD
 
Poison Was The Cure, from the venerable Megadeth. Three minutes that (to me, at any rate) describe the physical feeling of heroin addiction pretty well. As I explain it in the comment I put on the video; the first minute (bass and drum & guitar crashes) is the constant, slow, grinding, unbearable anticipation of the next dose. The second minute (verse and break) is that moment of revelation and release when the needle goes in and the plunger goes down, knowing that the third minute (solo and HOLY SHIT) of release and euphoria of what was so desperately needed is hot on its heels.
If actual addiction effects only happened over a space of three minutes, drugs wouldn't be outlawed and would probably be on sale at every gas station on the planet. But that's just not the way the world works.
Megadeth; playing rhythm guitar riffs that out-shred other metal bands' solos has been a staple since the beginning, and this song is one of those songs you can point to and say 'yup, right there, that's what Dave does right in that regard'
The lyrics are in the description of the video, if you're interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pok6dO4J6dg
 
This could be Lit's theme song: Spank It

Warning: involves "chicken pickin'" techniques and Led Zeppelin tributes. Make sure you hang in there until 6:19, which is when the good part starts.
 
AlwaysHungry said:
This could be Lit's theme song: Spank It

Warning: involves "chicken pickin'" techniques and Led Zeppelin tributes. Make sure you hang in there until 6:19, which is when the good part starts.
Click to expand...
Wow.

That's just . . . wow.

Thanks, AH. His Folsom Prison thing isn't too bad either.
 
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