More Old White Guy Stuff I Hate (or, Some Playful Self-Mockery From Your Lovable SocioLoaf)

Greetings comrade! Welcome to the newest edition of Impending Doom weekly. My latest observation has to do with the filthy homogenization of our art forms, which is something I'd love to lecture you about until the end of days. However, since I realize I can't keep your attention that long (since we've all be conditioned to only being able to digest byte-sized servings of intellectual content, thanks internet!), I've decided to focus on one insignificant sub-category that I know everyone will thoroughly enjoy seeing ruthlessly satirized: GUITAR PLAYERS.

Now, many of you know (or have gathered from my previous posts) that aside from being the pretentious self-appointed author and poet that I am, I am also a musician, and a guitar player at that. Don't crucify me yet, for I assure you I am not the type that only learned two chords to sit under the tree and sing pretty only to drown in my own sad, false hopes of getting laid. Creating things that sound soft and beautiful is just not in my nature. So what is one to do if he/she really wants to delve deeper into the instrument, gain a better understanding of true musicianship? Well, you can turn to the legion old white guys.

As if they hadn't taken over enough of things to rightfully belong to you and me, the old white dudes have done it again. Take a look on the good ol' youtube (right up there with Wikipedia is determining the meaning of a construct we label 'the truth,' that is if you buy into the concept of hyperreality or if you're just really stupid). Chances are, you're going to find a lot of these guys:







Yes! These old white dudes can make an axe squeal like nobody's business... but the problem is they are all just 'improvising' the same old shit. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the phrases 'awesome blues lick' or 'shreds pentatonic scale' attached to guys who are essentially just doing a pathetic rip off of Stevie Ray Vaughn and trying to make a youtube career out of it. It's like this for all youtube informative guitar videos, even if you're just looking to check out a product, let's say, a pedal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQocfCvpxSw

...aaaand 0:26, old guy plays generic blues lick. 

How about an amp?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdDd57s1tI

This old white guy only makes it 0:11, and these are honestly the first two random videos I looked up. I could bore you with 2,000 of these, but I encourage you to look for yourself. I don't want to start getting into the territory of below 10 seconds for fear of losing what's left of my fragile sanity.

Youtube is breeding an army of kids that will grow into these manufactured musicians. Guitar players, my advise to you: LISTEN TO SOMETHING BESIDES OTHER GUITAR PLAYERS. You don't realize it now, but they putting a curse on you. It will turn you into a generic old white guy, and then you'll vote Republican and start wearing John Deere hats. No musician deserves to end up like that, so save yourselves now!

This may not be so hilarious to you, but for me it's another great spec in the grand American comedy. I used to want to be just like that, and rip some fat blues licks when I was a youngin' all to fulfill my rock and roll dreams But after hearing that same damn pentatonic lick for every little tweak or effect I wanted to know about, something just snapped. It's not rock and roll anymore because it's not special. It's boring, it's stale, and it's ugly. If music can't save us, I don't know what else can - so this is a plea for help. If you plan to make music, stay away from youtube and just go play whatever the hell you want, and play it loud. Get out there and make some babies cry, in the name of the American way. And if some old white dude tells you to work on your technique, tell him to go fuck himself from me. Thank you all and goodnight.