Addicted to that rush

Ok, about a week and a half ago, I wrote up a little post about a cat named Shawn Lane. In that post I mentioned something about a guitar player named Paul Gilbert. Well, here’s his most popular band with normal consumers. It’s called Mr. Big. Paul’s first band is much more popular with technique oriented guitar players. It was called Racer X.

Anyway, in that post I talked about how I got mistaken for Paul many times over the past few years. Well, now I’m letting you hear a semi-commerical example of what Paul is capable of. In reality, this is very tame for what Paul can do. He’s a frighteningly fast guitar player. But he’s also a little looney sometimes too. Aren’t all musicians?

In the middle of this song you’ll hear a guitar solo that sounds like its on overdrive in terms of the speed of the notes picked. Well, there’s a good reason for that. Paul used an electric drill that had a triple pointed guitar pick on the end of it. Thus he’s able to rev up the speed of the picking, and that’s what that funky noise is you hear at the end of the solo. The drill being rev’d over the pickup of the guitar. Quite inventive at the time. In fact Van Halen even decided to use a drill soon after Paul did. I believe Van Halen used his drill on the beginning of Poundcake.

I remember Paul telling me a story about the drill and its use in concert. When a band wants to hear the crowd roar, often times they’ll bring a hand up to the ear and make gesture to scream. Paul was playing his guitar solo on stage by himself. He was using the drill and paused for a moment. He lifted his right hand up to the side of his head to make the gesture for people to scream. What he forgot was that he had the drill in his hand and it was still running. He had long hair. So what happens? Ziiiiiiiiiiiip, the drill caught some hair and wound right up to the side of his head. So he’s standing there attempting to play guitar and get a drill out of his hair. His tech comes out to help. They reverse the drills direction, punch the button… Unziiiiiiiiiiip and then ooops, re-ziiiiiiiiiiiip goes the drill right back up to his head. Eventually they had to unwind the hair by hand to get the drill out of it. How fun is that?

Anyway, I find that I like most people in that I get addicted to certain things. Not necessarily to addictive things like drugs, but other things like sports, cards, certain people, etc… Do you have something you’re addicted to? Is it another person. Cause that’s what this song is all about.

I know this flavor of rock went out with high button shoes, but I still think you should own it. Just for the sheer guitar prowess in the playing. It doesn’t hurt that all the players in the band are phenomenal. Buy it.