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Anyone like Jeff Beck?

jrbassman712

By jrbassman712
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PHILLYQ Newbie

PHILLYQ

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Well, I'm a Beck fan and I got the latest disc and after one spin I'm liking it a lot. It's similar to his last one, 'Official Bootleg', but a different bassist and the tunes are a bit more worn in and the players are adding bits here and there. I saw Jeff Beck about two years ago, and he's astonishing live. The sounds he gets out of a guitar are amazing, and he uses maybe one or two pedals, a slide sometimes and a pick for maybe two tunes! He does all of it with his fingers and it seems to me like a lot more than just a technical exercise or flash- YMMV.

  • 4 months later...
Parkertown Newbie

Parkertown

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Crap...I forgot about the R&R HOF gig last night. But I did pick up the new Jeff Beck Performing This Week Live @ Ronnie Scott's DVD and it's amazing.

You must see this show! Killer band. And the sounds coming from Beck's guitar are otherworldly... :tup

Edited by Parkertown
fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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Jeff Beck, assuming he hasn't gone bald in recent years, has never changed his hairstyle. It has gone in and out of fashion at least four times.

No good records for a long time though.

Ha ha! A man of constancy....
fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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I'd have to go back to my teens on this one. These guys were all heroes, the white brit boys leading us eventually to the black creators. We used to hear them all at rhe Fillmore. Beck was a no-show at Woodstock, I recall.

I liked him a lot at the time but as I myself became a better guitarist and musician I came to see how gimmicky a lot of his stuff was---like Beck's Boogie. He does tricks like going up the high E string with a 3 fret pattern. But when you're 16 and getting your first wind you're knocked out. I remember liking his lyricism. He played a really nice solo on Lookin' For Another Pure Love on Talking Book (Stevie Wonder), one of my favorite 70s records. Funny, it had that same ascending lick. Must be a franchise... Buzzy Feitin, another youth guitar hero I still admire (his time, especially as a rhythm player, is just sick) was on that track, too. I liked the second Jeff Beck group with Jan Hammer, it was pretty good. That tune Definitely Maybe (amazing I remember this s%^t) was pretty nice.

I guess Beck was as good as any of those 60s guys. I remember how Beckola ended abrubtly with like some feedback and it just ended cold. I remember getting pissed at a flatleaving friend and telling him 'you left me hanging like Beckola'.... He had a sense of humor, too, it seems. He supposedly told an interviewer 'girls are pretty, but they're too much trouble. I prefer my drummer'...

Jim R Newbie

Jim R

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I was never into the brit guitarists very heavily, having already been into the american blues players they were emulating. I will say I really dug "Blow By Blow" when it came out, though. That was the best Beck stuff I ever heard. I tried listening to it again about a year ago, and it didn't do much for me any more.

I will give the guy credit for being quite a technical wizard... I just never wanted to play like that.

fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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I was never into the brit guitarists very heavily, having already been into the american blues players they were emulating. I will say I really dug "Blow By Blow" when it came out, though. That was the best Beck stuff I ever heard. I tried listening to it again about a year ago, and it didn't do much for me any more.

I will give the guy credit for being quite a technical wizard... I just never wanted to play like that.

I never really heard him as a blues player. Of course all those (Brit) guys knew the blues masters---or should have. I think Clapton and Peter Green, and later Mick Taylor were the guys, having played w/John Mayall, a real blues band. Peter Green I'd like to listen to again from those days. He was into something real as I remember. Not such a trickster like Beck.

Beck is just a cloud from my past, one out of thousands of people our ears encounter, especially if we play. He was one of the guys we talked about and played his shit when passing a guitar around or listened to music. He was a good, but gimmicky player with a nice sound and nice, spurty creativity sometimes. A lasting influence? Hell no.

fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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Watching this I have to honestly say---with all due respect to Beck---I'm really glad I made a left turn into Charlie Christian, etc. at the end of my teens. He gets a good sound, nice sustain and all, but for one thing I find it rather light on content. A lot of guitar tricks and licks, as I remembered earlier from the mists of youth, though I do hear the blues roots. The other thing that's personally disconcerting to me---and perhaps me only---is a thing that's often, for some weird reason, confused with 'showmanship' in the rock/pop 'bigtime': this prancing around the stage, dramatic gestures, profiling, etc. It's really annoying to me. I watched a bunch of Stevie Wonder videos, and I love Stevie, big fan---especially of his writing---and had to just close my eyes and listen, b/c there was so much musically unneccesary shit coing on around him, all the singers, dancers, pomp, moving around by everyone, volume, etc. Finally I found a beautiful video of him performing You & I from an old PBS show---just voice/piano---and I could finally hear Stevie without all the window dressing. Back to guitarists: Wes sat down and played, as did every guitar player in my more mature tastes. You can be entertaining as hell sitting on a stool. Anyone remember Shelly Berman, the comedian? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with show biz. It used to be exciting to hear these guys live (the rockers/bluesers). I used to hear Hendrix at the Fillmore and he was an amazing showman (though probably half-deaf). B.B. King was entertaining as hell with Sonny Freeman & the Unusuals, besides playing his ass off as Hendrix did. But with a lot of these rock acts if you got down to brass tacks you'd see some musical weaknesses. With Beck on the video there wasn't all that much content to hold my attention, and all the strutting around and tomfoolery ain't gonna fix that. Just my opinion, and I appreciate the man's time put in and mastery of his style.

Edited by fasstrack
fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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No cigar there either IMO. He has the licks down but plays over the time and never settles in the groove, another thing I remember about his playing. Just sounds kind of 'white boy', sorry to say.The tenor player blew him away in every way musiacally. Nice sound, though. I appreciate a guitarist that can get a sound from the instrument. He showed he can do it quieter and probably would do the same w/acoustic. I give him credit for that and appreciate it.
Teasing the Korean Grand Master

Teasing the Korean

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I really loved what the Yardbirds were doing during the period that Beck was with them. The bassist and drummer, Paul Samwell Smith and Jim McCarty, did some really incredible stuff for guys in a rock group. There is that hint of psychedelia creeping through in the late 65 early 66 stuff. The mono version of the album "Over Under Sideways Down" aka "Roger the Engineer" is, even with a few weaker tracks, a pretty solid album that neatly captures that proto-psych vibe. All this culminated with the great single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." Then Beck was gone (Paul Samwell Smith was gone too) and the Yardbirds basically went to hell. I often wish that the sound of 1966 psychedlia lasted a little bit longer before its 1967 incarnation overtook it.

Edited by Teasing the Korean
fasstrack Newbie

fasstrack

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I really loved what the Yardbirds were doing during the period that Beck was with them. The bassist and drummer, Paul Samwell Smith and Jim McCarty, did some really incredible stuff for guys in a rock group. There is that hint of psychedelia creeping through in the late 65 early 66 stuff. The mono version of the album "Over Under Sideways Down" aka "Roger the Engineer" is, even with a few weaker tracks, a pretty solid album that neatly captures than proto-psych vibe. All this culminated with the great single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." Then Beck was gone (Paul Samwell Smith was gone too) and the Yardbirds basically went to hell. I often wish that the sound of 1966 psychedlia lasted a little bit longer before its 1967 incarnation overtook it.
Where's Teasing the Korean from? Does it have to do with Harold Sakata? Isn't he Japanese? Answer these or tell me to f%^k myself, but you have one of the funniest Internet handles ever. The other was so good one I actually wrote a tune on it: a guy on Branford Marsalis's forum calling himself Funbags McCracken.

Your name is more interesting to me than Jeff Beck, so please indulge me..........

7/4 Newbie

7/4

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Beck isn't a blues or a jazz player - it's all about rock and roll. If you think otherwise, you're confused.

Of course he's a flashy show off - that's rock and roll. I always thought of him as a mix of Les Paul, rockabilly and his own eclectic listening habits.

:rfr

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