BrickHorn

Forget it, Pancho. It’s Helobius.

The authors of that analysis are the guests on the podcast episode I posted above.

“Stew Peters” sounds like a step in a Jeffrey Dahmer recipe.

Your only position, as it pertains to my posts on this thread, is that reasoned probabilistic analysis should be cast aside in favor of “common sense.” That’s about as weak as it gets.

Common sense and probability don’t mix. Ask someone to apply common sense to the Monte Hall Problem or to determine their likelihood of having a rare disease based on a positive test result, and they’ll fuck it up. The same is true for the lab leak coincidence. It’s just not that unexpected that a novel respiratory virus would emerge naturally in China and that, if it did so, it would be near a lab researching similar diseases. Notice that our resident font of obfuscation rattles off minute details about the realized outcome (outbreak in Wuhan), but ignores the other possible outcomes in the sample space (outbreak elsewhere in China). That’s exactly the kind of common sense on which conspiracy theories are built. I’m no expert in virology. But I’ve now read/heard two experts in the field explain that numerous Chinese cities house coronavirus labs. These folks don’t seem to think Wuhan or its lab are particularly unique as it relates to likely sources of Covid. But I guess these otherwise intelligent scientists should just trust their gut instinct instead of, you know, reasoned analysis.

Common sense is for dopes. But you already know that and, in fact, count on it.

Yikes.

I’m about halfway through this podcast episode on the lab leak theory. It’s a good listen: Starting at around the 43 minute mark, they address the ”too big of a coincidence” argument. One of the guests notes that big cities are where respiratory virus epidemics emerge and 8 of China’s 10 largest cities house labs conducting coronavirus research. His view is that it’s not unreasonable to be intrigued by the seeming coincidence, but further analysis reveals that it’s actually quite unremarkable.

Hey, at least we got a shitty wall made of inconsistent materials, slightly mismatched portions, and sloppy lines of uneven posts out of the deal.

That’s a really broad definition of pop you’re applying there. It seems more subjective (ie what is popular at any given time) than objective (ie categorization based on particular characteristics of a musical style). Nirvana came on the scene at a time when “pop music” meant Michael Jackson, New Kids on the Block, Prince, Madonna, etc. Nirvana literally shares little or nothing in common with those artists in terms of instrumentation, song structure, beat, lyrical themes, or anything one might consider relevant to categorizing music. You’re talking about the band that recorded “Negative Creep” and “Rape Me” and “Even in his Youth” and “School.” I could see calling them punk or hardcore or grunge. But “pop?”

Prog rog in general is tedious.

Okay, I’ll admit y’all had me going for a while. But this one was too on-the-nose. “Skill isn’t important to guitar greatness. True guitar greats dance and sing! In the rain!” I get it, I get it. If you think Prince is impressive, you should check out this guitar legend: And Prince definitely played some cool fills in the acoustic Cream version. But if that’s “otherworldly” to you, well… you have low standards. (And note that he doesn’t sing over those fills, just in case you weren’t actually joking about the whole singing and dancing thing.)

I get that. But skill is a prerequisite, imo. You can’t be great with only technical proficiency, but you also can’t be a great guitarist* without it. So, in the context of my particular unpopular opinion: Prince doesn’t have the requisite proficiency and, in my view, that disqualifies him outright. I also find his guitar work to be uninspiring and heavy on gratuitous showy-but-not-skillful filler elements like slide-ups/slide-downs (ironically, a mainstay of 80s hair rockers) and basic finger taps. So to use your analogy, Prince is like adding a shitload of random JJ Abrams lens flares on top of a Thomas Kinkaid. Makes for a fun live show, I guess. But I’ve never criticized Prince as a performer. His stage presence and showmanship are undeniably world class. And I’m still trying to find a video showing him playing the When Doves Cry intro live. There are some theories on Prince fan forums positing that he never played that solo live and that he played the studio track much slower and used an effect to speed it up for the album. * A guitar player can be a great songwriter (and thus, in an important sense, a great musician) without being a great guitarist. Kurt Cobain was the former, but not the latter. Same for Jerry Cantrell and a bunch of others whose music I really respect.

You’re confused. The guitarists on my list all have exceptional skill. But that doesn’t mean they have ONLY skill. They’re also very musical and heartfelt in their playing. And as I’ve said repeatedly, it takes both skill and musicality to make an all time great guitarist. By contrast, you continue to imply that proficiency is essentially irrelevant to greatness. And I find that ludicrous.

You are selectively reading my posts, and ignoring statements that are inconsistent with your attempts to dismiss me as some kind of shredder worshipper. I also wrote that I’m unfamiliar with his music. How the fuck am I supposed to form an opinion about an artist I am only vaguely aware of? Greatness is more than just musicality and more than technical skill. It’s a combo of the two. I’ve been very consistent about that.

Some of the guitarists I admire most are Page, Beck, Slash, EVH, Django Reinhardt, Marty Friedman, Mike Bloomfield, early Clapton, Chet Atkins, Alvin Lee, Johnny Winters, Doc Watson, Joe Pass, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Skip James, Eric Johnson. Those are just off the top of my head. There are others. Nope. I can play okay, but I’m not remotely great and I don’t claim to be. Which is why the fact that even I—at best, a competent hobby guitarist—could learn one of Prince’s most lauded solos (which it’s not clear Prince himself could replicate or ever played full speed) without much difficulty indicates that his playing isn’t special. I don’t know enough about his music and haven’t ever learned to play any Cult songs. So… no comment, other than Fire Woman is a banger.

No. That’s only one aspect of what I believe makes a great guitarist. Technical difficulty alone is not enough. I don’t count Yngwie or Satriani or Vai among the greats, because they don’t have great feel or musicality. And similarly, I don’t count Prince or White among the greats because even if they have feel in their playing, they don’t do anything special from a technical or phrasing standpoint. (I happen to enjoy White’s music more than Prince’s, btw.) And I don’t just apply this standard to musicians I’m not that into. Alice In Chains is maybe my all time favorite band and I love Jerry Cantrell’s playing. To me, he’s more soulful than Prince or Jack White or Gilmour and he wrote laps around those guys. But I don’t consider him an all-time great guitarist.

I never said Prince doesn’t appeal to me as a guitarist. I said he’s not one of the greats. He’s fine, he’s played some guitar stuff that’s enjoyable to listen to and, given he’s a pop artist, he has mildly surprising chops. But he’s nothing special as a guitarist, and his stuff that gets fanbois drooling is startlingly basic. Whatever. I guess it’s human nature to let subjective taste overwhelm objective thinking. Carry on with your cherished mythology. Oh and one request: if any of y’all can find a video of Prince playing the intro to When Doves Cry live, please post a link. I’ve looked and can’t find an example.

No. I actually, really, truly think Prince is not a great guitarist.

It’s my opinion that Clapton is a fucking idiot, based in part on the events documented in that article.

Billy is a national treasure. But see the links above. Dude never has anything less than fawning saccharine praise for other guitarists. So take his review with a grain of salt. That said, I don’t have to trust Billy on this one. I can play that solo, as can any number of amateur guitarists. There are plenty of resources to learn it basically note for note. Billy’s opinion was formed in the old days, before the internet and apps that let you slow down a track. And it was formed based on his goal: to recreate exactly what Prince played on that lick. Because that intro solo is so distorted and pretty fast, it’s difficult to pick out the exact notes by ear. Which is how guys like Billy learned back in the day. (It’s how I did it when I first learned the instrument, too.) But as hard as it is to hear what notes Prince is playing, it’s not hard at all to replicate the solo once you know the notes. I learned it in around an hour. Other solos by better guitarists have taken me months and there are some I could never get quite right. And by the way, it’s not clear Prince could play that intro solo. At least, not after the first time. He apparently never (or only very rarely) played guitar on that song live. And there’s a rumor that he played it slower and sped it up after the fact. Which, if true, makes it FAR less impressive (that solo played slowly is absolutely nothing to write home about).

I suppose you could get your opinion on guitarists second-hand from Eric Clapton, a well-known imbecile. Or from Billy Gibbons who, as much as I enjoy his music, hands out effusive praise like generic Smarties at Halloween. Or you could cite pianist Elton John as some kind of expert on guitar, which is a choice you can certainly make if logic and reason isn’t something you give a shit about. Alternatively, you could learn to play guitar, go through the process of learning songs written by countless different guitarists, and determine for yourself based on that experience how those guitarists stack up against each other in terms of their command of the instrument. For me, I prefer not to outsource my judgment. So I choose the latter. And based on that first-hand experience, I concluded that Prince isn’t in the top tier of guitarists. He’s not even second tier. He’s a decent player who laid down some decent licks that aren’t particularly unique or difficult to play. That’s based on my own objective experience actually playing the instrument, and not just reading opinions by dipshits, flatterers, and irrelevant sources. But reasonable minds can differ. You’re certainly entitled to your own—err, Eric Clapton’s opinion.

I think we’ve found common ground here. That’s pretty much how I view him, although I'm not sure about how massive his impact was. But that’s largely because I’m not a huge fan of his music, so I never really tried to play like him or bothered to follow bands that sound like he does.

That’s fine and I have no problem with people saying “I love listening to Prince’s solos.” Fair enough. And I’m also not going to defend soulless shredders. But tons of guitarists can play basic bends with feel. Prince didn’t do anything on guitar that wasn’t already done by countless predecessors, and he didn’t push the bounds of what’s possible on the instrument the way other greats have. He’s just a dude who got famous for catchy pop tunes and when people later figured out that he could also play guitar adequately, they jumped to overrate him. There are plenty of dudes who can solo with Prince’s emotion and with vastly more impressive technique.