Burned By The Sun........

A Lengthy Explanation of Why This Site Has Utterly Sucked Since, Like, January
I meant to post the Coachella stuff. I really did. But I had three papers or so to finish, and then I had pack up the entire contents of my shitty apartment so I could go home for the summer. And after that I had to actually drive back to Michigan. During the drive, I noticed that if every few miles you see a billboard for a fireworks store, you're in Indiana. If there are signs on fence posts along the highway urging you to repent, you're probably in Nebraska. If you are seeing Adult Superstores, shit, you could be anywhere. Seriously, there was at least one in every state I drove through. It's the one thing that ties our nation together. I find that hilarious.

Anyway, all that previous whining doesn't entirely explain it the lack of Coachella stuff or the lack of quality (or even an attempt at quality), I know, but now I have my good computer (with all my Coachella pictures on it), but it has no internet connection. So I guess the Coachella stuff's out.

I haven't been posting too often because there's nothing to post. That last semester damn near gave me a nervous breakdown with all the reading and papers I had to write. And with all that work I had no life whatsoever and therefore nothing worth writing about. Also, I got pretty burned out on just linking to and commenting on music news. I wanted to do something else, but I had no idea what. I'm still not really sure what to do with this site. But right now, I'm leaning towards writing some longer stuff, like my stupid rants, or maybe longer reviews of shows that I think would be fun to write about (just because a show is good doesn't necessarily mean it would be fun to write about. At least not in my case. Trouble is, you never know when these shows are gonna be). I didn't really want the site to devolve into a journal, or some account of my day-to day life, but now I'm considering that too.


People, I DO NOT Hate Jimmy Page
To change the topic completely, I checked my email today for the first time in months. Not surprisingly, there were more comments on my "Eric Crapton" a.k.a. "You Are Not Jimmy Page" rant. That thing has gotten me more emails than anything else I've ever written. And the emails can be divided into two categories: people who loved it and relate their own stories about some asshole hack guitarist who terrorized them in school, and people who yell at me for hating Jimmy Page and/ or saying Hendirx is the best guitarist ever.

I just wanted to set the record straight: I do NOT hate Jimmy Page. I don't say anything bad about him in the entire rant. The point of the title, "You Are Not Jimmy Page" is that those crappy guitarists think they're as cool as Jimmy Page, but they're not. I actually like Led Zeppelin, although I think "Stairway To Heaven" is one of the most overrated songs of all time. And the fact that everybody attempts to play this song, whether they can play well or not, is just irritating. Music stores have that "No Stairway" sign for a reason. Even if I liked the song I'd be sick of it from hearing people attempting to play it all the time. And they can never play the whole thing...just that damn lick at the beginning. But I digress. What I was going to say was that just because I'm sick of one song doesn't mean I think Zeppelin's entire catalog is crap. And just because I don't think that the ability to play guitar with a violin bow makes somebody the guitar god of the universe does not mean that I don't think Jimmy Page is pretty cool.

As for the Hendrix being the greatest guitarist ever, that is my opinion. The entire rant is an opinion. My site is a place where I, believe it or not, express my opinions. I know that just because Hendrix is my favorite guitarist doesn't mean he is the greatest of all time in both aesthetic value and technical skill and whatever weird criteria people grade music on. Many people throw the names of guitarists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Eric Johnson in my face, to name a few. Well, no shit, those guys are good, and are probably all better guitarists in a technical sense. But Hendrix is my favorite. He just is. Sue me.