What does /mu/ think of Al Di Meola?

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>>74813993
One of the greats on his instrument, but not even close to as a person.

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Al Di Meola

Meltdown [1970s]

"Wow, I can play high speed scales XD"

May as well listen to Kirk Hammett playing.

>>74814095
You do know that Christgau has a hateboner for jazz fusion.

>>74813993
he's from one of those virtuoso schools of prog / hard rock that only people who aspire to be play like them listens to.

100% skill, 0% composition. Only good if you see them play live.

>>74814188
>0% composition
Elegant Gypsy and Casino are his crowning achievements. It's a shame most of his discography doesn't even approach those 2 albums.

>>74814188
Just like Robin Trower.

>>74814127
>"Wow, I can play high speed scales XD"
It's as if the guitar is the only instrument you can play scales and play fast on.
>May as well listen to Kirk Hammett playing.
Sure, when he collaborates with the artists Al did and starts playing jazz and flamenco, I might.

Jazz guitar blows away rock guitar for complexity/virtuosity so much that it's incredible.

>>74814272
Of course.

>>74814170
Yeah, but actually it has more to do with the fact that he dislikes guitar virtuosos with no songwriting skills or expression that noodle for the sake of noodling. Kind of like Yngwie Malmsteen.

>>74814296
It's not even about that. His reviews, if you can call them that, often don't even address the album in some cases even remotely, but he still feels confident in his convictions. But then again, what else could he do, given that his criticism consists of nothing more than sophisticated emotional descriptors.

Guitar virtuosos are always better live than the studio, even Jimi Hendrix...live performances of his absolutely killed his studio stuff.

>>74814272
that's the point of jazz mate. in it's purest form it's based entirely on live improvisation

it's both their gift and their curse as it means almost all their studio albums sound the same.

With that said Mahavishnu Orchestra throws almost any fusion band I've heard straight out of the athmosphere.

>>74814364
Eeh, Hendrix's albums where less about virtuoso playing and more "look at these wacky sounds I can make!"

>>74814364
>>74814272
Are you implying that Jimi was a virtuoso? I don't think you are, given that Al is a perfect example of one.

>>74814410
Quoted >>74814272 by accident.

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Underrated Return to Forever album.

>>74814408
Hendrix wasn't the most technical guy, his gift lay in his incredible expressive ability.

>>74814170
Jazz fusion was kind of bad, it was like the final death rattle of jazz during the 70s.

>>74814170
He said he's listened to a lot of jazz, so he's never been impressed that much with rock guitar solos.

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>>74814127
Bologna! The guy can shred but has exceptional compositional skills as well. See Elegant Gypsy.

>>74814505
Reminds me of the guy who said his cousin saw Frank Zappa and that the (redneck) audience booed his attempts to play classical pieces, they just wanted to hear him do mindless boring blues guitar solos.

>>74814465
he oozed personality. He basically pioneered hard rock and lots of hard spychedelia sounds by himself just because he could.

>>74814479
it wans't bad per se. it was just on the last stage of it's mainstream presence.

I've noticed that all major music genres have an "end of mainstream" phase when most artists turn to virtuoso demonstrations of the genre.

Fusion was that to jazz, the final gasp for air as rock replaced them in the popular gestalt around the early 70s.
In the same way, Math Rock and Post-Rock became that for Rock proper - in the same decade it got popualr people started calling it dad rock en masse, and your average sub-20s in the USA only cared about EDM and Hip Hop
Tango had the same thing too - in the 60s and 70 the only popular aritsts that remained where Piazzola and tango fusion artists who where primarily technical virtuosos. The genre was then repalced by rock and latin rhythms in argentina.

It's interesting that "pop genres" like latin rhythms and pop proper seem inmune to this and have retained the same ideas consistenly for like 70 years.

>>74814608
Frank zappa mistook a social venue for a venue of fans of the genre. most poeple just listen to what the grew up listening unless they take music as a legit hobby.

>>74814658
Pop is really an all-encompassing over-genre of music distinct from rock, jazz, country, or anything else.

>>74814658
>Frank zappa mistook a social venue for a venue of fans of the genre. most poeple just listen to what the grew up listening unless they take music as a legit hobby.

Or more likely he was just playing to the wrong kind of audience, evidently these guys expected to see AC/DC or something.

>>74814479
>Jazz fusion was kind of bad, it was like the final death rattle of jazz during the 70s.
It encompasses everything from Miles' Bitches Brew, Sun Ra, Chick Corea, Allan Holdsworth to Pat Metheny's "smooth jazz fusion" and Weather Report's Heavy Weather.

>>74814658
By the 80s, jazz was finished completely and all you had was buttjazz like Kenny G listened to by stoner fratboys.

>>74814688
from where I stand, the only true overgenre is folk.

I guess we could argue pop fills the same social niche as folk did before radio

>>74814827
also Spyro Gyra

>>74814827
And then Dave Matthews Band.

>>74814567
>>74814272
I mean, you're not gonna see Ted Nugent come up with anything like Flight Over Rio.

>>74814259
Kirk Hammett has never even written his own stuff, he's been playing recycled Mustaine licks for 34 years.

>>74814923
>Flight over Rio

Mah nigga!' Listening to Al DiMeola and Jan Hammer trading chops is pretty incredible.

https://youtu.be/qXtMCVHDddI

>>74814998
Speaking of which, I wonder if Dave Mustaine ever listened to Al Di Meola because some of the licks on "Take No Prisoners" sound very much "Race With The Devil on a Spanish Highway".

>>74814998
I honestly don't understand how he managed to be the same guitar player for decades. Doen't something excite you after a while, especially on such a diverse instrument? And by the way:
https://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/kirk-hammett-talks-hardwired-guitar-solos-lars-coached-i-improvised/30236
https://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/kirk-hammett-says-%E2%80%9Cguns-n%E2%80%99-roses-have-become-nostalgia-act%E2%80%9D/30170

>>74815091
You'd be surprised at how many rock guitarists are one-dimensional like that. For example, Angus Young and Eddie Van Halen have not learned a single new lick since 1981.

>>74815107
This is truly something else:
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/metallica-kirk-hammett-these-days-i-feel-i-can-play-anything-that-i-really-set-my-mind-to/
>"I feel like I've just turned another corner," he said. "I've reconnected with my instrument in a way I never have before. I quit drinking, which changed things. On nights we had shows, I'd play the gig, go out afterward and get drunk, and then go back to my room and play for a couple hours. I still do that, but the big difference is I don't drink anymore and I retain what I played the next day. These days I feel I can play anything that I really set my mind to, whether it's Paganini or a jazz standard. It might take me a couple of weeks, but I can do it!"
He had quite a lot of WEEKS to try something new.

Even Jimi Hendrix at the time he died was getting frustrated because he felt he'd used up most of his good musical ideas.

>>74815107
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbsYc3UNdZ4

Poor Eddie. You could look up concert footage of him from 1982 and he's playing this same exact solo.

>>74815204
>because he felt he'd used up most of his good musical ideas
Source? It's never late to get disappointed in people.

>>74815425
if anything, an established artist actually wanting to continue innovating is something that should be respected

the great majority of career musicians ind their niche at the end of their 20s and never try a new sound.

>>74815204
He was definitely bored with the power trio format and didn't think he could do anything more with it.

>>74814170
I'm pretty sure he's given John McLaughlin several positive reviews

>>74815530
Devotion [Douglas, 1970]

McLaughlin reminds me as much of Duane Eddy as of John Coltrane--he loves electric noise for its own sake and rocks more naturally than he swings. Here Buddy Miles provides his usual ham-handed thump, a universe away from Tony Williams's sallies, and McLaughlin just marches along on top, his tone supremely heavy by choice. But like Coltrane, though in a much more detached way, he can get enormous mileage out of harmonic ideas whose simplicity is probably one source of the spirituality he generates. Rarely has a rock improvisation been more basic or more thoughtfully conceived than on the little track, where he and Larry Young trade the same elemental motif for so long it turns into an electric mantra. A

Electric Guitarist [Columbia, 1978]

In which the top musicians in fusion are gathered by the man who made it all possible to show the genre off aesthetically--no funk vamps, no one-run solos, no twaddle about the harmony of the universe. The project has a certain stillborn aura--it doesn't swing a lot, there is a reliance on Speedy Gonzalez climaxes, and snatches of such deathless melodies as "Holiday for Strings" and "Mohammed's Radio" are audible. Still, repetitiousness is minimized, and there are good ideas and lots of sensitive interaction. And it didn't sell diddley. B+

Thieves and Poets [Verve, 2003] *bomb*

>>74815509
That's because most pop musicians have no formal training or compositional skills, they never learn how to do more than one thing.

>>74815617
eeeh, not only pop. In my country, all the rock legends found their niche at their 30s. Luis Alberto Spinetta did psychedelia - prog rock - jazz fusion and never changed his sound again.

Only two exceptions are Miguel Abuelo and Piazzola who found new niches as they got old. Miguel Abuelo did a shitload of genres and eventually settled for pop and piazzola began really experimenting with tango in his 40s

>>74815617
And mind, the one with actual academia training, Charly Garcia, has been doing shitty pop rock for almost than 30 years now, and almost singlehandedly bringing getting argentina into prog and then doing the same with new wave and pop rock 10 years later

>>74815693
Another outstanding example is Scott Walker.

The popular music scene in Argentina is extremely stagnant, everything just sounds like the Rolling Stones in the early 70s.

>>74815068
Megadeth tunes are full of stolen Judas Priest licks, but I have no idea about Al Di Meola.

>>74815141
Anyone remember that behind-the-scenes video of the making of TBA where Bob Rock had to literally walk Kirk through a pretty basic solo?

>>74815107
Keith Richards has been playing the same licks since 1968.

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>>74815763
Mainstream rock in argentina is pretty in it's death phase.

The last dregs that run around with it are the shitty "life's a party lol" indie happy hipster scene in La Plata that moves 10k people at it's very best and the rock dinosaurs with legions of fans that are basically waiting to die of old age. And neither group intermixes.

In the last 10 years or so there has been a massive restructuring our of music scene as the genre became niche, everything has become localy. Even subcultures like the metal scene pay attention to mainly local new bands.
It's a double edged sword. So many great groups pass on completely unnoticed. Bands with actual innovative ideas that will have maybe have 1000 likes in their facebook page 3 years after they disbanded.

It's kinda weird that there's nothing "serious" replacing rock tho'. It feels like music culture as a worldwide phenomenom is dying and only mindless "casual" music tops the charts

>>74816006
https://youtu.be/dDZ5Zozejh4
I'm aware of this one.

>>74816812
Did I mention that Kirk isn't the rhythm guitarist in the band?

>>74816845
Just makes this statement even more endearing:
>"I feel like I've just turned another corner," he said. "I've reconnected with my instrument in a way I never have before. I quit drinking, which changed things. On nights we had shows, I'd play the gig, go out afterward and get drunk, and then go back to my room and play for a couple hours. I still do that, but the big difference is I don't drink anymore and I retain what I played the next day. These days I feel I can play anything that I really set my mind to, whether it's Paganini or a jazz standard. It might take me a couple of weeks, but I can do it!"
Sure, he might have had a bad day, but it isn't that complex. Here's something astounding:
>Yet few people knew that Martino suffered epileptic seizures, crushing headaches, and depression. Locked in psychiatric wards, he withstood debilitating electroshock therapy.
>“To our knowledge, this case study represents the first clinical observation of a patient who exhibited complete recovery from a profound amnesia and regained his previous virtuoso status.”
Yes, the madman himself, Pat Martino.
http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/brain-damage-saved-his-music

>>74816812
That docu shows the sad truth that a bunch of 40 year old millionaires with state-of-the-art equipment can't for their best efforts recreate the simple joy of a couple of teenagers playing NWOBM licks on Kill Em All.

>>74816883
https://youtu.be/2eH-xozAMHo
Here's a 72 year old as creative and in dexterity as ever. The words escape me. Read >>74816873 and the same will happen to you. But don't you worry, he could do it, if he put his mind to it. :^)
Return to Forever reincarnation with Kirk Hammett when?

EVERYONE do yourself a favor and listen to "the rite of strings".

stanley clarke, jean luc ponty and al di meola. it's some of the best work of all three musicians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-reZDyn2XE

Les Paul remained very good as well in his later years, as he got past 80 he did have to slow the tempos and play simpler chords but he still gave it all he had at every show.

>>74816916
Oh, yes. An overlooked album.
https://youtu.be/NcDQUnbmCPo
Al's definitely still got it.

>>74816926
Are you aware of his debilitating injury?
>In January 1948, Paul shattered his right arm and elbow in a near-fatal automobile accident on an icy Route 66 west ofDavenport, Oklahoma. Mary Ford was driving the Buick convertible, which plunged off the side of a railroad overpass and dropped twenty feet into a ravine; they were returning from Wisconsin to Los Angeles after visiting family. Doctors at Oklahoma City's Wesley Presbyterian Hospital told Paul that they could not rebuild his elbow. Their other option was amputation. Paul was flown to Los Angeles, where his arm was set at an angle—just under 90 degrees—that allowed him to cradle and pick the guitar. It took him nearly a year and a half to recover.

>>74816929
>>74816926
>>74816904
Keep in mind that jazz guitarists tend to age and retain their playing skills better than rock guitarists because they're not as likely to engage in degenerate lifestyles. Eddie Van Halen was a huge alcoholic for years.

>>74816957
Many jazz legends were heroin addicts sadly. Joe Pass most notably called his friend one day and told him he couldn't play anymore. Other than that, most other jazz legends' dexterity didn't suffer.
https://jazztimes.com/features/high-notes-jazz-and-drugs-in-the-21st-century/

>>74816977
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/headphonian/jazz_artists_who_were_heroin_addicts/

>>74816977
>>74816985
Let's not forget that those addictions were a product of time to a degree.

>>74816977
Maybe back in the 50s when you had guys like Charlie Parker OD, doubt it's a problem in more recent times.

>>74814076
>but not even close to as a person.
explain

>>74816904
Lyl Keith Richards is about the same age as this guy but he can barely play the (much simpler) solos in Sympathy For The Devil now.

>>74816957
>>74815255
You think he'd get bored of playing Eruption every night for almost 40 years.

>>74817103
When you have no compositional skills or creativity to do anything different, and people who go to your concerts get upset if you don't play Eruption, it's inevitable.

>>74817039
He's played a jazz festival in a third world European country last year and he specifically asked for a Mercedes to transport him from the capital to the smaller city the festival was in. The Audi just wouldn't do for a star. Not to mention that the festival was financially struggling that year and even decades prior, forget the actual devastated country.
https://jazzfest.ba/en/2015/11/04/e-class-for-al-di-meolas-elysium/
Perhaps he had a sponsorship at the time, but the city in amother country ended up paying for the trip.