Alas, guitar solos (and their purveyors: guitarists) can be loosely analogous to commercials flogged by ad agencies. Many of them are created for the singular purpose of gratifying their creators and (ostensibly) to demo their virtuosity.

Rarely does it happen that a guitar solo can be a building block to a song. Most of them are pure wankfests.

Statistically, the spectrum of axe-wanking breaks out into roughly three buckets: Amazing, Obligatory and Regrettable.

1. Amazing (5%) – The tiny minority of gtr solos that actually add something to the song and help take it to the next level.
2. Obligatory (70%) – the meaty part of the Bell Curve. They don’t add anything to the song and in most cases they are simply there because it seems like they “should be”.
3. Regrettable (25%) – What the hell are they trying? Give it up.

Counter-intuitively, those pillars of guitar-ism rarely get a solo into that 5% sliver of greatness. These legends have names like Page, Hendrix, Satriani, Beck, et al but their work matters most to 1) themselves and 2) other guitar players. Sure, they’re prolific and technically adept. But a lot of their songs are simply “guitar solo containers”. Rarely is it that one hears an amazing song, made more amazing by a killer guitar solo, that happened to be emitted by one of the “masters.

More often a great song is intruded upon by a dose of wank, which is tolerated, appreciated or possibly celebrated, because of the undisputed greatness of the guitar soloist in question. The blasphemous truth: if the solo wasn’t there, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference one way or another.

There is probably a Paredo Principle at work here, even among individual guitarists. I’ll criticize my own body of work as an example so I don’t sound like an accusatory curmudgeon:

I’ve probably recorded about 50 songs in my “career” (and I use that term loosely), out of those songs maybe 30 of them have guitar solos. Of those 30, maybe 20 were performed by another guitarist, leaving 10 guitar solos that I’ve recorded. Of those 10, I honestly feel like I actually “nailed it” in one of them and I feel like it actually adds something to the song (“Pick U Up” on the first tPH record). Another eight (being generous to myself) are just kind of “there”. They don’t detract from the song, they just adequately fill in the [insert guitar solo here] space. And then there’s a stink-job on “Have a Parkdale Hookers Christmas Time” which is probably a disservice to artist and listener alike.

Now that we’re almost done the next Parkdale Hookers record, what will happen to my batting average? Well, out of 8 songs there are guitar solos in 4 of them. You win half the battles by not fighting them. Of those four, I am hoping that there are zero that are impaired by the solo. The rest are probably obligatory, just because they’re hard driving, kick-ass guitar rock that just scream SOLO!, but in reality, you could put anything in there and drunken people in bars will still air-guitar to it and my 5-year old will do the devil-horns and bob her head furiously. It isn’t the guitar solo that’s doing the work there, it’s the rest of the song.

So what are the all time greatest guitar solos ever? I’ll run those down in another post, but trust me: none of the sacred cows make the list. You’d be surprised.

I’ve always gravitated to unusual guitars like Vox’s, or my Tokai Talbo Blazing Fire, a cast aluminum guitar from Japan that I picked up for a steal way back in the late 80s. (I’ve been playing a rare 1972 Ibanez Artist bass I found used at Capsule Music, it was only in the catalogs for about 2 years).

That’s why I was so pleased to stumble across Eastwood Guitars, a company recreating the more unusual vintage axes from the 60′s and 70′s. Many of these were carried by Sears or Woolworths. If you’ve ever tried any of the originals, you’ll know that many of them were, uh, less than “the creme of the crop” in terms of playability and quality.

Eastwood crafts their reproductions with a careful eye to detail, but also makes their guitars to the highest quality modern standards – so you wind up with a killer vintage guitar that plays like a modern, high end instrument. Best of both worlds. (Oh yeah, surprisingly they don’t cost an arm and a leg either, although once the word gets out, I’m sure they’ll bet a bit pricer, especially at this level of quality, so get your’s while you can.)

What was better was when I found out that they were Canadian. Even better, they’re just up in Georgetown Ontario! just outside Toronto (and where Mark C calls home).

The past Friday I decided to stop by while on my way up to Stratford ON for some theatre. The kind Sales Manager Peter McCracken let me poke around their workspace and let me try out some of the models on hand.

Some great stuff at Eastwood

Absolutely brilliant stuff. They even spec custom pickups to reflect the sound of the originals, they don’t just plug in standard Humbuckers everywhere.

nice work if you can get it

Each guitar is hand set up and checked by the staff at Eastwood, so you’ll get something great right out of the box.

Not sure which one I’ll get, although I will be getting at least one. Probably the Wandre or the Airline Town & Country, although the Breadwinner is kinda cool as well, and the Messenger is really cool.

So stop on by Eastwood Guitars on the web (some local music shops carry them as well) and take a look at the variety of models they offer. They’re even holding a contest where you can win over $10k of Eastwood products. Considering what the guitars cost – that’s one heck of alot of guitars!

So which one would you get?

They mentioned this website and it has sucked my life away:

Bobby Owinski’s Big Picture Blog

This very knowledgeable fellow has posted RAW tracks from famous recordings. For instance today he features the isolated bass track from the Beatles “While my guitar gently weeks”. A fascinating behind the scenes look into the playing of one of modern music’s masters. Educational and inspiring.

Tons of insightful articles on music, musicianship and just about every thing else music related as well. If you’re involved in creating music for fun or for profit, this is a site to open every morning (I do).

Please Note: This site will suck up all your available time, so use caution when visiting. He’s taken days from me — damn him — sure hope he don’t quit.

You can find it here.

BUT, this is not Def Leppard, and this is not Guns N Roses either. It’s Chinese Democracy, and I like it.

A great resource on such topics and well as others in the Social Media Driven Marketing World is one of my favourite podcasts called “The Marketing Edge“

Today (well, at least thats when I listened to it) the host Albert Maruggi had a great talk with a friendly fellow from a company called Hubspot about a free website tool they’ve built and offered to the world called “Web Site Grader“

This tool, along with the great advice given in the podcast, can really help with ones efforts to move your website higher up in the rankings in Google and other search engines.

Our site ranked a respectable 78%, and the report came with a few pointers on how to improve our score. Not bad for free.

Put your site in and see where you rank. The team here at Parkdale Hookers International will be working overtime to implement some of the reports’ suggestions.

Once all the paperwork and approvals are in that is…

1. 9V batteries
2. a power cable and adapter
3. a drum key
4. pliers
5. a roll of toilet paper (don’t ask)
6. guitar strings of the proper gauge for every member of your band
7. drum sticks
8. duct tape
9. blank CDW’s (most sound boards can burn the stage sound straight to disk these days)
10. ….the current gig’s set list