3.18.2009

TELL ME WHY I HAVE TO BE A POWERDAVE


I kinda spoke with my wallet last month by actually purchasing a copy of Guitar World. And to think, it onlyl took ten years of being dead for the godly Criss Oliva to get a story -- and for GW to get my eight (!!) bucks. But hey there are lots of obscure, unsung guitarists. Savatage wasn't big, and the writer had to work the TSO angle pretty heavily as it was. So while it's wrong, at least it makes sense.

But it's in explicable and criminal to disrespect a well-known band's brilliant axeman. So what the shit is every guitar mag's excuse for ignoring Iron Maiden's Dave Murray? Only surpassed in pure phrasing by Tommy Baron of Coroner, Murray has a exhilarating, fluid style that's part Blackmore and 100% beautiful. Just exciting as hell. And clean, beautifully-toned on the neck pick-up against Gers' raunchy blues and Smith's staccato melodicism. More than once, Steve Harris' by-the-numbers rhythm parts drag like zombies without him. 

I laughed when ex-Manowar dork Ross The Boss said B.B. King's playing could make him cry; luckily, when I openly wept this morning following Murray's solo in "The Prophecy" (below), R the B wasn't in the shower with me. For once.




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