Tag: black-crowes

Remedy, by the Black Crowes.

Funny story! I sold my first electric amp (bought used in 1989) today, for more than I (Mom) bought it for (uh, well, less, minus shipping and fees and all that but still), and I thought to look up whether my BOSS Heavy Metal™ pedal was worth anything, and IT IS! So I dug it out of storage (I have already forgotten where I found it, but it was not put away as deeply as I expected, like maybe in a drawer) and made sure it was… in… good… working… order…. ohhhh dear I don’t think I can part with this just yet? Does it sound better now that I know it’s worth money? I’m not sure, but I am positive that last time I took it out, I was less impressed.

I’m also pretty sure that playing Remedy through it is not the heaviest of metals, but honestly it’s a pretty heavy track?

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This song was one I learned three or four different wrong ways before realllly reading it closely today and playing it in open G tuning (except for that high E string) so it’s DGDGBE which really is more like “dropped D and G” I guess, and it’s very much the “Rich Robinson wants to play like Keith Richards” tuning, but I am here for it.

There are, uh, more guitars because I like chaos, but there are at least two tracks of the electric played through the Heavy Metal™ pedal.

Sometimes I reflect a little bit on how, as a teenager, I had to figure out chords for myself, buy guitar magazines with a handful of transcriptions in each, or buy whole songbooks (and fake books) at music stores… and now it takes (well, in theory) just a few seconds because internet.

This one is mostly written up on the internet in standard tuning, but having read before that it’s in Open G Sort Of, I found a couple forum posts and more than one video lesson about how to play it.

And the drums are a bit silly, but the drums are still hard for me to freehand.

She Talks To Angels, by the Black Crowes.

The first two Black Crowes records (and to be clear, the only two I remember) hit at just the right moment for me, absolutely teenaged, enamored with the blues and the Stones, and the sound of a guitar tuned to an open chord, and this song is wrapped up in all of that.

I can’t think of this music without being transported directly to my bedroom from age 8-16, the room where I learned to play guitar, where I imagined myself on stage in front of my mirrored closet doors, where I spun around under black lights and tangled my cables, where my way too heavy bass amp dutifully transmitted the sound from my knockoff cherry red Ibanez clone that wouldn’t stay in tune (my fault) to the wood floor.

And goodness is it fun to play.

Had to add the organ, obvs. Hit the opening solo riff much better than the one in the middle, obvs. Can’t hit the highest notes, obvs.