Enjoy laughing at young Drew

[DrewJD82]

My buddy (the drummer in the vid) has been slowly getting all our old 8MM videos onto his computer. I’m 17 or so here and…..it’s not pretty. In fact, this is my evidence for talent = time + dedication. This wasn’t me just f*cking up the “Creeping Death“ solo, this was how I played a lot back then. There were some solos I learned mostly note for note, but if I didn’t practice them and forgot I’d just go off and “do my own thing”….including my own key/tempo that shifted at random. This was around the Vai fanboy days, which translated to me just playing fast and acting like a dumbass.

Exhibit A:

Year- 1999, subject is using an Ibanez JEM into a Carvin Legacy head that appears to be powering a Peavey Bandit. I don’t remember doing this, but apparently I did this before I had the 4x12. That f*cker is plenty loud.



Exhibit B:

Same night in ‘99, except it’s Steve Vai’s “Here I Am” I’m butchering, because after seeing him open with it I thought this would be a really energetic song to open our sets with. I really should have uploaded the whole song but I could only find this whole clip, my vocals really highlight the tone deaf thing. I don’t think I’m ever in key the whole time.



It was kind of funny, because if I sat down and really worked on learning something back then, I could get it. The stuff I did practice and actually learn I could play and sound capable/above average for my age, but I could never retain any of the scale/modal information to be able to implement it when I forgot how to play the real stuff. IE- Dream Theater’s “Pull Me Under” was our signature song, I’d play that probably 90% accurately, but then go into something like “Creeping Death” and just f*cking bomb all over the place. Our choir teacher said it best with “I don’t get it, Andy. One minute you’re playing some that sounds like Steve Vai and the next it sounds like you just picked up a guitar for the first time. You should work on that.”

 

[jellodog]

Amazing. You just can't bottle that!

Seriously though - I cringe when I see stuff like this, not so much because I'm cringing for the person I'm watching, but because I'm reminded of how much worse I've publicly embarrassed myself as a younger man. It's properly painful for me to remember.

 

[Stone]

Well that's pretty awesome for 17 years old
i only wish i could have started at that tender young age instead of starting at the old fart age of 54

 

[DrewJD82]

Amazing. You just can't bottle that!

I dunno man, I’ve pissed in a lot of bottles, I think that directly contradicts that statement.

 

[la szum]

Love that vintage footage from Weedly Weedly Fest 1999!

 

[TubeStack]

Dude, your picking hand is crazy.

 

[DrewJD82]

Dude, your picking hand is crazy.

Schizophrenic, I believe was the diagnosis.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

A Legacy powering a Bandit, now I've seen it all

It's not all that bad, the drummer looks like he's set up inside of a jungle gym

 

[la szum]

Dude, your picking hand is crazy.

You mean when he was not holding it up in the air taking a Vai victory lap??

 

[Piing]

#I'veBeenThereToo

 

[DrewJD82]

You mean when he was not holding it up in the air taking a Vai victory lap??

That was my signature stolen move. Did the same thing in jazz band once and the teacher said “If you keep both hands on the guitar you might hit a right note every now and then”

 

[TJontheRoad]

Great stuff. The beginnings of rock stardom. Where did it all go wrong?

 

[JiveTurkey]

Love it! You were putting on a show \m/ You gotta be flashy!

 

[DrewJD82]

Great stuff. The beginnings of rock stardom. Where did it all wrong?

Hahaha, this was “all wrong” in the video itself, it already started at this point. Most because-

Love it! You were putting on a show \m/ You gotta be flashy!

Exactly that and the non-musicians not understanding I was hitting every wrong note, but hearing me play fast, so I got a lot of attention for it, especially in the late 90’s where that kind of playing wasn’t in fashion for teenagers. It cultivated a “IDGAF, I can play fast, look at me” mentality inside me. It wasn’t until I started writing my own music that I put an end to this. By the end of high school it was working against me; I went to a buddy’s band practice one time and someone asked if I wanted to jam with them during a break, I put on a guitar and in about 30 seconds someone turned the amp off and said “We’re here to practice, not watch Andy f*ckin’ show off his virtuoso bullsh*t” and that was like my death knell.

Hopefully we find some live show footage at some point, where I’m jumping off PA speakers and throwing the JEM around by the whammy bar like a chunky pothead Vai who can’t play in key. The one move I did all the time, without fail was another thing I stole from Vai; doing a hammer-on/pull-off thing like 0-3-5-3-0-3-5-3-0, but I’d drag my tongue up and down the strings where you pick and it makes harmonics. Man, I forgot all about that move….I gotta bring that back.

 

[JiveTurkey]

The bar was so godd@mn high for lead playing. It's why I was always self defeating. You grow up around Vais and Satrianis and EVHs and Gilberts and Friedmans and Wyldes and Mustaines and Skolnicks and blahblahblahblah. I always wanted to be 1000x better than what I perceived myself as being.


It kind of extends into the whole boomer bends thing with Henson. I watched a BUNCH of Floyd clips from Pompeii and Pulse over the weekend. Dude is the MASTER of that. If you can visualize and manifest what YOUR strengths as a player/writer are; there's no stopping you. It's just tough to go "ok; this isn't the direction that works for me".

 

[DrewJD82]

The bar was so godd@mn high for lead playing. It's why I was always self defeating. You grow up around Vais and Satrianis and EVHs and Gilberts and Friedmans and Wyldes and Mustaines and Skolnicks and blahblahblahblah. I always wanted to be 1000x better than what I perceived myself as being.


It kind of extends into the whole boomer bends thing with Henson. I watched a BUNCH of Floyd clips from Pompeii and Pulse over the weekend. Dude is the MASTER of that. If you can visualize and manifest what YOUR strengths as a player/writer are; there's no stopping you. It's just tough to go "ok; this isn't the direction that works for me".

Yeah, it was a weird time in the 90’s; I was like 10 years too late to the party with trends going on with my peers. It took me forever to get into Korn/nu-metal because I was all about the Vai’s and Petrucci’s in that time period. Once my welcome kinda wore off, I started getting my balls busted for wanting to be as good as I could be. It was always harkening back to the 80’s; “you really like that 80’s hair band way of playing?”, “you need to wear spandex if you’re going to play like that”….it was like the nu-metal kids turned into the “shredders don’t play with emotion” boomer types.

The younger crowd will always bust balls of their elders, or vehemently oppose what came before them, whether it directly contradicts them or not, until the cycle that is life repeats itself and that younger crowd takes the role of what they made fun of previously. IE- Henson and the “I wish guitar music would die”, while the dude’s entire living/fame is based off guitar music, or the younger crowd who HATED classic rock that are now trying to make their own Greta Van Fleet band, or the kids who busted my balls in high school for being into “virtuoso bullsh*t” that are now trying to start their own djent/prog bands in their late 30’s/early 40’s.

I’m friends with one guy on FB I went to high school with, he was one of the guys who busted my balls about the “virtuoso bullsh*t” back then. Dude’s all into the new school guys; Plini, Tosin, Intervals, etc and regularly posts mediocre covers of their songs on his FB page. One of these nights after I’ve had a few cocktails I can see myself being a snarky prick and saying “See, if you spent less time busting my balls for playing stuff like that in 1998, you’d be able to play it now”

 

[la szum]

That was my signature stolen move. Did the same thing in jazz band once and the teacher said “If you keep both hands on the guitar you might hit a right note every now and then”

Haha! Did you also own a stage fan or 3??

 

[la szum]

Hahaha, this was “all wrong” in the video itself, it already started at this point. Most because-



Exactly that and the non-musicians not understanding I was hitting every wrong note, but hearing me play fast, so I got a lot of attention for it, especially in the late 90’s where that kind of playing wasn’t in fashion for teenagers. It cultivated a “IDGAF, I can play fast, look at me” mentality inside me. It wasn’t until I started writing my own music that I put an end to this. By the end of high school it was working against me; I went to a buddy’s band practice one time and someone asked if I wanted to jam with them during a break, I put on a guitar and in about 30 seconds someone turned the amp off and said “We’re here to practice, not watch Andy f*ckin’ show off his virtuoso bullsh*t” and that was like my death knell.

Hopefully we find some live show footage at some point, where I’m jumping off PA speakers and throwing the JEM around by the whammy bar like a chunky pothead Vai who can’t play in key. The one move I did all the time, without fail was another thing I stole from Vai; doing a hammer-on/pull-off thing like 0-3-5-3-0-3-5-3-0, but I’d drag my tongue up and down the strings where you pick and it makes harmonics. Man, I forgot all about that move….I gotta bring that back.

I wonder what would have happened if you had some confidence and self-assuredness??

 

[la szum]

The bar was so godd@mn high for lead playing. It's why I was always self defeating. You grow up around Vais and Satrianis and EVHs and Gilberts and Friedmans and Wyldes and Mustaines and Skolnicks and blahblahblahblah. I always wanted to be 1000x better than what I perceived myself as being.


It kind of extends into the whole boomer bends thing with Henson. I watched a BUNCH of Floyd clips from Pompeii and Pulse over the weekend. Dude is the MASTER of that. If you can visualize and manifest what YOUR strengths as a player/writer are; there's no stopping you. It's just tough to go "ok; this isn't the direction that works for me".

Yup. I want that Pompeii concert playing when they fire up my bones and flesh in the crematorium.

Taste, touch, and tone in spades. It's a masterclass not only in Gilmour's playing, but also in band/group
dynamics and interplay.

There was a lot wrong about the decade and an half or so of guitar pyrotechnics. It turned music into an
athletic performance as much as a musical experience. No wonder it appealed to mostly young males.
It's cool the envelope was pushed in that way, but it also kind of became its own worst enemy until it
fell off a cliff from its own hubris.

I'll always be convinced that musicianship is an entirely different skill set that was often lost in the shuffle of
outdoing what came before.

 

[DrewJD82]

I wonder what would have happened if you had some confidence and self-assuredness??

I’m scared to know that, honestly.