kudzurunner
4558 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:02 PM
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Please post your honest response to this video. Make sure that you watch the entire thing.
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Goldbrick
300 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:11 PM
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I found it kinda boring and non bluesy myself. Kinda like hearing someone shred on the guitar with no purpose.
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laurent2015
599 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:20 PM
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Spectacular,technical and physical performance with a harp "designed for playing blues".
I think his train takes a long time to stop.
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jbone
1502 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:21 PM
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You can't say he is not into his work. Having never done a long total solo like that my opinion may not be much to reckon with. I think he kicked some pretty serious ass there. Sure it was shred-y but there was no lack of creativity, he used every note he could find, more than I do on a given night. I give him a couple of thumbs up.
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http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000386839482
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa7La7yYYeE
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KingoBad
1431 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:23 PM
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Dear God, the man is going to have an aneurism.
I love it when someone unloads that kind of energy. It was certainly exciting.
I might put it more in the gospel/blues category.
There are some things I didn't like - particularly in the beginning which remind me of all the stuff I don't like to hear anyone do (like endless wailing).
That being said, he had everybody, and let loose with an entertaining performance.
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Danny
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jnorem
33 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:38 PM
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Heard it and heard it and heard it. Oh dear. I am so not into that…whatever it is.
For one thing, I just didn't hear anything all that technically impressive; I was doing that kind of thing when I was a kid, before I had developed good taste and musicianship. For another, I found his tone to be way over on the shrill side. And finally, I heard no interesting ideas whatsoever, nothing new, just the same old train stuff.
If this guy learns a few things about music and finds how to communicate his ideas with a little more artistry, he could eventually be an alright player. Maybe.
I didn't like it at all. A big thumbs down.
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Call me J
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SuperBee
1693 posts
Feb 20, 2014
6:48 PM
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i understand why J says that.
Gympie muster idea of 'amazing' harmonica. 'nuff said
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dougharps
565 posts
Feb 20, 2014
7:19 PM
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I don't want to sound harsh or negative. He played his ass off and entertained the crowd. However...
An energetic performance (lots of espresso???) that I would not characterize as having much blues content, other than partly being played in a country blues/roots style. I thought I heard a few different borrowed parts of songs (not necessarily a bad thing) woven into the performance, including some "Old Joe Clark."
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NOTE: I tend to not be a fan of the "Now it is time for a long (solo) harmonica solo!" school of performance. If it is part of an intro, or a breakdown that doesn't exceed 48 bars or so, and involves the band playing, I am OK with it. I like long solid solos, such as when William Clarke played an instrumental song with the band and showed his stuff. I want a solo that makes music, not just displays how fast you can inhale and exhale and use some chording.
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I have heard some really good tongue block technique used by other players in renditions of this kind of solo harmonica performance (trains, fox chases), played by some really good players. Even when played at an advanced level this style of harp hotdogging just doesn't move me, even if the technique is really good, beyond my ability, and even if I really respect the musicians' chops. This performance is not at the level of others I have heard, but it was a solid decent performance.
He has some skill (not passing out from hyperventilation for one), but I wouldn't put his skill level as better than some on this list or some whom I know. Some of the glisses and some of the chording is not all that advanced, though he played it with conviction, and that helps sell the performance. There is a good part at 3:28 to 3:42 when he intersperses notes with chords that is notably skillful (pun!).
I respect that it was a good performance, it entertained the crowd, he showed some good skills, he displayed a lot of energy and stamina in a dramatic way that excited the crowd. Just not the kind of music I am drawn to, and not as good as others I have heard.
I wouldn't be able to (or want to) duplicate his performance.
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Doug S.
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robbert
287 posts
Feb 20, 2014
7:27 PM
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I think this display falls into the category of showmanship/geek show/wow the audience with pyrotechnics part of the band's performance. It has a legitimate place in the course of an evening of musical entertainment, and the audience probably got a chunk of their money's worth watching it.
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walterharp
1323 posts
Feb 20, 2014
7:35 PM
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A fun country harp solo! A few licks in there that sounded new to me. Made me tap my toes and he was amusing to watch. I would say that goes in the category of good bar band harp. Not quite at the level of that Japanese Monster band :-)
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BronzeWailer
1210 posts
Feb 20, 2014
8:00 PM
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My main impression was that he played a lot of notes very fast; it would probably sound good live. But would I listen to it again? No real reason to. To me it lacks the ineffable quality of music that draws you back again and again.
BronzeWailer's YouTube
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Philosofy
515 posts
Feb 20, 2014
8:02 PM
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WTF was he doing at the end? I thought he would need paramedics for that seizure.
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nacoran
7546 posts
Feb 20, 2014
8:09 PM
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It needed a backing track. I liked it, but it's not something I'd listen to over and over. Started off sounding a little classical, then a little fox chasey, then it got kind of notey. I would have liked to have heard the clappers closer to the mics, and I think even just adding the drums added a lot to it. It needed a hook though.
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Nate
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jnorem
35 posts
Feb 20, 2014
8:27 PM
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I need to say something.
I just now tried to post a comment, and FOUR times I was told that I didn't enter the "are you human" characters correctly.
FOUR times.
The thing is, it was a fairly scathing post. But it didn't contain any profanity, it was just a scathing post. Censorship?
Anyway, I think this having to type in code every time you make a post is ridiculous. I haven't seen it on any other forum I'm a member of. Why put this burden on members, why make them jump through a hoop to participate on this forum?
It's stupid, and it needs to go. And that is my honest opinion.
Last Edited by jnorem on Feb 20, 2014 8:43 PM
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capnj
193 posts
Feb 20, 2014
8:59 PM
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Shotgun spread and random thought review:
Very few musicians can pull off a 5 min. solo,and make discerning ears happy.
Country audiences expect the chugging routine from harp guys.Yet bluegrass guys don't like the fast in and out of look ma harp players.He did allright.Deak can start and end slow,building tension,with the train thing which I like better.
Country rockers like some more melody,yeah and charlie mccoy,buddy greene,and terry mcmillan,mike stevens,and Im sure I missed a few deliver.
Blues guys can get funky,then swing,hold long notes,rock out while changing it up.
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TheoBurke
590 posts
Feb 20, 2014
9:50 PM
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I would say that he's better than Nick Shay. I admire his energy and the energy of his performance, but I've seen this before and still wish he had actually created something musically interesting. There are dozens of players like him playing this way --I run into them in San Diego all the time. He shows that he knows where to be on the instrument, but he is repetitive and not especially rhythmic, ie ,not compelling. The best I can say that is that he will mature and grow as a harmonica player, but at the present moment (or at least when this video was recorded) he's merely an enthusiast.
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Ted Burke
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheoBurke?feature=mhee
http://ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.coM
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BluesJacketman
79 posts
Feb 20, 2014
10:04 PM
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Not interesting. Mainly what drives me away is the tone. Most pucker players cannot get good tone. That high shrill sound always drives me away. I have spent alot of time trying to get out of that and its not all about the amp or the mic. I can get decent tone with a Mexican 545 and a Mexican Blues junior, which is not the best blues harp rig.
In short this has been wrongly titled. It his not Blues Harp it is just Harmonica.
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wolfkristiansen
262 posts
Feb 20, 2014
10:11 PM
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I listened to the end. No different from the beginning. I don't like to be negative but there was little I liked about this, and lots I disliked.
If this is country harp, maybe you country fans should be critiquing it. What follows comes from a blues/jazz/funk lover, so I may be bringing the wrong ears to the party.
1. No soul
2. No real rhythm. What "rhythm" I heard was simplistic and boring.
3. No shaping, caressing, loving each note. Just, get it over with, and move on to the next note!
4. No funk
5. No blues
6. No emotion
7. Rudimentary, I mean rudimentary note bending skills. No pitch control at all.
8. No imagination
9. No tone
10. No vibrato. It's hard to use vibrato when you are playing 1/64 notes.
Other than that, I quite liked it.
Cheers,
wolf kristiansen
p.s. Graham McLelland, it you read this one day, I commend you for getting up on stage and playing, for entertaining the audience, for having trained your diaphragm to go back and forth quickly, and for putting yourself on YouTube where you know somebody like me might dis you. I haven't put myself on YouTube, so I've not had to risk being critiqued. If you love what you're doing, keep doing it.
w.k.
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sonny3
126 posts
Feb 20, 2014
10:53 PM
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Holy cow! I thought that guy was trying to teleport to another dimension there at the end.some of the playing was good but he sacrificed musicality for speed.His chugging stuff was a little in and out for me.He should get Madcats rhythm harp DVD.Maybe listen to Sonny Terry and Deford a little and throw in some Octaves.I Guess the 4 draw wail made it bluesy.
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john_blues
4 posts
Feb 20, 2014
11:14 PM
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It reminded me somewhat of a traditional folk dance.
His speed is impressive, but I'm really more into slow/medium blues.
This just seems a show off, no emotion at all.
Last Edited by john_blues on Feb 20, 2014 11:14 PM
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nacoran
7549 posts
Feb 20, 2014
11:26 PM
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jnorem, no censorship in play with the captchas. They have an automated feature designed to detect spam which works terribly. It often catches honest comments with hyperlinks in them or cliches and marks them as spam, (and then, everyday, when I log on, I go to a folder and undelete them), but that's only ones it accepts as comments. If it rejects the captcha it's just that you typed the captcha wrong- or that you had the window open too long. After 15 minutes a new captcha gets generated that doesn't match what is actually displayed. If you are like me and open a bunch of tabs and then close them as you read them you may run into that. For a little background, before the captchas (which are something the webhosts put in, not us) we'd sometimes get two or three spammers right in a row and they would post on a couple hundred posts. Since this forum displays threads based on the most recent comment it would completely bury all the members posts several pages back. The system for going through and deleting all the spam could literally take a couple hours of checking boxes next to every piece of spam (they have made it easier, but it's still a pain). I know some forum software allows captchas to be disabled after a member has posted a certain number of posts, but the software here doesn't support it.
I still get the captcha sometimes, although at this point my auto-fill gets a lot of them for me. Usually, if you hit the back button in your browser you can get your comment back and try again.
If there was a magic wand I could wave that would be the thing about the forum I'd change first, but I've talked to support about options and really there aren't any.
I missed the damn captcha
That they throw at'cha
And now my post is gone
I typed it just right
And the message was tight
Yeah, it was my best one
Oh I got the damn captcha blues
But their ain't nothin' I can do
This thing is above my pay grade
Cause I work here for free
'Cept for an occasional CD
This job don't even get me laid.
:)
I feel your pain, really I do... and now for captcha roulette...
lol, and I missed it, but the back button saved my post. Cheers.
edit: and on a note about censorship, we don't take censoring lightly around here. So far this year I think we have (we being Adam, Todd P. and myself, the other mods I think are off on Kung Fu style adventures right now) only locked one thread and except for spam or editing a post that has an HTML problem that is preventing the page from not loading I don't think any of us edit other people's posts (although in the past there were people who edited or deleted their own posts in ways that sort of disrupted the flow of a thread.) I feel strongly enough about not censoring that when I restore posts I don't even delete duplicates, which will sometimes cause several identical or nearly identical posts to pop up when someone saw their post didn't display the first time. It's all part of the public record.
Anyway, like I said, cheers. If you are on a PC and you hold the control key at the same time as you scroll your mouse wheel you can enlarge things, which can help on some of the captchas- some letters though are just too close; Some capital A's often loop into B's. It's the server hosts and there isn't anything we can do about it.
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Nate
Facebook
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Last Edited by nacoran on Feb 20, 2014 11:43 PM
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CarlA
459 posts
Feb 21, 2014
3:52 AM
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Does anyone have tabs for this song;)
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kudzurunner
4559 posts
Feb 21, 2014
5:21 AM
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I like this forum. Smart, thoughtful, and opinionated.
I agree with pretty much everything that has been said, both positive and negative. McClelland's tone is pretty undeveloped, and his musical ideas are confined, for the most part, to breathing rapidly in and out and sliding up and down the harp. Once you acknowledge those two limitations--quite evident to the sophisticates on this forum, much less evident to the general public--then it's also true that he's got great energy, quite a lot of wind, and the passion to keep going, to keep working with the ideas and techniques that he actually possesses, pushing things higher, trying for more. The speed at the end surprised me, and I think it's one of the reasons he got the applause that he got.
In some sense, the style he deploys here is the harmonica equivalent to so-called "outsider art" in the art world. It's unschooled. There are few audible influences--at least to my ears--and one has the sense that he might have created this style on his own, out of whole cloth, without taking any lessons or record copying; without the sort of vital local tradition that many older players in Mississippi or Chicago participated in. Guys like Frank Frost and Peg Leg Sam (from the Carolinas) have pedigreed, schooled sounds, in that sense. But this guy is basically making it up as he goes.
I could do the same thing with a tenor sax. I don't play tenor sax. But I could learn one blues scale on a tenor sax, and then I could, at the appropriate moment in a concert, get out on stage, play that scale up and down, and then let my fingers fly, doing Coltrane-style hand-flaps, mixing "free jazz" with that blues scale, and I could create quite a racket. I might even get the audience on its feet by the time I was through. I might come up with all sorts of crazy "music" that wouldn't even occur to a trained sax player.
No real sax player would be happy, and it would be evident to any such player that I was making shit up right and left. The truth is, nobody on this forum can find a video on YouTube where a not-really-a-sax player goes off in this way, in the middle of a big-stage concert, and engages in incredibly energetic impressionism. The musical world just doesn't have a space for that.
But the musical world DOES have a space for harmonica players who do that sort of thing, and the music, the stuff, they create, is a real part of what our instrument is about.
I'm not sure how I feel about that situation. Part of me is offended by it. But another part of me can't help but admire an instrument that, with its easy in-and-out chordal capacity, enables somebody to come along and wow an audience like this guy wows this audience. When you get right down to it, this is fun stuff. I don't know if the word "amazing" is quite justified. Amazing is a word I would rather apply to Todd Parrott, Sugar Blue, Jason Ricci, Mitch Kashmar, L.D. Miller. But it's got an undeniable power. The audience felt that. They're not wrong to feel it.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Feb 21, 2014 5:26 AM
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atty1chgo
847 posts
Feb 21, 2014
5:29 AM
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Music is not sports - Jerry Portnoy
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atty1chgo
848 posts
Feb 21, 2014
5:36 AM
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It sounds to me very much like he was trying an improvisational free-form take on "Hoedown" as performed by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, only with a harmonica, and without the melody. I agree with a lot of the comments. The context is difficult to pin down. I agree with kudzurunner about the ability to wow an audience, but not at the expense of the music listener coming away thinking that this is how harmonica should be played.
Last Edited by atty1chgo on Feb 21, 2014 5:54 AM
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rosco1
34 posts
Feb 21, 2014
6:10 AM
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I've done the same sort of thing myself, years ago. Doing easily understood, riff based rythmic stuff in front of a sympathetic, un-critical audience is a turn on for the crowd, and the theatrics of it don't bother me (much- I would hate to see a video of me doing this from 20 years ago.) Kim Wilson does the same thing, with much better tone and more musicianship, nearly every show. But even Kim's bit doesn't seem to change much year to year. Crowds love it.
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TheoBurke
592 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:04 AM
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This unaccompanied fantasia seems inspired by Eddie VanHalen's brilliant show off guitar piece "Eruption", which was and remains a vintage assemblage of trade mark riffs that cross-references blues, classical, and hard rock . I can imagine the origin of that epochal show stopper being something near what Graham McClelland is doing in the vide, a fearless and committed Eddie stepping forth at every talent show, open jam and high school dance to reveal to who ever was there the new tricks he was practicing in the garage; early on, I suspect EVH's penchant for grand standing wasn't nearly as impressive as the virtuoso he became by the time the first album was released. He might have been awful, in fact, embarrassing to watching to watch in retrospect. The point, though, is that Eddie didn't let anything stop him, leastof all his own dissatisfaction with what he played. McClelland might be on a similar road, from excited amateur to , eventually, a musician in command of his technique. Just sayin'.
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Ted Burke
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheoBurke?feature=mhee
http://ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.coM
Last Edited by TheoBurke on Feb 21, 2014 7:06 AM
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The Iceman
1471 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:05 AM
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Aside from the work this guy put into his playing, I found most of it kinda silly and the ending almost embarrassing.
Sounds like a wannabe of this guy...
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The Iceman
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colman
296 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:13 AM
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He`s having fun for sure ,tinny tone to my ears.this attack is something we all should do every now and then for cleaning out the cobwebs.after 45 yrs. of blues playing i rather hear one deep note with a human voice vibrato saying i`m the hootchie cootchie main.......
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Littoral
1037 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:14 AM
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OT to Iceman, I should just shut up, I know: posting an opinion that people "really should think about" AND believe people aren't supposed to comment about it is an "interesting" view.
There, I can let it go now.
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Littoral
1038 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:27 AM
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Ah, I thought it was fine. People dig stuff like that, before they want something more. I'd bet he'd agree it was a bit much and overly enthusiastic but putting what he did into one minute with some organized band support would actually be good.
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The Iceman
1473 posts
Feb 21, 2014
7:33 AM
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Littoral...
What's wrong with being curious and thinking about ideas for oneself without commenting politically? No one's opinions change with the comments from that last topic...They were more attack the messenger, anyways.
That direction usually leads to a locked down topic.
btw, my email is IcemanLE@aol.com if you want to communicate with me personally.
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The Iceman
Last Edited by The Iceman on Feb 21, 2014 7:33 AM
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walterharp
1324 posts
Feb 21, 2014
8:01 AM
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man, you guys are a tough crowd... the guy probably did not post this himself, and could well come around here and see some pretty critical comments, even though he laid it all out there. Like Adam said there was some unique stuff in there, why not focus on that? Not fair to compare to Norton Buffalo, one of the top pros of all time.
What if this was a video of some guy adam found and took a video of on a back porch in Mississippi but the person was playing exactly this, would it sound better then?
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Tuckster
1394 posts
Feb 21, 2014
9:19 AM
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I'll give him points for enthusiasm and speed. As a guy who aspires(and struggles) with the finer points of harp playing,it didn't ring my bell. I'm sure the audience loved it and thought it was awesome playing. Oh well.
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Jim Rumbaugh
951 posts
Feb 21, 2014
9:57 AM
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It sounds good to me.
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theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
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kudzurunner
4560 posts
Feb 21, 2014
10:02 AM
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I posted it because I thought--hoped!--it would produce exactly this welter of opinions. Theo, I really get what you're saying. If I was McClelland, I would absolutely be muttering "I will see all you stuck-up f**ks later, down the road." Yes, sometimes people are on a path, they're developing in ways that one extended glimpse may not make entirely clear, and we need to understand that.
Hey, he's a harmonica player! He's out there throwing down, and entertaining an audience. He's not shooting up a school, for god's sake. We're allowed to have honest reactions, but I certainly understand those, like Walter, who say "Tough crowd!", meaning us. We're a tough crowd. I think that's OK, too.
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MindTheGap
290 posts
Feb 21, 2014
10:11 AM
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Don't non-harmonica players, the audience, actually expect harmonica players to be a little bit like this? Exuberant, thrashing about, flailing, head down, possessed by the spirit?
Concert pianist - head thrown back, floppy hair whirling around.
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MTG
Last Edited by MindTheGap on Feb 21, 2014 10:13 AM
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Rick Davis
2992 posts
Feb 21, 2014
10:17 AM
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No, it's good. It's country harp, new country. There were some Charlie McCoy-ish licks in there.
We can't measure it against our blues ideal. Yes, it was cheesy and reminded me of the wankerish overwrought presentation you see from some guitar heroes at jams. But that is new country. I know a harp player in a rock band who gets about the same tone and theatrics.
In this case I think the audience liked his energy a lot. Nothing wrong with that, but he's not gonna make the finals at IBC or get signed to Vizztone.
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-Little Rick Davis
The Memphis Mini harp amp
The Blues Harp Amps Blog
The Mile High Blues Society
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Tuckster
1395 posts
Feb 21, 2014
10:28 AM
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Is it wrong for we harp players to be hyper critical of other harp players? I think it comes with the territory. We all know how hard it is to get really good at this instrument. I'm always evaluating/critiquing harp players I see. I usually reach one of two conclusions: there/not there yet. If you really care about mastering an instrument,you better know what constitutes good playing and what does not. I would never tell a harp player "You sucked!", but I tell that to myself all the time. How else can you progress and grow?
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DukeBerryman
163 posts
Feb 21, 2014
12:27 PM
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Remember the King in the movie Amadeus? He said about Mozart's music, "Too many notes." Here's my counter argument in favor of minimalism:
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DukeBerryman
164 posts
Feb 21, 2014
12:33 PM
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One of the things I like about Junior's style is you can barely get him to finish a phrase - it's much cooler to leave it hanging.
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TheoBurke
594 posts
Feb 21, 2014
12:37 PM
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I did an interview with Charlie Musselwhite in the 70s for the San Diego Reader when he was playing at the Catamaran Hotel in Mission Beach. He was playing his usual brand of trail blazing blues harp scorch and for the interview, during a break between sets, I arranged my C Marine Band to be in my shirt pocket, poking up, in plain sight. He finally asked if I played and I said yes. Play me something, he said, and I did, a rather wheezy version of The Work Song. Charlie listened without expression and then said "You're really fast...." pausing a second , and then "...and you're real sloppy..." He got up and went back to band stand for the next set. Tough crowd indeed. But how else would I get better if he didn't tell me that I was playing crap? Charlie Musselwhite gave some goals to accomplish.
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Ted Burke
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheoBurke?feature=mhee
http://ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.coM
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orphan
315 posts
Feb 21, 2014
1:09 PM
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Ted, I wonder what he would say about your playing now. You have certainly accomplished some goals.
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.JPG)
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HarpNinja
3788 posts
Feb 21, 2014
1:09 PM
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I liked it!
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Mike
My Website
My Harmonica Effects Blog
Rock Lessons
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Frank
3867 posts
Feb 21, 2014
1:28 PM
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The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
Groucho Marx
That blues harp solo was amazing :)
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Rubes
808 posts
Feb 21, 2014
1:38 PM
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......worth the wait Frank! ;~}
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Old Man Rubes at Reverbnation
Dads in Space at Reverbnation
Benny and Rubes at Reverbnation
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didjcripey
709 posts
Feb 21, 2014
1:51 PM
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I agree with you Duke. Sometimes you can do so much more with less.
However, I think you need a pretty hot band behind you to make it work.
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Lucky Lester
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jnorem
36 posts
Feb 21, 2014
2:25 PM
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nacoran: understood. Thanks.
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Call me J
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Frank
3874 posts
Feb 21, 2014
4:25 PM
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Graham seems like a fine talented fellow and he has been around for good awhile... so I would imagine he has fairly thick skin, and knows his place in the pecking order of great harp players in his country and around the world. If he did read this thread - he'd probably shrug it off, after all "amazing" is in the ear of the beholder :)
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Todd Parrott
1203 posts
Feb 21, 2014
4:31 PM
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It is interesting to read the comments here from harmonica players, in contrast to those by non-harmonica players on YouTube.
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