The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    [wasn't sure where to post this, but ...]

    Wow, just saw this trailer on YT -- put together by Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame!):




    [no hobbits were harmed in the making of this film.]

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    The bummer is it premieres on Disney+.


    “They broke up because Yoko sat on an amp.”

  4. #3

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    Worth signing up to Disney+ just for that. Looks superb! And despite all the chaos, they still came out with great songs.

  5. #4

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    It’s going to be fab nostalgia and no small amount of tempus fugit poignance for me. I’m happy to pay Mickey and Goofy to get inside.

    But then I still have a BW photo from ~1966 showing young Robert with his first electric—Asian, candy-flake-red spray, one pickup, mirror pickguard, Gumby headstock—and Gibson GA-5 amp on a sofa with the Rubber Soul album cover. My parents were playing bridge two rooms away with Bill and Pam Watters. I was trying to play along with Tomorrow Never Knows, but I still had a long way to go ;-)

  6. #5

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    Oh, you have to share that photo, Robert!

  7. #6

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    I can't wait, it's a shame it's not coming to theaters that would be an experience.

  8. #7

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    Attachment 85401

    Back cover of Rubber Soul to the left, GA-5 behind to the right. Looks like Am on the left hand—maybe I was working out “Wait,” since its chord progression is so clear?

    The guitar cost my folks $30. I jonesed for a MusicMaster at Finkelstein’s Pawn Shop, the one good music shop in Wilmington NC, but it was at least $150 and I was too lazy and dreamy to be a paper-route capitalist.

    The peroxide bangs and tan mean this is summer 1966–I was at the beach whenever I could get there. And of course I was dreaming of getting girls via guitar/singing/ songwriting.

    I may look like I had early acquaintance with heroin or quaaludes, but I just wasn’t ready for the flash.

    ——

    ps I see now “Tomorrow Never Knows” was on Revolver, not Rubber Soul. Goofy memory! In my teen band/coffeehouse solo years, I performed these RS songs:

    I’ve Just Seen a Face
    Norwegian Wood
    Michelle
    Girl
    It’s Only Love

    ;-)—-What are your Beatles emulation stories?

  9. #8

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    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    I thought I was over it, then I saw the trailer. There is no cure for Beatlemania. Yes, I'll be in for a short-term Disney subscription in November.

  10. #9

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    Brilliant. A photo to treasure.

    Me? I was a Stones man…but I’ve learned to respect the Fab 4.

  11. #10

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    Stones to lute scholar, Rob—how the paths twist and branch off, no?

    Re Stones & 1960s teen music: The first recording our band The Other End did featured “The Last Time” and a reverb-drenched “Play with Fire.” By then I owned a blackface DeLuxe Reverb and a different Korean guitar (laminate hollowbody, two pickups, “Paul” on the headstock—I had no idea what a Gibson Les Paul was, nobody local owned one).

  12. #11

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    Meet my evil twin:


  13. #12

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    Jumpin Rob Mac is a gas gas gas!

    Rock Rule #1: Make a joyful noize. Thanks for this open G medley even if you didn’t remove the E string.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by rhl-ferndale
    Attachment 85401

    Back cover of Rubber Soul to the left, GA-5 behind to the right. Looks like Am on the left hand—maybe I was working out “Wait,” since its chord progression is so clear?

    The guitar cost my folks $30. I jonesed for a MusicMaster at Finkelstein’s Pawn Shop, the one good music shop in Wilmington NC, but it was at least $150 and I was too lazy and dreamy to be a paper-route capitalist.

    The peroxide bangs and tan mean this is summer 1966–I was at the beach whenever I could get there. And of course I was dreaming of getting girls via guitar/singing/ songwriting.

    I may look like I had early acquaintance with heroin or quaaludes, but I just wasn’t ready for the flash.

    ——

    ps I see now “Tomorrow Never Knows” was on Revolver, not Rubber Soul. Goofy memory! In my teen band/coffeehouse solo years, I performed these RS songs:

    I’ve Just Seen a Face
    Norwegian Wood
    Michelle
    Girl
    It’s Only Love

    ;-)—-What are your Beatles emulation stories?
    I made an 8mm movie to the Beatles "Revolution" that was well received by the Art School revelers at the (mostly faculty) party where it premiered and had its full run. It got an encore. So... not bad.

  15. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by rhl-ferndale
    Attachment 85401

    Back cover of Rubber Soul to the left, GA-5 behind to the right. Looks like Am on the left hand—maybe I was working out “Wait,” since its chord progression is so clear?

    The guitar cost my folks $30. I jonesed for a MusicMaster at Finkelstein’s Pawn Shop, the one good music shop in Wilmington NC, but it was at least $150 and I was too lazy and dreamy to be a paper-route capitalist.

    The peroxide bangs and tan mean this is summer 1966–I was at the beach whenever I could get there. And of course I was dreaming of getting girls via guitar/singing/ songwriting.

    I may look like I had early acquaintance with heroin or quaaludes, but I just wasn’t ready for the flash.

    ——

    ps I see now “Tomorrow Never Knows” was on Revolver, not Rubber Soul. Goofy memory! In my teen band/coffeehouse solo years, I performed these RS songs:

    I’ve Just Seen a Face
    Norwegian Wood
    Michelle
    Girl
    It’s Only Love

    ;-)—-What are your Beatles emulation stories?
    I love everything about that photo!

    The first 45 record I ever bought (with my parents money) was I Want to Hold Your Hand. I begged my parents to buy me a guitar, which they did—a Sears special—and we went to Chambers Music in Chattanooga, where I told them I wanted to play guitar like George Harrison and the guy from Johnny Cash (Luther Perkins—Folsum Prison Blues). I never learned to play any Beatles songs as a kid…

    A couple of years later I was at my best friend’s when his older sister announced she was throwing out all her Beatles’ records, ‘cause they said they were bigger than Jesus. That didn’t phase me, but did make me think the Beatles were more transgressive than they really were, a plus in my book. When they (Beatles) broke up I was heartbroken.

    Fast forward to the mid-70’s—the Beatles are gone, all the boys have solo hits but are pretty uncool, at least in my circle of friends. Our high school jazz band plays Got to Get You into My Life, which was a big hit (again) in the late 70’s for some weird reason. And suddenly the Beatles are relevant again.

    I was into prog rock big time. A friend suggested The White Album, which I bought and listened to and analyzed incessantly. It led me back into the Beatles, whom I started seeing as great artists and in fact the progenitors of prog rock.

    And I’ve never stopped loving and enjoying the Beatles. My kids inherited the Beatles idolization gene. They ALL love the Beatles above probably all other groups, even though they are not averse to Radiohead and hiphop and all forms of music.

    I have seen EVERY doc about the Beatles except this one. (My BIL is a journalist and wrote part of the foreword to the big book that accompanies the Beatles Anthology series, IIRC.) I plan to watch it, just waiting for the right time.

  16. #15

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    My most successful band modeled ourselves on the early Beatles albums. We played 50/50 originals to covers, we took requests live and if we didn't know the song we'd learn it for next time. It wasn't all Beatles covers we did stones, the who, the kinks, Chuck Berry, Elvis, modern bands too, it was fun. Two guitars so I could do what I now know are called shell voicings but we called them "weird jazz chords." Thinking back it's impressive what I was able to hammer out knowing almost no theory at all. I'd often come to rehearsal with something and the bass player would correct the chords, make the VI a vi or whatever and then it would sound like a real song.

  17. #16

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    I tried to watch it last night--we already have a Disney+ subscription--thanks Mandelorian!--but no luck. Will come out on my birthday 11/25.

    I had to settle for a Lynyrd Skynyrd documentary instead. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't Fab.

    Interesting story about Skynyrd opening for the Stones at a big show in England--200,000 fans, the largest LS had ever seen. They were determined to rock the crowd, so they broke one of the Stones' big rules--no walking on the tongue platform in front of the stage. Reportedly Mick was pissed.



    Paul and Linda at the show at Knebsworth:


  18. #17

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    Is that Dave Gilmour with the Dallas Cowboys tee shirt?

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
    Is that Dave Gilmour with the Dallas Cowboys tee shirt?
    Sure looks like him. But then, all those hippie longhairs look alike, so I was told.*


    * Many, many times.

  20. #19

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    It does look like the nemesis of Roger Waters, Rob. All those high boots and bell bottoms and ciggies!

    I still wear Chelsea boots with denim bell bottoms when I want to feel, oh, not quite 69.

  21. #20

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    Attachment 85428


    Here’s the boy band we called Walker, Bob, and Kelly from 1968-1970. Kelly (ES-175D) and I (Strat—anyone know the year from the RW fretboard/sunburst?) were songwriters, so we performed our originals, but he like me had busted into puberty when the Fab Four (Stones, Dave Clark, Hollies, Zombies) came to the US.

    So we also played Brit Invasion covers, especially with 2-3 part harmony, though Kelly and I had to drill Walker (pretty boy to the right) on his lines or he’d just slip into a robust unison melody. If I Fell, Here There and Everywhere, the Rubber Soul acoustic stuff, Look Through Any Window…. Flutist/tenorist Joey D. joined us so we could add You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Traffic tunes, and more. Looks like we’re rehearsing Tuesday Afternoon here.

    In a later, Walker-less electric band, our third set was all Beatles—mostly Abbey Road singles, but we did the whole medley that closes the album. And we killed it. Imagine how that played during the late Nixon years at Fort Bragg and Camp LeJeune, at soldiers’ beer halls, noncom and officers’ clubs, people just back from Vietnam or about to be sent. It was like Cubism meets Dada in the flesh. Shaved heads beneath the stage yelling “Die, Bitch!” to Ben, our lead guitar, who looked like generic Jesus but also a total rock star without hips in his bellbottom cords with a red 335, but after the show was done they wanted to show us their guns and Jeeps and stash and girlfriends. Ben and Joey and Ronnie the drummer acquired STDs.

    Oh, the topless bar in Fayetteville (nicknamed Fayettenam by then) where we had to set up in an enfilade on the back bar, and one of the young performers flung nipple-sweat onto my electric piano! My fingers slipped again and again on Do It Again, while bartenders with their bald spots just beneath my feet popped open crummy corporate lagers for boys from all over America who hoped to see any kind of exotic action soon. The place was called The XXth Century Fox, of course—and we should have worked up the Doors tube, but didn’t. One older patron at the bar with an Elvis haircut in loud plaid flashed his holstered pistol when I told him, “No, we can’t play Harbor Lights.”

    We had put the band together on the promise of playing a Norfolk-Bermuda cruise ship summer, but we weren’t the first youngsters deceived by a fast-talk manager and our own illusions. We maybe should have known that as a vet and retired Highway patrolman, his connections ran that way rather than to cruise line rock nirvana. But we had bought a lot of gear for the cruise gig, and had to play his bookings to pay it off. After which I returned to college to write poems and a senior thesis on the hero’s journey.

    Many years later, in the Pacific NW, I joined the Number 9 Band in Eugene. Number 9 had been organized just after John Lennon’s death and which activated itself for rehearsal every September for a John Lennon Birthday Party on whatever weekend was closest to October 9. Oh how wonderful to nail the double leads on And Your Bird Can Sing, Dig a Pony! To split lead octaves on I Should Have Known Better because we had no Rick 330/12, to imitate the tape tricks on Strawberry Fields.

    We opened with Birthday, of course, and middle aged people screamed with delight, and began jumping around and didn’t stop until we stopped. I most enjoyed the earlier stuff—I Feel Fine, Day Tripper, Please Please Me, I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party. Sometimes Number 9 had 2 guitars, sometimes 4. When the band was swollen, I tried to model laying out, but as you all know, people show up who want to sing lead on everything, the same people who tend to play too loud. Some JLBPs were better than others.

    I was part of it for 12 years, as well as being part of its choir of the Church of Latter-Day Lennonites, who supported the sermons of Jive Guru Dave, half mad organic farmer visionary, half standup comic. His sermons took their cues from Lennon lyrics. The JLBP was a deeply satisfying middle-age ex-hippie experience every October, like a weird harvest festival perfectly suited to the town of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and where the Dead and their descendants played the annual Oregon Country Fair.

    Jive Guru Dave and the choir of Church of the Latter Day Lennonites wore vari-colored HS graduation gowns bought from Goodwill, decorated with spangles. We came in singing the Amen processional, but substituted Len-non. There was lots of tie dye, fumes of patchouli and skunk weed in the darkened WOW Hall. There were kids picking up vibes of pure joy from a generation ago, people with walkers who’d been 30 and single when the Beatles swept across America.

    Forgive me for going on and on. Not long ago I had a mysterious bout of internal bleeding and ended up in the hospital for nights and days, where kind and smart and efficient people from various cultures and continents made sure I’d recover. I lost a fair amount of blood, and it may take months to restore the hemoglobin and oxygen I took for granted all these years.

    I can spend all day reading and writing, but not much else.

    Attachment 85431

    An hour or two with this or that guitar is heavenly, but my reflections on life and a Beatle-infested childhood are very much autumnal. The leaves are falling faster now. Walker and Ben died of lung cancer long ago; Charlie the ancient guitar tech at Finkelstein’s Pawn, who lost a finger in a touring band in Mexico, and who sold me his beat up Strat for $90, left quietly decades ago; so has Mr Finkelstein. Kelly’s 58 175D ($100, Finkelstein’s) is in somebody’s happy hands, but Kelly and I plan to record some of his songs from 1968-71 as soon as possible, if only to close a circle.
    Last edited by rhl-ferndale; 10-18-2021 at 05:33 PM.

  22. #21

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    Wonderful post. Thank you!