What if......

After posting in Jake's "We're dealing with...." thread, I raised a question I'd like your reponses to.

What if guitars and their music were to be banned, world wide, everywhere? What would you guys do? Start playing drums? Stop listenning to music? Create an illegal cult wanted in all corners of the globe? Avoid pop at all costs? What?

Personally, I have no clue what-so-ever I'd do. Perhaps the underground cult thing, seems a pretty exciting idea, hehe. Failing all else, I'd probably become a drummer - after all, I'd get no stick, there'd be no guitarist to make up jokes about me!!!!
Just some food for thought.

If that's food for thought, and we are what we eat, then I think we're gonna be reading some pretty strange thoughts. Like...

Me, I figure we'd all have to learn how to play like Tom Scholtz, so we could sell our recordings as synthesizer music. Can you picture it? "No guitars were used in producing the sounds you hear on this disk." Just the opposite of the Boston records that proudly proclaimed their stuff to be 'computer-free music'.

And if it played out the same way Prohibition did, when they tried to ban alcohol, rich gangsters would soon be calling the shots. You think 'The Industy' rules with an iron fist? You ain't seen nothin'!

By the way, the reason you poor, long-sufferin' bastards in the US of A can't get beer with a civilized alcohol percentage, is that the brewers in the twenties were allowed to continue to operate, provided the alcohol content did not exceed 2.8%... and you're STILL stuck with it!

Government involvement ruins everything it touches. For proof you don't have to look any further away than Canada. I just moved from Ontario to Alberta, so I could breathe again. The fools I left behind just re-elected the same bunch that have trashed our country over the last thirty years. Did you know that in the late 60's, the Canadian dollar was worth $1.13US?

I'll close off now before I really start to rant!
AAaaarggghh!!!

[Edited by Lordathestrings on 02-07-2001 at 10:36 PM]

Well, I'm a bassist, so not being able to play guitar would only be a mild irritation. Something though tells me that I would get in a lot of trouble very quickly. Also, bass is close enough to guitar to get banned along with it... hmmm...
well, if that's the case, I say RIOT!!!!
Yeah, we'll hit the streets using Fishbone's album "Chim Chim's Badass Revenge" as our soundtrack... "...it's a war, fightin' like the nutmeg. Steam rollin over,' steam rollin' down sour puss sissies like a psycologicly overcast beer gut on a rock star mission. A revolutionary e-racism muscled black man, white man, colorless man, red, or yellow man mission."

On other notes:
*Beer is vile... drink alcohol if you're going to drink at all.
*You should hear what my Newfie relatives think of Canada's central gov't. Your rant is not only tame, but dramaticly less animated and prone to the throwing of edged weapons.
*Yes I knew that the Canadian dollar was worth more than the US dollar at one point in time (not from first hand experience though; those days were long gone by the time I arrived on this earth).

Riot sounds good and, I should have mentioned it before, but I was thinking of bass guitars too, although I'm still in two minds about a sitar, banjo and mandalin...I think those can stay. I just thought though, why hasn't anyone tried making a metal album with a mandalin....hmmmmmmmm, "I have a cunning plan!"
More thoughts, I need more thoughts!


Other notes,
Damn you poor Americans, 2.8%!...Fortunately, over here in the UK, we don't have that problem. Actually, yes we do, it's called alchol free beer.
What happened to make the CAN$ less than US$? And doesn't Canada have one of the highest tax rates in the world or something? Sorry to be so ignorant, but what'd you expect?!

I'm wondering why you don't hear not necessarily metal, but some heavy bands using slides- the ballsy tone, 1/4 steps (or whatever fraction you can work in there, but anyway, it's chromatic riffs x10 to the western music centric ear). I've invented some incredibly heavy open D slide riffs.

We have non alcoholic beer too, they even have the audacity to put an Irish name on it. On the otherhand, we have "miro-brew" operations, and they're allowed to have slightly higher alcohol content.

However, the UK is one of two nations in the world where it's legal to buy and consume absynth, correct? You do have that one on us... hehe you can keep it.

...Haven't you heard?..... Absynthe makes the heart grow fonder!

Hey, you plug in your open-tuned slide, and I'll fire up my overdriven 12-string. You want heavy Power Chords? That setup produces the kind of silly grins more usually associated with those battery-powered sex-toy gizmos!

About the beer; anything with less than 5% alcohol by volume is required by law to be labeled as "Light Beer". (When you're out of Schlitz.... who cares!)

What happened to the Canadian dollar, Wildridge, is that our people were foolish enough to elect a series of Liberal governments. With promises of 'social safety nets' and and other 'social' goodies, the Liberal Party has perverted a once-strong country into a sheepish bunch of weaklings who are so psycologically dependant on Big Government, they don't want to do anything unless they can get government funding for it. The result is an economy, hobbled by high taxes, that discourages investment from foreign sources of capital. The value of our dollar reflects this international lack of confidence.

If I sound bitter, its only because I am. And your premise for this thread isn't that far-fetched. That is exactly the kind of thing the weasels in Ottawa would do if they thought it would keep them in power... demonize some identifiable 'fringe group' and buy votes with promises to rid the land of these 'outlaws'! 1984 by George Orwell should be read by every man, woman, and child the world over. And they should re-read it every ten years, as a reminder.

Thanks for letting me vent. But we're supposedly gathered here to talk MUSIC. Don't get me going on politics. Music keeps me young: politics makes me "crazy and old before my time".

Originally posted by Willdridge


Personally, I have no clue what-so-ever I'd do[/B]

Its kind of like Marijuana, we can't be monitered twenty four hours a day, :D...and they would have to cut down every tree in the forest to prohibit the beautiful sounds of the guitar, :). The guitar is more than just a part of my life, its my outlet for creativity, sure I could find another instrument to keep myself occupied, but not with the same endless possibilities of the guitar..

I'm very sneaky, I would find someway to slip underneaith the cracks...

-Joseph, :).

That wouldn't do it either. Good wood is already getting to be hard to find. In another thread, (Single Pickup Wiring, I think), somebody told of playing an aluminum guitar. I know Fender made a Strat out of granite. I was so heavy that it had to be mounted on a special stand, but it had Incredible sustain! We're talking Rock Music, fer sure. I keep hearing rumours about an axe made of carbon fibre, but I've never seen one.

Isn't the Parker Fly made out of part carbon, or fibre glass, or summit? There's something weird about it - I can't be bothered to find the magazine with a review in it, but I know there's something like that in the Parker Fly.

yeah, the parker is partly made of carbon composite fibers and stuff. I think the neck is all carbon fiber (and truss rod), but I'm not sure.

Also, this forum may be about music, but music and gov't do intertwine. Though things have lightened up considerably over the past couple of hundred years, their was a time when you could be executed for playing a triad. The reality is that music can be very powerful and governments recognize this and try to control it to a certain extent. I'm sure we've all seen how a powerful set of lyrics set to powerful music can wind a crowd up, and from that can imagine some such thing being a serious threat to people in power.

Hell, the whole genre of Ska was invented to help the Jamacan people feel motivated and enlivened after they won their independance from Brittan.

I know that if the wrong people come into power that my music will be in danger. I hope the day never comes, but if it does, I hope I'm strong enough to fight it for all I'm worth and make them regret the day they first pondered censorship.

Music is a powerful thing. It's something I think we all take for granted, just how much music influences us and those around us. I mean, I know personally, certain songs make me want to cry, others make me want to go and beat the wall 'til my either it breaks or my fist does, (never gone through with that yet, fortunately!) Yet, how often do we think about that stuff? And how often do we think about what would happen if we didn't have it? Pretty much what the whole thread is about, sort of. It's a disturbing thought really, isn't it? That the things we love (not only music) can be lost so easily if a powerful, opressive group came into the balance of power. Life's such a delicate little thing, isn't?

Here in the UK we have a Prime Minister who used to play guitar in a rock band. When asked what his most important possession was he named his Strat. It's a pity he and his party have f****d up this country, however the moral is don't vote for his party - VOTE FOR THE ALL NIGHT PARTY! If guitars were banned and we were forced to meet and play in the woods where would we plug in our amps ? The government in this country would'nt find us, they could'nt find their arses with both hands and a map.

...Sounds just like somebody we Americans just elected.
::sigh::
And the miserable thing is that the alternative was just as bad.

So back to your point, where's the party?

Yeah our alternatives were just as bad and the party ? That just has to be at Keith Richard's place. In a perfect world who would the guests be at that party ? I'd go for Lou Reed seeing, that sour faced b*£$*&$d always makes me happy. Keith Moon, Oliver Reed and Ozzy Osborne would keep us entertained, Leonard Cohen could join Lou Reed if we needed to be brought down a bit. How about a supergroup ? Keith Moon on drums, Phil Lynott on bass, Keith Richard, and SRV to trade licks, Otis Spann on keyboards, The Memphis Horns with Elvis Presley and Otis Redding on vocals. Jimi Hendrix to do the Star Spangled Banner as a finale. All washed down with the finest single malt sctch whisky.

[Edited by howie50 on 02-22-2001 at 03:37 PM]