One of the first YouTube clips I ever saw was lost footage of a godhead ax solo Prince performed at the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony; just last month, I was sent a YouTube file of a ten-year-old playing Led Zeppelin's "Bron-Yr-Aur" acoustically. Both were semitransfixing. But if these performances had been given to me as MP3 files, I wouldn't have cared about either. (I would have listened to the Prince track once and ignored the Zep kid completely.) This illuminates one of those depressing paradoxes about rock 'n' roll: Very often, profoundly exceptional guitar playing is boring to listen to.2
The article makes many good points. Although I would disagree that Stave Vai's Passion and Warfare is boring to listen to and Poison songs are NOT better than Frank Zappa's songs!
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