So apparently last night was Matt Skiba’s first ever show with The Sekrets, and it was god awful. Fans were tweeting about how Skiba was all sorts of fucked up and couldn’t make it through the first song of the set, even with lyric sheets in front of him.

I wish I was there.

Rock & roll is supposed to be dangerous, and a musician being too fucked up to function is part of the danger. Obviously, not everybody should do this, but its fucking Matt Skiba, who has spent his entire adult life writing music about self-destruction. Every so often, he throws one in there about fixing his issues, then BAM! Right back to the booze.

I can understand why people are complaining, but fuck them. It’s like they haven’t been listening to this music since fucking 96 when Goddammit was released.

Though now there’s attempts at covering it up.

Really? Fuck you.

Century Media has taken down all of the live videos from that night that have popped up on YouTube and Matt Skiba tweeted that he was just really nervous. Fuck you, you were not just really nervous. You’ve been playing music in front of people for longer than Taylor Swift has even been alive. Do not fucking tell me you were nervous. You were not nervous, you were fucked up. Now this could be Matt Skiba’s decision, or his label’s. Either way, fuck that. You own up to your fucking mistakes like a fucking man and stop hiding behind excuses like a pussy.

Everyone knows what the Uncanny Valley is. If you don’t, look it up. Or don’t. I’m not your mom.

So if there’s an uncanny valley for sight, can there be one for sound? And do records that are quantized and auto-tuned fall into that valley? Is that why no one’s buying records? Do the sounds we hear coming out of the radio sound TOO perfect, to the point where we don’t really want to listen?

Think about it, will you?

Best Guitar Player lists always piss me off because they never actually list GOOD fucking guitar players. Kurt Cobain is always in the top 20. Johnny Ramone is always pretty high up there too. Those people aren’t fucking guitar players. They’re songwriters. Just because you like someone’s songs, doesn’t mean they’re a good guitar player.

How come no one knows the difference between a good guitar player and a cool guitar player? Angus Young is cool. Johnny Ramone is cool. Kurt Cobain is fucking cool. But good? Arguable. Best? Certainly fucking not.

Obviously guys like Yngwie and Vai belong on the list. But Chuck Berry belongs there. He played those leads in keys that aren’t “guitar keys.” Jack White belongs there, because he filled that space in the White Stripes like a mother fucker. He’s also way better than he usually shows in the Stripes. John Lennon and George Harrison belong there because they played those weird chords that sound all pretty and poppy, but are a bitch to play. Like THAT’S good fucking guitar playing. Being able to make the guitar sound big and perfect. Knowing how to do it, and being able to do it well. You don’t need to play 1000 notes at a hundred miles an hour, but you can’t just whack down-picked power chords either.

Guitar players are always getting massive boners over vintage gear, dropping thousands of dollars on things that are older than they are. Now I’m not going to say that vintage gear isn’t cool, because it is. But fuck that mess.

My relationship with my guitars lies somewhere between tools and friends. They’re important to me. I look out for them, they look out for me. However, if one were to break beyond repair, I would be more upset at the cost of finding a replacement.

A lot of guitar players like vintage gear because it has “soul.” I can see where they’re coming from, but again, fuck that mess. I would rather put the soul into a brand new guitar then buy one that’s been souled up for me! I’m not saying that new gear is always better. I would just rather buy something new and watch it become vintage as it grows with me. If you look at all of the nicks and dings and scratches in my guitars, I can tell you where each one came from. I have a nice scrape on the back of my black and white Mockingbird Special from where it fell over while waiting to play a wedding. My black and chrome MS has a bunch of digs in the headstock where I used to accidentally bump it into the desk I used at my parents’ house.

I will point out that amps are a different story. Vintage amps are just better because they’re not chock full of technology. My amp of choice is the Marshall Vintage Modern because it’s set up to be a classic amp. The only computer part in it is the reverb, which I don’t use. Vintage pedals sound better but don’t fucking work. Save that shit for the studio and buy something fancy and shiny with a lot of buttons if you’re going to tour.

THE END!

If the 15-year-old me heard that the 25-year-old me makes his living playing in a wedding band, he… would be disappointed. I wasn’t very confrontational back then!