These last days I’ve got interested again in Guitar Idol competition. While I am a fan of Gustavo Guerra due to 1000 reasons that I will discuss at a later time(and I hope he win the competition), I listened to every one of the guys presented there in the final. I must say that in many cases, the video they entered the contest with was not the best choice if you also look for them on YouTube because, in my opinion, most of them have other pieces that are better.

But OK, I understand the reason for the songs presented there: they needed songs that show a broad range of skills and I can say that you could see in 3-4 minutes from speed picking, melodic sense, creativity, control, tone, tremolo bar works, 8 finger taping, slap, finger style, whatever else they could think of that I can not even imagine…

This morning I was looking on YouTube for this guy, Chris Feener, who is on the 3rd position considering the number of votes, but didn’t quite impress me.

In the beginning, his Ibanez K7 guitar was what set me back because it immediately made me think of a pattern: the young shredder, Symphony X fan that will drive me crazy with fast notes from moment one to the end of the song without understanding anything of the actual melody (if there would be any). Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of Ibanez electric guitars and a 7 strings Ibanez guitar has been something I have dreamed of for a while, until I understood that you don’t need 7 strings to play well. You need something else…

However, listening him on YouTube, I have discovered a 20 yo guy with a great collection of skills and techniques, with pieces far more interesting than what he presented for the contest.

So I have decided to put here one of his covers, Andy Timmons Groove or die song which I like very much, by the way, as almost all the songs of Andy Timmons.

So, without further comments, I give you Chris Feener and Andy Timmons’ Groove or die:

Question: considering the notoriety that YouTube builds to these guys, where do you think we’ll see him in a couple of years? In what band?

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I didn’t know Benjamin Lechuga since the only Chile music I listen from time to time is that acoustic folk that some Latin America musicians play in the middle of the city square. Actually I think they are from Peru, not from Chile. Anyway, I didn’t know him or his music and I found about him or his band, Delta(playing progressive rock music), this morning by reading GuitarPlayerZen. Benjamin Lechuga is not the regular hero everybody posts about since he has not such a great visibility for the moment but he has the support of Ibanez after winning the Ibanez Project when 17, has his part of recognition, playing with Andy Timmons and a lot of talent, in my opinion.

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If you think about it, I don’t think that any other musical instrument influenced the 20th century more than electric guitars. I think that electric guitars are to the last century what piano and the rest of the historically related instruments were for their time. Of course that if you think about Mozart, Beethoven, they used to compose their music on piano, or how you called it back then. I am sure that if they would have lived today, they would have given a great importance to electric guitars and probably they would have been rock stars. I am not joking, I mean what I say!

Think about Steve Vai, Satriani or Yngwie Malmsteen, gods of electric guitars, right? I have the conviction that born under an other star, a few hundred years ago, their names would have been listed near Mozart’s name and Bach’s name. Today, electric guitars are what drive the rock, blues, country music scene the same way as piano did some time ago.

Will electric guitars gods be remembered a few hundred years later?

Well, this is a really good question, and most of all, difficult to answer because we don’t have a way to compare what is going on with the music industry these days. Think about the fact that they didn’t have too much to do back then so composers, music people were seen as important figures of those days. Today, everything changes fast, electric guitars are a presence of the last 70 years I think, you can not predict how the music will change and if electric guitars will still be part of the next 100 years’ music. But who knows, maybe people will still remember and kids will learn in school about Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Andy Timmons…

What do you think?

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