Is John Watt the most progressive Progressive Rock Guitarist?

[John Watt]

That's me typing that, John Watt, having some progressive playing,
that quickly becomes progressive-aggressive, a truly heavy metal technology,
because it re-sounds that way, metal strings, making a pick-axe sound.

The video explains itself, just the camera, You Tube and Magle.dk.
This is so surprising for me, I'm just going to try and jam it out again.
These are nice chords.
E minor
A minor
C major 7th
moving that Cmaj7 down one fret,
halfway between Cmaj7 and Em.

I was just listening as much as I was playing when the sound happened,
and when I dropped my pick I just said I dropped my pick,
and after watching the video the first time thinking pick-axe sound,
"I Dropped a Pick", is all that could be, dropping a heavy pic on you.

And I didn't plan on all that hat-brim action. It just happened.
It all just happened.
That was Ryan at Thorold Music. I was asking him to treat me like a senior,
but he wouldn't. He had to recommend something, and talk me into it.
That made me forget to ask about a seniors' discount. Wow!
Maybe he did treat me like a senior, when I said I only use Ernie Ball 10s,
all I've used since 1970, even on the acoustic, and he said he had better strings.

oh yeah... I just pick-axed a little, and carved my name in progressive rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC2UoJL6Z7w&feature=youtu.be

 

[John Watt]

aaaahhhhhh... now I get to give myself the first view.
I gotta hit that bottom F# bass note a little more.
Lotsa sorries for the truly progressives,
because this isn't my two-octave electric guitar,
and I am a string and spring bender.

 

[John Watt]

John! This is your right hand, typing all by itself. You can see that.
You know, for all of my life, that lefty has always been your favorite.
You know I'm always asking to be up front, or at least first, for once.
Yes, you're nice to me, treating me the same, even if I'm the follower.

I do love you John, just like I know you have loved me, all of our lives.
That's why I'm typing this.
I've been listening as much as you have, and I was there,
that was me, being the right hand, doing the strings,
while lefty was slack-fingered beating on the guitar and hard-picking away.

I really do appreciate that one section of string pull-aways,
so traditional, sounding so acoustic blues, or even bad electric blues.
I know lefty was just doing that for me.
Don't to that. If you can keep playing previously unheard pickage and notage,
go ahead.
I'm there right-handed right beside you... all the way.
John! If you do a tremolo spring version, could you call it "Irish Spring"?
You know I really like that.
And if you get enough of a recording contract advance,
and we all go to New Zealand, how about "Hammer-ons for Hammerheads"?

 

[John Watt]

It's happening already.
Reactionists are starting to say I'm starting to just sit around all day,
picking my axe all the time, just being an axe-picker.

When I was playing these chords slower, seeing what was there,
I realized, something in their frets, brought to mind a silver shine,
and a song I sang came to mind, oh yeah, "Careless Whispers".
George Michael did it in Dm, and these chords are in Em, a lot higher to sing,
but I will, if I can just get a hold of that lens...

That's right. A general rock guitarist has to be able to provide back-up vocals,
or sing a song or two to cover for a lead vocalist who isn't there yet,
or for a front man who wants the band to play and then introduce him,
having a signature song for the band, or getting a request out of the way.

On top of, what Bono would call, "an achingly beautiful" sonic back-drop,
I would suggest playing some leads that sound like the ends of "Axis: Bold as Love" and
"Little Wing", or the beginning of "House Burning Down", high, soaring, eternally inspired,
and laden with effects, a nice blend.

I think Rolling Stone Magazine is waiting for Bono to deal with George Michaels' death,
before they put him on the cover.

 

[John Watt]

One of the things that progressive rock bands do, is use stage props and costumes.
Think of Peter Gabriel with his flower head, or Rush with their popcorn machine, and washer, onstage.
Truly progressive.
That's why I'm showing you this new packaging for Lays Classic potato chips.
Right away, people in your audience know what you're talking about,
and might not believe you, until you hold the bag up to the lights.
So what, you might say, oh yeah,
that's when it's time to use it as a prop, maybe on your guitar,
if the bag isn't too oily already,
or have a huge prop made, with a chip girl, okay, a chippie, coming out.
No, no free lip-chip-dip humour for you! And you can get your own Lays.
Okay, I'd be the first one to play guitar with one hand,
while I'm bopping around the dance floor edge, letting others take some.
For sure, a lovely lady in the audience would want to be the "Bag Lady".
More on that later.

 

[John Watt]

yeah, I couldn't eat just one, that's for sure, even if the bag looked better puffed up.
oh yeah, in the progressive rock musical world, everyone and everything is getting puffed up.
Hip-hoppers are pumping it up and putting it out, almost the same thing.

I'm here to say that I'm not the type to use music against another musician or band,
and now, I can add pipe organist and sheet music composer to that mix.
This is what makes it difficult for me, as a wannabe progressive guitarist,
and a Magle.dk member, showing them both.
Okay, I'm not getting big reactions here, not that I expected any,
because general rock guitarists know it's not about them, but about the gig.

But I have to admit, and it was an unconscious, totally stylistic thing to do,
but when I was talking about Soren, one of the members of TINKICKER,
did you notice that the playing got a little, uh, dissonant, dischordant, or just contentious?
Instead of a rounded out rhythm turnaround to start the progression again,
after I talked about Soren, didn't I cut my rhythm short at the end of the progression,
and alternate between heavy bass couplets, with triplets, with or without one, two or three open strings,
just like TINKICKER does, being a very heavy, and very emotional, heavy rock band.

Thinking I'm going to slow down and end it, the same passage is echoed, a spontaneous thing,
but making sense as an arrangement.
At the start, you can hear me make two slashing sounds where it sounds like my playing cut out,
and that was me trying to hit the pick-axe harmonic, hearing it ringing a little after that.
You can hear my playing cut out, when the pick-axe sound starts, surprising me, but giving me control.

At the end, getting the heavy chording and returning to just the three bass strings,
I get the harmonic going and hang on to it all through the progressions, nice.

I'm not going to comment on my hat brim action, in front of "Are You Experienced",
but that's really what my I Dropped a Pick is all about,
using the camera to make Jimi's hands surge towards the guitar, with other effects,
and seeing the hat brim, uh, make it look like Jimi's back with us and giving it to all of us,
oh yeah, for me, simply spontaneous.
I need a camera man.
That's one of the big differences between general and progressive rock guitarists.
General rock guitarists have to make their own music uploads, all alone.
Some of them might even play their own bass, how low can they go.

 

[John Watt]

For some, it's Easter weekend. Others live in the spirit, or follow it.
This is my message today. I'll be looking for chocolate specials later.

Sometimes even progressive rock guitarists operate by the light of day,
working hard to buy all the expensive musical, stage and P.A. equipment they think they need.
Sometimes a progressive rock guitarist can just be wandering around, lost outside the venue,
saying fresh air, stretch my legs, or just I gotta get outta here.

That's when you're vulnerable, and susceptible to public input, like catching a nick-name.

Arnie Davison paid my sign-painting partner to use his new computer to cut this lettering,
and make this sanding block for me, in his professional carpentry shop, a former INCO engineer.
Arnie and his wife had a beautiful daughter who was twenty years old.
She was complaining of headaches, and they all went to see the doctor.
She had a rare form of fast-acting brain cancer, and died months later.
Arnie and his wife couldn't sit in the same room together, they were so sorrowed,
so Arnie started his carpentry shop, making grandfather clocks as a hobby.
He'd be sitting there, looking out the window, with tears in his eyes.
When I saw him like that, I'd just go in and sit in a chair, quietly, by myself,
acting as my father would when he was acting on behalf of the church we started.
After a while, Arnie started talking, and his friends all came over to meet me.
Arnie found the famous wood. Arnie went to INCO and used a twenty inch, horizontal cutting saw,
to cut this 17" board so I had a top and bottom like a violin.
I'm crying, Arnie died of a broken heart and never heard it. He's still in there.
The Terry Fox run he and his wife started is still going strong.

It wasn't easy, living up to being "conehead the hippy", I'm still trying.
That might not mean as much to you, coming from where Dan Ackroyd,
and Crowbar and King Bisquit Boy, made the movies and wrote the songs,
for the Blues Brothers too. I am a cone-head, but I never was a hippy,
until Arnie made me one. If I'm sounding that way, I have to play that way.

Imagine that. An electric guitar, a quarter inch wider than a Fender Stratocaster,
with a matching one piece top and bottom, like the best violins.
When I look at my guitar, I don't always have to think about Arnie to feel new blues,
I can think of all my mothers' and fathers' Scottish relatives, who caught cancer,
coming to live in a big city in the Niagara Peninsula, where the first commercial hydro is,
and the most aluminum cookware manufacture.
That's my blues, cancer blues. Don't worry, it will grow on you.

I still can't figure out why the sight of me just sitting there by myself,
out behind the shop by the field, sanding away with my sandpaper, watching the deer,
made people think I was that strange. It must have been what I was sanding.
Bay-an-uck-let Arnie, your blessings are still on me.

 

[John Watt]

Sometimes a progressive rock guitarist gets invited by progressive country musicians, to a Saturday matinee,
if you don't have one, and that usually involves jamming, getting up onstage, using some professional equipment.
The reason rock bands didn't have matinees like that, was because rockers were famous for only coming out at night.
When I was on the road, I'd be visiting during the week, hanging out with other, non-stoned musicians, usually called country.
And for sure, I'd be going to their matinees, after I visited the strip club for the $2 lunch buffet, sitting with my back turned.
yeah, small Ontario towns...
One time, visiting a bar owned by a famous violin, banjo and guitar player from Nova Scotia, I was asked up onstage.
There were so many serious country players and industry reps there, an occasion I happened upon, playing down the street.
I had my pink corduroy baseball bags on, a floral, yellow and red silk shirt, a gift, and had my '64 Strat strap-locked on.
Right away, I was sitting at the back with the girlfriends of the musicians, all people I had never met before.

They wanted me to get up and sing a song. I had to be bad and sad, I had to poke these cow-pokers, so I did.
When I got up behind the mike, I just stood there, looking, until it got quiet. I'll explain this move I learned later on.
I said, I've never been here before, and I don't know anybody. I don't these musicians,
but if I'm going to sing a song, I'm going to sing the song I'm singing, and I don't care if you don't think I'm country.
There's a lot of chords in this song, as I turned to the band and said, do you know "Talking in Your Sleep", by Crystal Gayle.
The guitar player said that's a beautiful song, if you can play it we'll be there, everyone hearing.
I said I'm alone because the words to this song will tell you what happened, hearing some talking when I wasn't sleeping.
I started slowly, just playing the chords to a verse, and the band was hot, sounding nice, floating with it, and it got intense.
I repeated the ending, doing what Crystal Gayle couldn't sing, getting higher, holding notes, letting the band play.
People were clapping before we ended, and were standing up, clapping, cheering, I turned to the band, shaking hands.
On the way to the table, men were shaking my hands, women were hugging me,
and when I got to the back there were three pitchers and eight glasses of beer waiting for me,
but, I don't drink alcohol, and told the girlfriends they could have them with the band.
Oh yeah, I like it when musicians and their girlfriends like me.
When they ordered some, I got some deep fried shrimp, really nice.

Sitting in the lower room of the Reeta Hotel, at the Terry Carisse Saturday matinee, was a packed event.
In Welland, at the Reeta Hotel, Terry Carisse was playing, a hot country act who was winning Juno awards for his songs and recordings.
He was as famous for having "Magic Dick" on guitar with a long-time steel guitar player, having lots of harmony leads,
with intros and endings that were getting orchestral.
Magic Dick played a Gibson 335, getting those deeper tones than any Tele cast.
All the local musicians were there, people standing around the sides of the room.
The band was between sets, it was noisy, but, people started turning to look, and it was getting quiet.
Terry was there, standing behind his microphone, crying. It became totally quiet. He kept crying.
No-one said a word,
and then Terry said the words no-one wanted to believe, saying "Terry Fox just died".
People started crying, for over five minutes no-one was drinking, waiters weren't serving,
I was crying, everyone was crying, a strange and wonderful moment for a musical community,
everyone different, everyone looking around at each other, everyone sharing the same sorrow.
When the band got up, no-one else wanted to. They played like their lives depended on it.
And we all felt it.
I went up as they were getting down, having to shake the hands of Magic Dick and the steel guitarist,
to thank them.

This scan is from the best-selling book "100 Photos That Changed Canada".
If you are one of us, you know Terry Fox, now running for everyone, all around the world.

 

[John Watt]

Sometimes a progressive guitarist progresses onstage before he progresses offstage.
You're taking your life, your musical expression, who you are, up there when you play.
And when you are up there onstage, sometimes what others do are what you get into yourself.
That's the opposite of singers saying, you should only learn songs that are relevant to you.
Here's a lyrical move that made it into my offstage reality. A lefty lyrical move.

There was a new tenant in the social services apartment buildings, here in Welland.
She was brought from St. Catharines, where her behavoir created too many big problems.
Her father and uncle were having sex with her when she was a child,
having operations, now in her early thirties, and unable to have a child herself.
She was very obese, and dressed in childish clothing, and she got a brush-cut.

She was only going out after midnight to visit the dumpster in the parking lot,
when I saw her, me sitting up in a second floor balcony, watching the sky at night.
I'd say hi, she'd say hi back, and it took over a month of that before she'd come over to talk.
It took over another month before I could go down and talk face to face.
That's when her case worker talked with me, saying I was the only person she talked to.

We got into sharing food, giving her extras, taking food for free I normally wouldn't,
saying it was for her. She sold me a two liter pop after midnight one night, nice for me.
When I had something on a plate, saying I could bring it down,
I got into her apartment for the first time, and it turned into a visit.
She was talking, starting to get upset at what she was telling me,
so I said her name, saying hey, some things aren't what they seem,
and your life could change in a heartbeat, and she was listening.
I said some people, some things, don't lie, and are what they are.
That made a lot of sense between us.
I said watch this, taking a chance myself.

This Corelle plate was a left-over from a big set sold at Kresge's,
when Americans came up to liquidate the store, after Walmart opened.
It's a nice soft white with pale green strands of long, thin leaves, almost a fern.
It's big, you're just going to see the center circle, why I liked it, lots of room.
And I needed a dinner plate, living alone for the first time.

At her apartment, standing in the kitchen, I threw it like a frisbee,
skipping it off the kitchen tile like a stone on the water,
bouncing onto the carpet where it skipped a couple of times,
before it hit the distant wall about one foot in the air, falling to the floor.
She was laughing and laughing, I was too, going over to get it.

When my right elbow was dislocated that summer, we were visiting.
She asked if she could walk with me to No Frills to grocery shop,
when I said I can't carry anything with my right arm.
I said you don't have to do that, but she really did, so off we went.
It took a while, we had to stop and rest a few times, but we got back.

Is that the "circle of life"? I don't think so. Here's where I learned that move,
from an only progressive guitarist.

"There once was a girl, whose heart was a frown,
'cause she was crippled for life, and couldn't make a sound.
Until one day, she decided to die, so she took her wheelchair to the shore,
and to her legs she smiled, you won't hurt me no more.
But suddenly, a sight she had never seen before made her jump up and say,
look, a golden winged ship is coming my way...
and it didn't even have to stop, it just kept on going,
and so castles made of sand slip into the sea... eventually".

Third verse, "Castles Made of Sand", originally credited to Jimi Hendrix, now disputed.

 

[John Watt]

Finally, the new technologies and my semi-solid-body are starting to coalesce.
This is a link to a page in my new domain, gigsters.ca, about inventing this guitar.
I'm not suggesting you read it, being over four sheets of typing paper long,
and I'm not recommending it for any graphics, photos or scans,
because I'm just using a white background and typing like it's a book,
or set up as a newspaper page, when I start adding more.

Any way I look at it, it still feels strange, typing online to publish,
knowing how much it's going to be out there, either an invisible global audience,
or people I know in my own life.

http://www.gigsters.ca/inventing.html

 

[John Watt]

Oh! Of course I had to look first!
Isn't that link cute, just being all me with no other uploading host?
Did you notice there weren't any warnings about dangerous domain activity?
Doesn't it look like it's sized for typing and print paper, if you want to print it out?
gigsters.ca, the domain name, inventing, the page, html, typed and published by me.

And yet, typing "click it up and see", isn't the same as hearing "turn it up loud".

 

[PopeFrancis]

Sounds like you don't even know what progressive rock is dude

 

[John Watt]

You could either be right, or you could be realizing why I started this thread.
I'm not sure any more myself.
Playing my first electric guitar riff offa the first Black Sabbath album, was confusing,
because at the time a lot of people thought that first album was Christian rock.
When I saw Jimi Hendrix and dropped out of high school to get a steel factory job,
and buy a Strat and Marshall with effects while Jimi was still alive, was also confusing.
I cracked the window in my bedroom with the volume, and set it up outside after that.
I could be playing Star Spangled Banner, All Along the Watchtower, Voodoo Chile,
and Voodoo Chile, slight return, and even elderly neighbours would say we heard you today,
and it sounded good.
It's not like I was trying to get someone to complain to the police,
but no-one ever did.
I never coulda made it in hip-hop, needing to be shot for some cred.
Seeing Deep Purple when Deep Purple in Rock Came out, doing Speed King in a band,
could have been hard rock, what people started to call it, but what's that,
when you have a band with a Hammond B3 organ, no synths,
and even Ritchie Blackmore plugged his guitar straight into his amp, no effects.

Just when hard rock became heavy metal, and I was starting to see the differences,
heavier bands came out, the guitarists using seven strings, being an extra bass string.

No, when I think of American bands,
I just think, looking at their photos, would I want to let one of those guys eat me for supper?
If they look like they want to, I tend to avoid their music.

For me, progressive rock is expecting your audience to just listen, not dance.

 

[John Watt]

Sure, you can say it's just a progressive rock gimmick, what Phil Collins did,
playing a concert in England, and then taking the supersonic jet to America,
to play another concert on the same day.
But it gave me my own progressive rock idea, using different computers to type here,
all in the same afternoon, tightening up even Phil's timing.

Okay, I had to sit out some rain before I could leave my previous computer location,
and walk over to use this one, but the next one isn't far away at all at all.
Just when my very ambivalent statements about being the most progressive rock guitarist at Magle.dk,
become just more of the font of the vanities,
I manage to come through again, with this almost frenzied computer travel.
I even had to tell Wayne Gretzky that I was too busy to help him out.

That could have been another shot heard around the world.
Yes, a back-hander for sure.

 

[John Watt]

Well well well! If I'm progressing again I must be the most progressive rock guitarist again,
nice, very nice, even if we're all stuck in this same heavenly device.
I'm set up in my new apartment, no longer just homeless in my home town,
back to finishing my inventive semi-solid-body guitars.
After six months outside, at the back of a famous parking lot downtown,
I got talked into getting my storages together under one roof, where I can create again.
I wasn't suffering, setting up a shelter every night that I had to take down for business hours,
getting down to three degrees at the lowest, and getting into the cold.
It's good to lower your body temperature every once in a while.
That kills a lot of germs and bacteria that can over-accumulate in your body,
especially your digestive system.

 

[John Watt]

Everyone now expects progressive rock guitarists to do their own artwork,
so here's the first painting I finished in my newest residence.
I recommend staring at the center and letting your eyes go,
to let it envelop you, as the larger than eyesight scene it is.
The close-ups are here to show the detail of the rain and background.
This is a view from the Lake Erie shore north of Crystal Beach.
The original is 30 inches wide and 26 inches tall.
This domain works so nice it's just photo fun.

And... if the as-yet-untitled Frederik Magle sees some Lake Erie inspiration,
the fresh, cold rain in the northern wind that comes down this great lake,
feel free to use this any way you want. It's here already, voluntarily.

 

[John Watt]

I just had one of the most incredible co-incidences of my life.
This mail order left-handed Stratocaster, in pieces in the box, $149.95 plus taxes, is really nice.
That's just looking at the body and neck, seeing the offshore style electronics that can't be good.
I play with a right-handed neck on a left-handed body.
I had a left-over right-handed neck from a previous offshore guitar I used instead of an acoustic,
so I compared it to the one with the kit and found the heel and depth measurements to be the same.
I was surprised when the one screw holding the neck in the corner of the bottom went in easily.
I used a wire to poke through the body into the neck in the other screw positions,
and it went in all the way, and so did the screws.
I screwed the neck on half-way, wanting to keep it as fresh as possible for the final build,
and using a piece of string to check the alignment, it couldn't be better.

These two photos show the neck from front and the back.
This right-handed neck has a fret-board that juts out at the end a little,
enough to have one more frets. More notes, it doesn't get better than that.

Here's a link to the Toronto music store I ordered it from.
The left-handed version is $10 more than the right-handed one.

https://www.solomusicgear.com/




I've been looking for a left-handed tremolo unit in the Niagara Peninsula for two years.
I had enough wood left over from my first semi-solid-body to build another.
But I didn't have another left-handed tremolo unit.
In 1972, I sent Fender $150 to get on a waiting list for a lefty tremolo plate and block.
That took six months.
This year, I phoned Ring Music in Toronto, where I got my neck custom made.
Speaking with Jon, the owner, he said they didn't have any left-handed units,
or a left-handed Strat of any kind, and they have guitars going back to the 50's.
While we were talking, he said he found one in a music store in California.
He said it was a 1970 and they were asking $5,500. Yowza yowza!

One day, I decided to look at a Solo Music ad, thinking they were jamming up Kijiji.
When I saw left-handed Strat kits for $149.95 plus taxes, I had to phone.
Matt McWaters, oh yeah... I had to love that name, got into it with me.
His measurements of the tremolo were the same as mine, so I ordered one.
That was just for the tremolo unit. When I saw the body I decided to build it.
I got a machinist to convert a right-handed block for a left-handed plate given to me,
by another local guitarist. That was a wonderful thing to get. Thanks again Ron Horton.

If I have one guitar, it's got to be natural wood. That's what my semi-solid-bodies are.
Having this lefty Strat-style is the first time I'm painting a guitar to be decorative.
I could go on about my plans for my red maple guitar, or sugar maple guitar,
or maple syrup guitar... yeah... probably going to call it the red maple guitar,
but I'll leave it here and get back when I have something to show for it.
I'm going to order another one for an aquatic theme.

 

[Florestan]

Hey John, I know you appreciate good covers and since I could not find a good thread for it, I hope you don't mind I post it here. But check out this heavy cover (studio and live):

 

[elderpiano]

I can't understand this horrible din!

 

[Florestan]

I can't understand this horrible din!

Is metal version of the Doobie Brothers song: