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The I can't believe they didn't make it big thread.


PingPongBob

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Hey yall. I haven't been around in a long time. Thought I'd jump back in here since I've been listening to Crack The Sky again lately.

 

Crack The Sky was a band that got big in the Baltimore area in the late 70s and early 80s. Their songs still get played on local rock stations and they still do shows every now and then and still sell out. It's not just that they are great musicians, they have great songs. The songs are kind of eclectic but have great hooks and a pop sensibility. Just read all the comments on the Youtube page and you'll see all the people that remember the days seeing them at Hammerjacks, Seagull Inn etc. I won't post all my favorites since no one will probably listen to the two here, but some other good songs are: The Ice, All American Boy, Surf City Here Come the Sharks, Techni Generation, Skin Deep....and more B)

 

 

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Cool thread. My computer is literally crashing from all the vids.

 

Regarding TERRY ROBB: It's worth a little explaining, because the guys playing is deep, and the more you look, the deeper it gets. I actually don't think his best stuff has yet to be recorded, and he has played stuff that I have actually never heard before or IMAGINED would exist. But what is available of his recordings has some pretty amazing stuff, musically, and "technically".

 

Whats mainly different about him starts with his TECHNIQUE: If you look at the vids and note his hand positions, the left thumb is WAY over the neck, and his right hand over the strings in a way to fingerpick and use his fingers and thumb all the time. He is a pure fingerpicker. It's very different than say, a classical guitarist for sure, but in reality, this is VERY old school like what a rag or folk guitarist would have done way, way back.

 

Now, imagine if, instead of being taught "proper" technique like thumb behind the neck, or picking/playing position the way nearly all of us start, if back then rag and folk guitarist was thought of a "proper"? For a FULL chord, instead of bringing his wrist down and applying equal pressure and control, his wrist goes up BEHIND the neck, and his thumb and fingers all playing equal pressure. It actually pruduces a wider chord with more separation from the bass notes and treble notes, and different fingering patterns are favored. Rags and such are natural, AND it favors finger strenght/position for hammer-ons and pull-offs more.

 

Now, what he has done is kick this whole thing up a notch: He ATTACKS the strings fingerpicked like snapping his fingers, and does it with both hands. His "speed" comes from doing runs fingerpicked with the intensity of say, a "shredder". So, instead of perhaps just fingerpicking a chord, he can also fingerpick a scale, one note at a time. But he can hit four times as many notes with one movement using thumb and finger(s) of the right hand and hammer-ons pull-offs of the left. That's more than "evh" style finger-tapping, even as much as Jeff Watson's "four finger" technique, but he is ALWAYS in the position.

 

Now, while all this seems mostly "technical", it also opens a lot of doors musically. He plays a lot of chords and fingerings of chords that aren't available playing with "classical" technique, as well as open strings. Besides being able to play a lot of traditional "blues" voicings and throw then out one after another as one would a "note", I've heard him play some voicings and stylings than honestly, I have never heard before, and patterns I have never heard before. Besides Robb the "guitar player", or "stylist", there is a musical thing happening that really doesn't even have a place because no one has really heard it.

 

So, anyway, to sum this up (if that were possible), this stuff of his is all learnable, and IF he was to "make it big", I could see guitarist all learning his "technique" the way EVH or others made us want to learn them. And also, when he HAS been taken up by producers and labels and such, they pretty much miss MOST of what sets him apart and record him doing what they know or have heard and have him record the best "normal" style Blues stuff or what they know of.

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A wonderful explication of Terry Robb Stein. I could never have expressed what I heard and saw as you have and that is just what I have seen in teh three vids of Terry on this thread. I have learnt bundles just from those vids. I only wish I could play like that. Marvellous!

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