The Death of Guitar?

A CONSEQUENCE of sharing the name of this centuries-old instrument with the loud electrical instrument that takes pride of place in a typical pop group is that the uninformed sometimes confuse one with the other. How else can you explain this recent YouTube comment?

‘Just had a listen to X. Sounds like the death of guitar to me.’Now, X is a well-known and hard-working professional player whose work is highly respected in music circles. The writer clearly did not know what he was talking about, but that didn’t stop him from giving his opinion. You can call it blinkered – i.e. an opinion based on restricted vision – but it will find plenty of supporters; any human being, they will tell you, has a perfect right to say what he or she likes about anything in the world. And so, in theory, they have.

If you believe that it is more positive to point out the virtues of what you love than to condemn the faults of what you hate, you will find too much negativity in contemporary comment. It’s time the balance was restored. Every time someone tries to tell you that the guitar is dead, a more positive assessment should come from someone who knows better. Imagine Vlad the Impaler after seeing a performance of Hamlet: ‘A lot of impaling, but so inexpertly done that it cannot be taken seriously. Looks like the death of impaling to me.’