altar of fire

A lot of lonely woodshedding has to occur to produce a bonafide shredder, but rock and roll is still supposed to be about getting together and having a good time.  Those last years of graduate school, I drafted all my friends, friends of friends, girl friends, people I wanted to be girl friends, all rounded up for what became semi-annual multi-media musical events at the local planetarium, Pink Floyd-style.


Some were seduced by the Blues Brothers reunion ambience for a time, though by all accounts, I was a harsh task master, and few lasted long.  Blinky's Last Ticket, which resulted in an album called QUADRIVIUM, was a collection of originals, each of which was supposed to represent a different amusement park ride.  For our haunted house segment, like so many horror flick soundtracks, there were definitely some classical music stylings...


O.K.

This might have been a pretty original approach had it not been for the spectre of the most notorious shredmeister of them all, Ynwgie Malmsteen.

His raw speed and articulation had already made such an impression that guitarists were unwittingly absorbing influences he brought back from old dead white guys; here was a rock star who actually thanked Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach on the back of every record.  But bounding onto the international stage at a time during which it seemed Eddie Van Halen had already canvassed every single possibility of the heavy metal guitar, the young Swede succeeded in contributing one final element that would elude so many of his many imitators: emotional intensity.  And for every blues purist who would dismiss the long-haired Viking's output as merely notes per second, there shall be two who worship at his altar of fire: