The American Spectator

p> STRING ‘IM UP br> Re: Reid Collins’s Plangent Pluckin’s : /p>

I have always have admired Reid Collins’s courage in exposing the bias of his fellow journalists, and loved every one of his opinion pieces, until now. Collins has made the mistake of judging the art of playing an electric guitar using the standard of the pollution produced by the tasteless. In addition, like a gun control advocate, he blames the object, not the person who uses it. Playing an electric guitar well is more difficult than he knows, and his characterization that “the sound is all electronic and has little or nothing to do with the skill of the player” is misinformed. All the same qualities for the sound of an acoustic guitar such as the selection of wood, structure, shape, and other elements, apply equally to an electric guitar. Any luthier would agree. Ditto for the player who wields the axe. In fact, electric guitars have a wider range in tone and differentiation than acoustic guitars, and competent artists can tease out these tones.

p>I hasten to add that I agree wholeheartedly with Collins that the dismal use of the instrument by “[l]ittle boys whanging away on these stringed sticks” results in dissonance, but then again, everyone has to start somewhere. Collins surely would not have desired to suffer under the first pluckings of a 12-year-old Andres Segovia in the Andalusian countryside. And for an example of a great acoustic artist who benefited from and advanced the art of acoustic guitar playing after a long period playing an electronic “stringed stick” Collins need look no further than Doc Watson, who developed his trademark acoustic picking style as a journeyman gig player with an electric guitar. And for an example of the wide range of tone and sophistication that is possible on the electric guitar and is impossible on an acoustic guitar, I suggest Collins listen to Jay Gradon’s title track solo on Steely Dan’s “Aja.” If I can coin two phrases, there are more things in electric and acoustic, Collins, than are dreaded of in your cacophony; and it is a bit more complicated than a simple pluck yew. br> — James N. Ward br> Breux-Jouy, France /p> p> Get over yourself. Les Paul is a fine, gentle man of great talent. He could do things with a guitar, electric or otherwise, that Jimi Hendrix et al. could only dream of, and his invention is every bit as capable of expressing beauty as it is angst and rebellion. And the democratizing effect of Rock and Roll — the anyone-can-do-it factor — should be celebrated, not scorned. Why? Because it’s fun, that’s why. And fun is good. Try it sometime. br> — Scott Stambaugh