I sincerely hope that no one wants to be the "next Hendrix or SRV". It used to be quite a point of pride among musicians to have developed their own sound, and I'm just barely old enough to remember the glory days of free-form FM radio, when it had been taken over by wild-ass hippie college students, Back then, you could recognize a guitarist within three or four notes - Hendrix, Allman, Garcia, Beck, Page... when the corporates got a hold of things in the mid-70's it went weird. I remember hearing "Hotel California", Jefferson Starship and particularly the first Boston album, and thinking "uh-oh - Tom Scholz has got a Tone-O-Tronic here."
Nowadays there's an awful lot of sameness, and so many de rigueur "cool rock moves" - everybody and their dog play the "Eric Johnson lick" from the transition to "Cliffs of Dover", where you hold a note on the high E string as a pedal tone and alternate down the major chord tones. Derek Trucks is one of the few guitarists who do have a sound of their own, bless 'em. It's a short list - Julien Kasper, Oz Noy, Chris Poland (w/ OHM), Sonny Landreth, Trucks...? I can greatly admire the talent and melody-writing of people like John Petrucci, Andy Timmons, Paul Gilbert and all, but most of what they do sounds like - somebody else's licks. "Oh! There's a Metallica lick stuck in a Steve Morse song!" Etc.
I personally feel like there's something just broke or at least beat-to-death about all the borrowed song formats. There are some talented and very successful people who's entire careers are based on skilled regurgitation and recombination - John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows, Chickenfoot, Switchfoot, Nickelback, Foo Fighters, Coldplay hey - this list is longer than the originals! The point is you can hear where everything they do came from if you listened to a lot of music. John Mayer = 70's soul song formats + Hendrix/SRV guitar licks + Dave Matthews/Tiny Tim/Betty Boop vocals, for example.
You have to realize that if there is ever going to be a next big thing, it can't just be a rehash of one-of-the-last-big-things. "The new Hendrix" isn't NEW... I suspect (and hope!) that somewhere in Calcutta there's an Indian kid playing around with a pedal steel guitar and a sequencer, or some mad Chinese scientist locked in a dungeon with a pile of synthesizers.... Hey, here's a clue: name the five best rock songs that DON'T use the words:
"Baby"
"Hey"
"Yeah"
"Rock"
"Oooh"
Ooh, yeah baby, hey - you rock..... :toothy10:
(Hey, BB - I almost mentioned the post-Grateful "Dead" as another band who often plod, along with the newer Yes, Stones, Eagles, etc etc etc. "Oh goodie! - we get to play 'Sugar Magnolia' - again...." The (grateful) exception was the Phil Lesh & Friends lineup known as the Quintet, 2000 - 2003. It's the best I ever heard Warren Haynes play, often times he's just sort of there, you know. Something about the combination of Jimmy Herring and Haynes on guitars really clicked and they got way, way out of their comfort zone. The sign of a real jam band is when they play something every night that they've never played before, and will never play again - see the aforementioned 1973 Mahavishnu, the "You Don't Love Me" from the 1971 San Francisco show, the '72 - '74 "Dark Stars"... tear a hole in the wall of the universe and see what come creeping, oozing or blasting in. Yeah, baby. The Phil Lesh "Q" is amply represented on sugarmegs.org, there's also a Derek Trucks "box set" of instrumentals at the end of his band's listings.)
