Marnie Stern, I'm Blown Away

I rarely, if ever at all, write about music on this blog. I often write about arts and literature, but not music. However, I'm a huge music fan.

However, over the last couple of years I've been listening to older music. I've been listening to and discovering older jazz music, classic rock records and classic metal records. The "mainstream" indie scene got boring for me. The stuff that was being presented as new and groundbreaking by the pretentious music experts wasn't that new and exciting. At the beginning of the decade I was excited by ambient or classical influenced bands like Sigur Ros, Mum and Apocalyptica, as well as a few garage-rock sounding bands like The White Stripes, Death From Above, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And then, meh.

Late this year an album was released entitled, a really long title is coming, This Is It And I Am It And You Are It And So Is That And He Is It And She Is It And It Is It And That Is That. It is the second album by Marnie Stern.

In the early 90s when grunge came along, a lot changed in rock, much of it for the better. However, one could argue something was missing, with a few exceptions as always, with the "alternative" scene and the "indie" scene. That thing was musicianship. Lyrics and catchy tunes displaced musicianship, mainly the long-winding guitar solo.

Stern's album displays her virtuoso guitar playing and tapping technique in a way never displayed by the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen or any of the other 80s shredders. She manages to have poppy melodies included in the difficult to play rhythms, with songs like Shea Stadium and Transformer, as well as rockier songs like The Crippled Jazzer. No songs are longer than 4:20 (I'm guessing a coincidence). She doesn't get into the solo.

Years ago, I was one of the kids who walked around the halls in school either carrying a guitar or a guitar magazine. Guitar magazines that had a couple of free song tabs in them were quite popular. I remember there was one copy of Guitar World discussing women guitarists and why there were so few of them. It also discussed how hard it was for women to break into the testosterone-dominating hard rock scene in the 80s. How ironic would it be if a solo-performing female is the next "guitar hero" (no pun intended) in 2008, the one to seriously bring the guitar back to rock?