Kaki King
I’m a little obsessed with Kaki King, in part because she is my age. I’ve only seen her once, at SXSW, and I was struck by (a) her amazing guitar-playing and beautiful voice but also (b) by her incredible physical presence. She’s quite small, smaller than me I think, yet she has this really fearsome aspect, and she somehow takes up a lot of room. Perhaps this sounds to you like a euphemism for, “I find her extremely beautiful,” which is certainly true to an extent, but I also wonder — how is it that we were both infants at roughly the same time, yet she is this Crazy Being and I’m me?
Which is to say, you should listen to this Kaki King/Mountain Goats collaboration, hosted by the good people at Stereogum.
What I find amazing is that anyone could find her guitar playing “amazing,” or even above average. I guess it’s possible if you know nothing about playing the guitar, or have never heard the far more talented guitarists she imitates, but even then, her lame songwriting should be obvious to anyone.
— Russ · Sep 9, 07:05 AM · #
You should send her a signed copy on GNP with your phone number in it
— Ricky · Sep 9, 09:42 AM · #
I got no dog in this fight, I pretty much have no idea what’s hot right now, but I follow this kind of link so I know what the hell is going on. I want to be one of those dads who makes painful pop-culture references in front of his children that show he just barely has an atom of a clue, but not really, because I’m hoping to scar them that way.
But I’m with Russ. It ain’t “amazing” in a technical/wanker sense (see e.g.: Screameola, McLaughlin, Charlie Hunter). It ain’t “amazing” in a “weird, counterintuitive” sense (see e.g.: Monder, Frisell, Shepik). It ain’t anything I don’t think I can’t go pick up a Strat right now and do (disclaimer: I think this every time I hear Santana, yet people whose musical opinions I really, really, revere — like Wayne Shorter — think the guy’s the shit. So de gustibus non est disputandum.)
But she is kind of cute.
— Sanjay · Sep 9, 01:11 PM · #
I just want to point out, by way of dispelling the mystique of surpassing smallness that Reihan is building around himself, that a woman could be well smaller than Reihan and still not be “quite small.” He is actually a deceptive six-foot-seven. I think he seems a little on the small side because of the shyness.
— Matt Feeney · Sep 9, 03:02 PM · #
Wow, sanjay, are you the world’s only fingerstyle Strat player?
King’s usual style is along these lines ; like Andy McKee, she listened to Michael Hedges and never got over it, but she’s a good player. Most people could play Santana’s solos note for note long before they could do what she does.
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 9, 03:37 PM · #
I usually use a plectrum (well, not quite — I usually use a plectrum and chord with fingers, my lame attempt at a Frisell) but fingerstyle solid-body players aren’t uncommon, Alan, and I even have a valiant go time to time. For example, the last couple times I’ve seen Abercrombie he’s played without a plectrum, and I’ve seen Monder do it too. There’s a (probably misguided: see Pass, Joe) conceit among the Berklee boys I’ve known that somehow one “progresses” to playing fingerstyle. Although we have a couple hollow-bodies lying around too, but they’re a little loud, even unamplified, for constant home use, and anyway I don’t really do the Bucky Pizzarelli-type thing you might be thinking of (for lack really of skill). Fleck is obviously a fingerstyle player on a solid-body too although I concede that he “doesn’t count” because the guitar is secondary.
Of course my bias is towards jazz, not rock, guitarists, and I’ll grant you that anything other than pretty much straightforward picking is pretty unusual among rock guitarists (because, well, the rock guys aren’t very good, by and large.) Which appears to be informing your (and Reihan’s) inflation of the fetching young lady’s fretwork….the same thing happens when some rock drummer – mirabile dictu! – discovers polyrhythyms and suddenly it’s, man, what a talent.
— Sanjay · Sep 9, 04:44 PM · #
There’s a (probably misguided: see Pass, Joe) conceit among the Berklee boys I’ve known that somehow one “progresses” to playing fingerstyle.
That’s very true. I giggle at times when I hear people condescend to Doc Watson on those grounds. But you must admit that for fingerstyle players a Strat is rarely the axe of choice. I was just commenting playfully on that.
Don’t get me wrong: the post-Hedges style that King plays is not my thing. Much of it isn’t as difficult as it sounds, and people tend to have very narrow notions of what counts as “technique.” What I listen for above all in guitar playing is quality of tone, which requires enormous technique, especially in slow pieces — and yet I hear people all the time say that Frisell (who has the most beautiful tone of any electric player I have ever heard) is nothing special.
But by the same token what King does is worthwhile, and there’s no need to dismiss her either. That’s all I’m saying. But I’ll stop there. If you think I’m obnoxious about other things, just get me started on guitar players. . . .
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 9, 05:26 PM · #
There is a sense in which Frisell is nothing special — his stuff isn’t technically “wow” like (say) McLaughlin’s. But, damn, he writes nice songs and he plays some haunting, weird tonalities in what would otherwise be simple “Americana” contexts, and that tone — yeah, the way he uses a volume pedal is almost how you try to use your breath playing a horn. But the guitar wankers will never have the reverence for him that the do for (say) Metheny or Pass (both of whom also have amazing tone, of course). Although I hear God knows how many would-be sound-alikes the past few years on the pop scene. And feel old — I remember when there was still a jazz place on JFK street in Harvard Square where you could hear Frisell. I kind of miss the Klein he used to play but it doesn’t seem to’ve hurt him any to go back to a Strat-like body.
The trick with that post-Hedges style (if indeed it is that — I’m not sure) is you can do hellishly hard stuff that nonetheless sounds like it’s that sort of, memorizing finger patterns though it’s not (and I’m thinking of Kottke).
I was driving around Mike Stern once and Frisell came up — this was in early 2001 when Frisell was like God, omnipresent — and he got a little wistful and talked about, how people often created a glorious sound out of not their skills but what they couldn’t do: he went through a couple other guitarists and ended up talking about how he himself was uncomforable with a lot of left-hand technique and really turned that into a sound. So he didn’t mention Frisell in that response, but you could sort of see what he was thinking, since I suspect when they were young and full of vinegar Stern couldn’t help noticing that Frisell didn’t have his speed or power. And of course Frisell went the Jim Hall/(old)Ahmad Jamal route instead and made his name using pacing and silence instead. But the kind of guy that idolizes, say, Yngwe Malmsteen isn’t going to hear what the big deal is with Frisell.
None if this is to be interpreted as, I’m another Boston guitar wanker. I’m a reeds guy first and foremost…
— Sanjay · Sep 9, 06:52 PM · #
Sanjay: while we’re waxing geeky and therefore going totally off-topic, last December I heard Frisell play a really wonderful set with Ron Carter and Paul Motian at the Blue Note in NYC. I thought it was going to be just an old-timers’ reunion but they were all fine, and Frisell was (I thought) especially marvelous.
Along the lines of your Stern anecdote: Miles David used to say that he developed his own distinctive sound because he knew he didn’t and would never have the chops to compete with Dizzy Gillespie. So: no vibrato, lots of mute, long-held notes. The anti-Dizzy.
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 9, 09:07 PM · #
Was backstage with Carter when he opened up his bass — and found the neck had snapped in transit! A catastrophe for all (though a local music store provided him while he got the fix).
— Sanjay · Sep 9, 10:40 PM · #
I admit I can get pretty snarky about King, but it’s the result of having endured repeated episodes of breathless gushing at how she’s the greatest guitar player alive. It’s her fans than annoy me more than her, but I can only listen to someone smack an Ovation around for so long.
Mark Knopfler is a fingerstyle strat player, btw (at least, he often plays one), and Clapton does fingerstyle increasingly often. Check out his foreward to The Stratocaster Files, (see the preview at:
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0634056786)
— Russ · Sep 10, 06:03 AM · #