It might seem odd for me to suggest to all the Eddie Van Halen
\nwanna-bes out there that they pick up an album that is over 40
\nyears old — and has its roots in country and bluegrass. “I don’t
\nlisten to that chicken-pickin’ music,” the younger generation might
\nsay as they slap on their headphones and air guitar their way
\nthrough “Eruption” again.<\/p>\n
Now, watch as your faithful reviewer removes said headphones
\nfrom their backwards-baseball-cap-clad heads and smacks them silly.
\nYou see, had it not been for someone like Joe Maphis, we might not
\nhave had the lightning-fast guitar gods of today. And while I
\nhesitate to put the multi-instrumentalist in the same category, his
\n1957 disc
\nFire On The Strings<\/i> (re-released by Columbia\/Legacy with
\nbonus tracks) suggests that herein lie the roots of Van Halen,
\nYngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani.<\/p>\n
It might be country-pop, but Mathis’s performances often live up
\nto the title of this album. Blazing through licks on guitar, banjo
\nand whatnot (I’m working from an advance copy, and misplaced the
\nprinted liner notes somewhere here in the Pierce Memorial Archives
\n– how hard could they be to find amongst over 1,000 other bios?),
\nMaphis keeps his performances clear enough to hear every note and
\nexciting enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Think of
\nMaphis as a more rural Dick Dale, if you will.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, these instrumentals tend to blend together,
\nespecially after repeated listens. But the talent is there, and
\nwhether it’s “Twin Banjo Special” (yes, the title describes the
\ninstrumentation), “Tennessee Two Step,” “Guitar Rock And Roll” or
\nthe title track, Maphis proves just how talent can be turned into
\nsomething exciting to listen to.<\/p>\n
This expanded edition includes seven tracks from other singles
\nor albums Maphis recorded during his time with Columbia. “Marching
\nTo Pretoria” brought back memories of music class in the late ’70s,
\ntaught by Atilla The Nun – and the scary thing is that I think I
\nremembered all the lyrics we learned back then. (It’s amazing what
\nintimidation can do to a youngster.) The real gem here is “The
\nRockin’ Gypsy,” taken from a release with Larry Collins. If you
\nwalked into this disc cold and heard it, you might swear you were
\nlistening to Dick Dale.<\/p>\n
So why isn’t Maphis better-known these days? This, my friends, I
\ndon’t have an answer for — and while Maphis departed this vale of
\ntears some years back, he might have taken comfort in the fact that<\/p>\n
Fire On The Strings<\/i> is being made more accessible for
\ntoday’s listeners. And for our future guitar gods, take my advice
\nand give this disc a listen, if only to hear the roots of fancy
\nguitar playing. It will be 45 minutes well worth your time. Hey,
\nwho knows? You might find yourself enjoying that chicken-pickin’
\nmusic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6570],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-37021","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-joe-maphis","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37021"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37021"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}