{"id":1937,"date":"2014-05-08T06:30:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T12:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=1937"},"modified":"2014-05-09T11:34:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T17:34:30","slug":"book-review-diary-of-a-would-be-rocker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2014\/05\/book-review-diary-of-a-would-be-rocker\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Diary of a would-be rocker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Highway<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Mike Curtis slaved over the “Highway Star” solo in his basement, then turned to his desk-top computer to chronicle his quest.<\/p><\/div>\n

Guitar Odyssey: A Journal of Musical Growth<\/em>, by Michael Rays, Smashwords, 2013. 59 pages, $4.99.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A few years ago, Mike Curtis set two goals for himself. He wanted to write a book and he wanted to master Ritchie Blackmore\u2019s blazing guitar solo on Deep Purple\u2019s \u201cHighway Star.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hit on the idea of combining the two goals by setting out to learn the guitar solo while chronicling the experience in a diary.\u00a0This past November, after two years of practice, he was finally satisfied with his rendition of the solo and pronounced an end to his quest.<\/p>\n

And now he has come out with \u201cGuitar Odyssey,\u201d an e-book he self-published at Smashwords, under the pen name Michael Rays.<\/p>\n

Curtis, who owns an advertising agency and has lived in Billings since 1998, pursued his \u201csemi-obsession,\u201d as he put it, by practicing in the basement of his Yellowstone Avenue house, then sliding over to his desktop computer to write about nearly every practice session.<\/p>\n

The result is a surprisingly entertaining read. Curtis has an easy, straightforward style, and he writes with a guileless enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

\"Guitar<\/a>Here he is in the introduction, explaining his motives: \u201cJust as mountain climbers go up Everest because it is there, so will I learn every note of Ritchie Blackmore\u2019s masterpiece \u2014 because it is there, and because it is awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

He strikes a similar note a few months into the project, when he tells how \u201cHighway Star\u201d suddenly came on during a spinning class at the Y. Dripping with sweat and pedaling in time with the music, he finds himself \u201clost in and at one with the universe of kicking ass.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he wrote the book thinking of fellow guitarists as his primary audience.\u00a0That\u2019s a pretty big niche market in this country, so this book could do well. I play guitar myself but know next to nothing about music theory or notation. Fortunately, you don\u2019t need to understand every nuance of passages like this to enjoy the writing:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother issue is starting to rear its head: the final note in the speed section (the last in a series of 640 straight 16th notes) is going to be trouble. To hit it, and then move cleanly into the final licks, will take some work. To skip it and hope no one notices is the easy way out. But we can’t have that!\u201d<\/p>\n

Other aspects of his quest probably will appeal more to fellow guitar players, such as his constant experimenting with picks of different thickness, his intimate relationship with the metronome, and his finicky obsession with calluses and fingernails.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother light night of practicing,\u201d he writes on Oct. 30, 2012, \u201cthis time due to a sore fingernail on my left middle finger. I clipped my nails a couple days ago, and I clipped that one a bit too close, but not until today did it decide to become really sore. I feel like such a prima donna. \u2018Tonight\u2019s concert has been canceled because Mike has a sore fingernail.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You feel for him, and not just because of his sore fingers. Time and again he thinks he is so close to conquering the solo, only to have all his painfully acquired skills fall apart during one of the five distinct sections of the solo. In case you\u2019re wondering, the solo is 1 minute and 20 seconds long and consists of 57 measures at 168 beats per minute.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>It\u2019s not all about the music, however. There\u2019s a lot of psychology, too, interludes of thoughtfulness that have him comparing his journey to golf, or another sport: \u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019m a tennis player ranked #125 in the world. I\u2019m entering all the big tournaments and getting crushed in the first round, but I see glimpses that tell me I can play with these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

He breaks up the chronicle of his quest with a couple of recurring interludes. One is a series of rock haikus, or \u201crockus,\u201d that pay homage to some of his other favorite guitar solos. Here he is writing about Randy Rhoads\u2019 solo on Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s \u201cFlying High Again\u201d:<\/p>\n

Effortless lightning
\nControlled, almost robotic
\nYet full of feeling<\/p>\n

The other is a series of 10 \u201cmusic memories,\u201d starting with growing up in a musical family in Colorado, taking piano lessons and hating them and switching to the trumpet in the fourth grade. He played in the junior high jazz band \u2014 the Funky Turtles! \u2014 and then got heavily involved in music in high school. He also turned \u201cpro,\u201d making a few bucks \u201cplaying the Star-Spangled Banner at civic and restaurant openings.\u201d<\/p>\n

These keep the tone light and help you get to know Curtis, which in turn encourages the reader \u2014 or encouraged me, anyway \u2014 to care about his ability to nail that solo.\u00a0There is no great climax. He just finally decides he\u2019s playing it about as well as he could ever expect to, after two solid years of practice.<\/p>\n

And having said that, he immediately begins thinking of what might lie ahead. Hmm, he thinks, Poison\u2019s \u201cTalk Dirty To Me\u201d solo sure would be fun\u2026<\/p>\n

Details<\/strong>: I\u2019m not a big fan of classic rock, but I did listen to Deep Purple pretty intensely during one stretch of high school. Even so, I couldn\u2019t remember \u201cHighway Star,\u201d until I found it on YouTube and gave it a listen. Oh, I said to myself, that song<\/a>. The solo in question runs from 3:45 to 5:05.<\/p>\n

To find Curtis\u2019 book, just go to Smashwords<\/a> or Amazon<\/a> and type in “Guitar Odyssey.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guitar Odyssey: A Journal of Musical Growth, by Michael Rays, Smashwords, 2013. 59 pages, $4.99. A few years ago, Mike Curtis set two goals for himself. He wanted to write a book and he wanted to master Ritchie Blackmore\u2019s blazing guitar solo on Deep Purple\u2019s \u201cHighway Star.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[614,616,613,617,615,618],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-deep-purple","tag-haiku","tag-highway-star","tag-mike-curtis","tag-ritchie-blackmore","tag-smashwords","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}