Revolutionizing the guitar

The press release described Guitarevolution (the Future of the Electric Guitar) as a performance event that "aims to change the way people see the electric guitar by presenting a broad range of exciting, creative alternatives for the Western word's most popular instrument." My friends, we're dealing with some pretty heavy terminology here: "the future?" "Exciting, creative alternatives for the Western word's most popular instrument?" These are some fairly lofty notions of what can be done with a six-string instrument that has already known so many million manifestations of sound.

The people behind Guitarevolution demonstrated even greater audacity by showcasing three lesser-known musicians at the Western Front as part of a 12-day festival held simultaneously in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Jonquiere (Quebec), and New York.

We're lucky Guitarevolution was fearless in its audacity. We're unlucky that, although it had platforms in five major North American centres, Guitarevolution did not receive more attention.

There was something oddly amazing about seeing Alex Varty, Ron Samworth and Greg Lowe redefine sound beliefs with an electric guitar on a night when Steve Vai and Joe Satriani were going off at the Plaza of Nations and "The Artist" (Prince) was freaking out GM Place. A lot of guitar amps were getting sweaty and pumped up in Vancouver on Friday, September 26. Varty, Samworth, and Lowe were not out of place.

Alex Varty played first. He is a big and very amiable man. At one point in the show he joked about not being a guitar revolutionary but "...more of a guitar social democrat." Teddy bear would be too easy of a metaphor, but I'll use it anyways.

He began with a piece on a newer replica of an antique guitar, in which he played a musty and earthy improv. Just a little warm-up. The bombast came later.

I'm glad I wasn't on hallucinogens, and I was surprised to be feeling what I was feeling from what I was hearing. My sobriety was complimented even more vehemently by Alex's next piece. The notes that I made during that evening are a suitable description, but are a bit incoherent: "heavy religious sounds, subtle smell of apocalypse, monks singing on fire, clanking of condemnation."

Alex finished his set with a superb blues cover on the antique replica that began his set. Even though he was reproducing the past, his sounds were freshly ambiguous enough to leave me thinking that maybe I hadn't heard them before, maybe they had not yet been embalmed in time, maybe in fact I was hearing snatches of the possible future of guitar.

Ron Samworth and Greg Lowe took this idea even further. Their set was a mixture of collaboration and solos. The collaboration pieces were sometimes exhilarating and sometimes so abstract they verged on painful.

Samworth's first solo effort was, by my notes, "an intricate emotional collage," or "primal celestial." Correspondingly, I described Lowe's first solo effort as "an eerily acceptable sound of fluttering birds squawking while they're being trampled or drowned," or "grating, but beautifully so," or " a musical Atari that dropped acid and now we're hearing its thoughts." Samworth played over a bunch of overdubs. Lowe bashed and poked and teased his guitar and its pedals.

In technique, sound and effect, I was hearing music that has yet to be defined. Music that maybe Satriani or Vai or Prince had attempted, but never to great extents. Varty may have suggested the future of guitar. Samworth and Lowe clarified it.

Before this article gets so mushy that it turns to sap right before your very eyes, I must interject that there were some gigantic flaws to the evening. A lot of people did end up walking out of the Western Front, which is to be expected from experimentation into any art form. By the end of the evening, Samworth and Lowe were playing to a couple of handfuls of people. Revolution is a much bigger thing, man.

But (and this baby deserves and exclamation mark)! At least Samworth and Lowe (and Varty) are playing, and at least they are trying to push the guitar towards the future. I was, at first, sour that I was attending such a small event when more notorious happenings were taking place. I've seen Satriani once before, though, and he seemed to take guitar further than anybody else I had seen previously. After seeing Varty, Samworth, and Lowe, I realize that there is still a lot of space within the electric stringed dimension to be played with, to be processed, and most of all, to be explored.

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