Courtesy of Wikipedia…
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a trivia game based on the concept of the small world phenomenon and rests on the assumption that any individual can be linked through his or her film roles to actor Kevin Bacon within six steps. The name of the game is a play on the "six degrees of separation" concept.
If you’ve ever tried this game…you know in some strange cosmic way it works. Part of it is that being able to connect everyone gets easier the more movies come out, so from year to year the degree of difficulty decreases…It also may be that Kevin Bacon is an extraordinarily hard working actor who just keeps showing up in our favorite movies, and some duds as well…maybe he should ask his agent what he’s thinking… [Now you gotta cut loose…Footloose…]
Before there was Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, rock and roll had it’s own system going, more resembling a family tree. Although it does follow the same concept, and my friends and I used to play a game to see how many bands we could connect to each other, and the weirder the connection the better. There was a publication called “The Harmony Illustrated Guide To Rock & Roll” when I was in high school, and it featured hand drawn family trees to show the many line-ups of a particular band, and this just takes it a step further. It’s really more like a spider web than a tree. I remember seeing the seven million incarnations of Deep Purple and wondering why it changed so constantly. [as a disclaimer this can also be played with Rap & R&B artists. However due to the commonality of being featured on each other’s records and singles, the game is over much more quickly…]
The concept is simple. Connect as many bands through their ever changing line-ups to see who worked with whom. There are a few bands that actually make this easier such as Yes, Whitesnake, and Rainbow [Yngwie Malmsteen is equally guilty], given their sheer number of members over the years. It could be that the stability of the lineup was directly related to the egos involved…but that’s just an educated hypothesis.
To give you a simple example… let’s connect Led Zeppelin to Vanilla Fudge..it goes like this…
Jimmy Page played guitar in Led Zep…He went on to play with The Firm [with Paul Rogers of Bad Company, Tony Franklin, and Chris Slade]…Bassist Tony Franklin went on to work with Blue Murder, whose drummer is Carmine Appice, who used to be the drummer of…you guessed it..Vanilla Fudge.
Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder>Vanilla Fudge
To make it harder… you can go from Led Zeppelin to Kansas…you go from Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder and from Blue Murder we go with guitarist John Sykes…who played with Whitesnake..from there we choose lead singer David Coverdale, who also sang for Deep Purple, to guitarist Steve Morse, who also played with Kansas…so it then goes like this…
Led Zeppelin>The Firm>Blue Murder>Whitesnake>Deep Purple>Kansas… The number of degrees becomes as many as needed, but we try to keep it to 6.
One last one before your head explodes and then I’ll challenge you… Let’s connect British rock band Genesis to 80’s L.A. pop band Missing Persons… it goes like this…
From Genesis we pick guitarist Steve Hackett, who played in GTR with guitarist Steve Howe from Yes, who played in Asia with bassist John Wetton, who played in U.K. with drummer Terry Bozzio, who played drums in Missing Persons with his wife, Dale, on vocals…
Genesis>GTR>Asia>U.K.>Missing Persons…in just 5 moves… quite simple really… ;-)
Now the challenge…Can you connect 70’s Funk band Sly & The Family Stone with Greek progressive metal band Firewind in 6 moves?... Good Luck!...
And Now…Don’t Stop Believin’… It was the summer of ’81 and the song was all over the radio. Upon the release of the record “Escape” on July 31, 1981 this monster was born. I remember playing Adventure on the Atari 2600 and listening to this record all summer long at my friend Tim’s house. We were geeks [Rush’s Moving Pictures was also a favorite on the turntable…]. It’s in my opinion one of the best pop songs ever written. Journey performs it flawlessly. And there’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t know the song from the first few chords on the piano…so…what’s my problem with it… Oversaturation has killed it for me… From the T.V. show Glee doing their take on it to it being played at every sports event known to man, to the various instrumental covers from the harmonica to the kazoo…it makes my head want to explode… I vote for a moratorium on the song for a few years…give it a rest so that we can still appreciate it. I still have trouble listening to Free Bird and Stairway To Heaven from all the Jr. High and High School dances I endured in my youth. What person thinks that Free Bird with it’s last 5 minutes of purely guitar solo to be an acceptable choice at a dance anyway?... I don’t know…maybe someone can figure that one out…
On to other things…
I have been remiss in not mentioning the passing of guitar great Gary Moore. From his work with Thin Lizzy, his forays into hard rock, and his blues expertise, he was a true innovator and a true guitar hero. Mr. Moore you will be missed but your contributions are going to inspire many for a very long time. Thank You.
Robert William Gary Moore (4 April 1952 – 6 February 2011) R.I.P.
In Business News… Activision has decided to discontinue creation of it’s “Guitar Hero” game. The company statement is as follows:
"Due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing's Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011," Activision said in its financial statement.
Bottom Line…It’s gone the way of Space Invaders and Intellivision… It was fun to play the first few hundred times but people didn’t see the need to continue purchasing the updates every year. With the cost of licensing all the songs to create the game it’s no surprise that turning a profit has become difficult. Maybe now people will go out and pick up REAL instruments and learn to play them!… and of course there’s always air guitar…
Things to look out for this year….
New Journey for 2011…the second recording with Arnel Pineda on vocals will be the follow-up to the platinum release “Revelation”…
New project from former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, who is in the studio with Steve Morse on guitar, [Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Steve Morse Band, currently with Deep Purple], Neal Morse, vocals, keys, guitar [Spock’s Beard, Solo] and Dave LaRue on bass [Steve Morse Band]. And the producer of this project is the one and only Peter Collins [Rush, Queensryche, October Project, Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi]… Stay tuned!
And…courtesy of Classicrock.com…Rush are planning to totally remix their 2002 album Vapor Trails.
Talking exclusively to Classic Rock, guitarist Alex Lifeson revealed: “We were never happy with the production. Perhaps we should have taken more time over the record. But now we’ve got the chance to improve things. There will be no re-recording, just a remix”.
Two of the tracks were remixed for their compilation Retrospective III. Rush is currently working on their latest album “Clockwork Angels” for a 2011 release, and will tour thereafter…
In closing, I must say that I LOVE the Chrysler ad with Eminem. Very classy…
Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon…
J.
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