So I was writing up this list of totally awesome classical music I listened to this last year and I hit Phillip Glass. Now, I'm not crazy about Phillip Glass, so I'm not sure why I thought about him, but thinking about him made me think of crappy music written for commercials. Now, when you combine crappy music in commercials, there's one other thing that may come to mind OTHER than Phillip Glass: Yngwie Malmsteen.
Malmsteen, pictured
http://www.yngwie.org/images/Magazinecovers/GuitarMagJapan84.jpg here, is a self-proclaimed guitar god who seems to be fighting a battle with only his axe of victory. This may have been cool in the 80's, when this picture was taken, but this fucker has been "going strong" for more than 20 years now.
Below: A more recent photo
Just look at this old sack of shit. I mean look at him. His leather pants look like they're going to split at the seams. His hair extensions are so badly permed the latino woman in me wants to kick his teeth in.
I know it shouldn't matter how an artist looks. If he wants to look like a rehab patient who doesn't remember anything other than his first Van Halen concert, cool. If he wants to look like that fat fucker that played keyboard in "Spinal Tap", awesome. What I should really care about is his MUSIC.
I do care. His music sucks.
Download, and listen to, "I am a Viking". The title should give away why I hate this man. I'm not going to elaborate.
Next, listen to ANYTHING ELSE by Malmsteen. I can pretty much guarantee that if the tempo is relatively similar, his guitar part is going to be almost the fucking same. This man has been, for 20 years, doing nothing but sweep arpeggios, pyramid arpeggios, and other guitar masturbation techniques that are shunned in everything except for technical etudes (music you play to build your technique, not to perform) and the guitar music of Paganini (from the 1800's).
This man is pretentious as hell and his music sucks. He may have phenomenal technique, but so do many other guitarists. Other guitarists just know when to stop giving their guitars handjobs and when to play a fucking song.
