Thurs 18 – Axe hero
Coheed and Cambria -
Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Volume 1: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness
I already played their debut for grail day, and unfortunately I don't have their sophomore album yet (my actual favourite), so I'll play their third, and most explicitly "guitar hero-y", record.
This came out when I was in grade 11, and had already been playing guitar for a couple of years. I learned how to play, largely, from finding tabs of their first two records online and, after hours and hours and hours of practicing alone in my room, playing along with them. My first guitar was an electric, but I've played mostly acoustic since leaving for university, so in the years when I was playing harder rock and metal way more, this was by far my favourite band.
Led by frontman Claudio Sanchez, with Travis Stever on lead guitar (and the only other member who's been in the band the whole time), these dudes really changed my life and my impression of what music was allowed to be. At least on the first few records, the two had a really unique style with Claudio playing "rhythm" parts based around power chords and riffs, and Travis dancing around them with tasteful licks and harmonies. Then they made this album, and brought the guitar solo front and centre, on probably their most famous song, "Welcome Home." But the real guitar jewel (actually, there are a lot) on this record comes in the closer,
particularly on this live version from a 2006 concert DVD (nope, not from the DVD, but same era). They jammed once in a while mid-song, which first introduced me to improvisational music and paved the way, eventually, for my Allman Brothers and Grateful Dead fandoms. (But maybe most importantly, their covers of "The Trooper" got me way into Iron Maiden.)
Claudio and my nostalgic fondness for these early records are also why one of my dream guitars is a brown Explorer with a black pickguard. (One day. After my Les Paul.)
