Okay, Willie, what's the verdict? Early Spring or more Winter? After yesterday's heavy snowfall, I think we can take a pretty good guess. Will you agree with your cousin Phil in Punxatawney, or will the groundhogs be at odds? Oh, the suspense!

Happy Groundhog Day!


     Wiarton Willie  (Wiarton, Ontario)

I just made a couple of small adjustments to the "China Grove" tab I posted earlier today. The changes are in bars 11 and 14 of the guitar solo. The notes are still exactly the same, I just moved a few notes to different strings so that the fingering falls more naturally.

New tab posted today. "China Grove" by The Doobie Brothers. It can be found on the Home Page or on the Various Tabs page. Add mine to the pile of "China Grove" tabs that are already out there.

I'm opting for a live video version to link to the site. It's a good live version, and it helped me out in figuring out some of the parts.

But since the tab is of the studio version of the song, I'll put a link to the studio version here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcfEmG3TrMg

The next tab is coming along, but it's still awhile away. I still have the Bridge and the Solo to do. In the meantime...riff time. Today's riff is from Blue Öyster Cult. It's the Intro to the hit off of their 1981 Fire Of Unknown Origin album. A little harmonized guitar, a little soloing by Donald Roeser, power chords in the background. They could manage all of this live, because in onstage photos, it always looked to me like BOC had about 5,000 guitarists in the band.  But I think it's three, actually. (Okay, so I'm prone to a little exaggeration.) Still, there aren't a whole lot of bands that have three guitarists. But this is one of them.

BLUE ÖYSTER CULT - "Burnin' For You"     (D. Roeser/R. Meltzer)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/varriffs.txt

And you can hear it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYD9z_fvjgk

I just posted the site's first tab for 2008, "(Make Me Do) Anything You Want" by A Foot In Coldwater. I've known this song forever, but I discovered something while doing this tab that I didn't know. When I do a tab, I'll often look for a video version on YouTube to check for accuracy. I was watching some footage of this song and I noticed the poster had the band listed as A Foot In Coldwater, when I had always assumed it was A Foot In Cold Water.

So I started searching around a little for answers, and sure enough, on every one of the band's album covers "Coldwater" is a single word. And that got me wondering further if the band's name might be more than it appears. Depending on what article you read, it'll tell you the band took its name from British slang for either "a shocking experience" or "bad luck".

But is it possible the band's name has a secondary meaning, as well? AFIC are from Toronto, and there's a town north of Toronto (okay, well north of Toronto) near Orillia called Coldwater. I wonder if anybody in the band might have roots in Coldwater...making A Foot In Coldwater maybe also be a reference to staying grounded, always having a foot in your hometown. Pure speculation. I'm sure it probably has nothing to do with it, but it does make you wonder why they spell Coldwater as one word, doesn't it?

There are two video versions of this song on YouTube, one from the band's early days, one more recent. Both have their cons. In the more recent one, the band's lead singer is singing with strep throat...but that version has the full guitar solo, so that's the version I'm going to put on the video page of the website (as soon as I get a chance). The other video, well, I think they're just performing on a show along to the studio recording, so it sounds fine. But it's an edited version of the guitar solo, which is why the other one gets the nod for the website.

But for your listening enjoyment , I'll link to the edited version here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek_Xf2HTsZo

Believe it or not, there really is a tab on the way (a request). But the song has a 32 bar solo in it, so I knew it was going to take awhile. And since some of those parts are harmonized it's more like 44 bars. The good news (for me, at least) is that I finished the solo section tonight (on paper, it's not in the computer yet). I still have to do the Outro, though, which involves some lead parts.

So in the meantime, I'll add the first riff of the year here. It's by Lighthouse, and it's the Intro of the title track from their One Fine Morning (1970) album. The brass parts have been transcribed for guitar. The lower staff brass part has been tabbed an octave higher than it sounds on the record, because when converted to guitar parts it sounds better for the melody and harmony line to be within the same octave, rather than an ocatave and a half apart.

LIGHTHOUSE - "One Fine Morning"         (S. Prokop)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

Hear the full song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IbSKbsh6Zo