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

TABS 

A listing of all of the new tabs added to the site in 2007: * 

January
1. Rock Goddess – Satisfied Then Crucified
2. Girlschool – Running Wild
3. Harlequin – Sweet Things In Life 

February
4. Warlock – Fur Immer
5. Moist – Gasoline
6. Girlschool – Feel Good
7. Girlschool – Yeah Right (guitar)
8. April Wine – You Won’t Dance With Me 

March
9. Harlequin – You Are the Light
10. Doro – Heaven I See
11. Doro – Terrorvision
12. FM – Phasors On Stun 

April
13. Girlschool – Following the Crowd (bass)
14. Three Dog Night – One 

May
15. Stevie Nicks – Edge Of Seventeen
16. Toronto – All I Need
17. Kim Mitchell – All We Are
18. The Kings – This Beat Goes On
19. The Kings – Switchin’ To Glide
20. Girlschool – On My Way (live) 

June
21. Prism – You Walked Away Again
22. Max Webster – Battle Scar
23. Zon – Astral Projector 

July
24. Girlschool – Nothing To Lose
25. Warlock – True As Steel
26. Saga – Scratching the Surface
27. Sass Jordan – Make You A Believer 

August
28. Bad Company – Shooting Star
29. Toronto – Lookin’ For Trouble
30. Girlschool – Kick It Down
31. Rock Goddess – Back To You 

September
32. The Guess Who – Runnin’ Back To Saskatoon
33. Headpins – Don’t It Make Ya Feel
34. The Guess Who – Bus Rider 

October
35. Coney Hatch – Hey Operator
36. Max Webster – High Class In Borrowed Shoes
37. Bachman-Turner Overdrive – Tramp 

November
38. Girlschool – Back For More
39. Honeymoon Suite – Stay In the Light
40. The Rolling Stones – The Last Time
41. The James Gang – Funk #49
42. Trooper – General Hand Grenade  

December
43. The Guess Who – Albert Flasher
44. Girlschool – Flesh And Blood
45. Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle 

(*All of the tabs on the site were added in 2007, as it was the site’s first year, but listed above are the tabs that were actually done in the calendar year of 2007.) 

RIFFS 

A listing of all of the riffs posted in the blog Riff-In-A-Jiff section in 2007: 

September
1. April Wine – Don’t Push Me Around
2. Heart – Sing Child
3. Girlschool – Let’s Get Hard
4. Cry Of Love – Peace Pipe
5. Bachman-Turner Overdrive – Blue Collar
6. Girlschool - Don’t Walk Away
7. Brighton Rock – Can’t Wait For the Night 

October
8. Concrete Blonde – Rain
9. Girlschool – Tiger Feet
10. Queen – Keep Yourself Alive 

November
11. Honeymoon Suite – Love Changes Everything
12. Styx – Miss America
13. Trooper – The Boys In the Bright White Sports Car 

December
14. Girlschool – Furniture Fire
15. Harlequin – Survive
16. The Doobie Brothers – Jesus Is Just Alright
17. Crowbar – Oh What A Feeling

Most viewed tabs for the month of December 2007:

6 - Girlschool - Race With the Devil (guitar)
5 - Girlschool - Yeah Right (guitar)
4 - Trooper - Two For the Show
3 - FM - Phasors On Stun
3 - Max Webster - Battle Scar
3 - Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle
2 - April Wine - Cum Hear the Band
2 - Girlschool - C'mon Let's Go
2 - Girlschool - Future Flash
2 - Girlschool - Wildlife
2 - The Guess Who - Albert Flasher
2 - Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes
2 - Max Webster - Hangover

Total tab views for December: 67   (Girlschool-29, Canadian-27, Various-11)

Most viewed tabs overall (stats date from Oct.3/07 to Dec.31/07):

18 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
10 - Girlschool - Race With the Devil (guitar)
10 - Trooper - Two For the Show
8 - Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes
7 - Girlschool - Burning In the Heat
6 - Bad Company - Shooting Star
6 - FM - Phasors On Stun
5 - Girlschool - Wild At Heart
5 - Girlschool - Yeah Right (guitar)
5 - Max Webster - Battle Scar

*Only tab views made by people (excluding my own views) are counted here. Webcrawler/bot views are excluded.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 

I hope everybody had a great night last night bringing in the New Year, and also a good New Year's Day today. 

I spent the better part of the afternoon watching the Winter Classic NHL game, the outdoor game in Buffalo between the Sabres and the Penguins. I was watching on TV, but it looks like it would have been fun to be at. I loved that it snowed through much of the game, that was great! And Sid the Kid scoring the winning goal in a shootout, I'm sure the league loved that...to have the NHL's current golden boy be the deciding factor in a game broadcast all over the world.

So did anybody do a Polar Bear swim today?  

Not me, but I think I'm going to go out for a walk right now, take in some of that fresh New Year's air and enjoy the outdoor lights, which most people will be taking down soon.

Here's to a 2008 full of good jammin', guitarin', tabbin', and such.

And I wish a great 2008 to all of you!

No, it's not a flock of sheep, it's today's riff. The band is Crowbar (the Canadian band Crowbar, that is), and this is probably their most well known song. It comes from the 1971 album Bad Manors (a name also later given to their Greatest Hits album).

The chord progression/riff here is only a measure or two long, but you can play your way through the whole song with it. The partial F chord at the end of each measure is sometimes played once, and sometimes twice. There's no particular pattern to when to play it once or twice, so just wing it, and mix both ways in there, as you please.

CROWBAR - "Oh What A Feeling"      (K.Jay Fordham/R.Greenway)

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

I couldn't find a full version of the song on YouTube or MySpace, but there's an audio clip of it on this page. It has a bit of the Intro and part of the first Chorus:

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Manors-Golden-Hits-Vol/dp/B000001CWO

Wishing a very MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Well, fellow six-stringers, the tab that was posted yesterday -- Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like An Eagle" -- will probably be the last tab of the year. It's not very likely I'll have time to do much in the way of tabbing between now and Christmas. I'll work on one in the week after Christmas so I can hopefully have one posted early in the New Year. I've worked a bit on the Intro of one already. In the meantime, in the week between Boxing Day and New Year's Day, I'll try to get a riff posted on the blog page.

You might have noticed some minor design changes that took place on the site yesterday. I moved all the page links up to the top of each page. The idea was to make it easier to navigate around within the site. Having the page links at the bottom of each page, a person wouldn't even know they were there unless they scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page. With those links at the top of the page, site visitors can immediately see that every page on the site has a link to every other page on the site.

Today, a little Doobie Bro rock'n'roll. The song is from the band's second album Toulouse Street (1972), and this one rocks out pretty good. Since the guitar part for the Intro is fairly short, I've included the 1st Verse, as well.

For the verse, I've only put in very basic chords. I like to be as accurate as possible, but I ended up spending a lot of time second guessing the chords, the exact variations being played. (On the record, it doesn't sound like a simple D Major in the verse, in the live version below it does). So eventually I decided, it's a riff section anyhow, and I've got the riff, so I won't worry much about the chords, and I just put in the basic changes. Close enough for rock & roll.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS - "Jesus Is Just Alright"     (A. Reynolds)

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

There's some live footage of the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ClBlp9crA