Skip's Guitar Wars 2000

Skip's Music in Sacramento has a series of Clinics involving name musicians every year about this time. This particular year they included a guitar and drum contest - which was to be judged by the various clinicians. The judges for the guitar contest were George Lynch, Gary Hoey, Paul Gilbert and Frank Hannon.

Planet X's guitarist, Darryl had entered this contest and was among one of the 9 finalist.

I had thought that the contest was going to start at 2pm, but in fact it started at 1:30. As a result when we were walking in - I faintly heard a guitar playing that sounded a lot like Darryl, and it sounded nearby so I started looking for him in one of the tents that had been setup with various gear around Skip's Music. But in fact, what I was hearing was Darryl playing in the Contest behind the store. By the time my wife and I had walked back there, his two minutes were completed and he was off-stage.

Yep, missed him by that much.

From what I could tell Darryl sounded pretty good - but not neccesarily at his best. The next guy up was also a rock guitarist, but he ran into more than a few problems and some of the things he tried to play simply didn't work, which was probably nervousness - it was clear that he was a good player.

One guy got up and basically played a folk song. Another went up and played some classical on an acoustic. The last guy - whose name is Martin - got up and played some speed metal. First he started with a rythm guitar riff...then he just started the blazing flurry of notes. He was very fast, very clean and able to sustain that for nearly a minute, which really got the crowd going.

When the judges score were finally submitted, Darryl had won 3rd runner up - which got him about $500 worth of gear including a wireless unit, a gig bag, a year supply of strings and a heavy duty guitar cord. Problem was - what Darryl really wanted was what the 2nd runner up won - the P.O.D. amp emulator by Line 6. He's been struggling to get a guitar tone he's completely happy with for months, and he'd already had chance to try out the P.O.D. and knows it would be the perfect thing.

The irony is that the person who won the P.O.D. plays acoustic guitar and doesn't need it.

Another irony like that was that the first runner up - won a Marshall Amp, only this prize went to the classical guitar player. They did say they were going to swap it for an acoustic guitar amp of equal value though.

First place went to the speed-metaller, Martin.

Which was cool - he rocked. (He got the same stuff as Darryl, plus the Marshall *and* the P.O.D)

Paul Gilbert Clinic

After the contest was a clinic by Paul Gilbert. I wouldn't normally mention this in the starlog, except for the fact that supposed the winners from the Guitar Wars contest were going to get a chance to play with Paul. For this, Darryl was stoked.

Paul put on a great show/clinic - obviously playing some killer lead and rythm guitar, but also injecting a lot of humor into the entire affair. For example he played a song that included elements from three of english groups - Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Spice Girls.

Basically he did a Spice Girls ballad, with some tasty guitar fills --- then went into the solo from "Stairway to Heaven", and finished the entire thing off with "Sweetleaf".

Anyway, the end of his clinic came up and they were trying to find the list of people who were going to come up on stage, and Tommy Armstrong - a skips employee who was acting as stage manager says, "Oh don't worry about the list, I can point them all out...".

So, he does so...and the only person from the contest who he pointed to, was Martin. The other two winners had already left - since they were acoustic not electric/rock players, but Darryl was sitting right behind Martin and Tommy ignored him and picked someone else. I mean, Skip - the owner of Skip's Music - had told Darryl he was going to get a chance to jam with Paul Gilbert like the others, but when the time came - that isn't what happened.

At first we were confused.

Then we were pissed.

One of Darryl's friends came by and asked why he didn't go on stage? He didn't know. The person who knew - was Tommy. So I got up went over to wear he was at the side of the stage and asked him.

"Wasn't Darryl supposed to Jam too?"

He didn't answer - he just said "Please leave the backstage area...".

It was rather difficult to enjoy the rest of the show after that, but I tried. Ultimately they had six guys go up and play with Gilbert, some were good - some weren't. Most were kids. Martin, the contest winner - actually didn't play very well at all. Maybe it was nerves, but it also might have been the fact that when he was competing in the contest he was sitting down, and now - he was standing and it's much harder to play while standing than it is when sitting. Even Gilbert was cracking jokes about it - "Yeah, you need to learn how to play with your guitar strung low like Sid Vicous..."

The last person - was Frank Hannon, formerly of Tesla and Moon Dog Mane. Then, once the jam was finished Paul switched over to drums and his former Racer X band mate Jeff came out to sing "Living after Midnight" with Hannon on guitar.

It was pretty cool.

Once the show was over Tommy, whose known Darryl for years (although they've never been in the same clique) came out and explained that "they" had decided to let the kids from Skip's "Stairway to Stardom" program - where younger players are mentored by veterans - come up and play with Gilbert. In fact, Tommy happens to be one of those mentors since he's a excellent guitarist (at least - that what I'm told - I've never seen him really play), a G.I.T. grad, and is currently a member of the local band H.U.R.T., who we competed against in this years SAMMIE Awards. I could be wrong, but I very much suspect that most of those kids he brought up - were his own students.

Oh well, at least he was man enough to apologize afterward, and explain to Darryl what had happened - he deserves credit for that I think - although I also think not jipping Darryl out of his promised slot with Gilbert would've been even more of a "manly" and honorable a thing to do.

But then...maybe that's just me.

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