Thursday, August 10, 2006

A circle of hell appears at Turner field

I came across this somehow
A Guinness World Record-Setting Event for Banjo Players!
...
We plan to bring together the most number of banjo players assembled at one location to play the same song at the same time.
...
All banjo players are welcome to attend. Only those who can demonstrate the ability to play the song Foggy Mountain Breakdown for 5 minutes will be counted toward the Guinness World Record. The tempo will be 120 beats per minute, and we'll play in the key of G.
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We'll stand together on the field in small teams, according to the type of instrument played and the style of play.
That's a whole lot of banjo. I have all the usual bluegrass prejudices against the banjo I suppose.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Nick said...

Love the banjo. Looooooove it! Does this possibly explain why I've never been able to get into BG?

5:21 PM  
Blogger Steve said...

Nope. In a traditional bluegrass band there is one (and only one) banjo player. That is tolerable with a decent banjo player and very good with a good one. The banjo is usually the loudest acoustic instrument

Once you have more than one banjo though, the noise gets overwhelming. Also, since no one plays note for note, the sound gets exremely mushy.

Dozens of banjo players just seems miserable.

5:26 PM  
Blogger Nick said...

Yeah, it does. There's some nice banjo on the new Dixie Chicks. I got it for the old lady, been listening to it over the last week. I'm really liking now, we'll see if it holds up as well as the last one.

6:03 PM  
Blogger Steve said...

If you like banjo, you should really check out John Hartford. He managed to be both the Frank Zappa and the [insert name of traditionalist here] of bluegrass. Very interesting music.

12:06 AM  

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