Hello dear Music Community.
This is my first time participating in #ThreeTuneTuesday brought to life by @ablaze. My name is Hannes (well, it is here on Hive 😉), I am German and a child of the early 80's.
Since this is my debut and I would like to seize this opportunity to tell you a little bit about me, I picked the theme "Show Opener/Introduction".
For some strange and to me unknown reason (maybe there are some shrinks out there to render an explanation?), when my son was born some 5 years ago, I started collecting bathtub ducks. As a gift from a friend I was given the one which later became my avatar. Never had I seen a devil-horned-duck before and since I am an ACDC fan my friend thought this might be a nice fit.
I was so fascinated by it, and so was my son, that I took a few pictures when it was in the splash pond. Then, when the time arose for me to join Hive and I was asked to pick an avatar, I remembered those pictures and here we are.
With this devilish look on its face and some background history to it, the song among my favorites that fitted this and this post's theme the most was of course:
Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones
At some to me unknown point in the mid 90's I picked up my mother's old acoustic guitar and taught myself how to play with some books from the library. I quickly progressed to electrical guitar and these three chord progression songs resonate with me ever since. Those were my first steps with this great instrument, which allows me to completely emerge into the music, escape from the troubles of this world, whenever I need it, to face it again with new strength.
Sympathy for the devil is one of those songs I put on an endless loop for an hour to just experiment with the different scales for improvisation or just completely emerge into the rhythm.
Everybody needs Somebody by The Blues Brothers
But please do not let my avatar fool you. I consider myself a nice guy 😊. I must have been around 9 years old when I first saw "The Blues Brothers" on TV. Of course I was not able to comprehend nor analyze what I saw and yet I had to see this movie over and over again. Hey, I was a kid, and when kids find something they like they never get tired of doing/watching it all the time again and again.
The complete movie builds up to the final concert which opens with this song and its beautiful message. What a cinematic masterpiece that puts a show opener at the end of the movie.
A little over a year ago I started playing the Drums. I got a cheap E-Drum set. The beautiful thing about this instrument is, the first steps are very easy. Your first basic grove can be played within one or two hours even and everybody told me to start playing to music as soon as possible. This song fits perfectly into the basic rock grove one learns first on the drums and is now my starting point for every practice session.
Additionally the lyrics remind me of the good in this world and keeps up hope in these times of war and crisis.
For those about to rock, we salute you by ACDC
There's another ironic placement for you. Considering the lyrics this might be the perfect opener for a rock concert. And yet ACDC always put them at the end of their show.
The slow and single instrument beginning suggests the goodbye they are about to say to the audience and yet the disharmony within the first three chords already builds up tension. And this tension is then slowly build up with the added instruments, the heavy solo, followed by final(?) chorus with pyrotechnic support of the percussion's which then culminates in a repeated rendition of the chorus at higher speed. Should that not be an opener for a heavy rock show? And yet they managed to make it their signature ending for years.
I followed this example and made it my signature ending for my guitar practice sessions. So much, that my 5 year old already recognizes it and knows whenever that song is played he may afterwards enter my practice room again without his ears blowing out 😉.
So with this I want to salute and thank you for reading through to the end. I hope you enjoyed these little nuggets from my playlist and from my person.
The embedded videos and songs are not mine, nor do I own any rights to them. They are embedded from youtube and serve an illustrative purpose for this article
Header image created with Canva