My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 22 - TOP 10 FAVORITE GUITARISTS EVER WITH PFT COMMENTER

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Robbie's Pup Punk bandmate PFT Commenter joins him in the basement this week to give a little insight as to how he got started playing guitar, he shares some crazy stories about growing up in ska/punk bands - consider this a mini "Behind The Music" - and the two rank their top ten favorite guitar players of all time!!! Follow PFT Commenter on Twitter: -@PFTCommenterYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. The top 10, your favorite top 10 guitar players of all time, not best. Right, it's an important distinction to make because if you want to just go best, then you're opening up yourself to like, you'll never be right. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter who you put in there. Everyone's going to have a different list. Everyone's probably going to have the same consensus top, I don't know, 25 that can fall into that top 10. But everyone's going to say, well, you should have put this guy here.

You should have put this guy here. This is favorite. Straight who is your favorite guitar player. Who are they? And it's interesting because you said that I'm one-fourth of Pup Punk. I'm actually one-fifth of Pup Punk when you count Hank, who is also an assistant songwriter. Yep. He does have songwriting credits on a few of our punk. I'm actually one fifth of pup punk. When you count Hank, who's also an assistant songwriter. Yup. So he's,

he does have songwriting credits on a few of our songs, a couple of our songs. He's really good at throwing in like the yelling backup parts. Yeah. Beers with the boys, beers with the boys. One, two,

three, four. Yeah. And back to school. Hank invented one, two, three, four.

That's actually his vocal track. He invented counting. Yeah. Yeah. That's, I was very impressed with that. Um, I,

and the whole reason I bring them up is because he insisted he wanted to throw in one of his top ten guitar players of all time. Really? When he found out I was doing this list. He said it was me. So I wanted to I didn't want to bring it up, but Hank said it. Yep. And so Hank's list of best guitar players of all time

is number one, PFT. I do have you in my honorable mentions pft commenter i mean the the little reggae ska part in in my real girlfriend that's legendary for years to come people will be trying to learn that part they're on an acoustic no less on an acoustic no less with no pick yep i was surprised that i was able to do i thought it was a scratch track yeah and then i listened back to it i was like that actually sounds good let's just use that tremendous um so speaking of playing guitar i want know, because I don't even know this. I don't think we've ever talked about this.

When did you get into playing guitar? I started playing guitar when I was 12 years old. 12 or 13. And why? Actually, my older brother. Okay. So my older brother started when he was 12. We had to play an instrument growing up that was like a rule in

our house because you know parents like to have something to have activities um so i had to play the violin when i was younger like elementary school and middle school and i hated it and um the rule was we had to play through middle school and then we could quit and do whatever we wanted so i quit immediately after eighth grade because it was awful. I didn't like it. I was a nerd instrument. It's a big nerd instrument. And even the thing about the violin is if you're not excellent at it, you sound like you suck at it.

Yeah. It's one of the it's like the saxophone is similar. You need to get within like five percent and then you sound OK. Yeah. So I never got past the sounding like I suck part. And my sister played a clarinet growing up too hard like another one of those instruments if you don't if you're not amazing at it you sound horrible yeah i sounded bad and my brother had picked up the guitar

and when he picked up the guitar i was i think i was two and a half years younger than him so i was probably nine i would say and uh he started playing and he rented all these videos from the library of like the greatest rock and roll guitar players in the history of rock and roll. And I sat and I watched the shit out of those and I like fell in love with rock music. And I just couldn't wait to start playing guitar. I even snuck a couple

like when my parents weren't around I would go into his room and he would show me like a couple little licks here and there. And the thing about my brother and guitar is he is amazing. And when I say amazing, he was a prodigy. He was an insane guitar player, like one of the best blues guitarists on the East Coast when he was like 17 years old. Holy shit.

Really fucking good to the point where, you know, we'd go to an open mic night and he would sit in with a band, and the place would just burn to the ground. They would absolutely love it. I didn't know that at all. So he's really, really good, and I wanted to be like him because he sounded awesome when he played, and so when I turned, I think it was when I turned 12, maybe 13, I got my first guitar and just kind of never looked back.

What kind of guitar? My very first guitar was a i don't even remember the the brand name it was an aria pro i think was the name of it and it sucked it was did it just look like a strat it looked a lot like a strat it was a little bit better than like a yamaha okay or one of the like cheap very very first guitars it was probably equivalent to a squire to a fender squ, to a Fender Squier. All right, so pretty decent. Not bad.

Not an awful starter guitar, but I think I bought it for $75 at some sort of yard sale or something like that, and I played the shit out of it, even though one of the strings on the bridge of the guitar was like, it wasn't a string, actually. It was like a spring that was loaded into the screw down there it was poking out and so if i hit it too hard if i hit it in the wrong spot it would just slice the shit out of the heel of my hand so i had to learn how

to play like hit like big power chords with the with the flailing arms i'd be very careful about where i played the notes on that guitar uh so yeah, the Aria Pro was the very first one that I had. And what kind of music were you into? Like, were the VHS tapes from the library, was that your introduction to like rock and roll? Basically, yeah. That and the Forrest Gump soundtrack, if you can believe it. The Forrest Gump soundtrack you had like on CD? Tape, it was cassette. Oh, sweet. Wow. Way back in the day. You're old, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very old. But if you listen to it still holds up. It's a great soundtrack. It is a good soundtrack. It's one of those like takes you through the era. It does. Yeah. So that was the that was the really my first introduction to rock music. And I loved it. And those tapes. Yeah. So who were your first like favorite bands? I was into Zeppelin. I was in a really into Skinner. Okay. Really into Skinner growing up. And then once my brother started getting really, really good at blues guitar, I listened to some blues. But I quickly realized when I started playing that I wasn't going to be a prodigy.

I wasn't going to be what my brother was. And I started gravitating more towards punk music and more specifically ska music because I had like a really good rhythm hand, I guess you could say. My left hand doesn't work as well. But my right hand through years of practice as a teenager, I got pretty good at just finding that stroke and that rhythm. That's what the critics have always said about you.

They're like, as a guitar player, his left hand is there, but his right hand does the magic. Yeah, a lot of people say that. And so i got into music that wasn't as technical in terms of like you know complicated solos and riffs and things like that even though i still listen to it but when i was playing i was more into like rhythm stuff places where i could find a groove just like uh just cool relatively simple guitar parts that sounded good. So I got really into Ska music and Ska core, like the Mighty Mighty Boss tones were huge for me then. Their guitar player, actually, I could put them on this list because if you want to teach

somebody how to play Ska guitar, their original guitar player, Nate Albert, is as good as it gets. I don't know a ton about Ska, admittedly, but the Mighty Mighty Boss tones definitely feel like they're the standard yes well they are for like third wave ska they kind of set the bar for that kind of stuff and it was interesting because i got i got better at playing that type of music than my brother was so like my brother would try to play along you would show him how to do some ska things yeah and it's it's so stupid because it's very simple music for the most part. But if you want to be really good at playing ska guitar, there's actually some complicated stuff that you have to do

with the timing of both your left and right hand to make it sound as good as it can get. And actually, it's funny that we're going down this path because I was listening to Catch-22 on my way into work the other day, also known as Streetlight Manifesto. And they're a very, very good band, but their guitar player is not that good at playing ska guitar, at least the way that I like to hear it. He leaves the chords open for a long time.

It doesn't give that nice chicka-chicka. Like the palm mute? Yeah. Yeah, you don't get that nice chicka-chicka, which is so important to keep the rhythm going. And it's so recognizable as like, that's a ska thing. Like you do that and it becomes a ska part. Yeah, exactly. So it's a little more complicated in some ways,

but that was like my way of lashing out and being like, you know what? I'm not going to be as good as my brother at guitar, but I'm going to find something that I really enjoy. It's a punk rock attitude. That I can learn, yeah. And then let's talk about like getting into a band. Like what was your first band? What was the name of your first band was a horrible the name my first band was public notice actually pretty good not a bad name for a good band yeah first band name my first band had so

many different names we were and they were all from like all-time low lyrics so we were like the party scene which was like their ep we were were Snakebite Heart. We were Bubblegum Smile. We were the Shake It Out. We were the Legend of Our Uprising. And then we eventually settled on Fixed at Zero, which was – it's okay. It's not bad. Yeah. I kind of like Fixed at Zero.

I remember – Because I was – I think we were talking about it and we were like, we're going nowhere. And then the drummer, I think, said like Fixed at Zero was a song at the time. He's like, Fixed at Zero, that's what that means. going nowhere. And then the drummer, I think, said like Fix the Zero was a song at the time. He's like, Fix the Zero. That's what that means. Now, did anybody ever think that you were a tribute band because you named your band after a song? Oh, yeah. And if you looked it up, it was so, so dumb at the time, because if you looked it up, it was just the song by this band called Versa Emerge. So it was like you had to look up Fix the Zero bands as a whole thing. What kind of music did your first band play? It was so we were mostly cover band. I think we had like one or two original songs that sucked ass. But I actually, the reason I got in the band was because I had a four-track recorder and nobody else did.

I didn't really know how to use it that well, but I could record a couple things on it, nothing too complicated. And the band Public Notice was already banned and some of my friends were in it. Two of the guys were my friends. Two of the guys were people that I knew but weren't really friends of mine. And my friend convinced them to let me in the band just because I had a four-track recorder so they could get some recordings out of it

and wouldn't have to spend money on a studio. So they let me in. They probably wouldn't have let me in otherwise but it just so happens that like on the eve of the eighth grade talent show our guitar player got suspended from school i think he was like caught smoking during a fire alarm or something like that that's what you want pretty fucking punk yeah and so i had to step in and play guitar for smells like teen Spirit. And I didn't know the solo. And our singer didn't know the third verse. And so the song kind of fell apart after the second chorus. A song that we now play in pop punk.

Exactly. So every time I play the solo to that song, it's a big fuck you to myself. Nice. Back in middle school. You're just dunking on yourself. I'm dunking on my old self. But yeah, Public Notice. Were you in a bunch of bands growing up, or was there one?

No, so Public Notice dissolved after, I don't know, like a month or two. After one or two recordings on the four-track? Yeah, and our singer was not good. I think we just used the four-track to record Self-Esteem by The Offspring probably six times. And we recorded different versions of it. And then, yeah, so then our singer didn't really want to sing in the band anymore, and he didn't really like singing in a band. So we got a new singer, and we became Fall Guy.

Another decent name. Yeah, I guess it's okay. For a young punk band in the 90s, Fall Guy, pretty good. I can imagine that on a poster. Yeah, yeah. It was okay. It was okay. It was fun. We did a lot of local concerts for town events.

Yep. Our town had a lot of outside stuff. We did the Fall Fair on Main Street. We played at churches. We played at birthday parties, our friends' birthday parties. We just played in the backyard. Some Battle of the Bands. Oh, a ton of Battle of the Bands.

At local high school. Yep. Yeah, so we did that for a little bit and then our singer and it was it was weird it was like a mix of punk ska and classic rock all together because our singer was really into oldie stuff um so he wanted to play a lot of like old slower songs sometimes he was obsessed with ballads yeah he drove a 57 Chevy Bel Air. He was really into Buddy Holly. How old are you? I'm 34. No, not right now.

At the time. 15, I think. What a weirdo that he was just into the 50s at 15 years old. Yeah, really into the 50s. He was also a year older, which was cool because he could drive us around. Oh, nice. So we had a little bit of independence. And then that band changed from Fall Guy into the Elbow Jockeys. I don't like that one.

You know, I thought that was the best name out of all the Elbow Jockeys. No, yeah, maybe that's a very ska name. Yes. Yeah, it is. And so we had a horn section. Oh, shit. Not a bad high school ska band. Once you got a horn section, you're kind of legit.

Yeah, we weren't that bad I'll say that We played A few decent shows Opened up for some Cool bands One time We went to

The 930 Club In D.C. That was like Our favorite place To go see music And The Mighty Mighty Boston Was playing a two night

Show there So they did a different Set each night And the first night We were there the singer dickie barrett came out and he saw us like waiting in line talked to us for a while cool and he was like are you guys in a band or dick in his voice and we're like yeah yeah we are he's like what are you guys called we're the oboe jockeys and he goes you guys got any tapes or anything

like that let's do a cd so we gave it to him we We go on the show, have a great time. The next night we go in for, uh, for the second show and he comes out for the encore wearing our shirt. Oh, come on. Yeah. And he asks if the elbow jockeys are in the house and we look around and it's me, the guitar player and our singer, but we don't have our drummer. We definitely don't have our horn section. And we're like, yeah, we're right here. And so he got us up on stage to play a song at the 930 club sold out show which we did with a drummer that didn't know the song whatsoever you played an original yeah but still it's pretty cool it's a great experience fucking crazy yeah that's insane is the mighty mighty boss tones your favorite band of all time yeah yeah without a doubt holy shit for you to, holy shit, for you to have that moment, I didn't know that at all.

That's legit. You know, we blog it all the time. Like, Dave Grohl brings so-and-so up on stage, and it's the moment of a lifetime. Like, if camera phones were around back then, you might have gone viral as, like, Oh, yeah. Mighty Mighty Boss Tones mega fan gets pulled on stage to play a song. I was that kid that everybody hated. Yeah.

They were just like, you son of a bitch. Like, fuck that guy. You know what's actually even worse than that is about a year later at the 9 30 club real big fish was playing okay and they got me on stage what to play a song and uh they were like what song do you want to play with us i was like beer and aaron their lead singer is kind of a dick sometimes he's like a surly guy and he was pissed off because the whole crowd was chanting beer at him the entire night. Yeah. And he was like, oh, yeah, that's all you guys want to hear is beer.

And so he's like, okay, we'll do it, but you have to play it by yourself. And so he just put the guitar on me, and then he took the entire band offstage. And I had to start playing it. And one of the first things that hits in that song is a solo. And I was actually nailing it. And then he was oh this kid I guess doesn't suck but I was like playing it and singing it the whole crowd was like singing along and then when the first chorus comes in the entire band had snuck back on the stage and I didn't know and they all hit it at the start of the chorus dude what the fuck spooked the shit out of me so I played

beer with them you had the most rock star life of all time before Barstool, apparently. And then they were pissed off because I played the song that the whole crowd was chanting for. So at the end of the show, they closed by playing beer four times in a row. They're like, do you want to hear this fucking song again? We'll play it again, assholes. Jesus Christ. I don't know how I didn't know these stories, but that's insane. Let's get into the lists. Top ten favorite guitar players of all time. I don't know how I didn't know these stories, but that's insane. Let's get into the lists.

Top ten favorite guitar players of all time. I'll say mine first. I'll say my ten. You say your ten. My number ten, kicking off my list, Billy Corgan. My number ten is going to be Tom Morello. There's a thing in wrestling, a traditional, like, a respectful thing to do in pro wrestling is to wipe your shoes on the apron before you get into a ring. That's what that reminds me of. I did not know that. When's the show coming out, by the way?

Monday. Okay, Monday. So if anybody out there is in the Mighty Mighty Boston's, I will be at that show on Wednesday next week. So I will see you at Webster Hall. Nice. I just saw Lucas Nelson there, and it's a very nice redone venue. I've actually played there twice. Played there twice, Battle of the Bands in high school. Did you win? No, we didn't. We really didn't. Did you hurt yourself?

Yes. That's where I got my, what I believe is my first concussion, off that overhead amp. When I jumped off the stage, I used to do this thing. Me and my guitar player, our last song during the bridge of it, we would run into the crowd because we had just gotten our wirelesses and we were really just like, check out we got wirelesses and I jumped off the stage hit my head on the overhead I was bleeding a little there was a fight that broke out and I got punched in the knee um I remember like the fight spilled over and I was sitting down waiting to go into the green room and like a wild punch caught me in the knee and I was like what the fuck right before we went on

stage it was a whole thing but uh Tom Morello is my number nine. Cool, cool. My number nine is, I'm going to go Richie Havens. We got a great transition here. The man who wrote Here Comes the Sun, George Harrison. Your number eight. My number eight, that's right. My number eight, Brad Knoll from Sublime. It's one of the easiest solos to play, one of the hardest solos to write.

Yeah. Because you want to, at some point, you want to explore the guitar a little bit more during a solo, but he just sticks with the dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. You know, and it's very, very cool to hear that. And also it was one of the first solos that I could play. Yeah, I mean, nostalgia drives pretty much almost my entire top five, so I'm with you there.

And such a recognizable tone to his guitar. Like you hear any Sublime song, you know it's Sublime because of that tone right away. The tone and like the way the drums usually kick in, the whole rhythm section. My number seven, an obvious one who's got to be on everyone's list, Stevie Ray Vaughan. A lot of kids my age don't know him, and I've noticed this recently because reaction videos to Stevie Ray Vaughan live performances are becoming popular on YouTube and they're hysterical because

it's people discovering him for the first time and watching his kind of weird scratch in the belly of his guitar style and his rhythm and if you look up Stevie Ray Vaughan voodoo child reaction video, there are some really fucking funny videos of people just blown away by his talent.

But yeah, he's number seven on my list. He is a no-brainer on anybody's list. And on the list of greatest guitar players of all time, he would be like top three for me. Yeah. Okay, we'll get more to Stevie Ray Vaughan in a little bit. My next pick, I'm going to go with Dickie Betts from the Allman Brothers. Number six. Another one. Pretty much everything I said about Stevie can be applied to this guy, Jimi Hendrix.

Uh, my next one, I'm going to go Angus Young. Uh, my number five, this is from really my entire list is really inspired by the music my brother listened to and got me into. Um, but my, my top five is especially that way. Number five is Mick Mars for me. Your number five. My number five. And then after this, are we going to break and do honorable mentions?

Oh, yeah. After this, after five, we'll break and do some honorable mentions. Cool. My number five is going to be Mark Knopfler from the Dire Straits. Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi. Brian May from Queen, John Mayer, Joe Perry from Aerosmith,

Chris Stapleton, and John Frascante. Okay. Those are my honorable mentions. They just missed the cut, especially someone like Richie Sambora, a guy that grew up in New Jersey, been to, I don't know,

seven Bon Jovi shows in my life, eight. He is really high up there on my list. All right. On my honorable mention, I've just got the entire guitar section from Leonard Skinner. Just anybody that's ever played a guitar on Leonard Skinner. I wasn't going to be able to differentiate between them because, honestly, I don't know which one does which at some times.

There's a thousand guitars going at once, a slide, this or that. But they're all great. They're all great songwriters, so I'll shout them out there. I wanted to include Lemmy from Motorhead in my guitar players, even though he's a bass player. Okay. Because he played the bass like it was a guitar. Yeah.

And he was really fucking good at it. Amazing. So I'm going to include him in that one. And let's see. Who else for honorable mentions can I go with? I had Joe Perry on my list, too. I'm actually seeing Aerosmith this weekend for the first time. I'm stoked.

That's going to be a good time. I cannot wait. So if I guess if you're listening to this episode, I saw him last night. Congratulations. Thank you. James Hetfield from Metallica. So I was going to put him on mine as well because I think I like James's guitar playing better than Kirk's. Me and my brother agree on that, I believe. My understanding is that James writes the riffs and then they sing Kirk in there to do the solos. Yeah. And the riffs are really what make Metallica Metallica. Totally. So, yeah, I'm going to include him.

I think he's actually a really good guitar player. He's just not like he's not a shredder. Randy Rhodes. He did the Crazy Train solo, the Crazy Train riff. Just for that alone. Boom. You're in there. We should discuss him in this.

Absolutely. That was like any VH1 top 100 countdown of anything. Number one was always Crazy Train. It would be like top 100 ballads of all time. Number one, they'd be like, we're going to throw Crazy Train in there. It's so good that it was a smash hit for Ozzy Osbourne, and it was a smash hit for Lil Jon. Yeah. I mean, you talk about a versatile songwriter right there.

Yeah, there you go. Number four, I Got Prince. I agree with everything that you said, including that live performance was amazing. And I heard that he didn't show up to rehearse. And they were pissed off at him. But then once he started playing, was it Paul McCartney that was on stage with him? No, it was George Harrison's son. And it was Tom Petty and Steve Linwood.

That's right, it was Tom Petty that was doing a lot of the singing. Tom Petty just looked over and was like, just let him go, man. Just let Prince be Prince. Yeah. The intro to When Doves Cry is so good. He also played a Foo Fighters song that night. He played Best of You out of nowhere. And Dave Grohl tells a hysterical story about not knowing that was happening

and watching Prince's halftime show. In his later years, he was working with this band Third Eye Girl, I think they were called, or Third Girl Eye, something like that. And they did a version of Let's Go Crazy that was in halftime, and it's real groovy and cool. That's the one that you can fuck to. This is probably the most, I guess you could call it a nostalgic pick, where guitar experts will roll their eyes at this one. A lot of them will. Some of them, I assume, were inspired by this guy, but it's Ace Frehley from Kiss. Doesn't get better. I didn't actually hear it, but I'm sure it was very good.

My number three guitar player, most favorite guitar player, is B.B. King. My number two, such an easy decision here, is Jimmy Page. I bet if you spent the time just sitting down listening to Zeppelin, especially like the live show, Song Remains the Same and shit, How the West Was Won, I bet you would really really fall in love with jimmy page i'll give it a shot i'll definitely give a shot uh my number two is that we're on we're already on number two is stevie ray vaughn uh my number one is going to be predictable for many i've talked about this guy a ton uh he is my favorite guitar player of all time he holds my favorite uh library of guitar solos there could possibly be it's slash from guns and roses um my before i get to my number one i want to say two things one i forgot

to mention my honorable mentions eddie van halen yep he's very very he's a great guitar player just i was never super i i could only take eddie van halen in small doses i was never a huge van halen guy myself but of course I could recognize fucking Eddie Van Halen. Because the solos are all incredibly fast, tough to play, the finger tapping and stuff. For whatever reason, it's good to listen to for me in small doses,

but there's no chance I can sit down and listen to four Eddie Van Halen, or four Van Halen songs in a row. For whatever reason, just not my cup of tea. Also, honorable mention, I just want to include Beyonce on my list, because if you don't include Beyonce on a list on the Internet, people will eat your fucking lunch. So Beyonce is on my list. Yeah, I'll throw her on my list, too.

Respect to the Bayhives. And the one honorable mention that I forgot was Buckethead. Okay. All right. Interesting. So my real number one is Jimi Hendrix.