Guitar Center Syndrome

Waksman referenced Buzz Osborne’s interview with Guitar Player magazine from 1996 in which he claims guitar players have fallen victim to “Guitar Center Syndrome in in which guitarists felt compelled to display the fastest, flashiest, and most flamboyant aspects of their technique for the sake of other guitarists to prove their capabilities.”  As a guitar player myself, I can actually imagine the scene he is describing, because not only have I witnessed it, I too have experience the Guitar Center Syndrome. 

Guitar Center is a large chain of music distribution outlets throughout the country.  They specialize in Guitars, but have a wide variety of musical equipment available.  They have to allow the customers to play a guitar or test out an amp before they make a purchase, and of course hundreds of customers a day come to plug in and jam out right there in the store.  Now, when a guitar player plugs into an amp in front of people, it might as well be considered an audience.  All guitar players want to sound good, and look good when playing the guitar.  So what’s the first thing they play?  Stairway to heaven, as famously mocked in Wayne’s World, possibly.  Most likely they will start shredding the guitar and doing their best Eddie Van Halen impersonation trying to impress the other 50 guitarists within the vicinity.  Guitar Center even acknowledges that a lot of talented guitars do come into their shop to test out the best gear, and they hold a yearly regional competition to for guitarists to settle the score and decide who is the most metal guitarist.  Soon, everyone was a guitarist trying to become the next big thing discovered at the Guitar Center.  Then, a unique sound started to get some attention out of the Pacific Northwest.  Grunge bands started getting record deals and soon the Seattle sound would spread.

Seattle has a rich musical history, producing many great musicians including Jimi Hendrix, a guitarist know for his unique use of the guitar and recording techniques that were revolutionary.  Soon bands like Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana would follow that tradition and use strange tunings, new tones, and defiance against the musical norms around them to craft a musical movement.  Technical musical prowess was not important to these bands, because the music was more personal and creative.  It didn’t follow the same pentatonic progression.  It was wild and unpredictable, often using dissonance to create tension.  The shredders had contributed to the very disenchantment of music that heavy metal intended to combat, and people were vocally upset about it.  The Guitar Center Syndrome is an insult intended to illuminate this problem within the musical spheres that existed after the mainstream success of heavy metal musicians such as Van Halen, Metallica, and shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen.  I personally loved to play the guitar as fast as I could because I thought it was the most challenging.  However, after a while it is not fun at all to play the same patterns over and over again, and the music sounds the same after a while.  Grunge music gave a soulful, blues inspired aspect of bringing back the true importance of music and making it individual.  Being from Portland, a lot of these Seattle bands were intensely popular when I was growing up, and I was not only a fan of Metallica but also Nirvana, an interesting contrast as they were almost directly at odds musically.