GUEST,

I guess we'll just have to leave it at "it's arguable" on the holler/scream question, but I still have to come down saying Leadbelly's hollers were a lot closer to music than JJ's screaming — a pretty good imitation of which you can get by poking a pig in the ass with a hatpin.

I still also have some trouble with categorizing JH as a "blues" guitarist based on a few cuts. It might prove he COULD HAVE BEEN a bluesman, but his body of work still says to me he wasn't.

Steve,

You're spot on on the age difference — I'm a few months short of 58.

And you're right about my taste forming before Hendrix changed the way guitar was played. I was in university when Hendrix was big (I'd spent six years between high school and Univ.) and a lot of my friends thought he was wonderful. I didn't agree then and I don't agree now. I'm not even sure I can concede that the electric guitar is any more a guitar than an organ is a piano — I consider them different instruments.

I also have some trouble relating to the argument that volume and sustain convey the same emotional range as subtlely played, well-placed notes. They might both be able to make you happy or sad or angry, but to me there is a QUALITATIVE difference in the feelings the two can evoke. Maybe I'm a fossile and don't understand the "language" of the electric guitar, but I find its emotional range limited more to angry, angrier and ready to kill something.

But then, I like Beethoven and hate Bartok and I won't allow an artificial Christmas tree in the house.

David — dug in and flak jacket on.....