Well, I did it. I bought a PRS SE CE24 Standard Stoptail Satin in charcoal. Yeah, the name sucks and I am probably just going to shorten it to CE24 or “the PRS” going forward, but let’s not linger on the name. I’m pretty excited, but I also feel guilty buying my guitar before my son gets his. He insists on waiting for the red one though and I respect that; besides, he’s not going to touch it until Christmas.
 
In the end, I had actually narrowed it down to the PRS and the Schecter Omen Extreme-6 in black cherry (I always go for the most evil-looking finish), but the CE24 felt like the more versatile instrument. Though the guitar will probably never leave my house, I still didn’t like the idea of being confused with one of those metal guys who only care about whether the guitar “chugs.” Since most of what I listen to consists of various sub-genres of rock, it can be easy to think I don’t have very diverse taste in music, but rock as a genre is incredibly vast and one sub-genre can sound like it’s from another planet next to another. The PRS also seemed the more beginner-friendly instrument. I certainly didn’t want anything too budget, though I also recognize from my experience in the world of audiophilia that price oftentimes has very little correlation with quality beyond a certain point. While it’s possible the guitar may eventually find itself collecting dust like my last guitar, I don’t want to feel like I have to upgrade later if I actually stick with it this time around, I want something that will potentially last me for years. In my son’s case, he is getting a significantly cheaper guitar mostly because he is going to physically outgrow it at some point, whether he is still playing by then or not.
 
I also bought the Orange Crush 20RT. I wanted a no-bullshit, all analogue (except for its reverb) practice amp that wouldn’t leave me or my son paralyzed by thousands of options, I just wanted something that would allow us to focus on actually playing and practicing. No apps, no Bluetooth, no “smart” features, no digital modeling, no batteries, no wall warts, and no fixed power cables. Springing for the RT model to get the digital reverb and the built-in tuner is about as much complexity as I was willing to add. Everything else is just a distraction. I went with the orange color because it’s iconic. I mean, the brand is called Orange. I may have to get a second amplifier down the road so my son and I can play together, but I’ll need to spend a bit of time with the 20RT to determine whether I should just get a second one or something else altogether. Beyond that, I picked up a basic Ernie Ball Polypro strap; some Fender strap blocks; a Fender universal A-frame stand; some Jim Dunlop picks; a pair of Gator Cableworks Composer Series cables; a clip-on tuner; and an all-in-one string winder, cutter, and bridge pin puller tool. At this point, the only things remaining are my son’s guitar, a kids strap, and some replacement strings, though I have not yet decided what strings we’ll be putting on either guitar. My research, based on my genre preferences, is pointing me in the direction of skinny top heavy bottom (10-52) strings for me. For my son, we’ll probably keep him on some regular slinky (10-46) strings. In either case, we’re going to play the factory strings until they fall off because, while I have restrung guitars before, it has been a couple of decades and I hate having to relearn it.
 
For the record, the guitar I had as a young lad was the Ibanez AX125. I also had some random Squier acoustic. I am not a believer in learning by playing Old MacDonald Had a Farm. I have already put together a playlist of songs to practice, which will serve as our curriculum. Here’s the playlist:
 
The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails
T.N.T. by AC/DC
Highway to Hell by AC/DC
Stinkfist by Tool
Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC
Every Day Is Exactly the Same by Nine Inch Nails
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath
Children of the Sea by Black Sabbath
Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth
Paranoid by Black Sabbath
Trust by Megadeth
Cold and Ugly by Tool
Wish by Nine Inch Nails
 
Realistically, this playlist represents countless months of practice. Unlike when I was a kid back in the early 2000s, I understand that the most important thing is muscle memory, so we’ll be repeating the same riffs until our fingers bleed and obviously skipping all the complicated solos. I’ve been working with my son on reading and writing evening after evening these past few weeks and out efforts are finally beginning to bear fruit. I was ripping my hair out a couple of weeks ago and now I mostly just sit back and listen to Green Eggs and Ham. I am hoping guitar practice will eventually bear fruit in the same way. If I can teach him how to read, I can teach him how to teach himself to play guitar. His mother keeps scoffing about the whole thing, shaking her head like it’s some idiotic idea for our child to learn to play an instrument. Have I mentioned what an awful mother and person she is? Surely I have mentioned how jealous she gets of all the affection my son shows me because I actually spend meaningful time with him. No matter what happens with the guitar thing, the fact remains that I am investing in my relationship with my son while she is rarely to be seen in the same room.

I find I have so many hobbies, passions, and obsessions that I cannot feasibly devote my attentions to more than one or two at any given time. Something is always on the back burner. I’ve mostly been focused on music of late. In my previous post, I had only just discovered Nene Royal and, as highly as I praised her, I think I still somehow managed to underrate her. She is a generational talent. Now, I realize she has since won America’s Got Talent and, while that may mean a lot to her, I couldn’t possibly care less because at no point did that show (yes, I watched the performances) actually demonstrate the true depths of her skill. They only just scraped the surface. In my experience, rockstars are not born from idiotic American talent shows and she was better than anyone on that show since she was twelve years old.
 
I am still keeping a close eye on her, but my attention was more recently grabbed by one Chelsea Wolfe; in fact, I am pretty obsessed right now with the whole gothic doom metal dark folk scene, from Chelsea Wolfe to Darkher and Trees of Eternity. Chelsea Wolfe, though, is one of those artists I discover and marvel at the fact that I spent the past decade completely ignorant of her existence. I’ve been digging through her entire discography and her 2017 (the year I started this blog) album Hiss Spun has, in a matter of weeks, become one of my all-time favorite albums. It’s certainly my favorite Chelsea Wolfe album, though her latest album, The Dark, is right on its heels. It was actually after feeding an AI chatbot a detailed accounting of all my favorite genres, sub-genres, artists, albums, songs, and instruments that it spat out Chelsea Wolfe as its number one recommendation for me. I can knock AI for so many things, but it has proven an incredible resource for discovering music and other media.
 
I don’t know what it is about addiction, but it seems to generate some of my favorite music ever made. It is when an artist is driven to self-destruction, the the very breaking point, that they seem to be at their creative peak. Pornography (1984) is my favorite Cure album, The Fragile (1999) is my favorite Nine Inch Nails album, and now Hiss Spun is my favorite Chelsea Wolfe album. All of these were forged in the deepest, darkest, drug- and alcohol-fueled personal abysses and they sound the part. Speaking of abysses, the chatbot got one thing wrong: It suggested I check out Chelsea Wolfe’s Abyss album first, which I fortunately did not do. The song After the Fall is an absolute highlight from her entire discography and it calls that album home, but, overall, it didn’t really do it for me. Naturally, given my taste for industrial music (while everyone else in the ’90s was on the grunge bandwagon, I was a mere child listening to industrial rock and industrial metal in my bedroom), Hiss Spun hit the spot for me. Don’t ask me what the album title means. I haven’t the the faintest idea, I just know it rocks. 16 Psyche is probably my favorite Chelsea Wolfe song.
 

 
With that said, I think Hiss Spun and definitely Abyss would have benefited from more of the crystal clear vocal delivery we get with The Dark. The Dark is definitely Chelsea Wolfe’s most accessible album, but, to those people online who describe is as Chelsea Wolfe’s pop album, let me just say I have actually heard pop music and that is not what pop sounds like. My understanding is that Chelsea Wolfe, in addition to getting sober, began working with a vocal coach some time ago and even the people who aren’t particularly keen on The Dark don’t deny that it features her strongest vocal performance to date. You see, I don’t do death metal. I don’t do growls or barks. I like my music heavy and I like the vocal delivery clean. Chelsea Wolfe just happens to possess what I consider my ideal female voice.
 

 
Darkher and Trees of Eternity are a couple of steps down on my tier list, but they caught my ear as well as I dipped into “similar” artists. It struck me though that every one of these artists I have been discovering these past few weeks are of the female persuasion or at least have females involved at some level. Swedish metal band Trees of Eternity was an otherwise all male band, but it only released a single album, Hour of the Nightingale (2016), because its female vocalist, Aleah Stanbridge, died of cancer in post-production.
 

 
In fact, I also started listening to The Warning a bit recently. I had tried The Warning in the recent past and couldn’t really get into their music, but I really enjoyed their most recent album, Everything’s Falling, which surprises even me because it is easily their most produced work and the vocals, while so much cleaner than ever before, have a definite K-pop influence on them. The band, if you don’t know, consists of three sisters from Monterrey, Mexico and the bassist happens to be kind of hot. The song Why Do You Like It When I Cry? is my favorite from them, despite being well outside of my musical comfort zone.
 
Then I look at my top five albums of the year thus far, which consists of Chelsea Wolfe’s The Dark, a tie for second between Puscifer’s Normal Isn’t and Marilyn Manson’s One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2, The Warning’s Everything’s Falling in fourth place, and probably Nine Inch Nails’ Nine Inch Noize live album in fifth. All but Marilyn Manson’s album involve women and, given the recent accusations against Marilyn Manson, that makes sense. Yes, even the Nine Inch Nails album feature’s Trent Reznor’s wife, Mariqueen Maandig, on vocals and, if you haven’t seen their performance from this year’s Coachella, you need to get on that.
 
The earliest stuff in my music library comes from 1968 with a bit of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and things really kick off with the 1970s. Going all the way back to the ’70s, my entire music library is dominated by male musicians. Not a female in sight. It was a complete sausage-fest, but then I move forward into the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and all the way up to today only to realize there aren’t just more females in my music library, female musicians are beginning to dominate my music library. As the kids say, I’m here for it.
 
My recent musical obsession extends to more than just listening to music, however. My son still worships the ground I walk on and he loves rock. He at least has enough individuality to select AC/DC as his favorite band, whereas I have traditionally identified Nine Inch Nails as mine. Now he wants to learn to play the guitar. Excluding the various pets he has asked for or the brother he has asked for, he wants two things this Christmas: a telescope and a guitar. The fact that he is into science and music warms my heart, but I don’t know shit about telescopes except that good ones are expensive and that we don’t live in the ideal place for observing the firmament.
 
Either option would give me an excellent opportunity to bond with my son, something completely alien to his mother who just has no connection with her son and who just lets him gorge himself on YouTube videos on the computer my son and I built together. I worry about what all the YouTube is doing to his brain, so finding a skill he can work on, such as learning to play the guitar, has become a priority for me and I won’t deny hearing how Nene Royal started playing guitar at age seven, the same age my son will be but days away from this Christmas, had something to do with it. I don’t expect him to become the next Nene Royal. In all likelihood, he’ll get bored of it and move on to something else altogether, but I have to let him try new things because what if he does become a professional musician some day or even just gets really good and finds playing the guitar in private a rewarding hobby?
 
Trang doesn’t want me to get him the guitar, but that’s exactly why he will never love her the way he loves me. Not only will I get him the guitar, the amplifier, and all the necessary accessories, I will try to learn with him. I briefly attempted to learn to play the guitar as a teen, but I think I lacked proper guidance and I didn’t have all the online resources we have today. My teacher wasn’t very good either and I just lost interest over time, but, looking back, I think giving up on the guitar was one of my biggest mistakes. At the very least, it gave me the knowledge I need to get my son started and, worst case, he gives up and I get a new toy.
 
I already have the cable and stand. I am planning on getting him an Ibanez miKro GRGM21M in candy apple because (1) it’s a ¾ size guitar and (2) he really wants a red guitar. That one in candy apple with the maple neck is a Guitar Center exclusive and it’s on backorder, so I am holding off for now. I kind of prefer the blue burst or even the metallic purple, but the man wants red. I also intend to get him an Orange Crush 20RT amplifier to go with it. Sure, I could play a bit on his Ibanez, but I am getting so into the idea that I am even considering picking up a guitar for myself and, with severely tempered expectations, learning to play again. I was considering getting a PRS SE CE24 Standard Stoptail Satin in charcoal. It could be an ideal bonding experience to race to see who can learn the rhythm sections of T.N.T. better. Or Smoke on the Water. Or Iron Man. Chances are it’ll be me at first, but my hope is that he will quickly surpass me; after all, there is no better time to learn a new skill than his age and there has never been a better time to be self taught than today.

I’ve all but abandoned this blog, but I’m still going to come back when there is something I really need to talk about. It’s not what is going on in my life that I want to talk about, it’s what is going on 14,000+ kilometers away in a place I once spent part of my honeymoon, a (not so) little place called Phuket. So there I was one evening last week scrolling through Reddit (yeah, I know) and I come across a video of a sixteen-year-old Thai girl supposedly performing Metallica’s Master of Puppets on guitar and vocals. I approached with some skepticism. Sure, Eddie Munson was my favorite character in Stranger Things and the moment he starts playing Master of Puppets is among my favorite moments of the entire series, but it didn’t seem unfeasible that a guy his age could conquer a song like that; after all, back in the ’80s, we weren’t all distracted by social media and smart phones. People back then actually developed their talents.
 
If you told me a sixteen-year-old Thai girl would melt my fucking face with the same song though, I would have thought you mad. Enter Nene Royal. Please follow the link to her Master of Puppets performance, as playback on other Websites has been disabled for this one. That video served as my introduction to her talent, but, highlight though it is, it was but the tip of the iceberg. Then I saw Nene Royal, her Ozone band, and guest vocalist Ployfun perform the greatest Guns N’ Roses cover I’ve ever heard in the form of Sweet Child o’ Mine:
 

 
That, in turn, served as my introduction to Ployfun, a twelve-year-old prodigy who isn’t quite up to Nene Royal’s level on guitar just yet but who might already surpass her on vocals. As if I hadn’t already been impressed enough by the keyboardist or the drummer and as if I weren’t already blown away by Nene Royal’s insane guitar solo, this girl comes along and steals the show with her vocal performance. In both cases, these Thai kids are outplaying the bands they are covering. Guns and who? Metalli-who? Metallica lost its spark decades ago and watching them perform now is like watching some mediocre cover band. I just heard about her last week, but I would choose to watch Nene Royal perform a Metallica concert over watching Metallica perform a Metallica concert any time. As it turns out, I’d probably rather watch Ployfun perform a Metallica concert over watching Metallica as well when I took a look at her slaying Enter Sandman on the streets of Phuket:
 

 
Those audiences haven’t the faintest clue what they are actually witnessing. It doesn’t even make sense to me that this shit is coming out of Thailand, a country traditionally dripping with shitty pop music, but here we are. Is Phuket about to become the new Mecca of rock music? Will some incomprehensibly talented kids in Thailand be the ones to bring rock back from the grave?
 
It’s not the first time I’ve been impressed with some talented youngsters. Let us not forget Tina S from France about a decade back, whom I remember best for her cover of Megadeth’s Tornado of Souls:
 

 
Tina S was not alone. There was also Juliette Jade Valduriez, also out of France:
 

 
Tina S was good, but she was never so effortless as Nene Royal and she was never able to make the jump to composing anything of her own worth its weight in piss. Juliette Jade, though lesser known, actually released some competent tracks that I still have in my music library. I remember Killer and Hélicoptère being standout tracks. Unlike Tina S, she sang, too, but her vocals were on the monotone side. Both of them kind of vanished from the face of the Earth after a time. They were good and they are missed, but they were not the full package.
 
So what do Nene Royal and Ployfun need to become the full package? They need to make the jump to composing their own music, of course. I do not believe Ployfun has made that jump, but she’s twelve years old, so let’s give her some fucking space. Nene Royal, in the meantime, is currently in the process of making that jump and, from the one unique composition of hers I have heard, it is sounding promising thus far:
 

 
These kids are giving me hope for the future. I just pray that they won’t betray their roots and start appealing to the masses with a bunch of pop songs. They have a chance here to do something truly special and breathe new life into a genre that has been circling the drain for too long. I can hardly wait to see what they do next.