Samuel Leipold, Viscosity | The Vinyl Anachronist

Samuel Leipold and his album Viscosity reminds me of the first few times I tried to play guitar. My best friend had learned how to play when he was young, piano too. Every time I’d go to his house I’d pick up one of his guitars and make various sounds with the body and strings, all without any concept of how to extract a chord or even a single tolerable note. I can even remember getting in the zone, coming up with something that sort of resembled music–just not normal guitar music. It was probably still unlistenable, but I learned a lot about guitars before Lesson One. When I actually learned how to play the guitar many years later, all those exotic, weird and atonal noises disappeared forever. I learned chords. I played notes. I left all that fooling around behind, but at the same time I always remembered the type of music all that fumbling produced. Samuel Leipold, an exquisite and adventurous guitar player, seems to have brushed up against those memories. Remember when that interviewer asked Jackson Pollock if he knew when he was finished with a piece, and how Pollock replied “How do you know when you’re […]