Some people think Richie Valens played Sleep Walk!

[Butch Mullen]

Who is at fault, the student or the teacher???

[Fred Treece]

Who is at fault, the student or the teacher???

Can of worms times a thousand.

[Doug Beaumier]

The schools don't stress history and geography as much as they used to, from what I've read. And the kids... between texting, playing video games, TV, and social networking they don't have much time for study. Too many distractions and shorter attention spans. That's what I've noticed in 40 years of teaching guitar lessons.

[Fred Treece]

The schools don’t stress history and geography as much as they used to, from what I’ve read.

Not to mention art and music - including art and music history.

[Frank Welsh]

I was in a music shop noodling with a standard guitar and playing some chord melodies to get the feel of it when a 17 year old approached me and said "You're playing melodies on the guitar." He thought only "licks" could be played on guitar.

I engaged him in conversation about music and found out that:

- he never heard of the Big Band Era or the names Glen Miller, Benny Goodman or the Dorsey Brothers;

- he never heard of the "Roaring Twenties" and the popularity of jazz and dixieland;

- he did not know what decade WWII took place in and

- he did not know what half-century the American Civil War took place in.

He was clearly a middle-class kid who attended a local public high school and seemed friendly and articulate but almost entirely devoid of knowledge.

This conversation took place about 30 years ago and I suspect things are much worse these days.

[Doug Beaumier]

The other day a woman here in Massachusetts told me that she was going "up to Tennessee" to visit her aunt.

[Mitch Drumm]

As I understand it, a lot of school districts are abandoning textbooks.

The student is issued (or supplies his own?) Chromebook, which connects to Google on the Internet.

Google provides the curriculum, I assume with some input from the school district or state.

The student interacts with Google and uploads assignments and examinations to Google, where they are graded and returned.

I'm unclear on what the "teacher", pardon the expression, does anymore.

What could possibly go wrong?

I haven't been in a K through 12 classroom in many decades. Have pens, pencils, and paper been totally abandoned and it's entirely keyboard based, from Kindergarten forward? No handwriting at all?

[Fred Treece]

I'm unclear on what the "teacher", pardon the expression, does anymore.

The main job is to make sure that one kid doesn’t code his way through the porn-surfing safeties and send it to everyone in the school.

[Doug Beaumier]

[Doug Beaumier]

...update, almost two years later. It's still happening, and I'm still correcting people and getting pretty tired of it! 😝

[Bill Leff]

Is it just me or does anyone else get that shot of adrenalin from fear on the gig during the intro right before attempting to hit the first harmonic slide? I’ve flubbed it more than a few times

[Doug Beaumier]

The ending harmonic is more terrifying IMO because the band stops playing... and you and your chime are out there all alone! 😊 If you flub it everyone in the room will notice. As with so many other things, lots of practice will build confidence. Hey, if Richie Valens could do it, so can we! 🤣😷

[Jack Hanson]

When I lived in South Minneapolis, I thought you needed a canoe to cross Lake Street.

[Nic Neufeld]

Is it just me or does anyone else get that shot of adrenalin from fear on the gig during the intro right before attempting to hit the first harmonic slide? I’ve flubbed it more than a few times

Me too! It helps with my frypan though, long scale and endless sustain seem to help with that stuff!

Now...that four note harmonic took some work, but the one where sustain seems to run out of gas is the outro to Santo and Johnny's cover of A Thousand Miles Away:

https://youtu.be/kkLEH9pJLdk?t=161

G - A - B - D - C - B - A - B all in one harmonic strike! Even my Clinesmith starts to trail away there, Santo must have hit that harmonic strong...

[Doug Beaumier]

the one where sustain seems to run out of gas is the outro to Santo and Johnny's cover of A Thousand Miles Away

That's a nice harmonic. I agree with the commenter who said that song sounds like "Sleep Walk part 2"

[Clyde Mattocks]

I occasionally was a musical guest on a local TV show. The host played guitar and we would banter and play a song or two. One show I did was to trace the history of steel guitar. I carried my dobro, my Ric, my Fender console and my pedal steel. He politely acknowledged as I played pieces thru the years on the period correct instruments. When I got to "Sleepwalk" on the Fender, he got all excited and said, "I never knew it was a steel guitar that played that tune."

[Doug Beaumier]

The revisionism continues. It's nearly complete. In future years Richie Valens WILL be the guy who played Sleep Walk.

[Nic Neufeld]

Maybe its actually just us forum members playing a practical joke on you! Next up "That version of Apache was great! Almost as good as Dick Dale's original!"

Just kidding! (And of course, to slightly modify Hanlon's Razor...never attribute to grand conspiracy what can adequately be explained by general public ignorance!)

[Doug Beaumier]

never attribute to grand conspiracy what can adequately be explained by general public ignorance!

I like that!

[Doug Beaumier]

Here we are... three years later and a new wrinkle has developed in the revisionism of Ritchie Valens & Sleep Walk. Recent commenters on my YT channel have claimed that they were listening to Sleep Walk on the radio in 1959 when they heard news of the plane crash that killed Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly. They're confusing the ending of the movie "La Bamba" with the actual facts. The plane went down several months before Sleep Walk was released. No one had heard the song at the time of the crash. It hadn't even been recorded yet. D@mn that movie!

[Miles Lang]

Here we are... three years later and a new wrinkle has developed in the revisionism of Ritchie Valens & Sleep Walk. Recent commenters on my YT channel have claimed that they were listening to Sleep Walk on the radio in 1959 when they heard news of the plane crash that killed Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly. They're confusing the ending of the movie "La Bamba" with the actual facts. The plane went down several months before Sleep Walk was released. No one had heard the song at the time of the crash. It hadn't even been recorded yet. D@mn that movie!

Serves us right for not doing the math!

We often play Sleep Walk in the San Fernando Valley, Ritchie’s hometown and final resting place. We, of course, announce it as the finest piece of island music from the Hudson Archipelago, known for the islands of Long, Staten, Coney, and…..Manhattan. We make a big deal about announcing it as a Santo & Johnny tune, because many people know the melody, but have no idea what it is.

Just before that last harmonic run on my old Stringmaster, we will frequently shout out “Ritchie” like Rosanna DeSoto did in the movie. Sometimes folks jump in, and they seem to like it. One night, at an outdoor party, we did that bit and I heard a gang of voices in the dark shout, “What about Bob?” Scared me to death,

It’s all fun, but we try to educate our audiences on the song. I feel we all owe that to S&J to keep it alive. This is one of the amazing melodies of the 20th Century.

[Doug Beaumier]

Well said, Miles! My band also tells the audience that the song is by Santo & Johnny, 1959. No mention of RV at all!

[Jeff Keyton]

It's not the worst thing in the world to have a readily identifiable song to go along with the instrument - if the instrument is to be promoted. Along with Steel Guitar Rag it's arguably the most widely recognized tune for the instrument. I probably heard Sleepwalk before the movie came out, which was about the time I started on standard guitar, but after that movie, the song was stuck in my respective craw until I got my hands on a dusty little Kalamazoo lap several years later and tried to figure it out, or failing that, makeup stuff that sounded, to me, like it.