Music / Guitar (Sonny Sharrock Album)

Pictured: Man shredding harder than a cheese grater

Guitar is a studio album by African-American guitarist Sonny Sharrock released in 1986 on Enemy Records.

After returning to music after briefly quitting and moving back to his native Ossining, New York. Sharrock would be enlisted by Bill Laswell to play in his punk-jazz outfit, Last Exit. It would be around this period that he would also release his own return as a bandleader with Dance with Me, Montana.

Influenced by his previous composition "Dance with Me, Montana" and a switch from his previous, more melodic jazz guitar he had played with a Gibson L-5 in favor of noisy blues-influenced shred guitar using a Gibson Les Paul Custom. Guitar would be considered a high point in his work and discography. With it being simply him shredding on his Gibson for the entire record with no accompaniment from any other musician.

The record would take influence from and be heavily compared to blues music and free jazz musicians such as Albert Ayler and John Coltrane (one of Sharrock's most noted influences) and therefore is considered a noted record not just in avant-garde jazz, but in heavy metal music as well, his playing on this record being considered the start of his later metal-inflected jazz recordings.

Not to be confused with Frank Zappa's Guitar.

Tracklist

Side A

1. "Blind Willie" (4:41)
2. "Devils Doll Baby" (4:07
3. "Broken Toys" (6:38)
4. "Black Bottom" (3:55)

Side B

1. "Kula-Mae" (5:07)
2. "Princess Sonata" (12:57)
   • I. "Princess and the Magician" (4:05)
   • II. "Like Voices of Sleeping Birds" (3:08)
   • III. "Flowers Laugh" (2:12)
   • IV. "They Enter the Dream" (3:32)

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Broken Tropes

• Alliterative Title: "Devils Doll Baby", "Black Bottom"
• Avant-Garde Music
• Blues: The record is positively dripping with musical influence and cues from the genre.
• Heavy Metal: His heavy use of distortion and feedback in his jamming on the record made his work to be considered a fusion of this and free jazz.
• Improv: The record is largely just Sonny shredding on his guitar throughout the entire record. Overdubbing his improvisations onto the finished recording after he finished playing a song's introductory passage and opening chord statement.
• Instrumentals: As is to be expected from a jazz record.
• Jazz: Of the free and avant-garde varieties.
• Longest Song Goes Last: The suites of "Princess Sonata" on most records are listed as separate tracks, however, on some pressings they are all condensed into one track making it nearly thirteen minutes.
• Meaningful Name: The record is aptly named after the (only) instrument which would be heard on the record.
• Rearrange the Song: The overdubbed and reverb-soaked version of "Blind Willie" on this record is markedly different from the version on Black Woman" which is primarily acoustic.

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