So, what have you been listening to lately?

[Basvarken]

You watched (almost) an entire hour just to see him using his pinkie once??!

He just doesn't use it. Most of the time he has it curled up.
Until 53.40 where he stretches out to take that one fret further for just once... ;-)

By the way that bass player is Barend from my home town.
Nice to see him enjoy being on stage with his hero.

Still don't like Ronnie Romero as a singer. He sounds like he does not have a clue what he's singing about. All of the lyrics sound like phonetical interpretations.
Armed or ready?



Anyway, here's Barend and the band he played with in the early nineties

https://youtu.be/tlMYchAKOzQ?si=EKT5vTe-vAqLf2CB&t=152

[westen44]

You watched (almost) an entire hour just to see him using his pinkie once??!

He just doesn't use it. Most of the time he has it curled up.
Until 53.40 where he stretches out to take that one fret further for just once... ;-)

By the way that bass player is Barend from my home town.
Nice to see him enjoy being on stage with his hero.

Still don't like Ronnie Romero as a singer. He sounds like he does not have a clue what he's singing about. All of the lyrics sound like phonetical interpretations.
Armed or ready?



Anyway, here's Barend and the band he played with in the early nineties

https://youtu.be/tlMYchAKOzQ?si=EKT5vTe-vAqLf2CB&t=152

I think what you said about the singer is fairly common with a number of Romance language singers who sing in English.  The Romance languages and a Germanic language such as English are just too radically different.  The singer is Chilean, isn't he?  Possibly the best friend I ever had as a young man was a Chilean woman, but as far as I know Chileans aren't particularly known for singing rock songs in English.  Nevertheless, Ronnie Romero does have a record for being with some really good bands. 

[Basvarken]

That's him. He has a record for being all over the place in a very short span of time. Being with (hardrock)bands/artists that are way past their prime (Rainbow, MSG, Vandenberg etc)
Not the most loyal band member.

[westen44]

I'm really not very familiar with him.  As for Romance language speakers singing in English, I've probably listened to Italians more than anyone.  They tend to do a lot of rock.  In real life, I've always been around Latin Americans mostly speaking Spanish, with one exception from some Brazilian friends speaking Portuguese.  But none of these people are involved in music.  With Italian it isn't so much the singing itself as it is with the lyrics written by someone whose native language isn't English.  It can be a challenge.  But the world for years has expected for the most part that rock music be in English.  It doesn't mean English is the best language in the world.  I personally don't think it is.  But it is good for rock. 

[Dave W]

[uwe]

That's him. He has a record for being all over the place in a very short span of time. Being with (hardrock)bands/artists that are way past their prime (Rainbow, MSG, Vandenberg etc)
Not the most loyal band member.

He looks very Dutch.

Schenker is not much of a pinkie user, Uli Jon Roth is.




I'm not saying that three finger guitarists can't play or have nothing to musically say, but four finger use just looks more elegant/refined, just take a look at how Roth plays the Sails of Charon riff at 11:05 above.

It's like watching someone type, you can get along with just your two three or four fingers, but using them all certainly looks more proficient.

[Basvarken]

Haha yeah. Those greasy curls are typical for the Dutch. 😜

[Basvarken]

I think it has more to do with how you learned to play in the first place.
Self taught or classically trained.

When I learned to play the guitar I had to start out with memorising the names of the fingers on both hands:
PIMA for the plucking hand (P= thumb, I=Index, M=middle, A=ring)
1234 for the fretboard hand (1=index, 2=middle, 3=ring, 4=pinky)

And the first (tedious) exercises were moving the fingers of the left hand from string to string. In all possible orders.
Same with the plucking hand PIMA, PAMI, AMIP, et cetera

Not using the pinky (nr 4) of the left hand was not an option.

[uwe]

No, it's not the hair, it's the facial features. Not all Dutch(wo)men share those, but you just have a higher percentage of people who do. Barend with short hair would just fit in fine as a partner in our Amsterdam office.

You, by the way, don't have that Dutch look at all, what went wrong, speak up?! 

But then I don't look German either, no one in our both paternal and maternal family strains really ever did.

[westen44]

I've not paid much attention to the looks of German men.  I can't say I pay much attention to the looks of men from any country.  German women, on the other hand, are a different matter.  I wasn't prepared for how beautiful many of them were.  Especially when I was in Nuremberg, I seriously kept wondering from time to time if I had arrived at a time when they were having a super model convention somewhere.  Once at a restaurant there, I remember spotting a table with only beautiful women sitting there.  Probably anywhere between 7 to 10.  I kept wondering who they were, but never went up to talk to them.  What was I going to say?  Why are you all so beautiful?  It would have been kind of awkward.  Still, I was kept wondering.  I mean how is it possible for so many people to look that good?  The only comparable place would be Dublin, Ireland--a city I would go to many years later.  In that case, you've also got the sexy Irish accent, something I find very appealing. 

I remember I told this experience on another thread years ago.  I don't remember the context.  I used to have quite a few things to tell about traveling to Europe.  One of my best friends lives there.  But I've got to say it's unlikely I'll be seeing her anytime soon.  She let herself go to the extreme during the pandemic.  It's unlikely I'll be going back to Europe and most likely won't have anything else to say about being an American tourist there.  I think I went a total of eight times and in many cases stayed for months at a time.   

[Basvarken]

No, it's not the hair, it's the facial features. Not all Dutch(wo)men share those, but you just have a higher percentage of people who do. Barend with short hair would just fit in fine as a partner in our Amsterdam office.

You, by the way, don't have that Dutch look at all, what went wrong, speak up?! 

But then I don't look German either, no one in our both paternal and maternal family strains really ever did.

I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a Dutch look (nor German).
I think we already established that once and for all, some 78 years ago...

[Basvarken]

Russian band Leonid and Friends with a BS&T cover




Not a native speaker either. Yet his performance is very convincing. No doubt he knows what he sings about (which I'm no too sure of with Ronnie Romero)

[westen44]

I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a Dutch look (nor German).
I think we already established that once and for all, some 78 years ago...

Well, I hate to break it to you, but as someone who has visited the Netherlands many times, there definitely is a Dutch look, both for women and men.  It's something very positive, though.  Otherwise, I wouldn't even be posting this.  I could go into the details, although, of course these are only personal observations.  How much validity or importance they might have, I really can't say. 

[uwe]

Since when do you care for Blood, Sweat & Tears, Holländer? I'm baffled.

**************************

"I hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as a Dutch look (nor German). I think we already established that once and for all, some 78 years ago ..."

What was - fortuitously - knocked severely about back then was the perverse belief that there is some kind of a pecking order of ethnicities/"races" (there is only one human race). Unfortunately it wasn't dealt a death blow back then or we wouldn't have had to bother with Apartheid all the way up to the 90ies, Hutus and Tutsis (or Serbs and Bosnians) slaughtering each other or with Han Chinese treatment of Uyghurs today.

But sure there (still) are national looks, don't you agree? Not in a sense that everyone there then looks that way, but that a sizable chunk of the population in question shares certain features. Dutch(wo)men are on the average taller than Italians and there are less (non-bottled) blonde's in Italy than in Sweden, people living in Mediterranean states generally have a darker complexion than people in Germany and there are probably more people in Afghanistan with dark hair, yet blue eyes than anywhere else in the world, more Greeks with curly hair than Germans too. Of course that is all changing through migratory mixing (and that is a good thing, I abhor the preservation of 'racial' purity, people aren't animals whose DNA has to be protected against "dilution" on biodiversity grounds - even in the animal world, I think that invasive species are in essence evolution doing its core job, any species will always try to enlarge its geographical expanse given the opportunity).

But national physical traits still do exist and will continue to do so though in, say, a few more centuries many parts of the world will have a very mixed DNA with lots of ethnic components stirred together. Which is perfectly fine.



You still don't look very Dutch, Rob, but others from your neck of the woods dams & dikes do! Adrian Vandenberg looks Dutch as hell.



PS: In the latish 80ies - it still existed then - I paid (in the literal sense, there was Zwangsumtausch, mandatory minimum curreny conversion when you entered because their own currency was worth shit) my first visit to the German Democratic Republic ---> East Germany. By then, they had begun looking different from us West Germans or to be exact we had begun looking different to them due to all of the migratory influences we as West Germans had experienced (and mostly benefited from!) in the 50ies, 60ies, 70ies and 80ies. East Germany had been pretty much secluded for four decades. There were simply a lot less dark-haired, curly-haired, dark-complexioned or Asian ancestry people on the streets, I felt like I had been time-machined back to pre-war Germany, it was unsettling! In the Frankfurt area where I live, a majority of the population has by now a migratory background.

[westen44]

To me Laura Vandervoort is one of the best examples of the Dutch look for a woman.  Of course she isn't Dutch at all, she is Canadian.  But her father is Dutch.  She was far and away the best Supergirl (from years ago in Smallville.)