This started eight months ago, but its rise is meteoric.
Jerry C., a young Asian fellow decided to create a version of Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, hard-rock style on electric guitar.
Jerry C., Canon RockYouTube.com has gotten over 100,000 hits on the posted video; if this were a commercial release, the song would be triple platinum by now, because this video is all over the net.
It's an interesting reinvention that classical music lovers should appreciate and not scorn. The Canon itself is a natural for interpretation (I think there's only 6 chords), and Jerry's composition and performance features some blistering shredding guitar work that really shouldn't be called "Heavy Metal"--it's moving, soulful, and it just happens to rock your socks off. Andrew Lloyd Weber released "Variations" a good 20 years ago along similar lines with a Paganini piece and it was not well received.
Because Jerry openly published the backing tracks and about 45 pages of tab, others have stepped up to the mic and have done music videos, so this is becoming something between American Idol and The Gong Show!
Fun Two performs Canon Rock Many say this is a better performance, and because Fun Two's face is hidden in the video, a lot of folks are falsely claiming to be him.
bastian covers Canon Rock This Danish youth puts on a similar, laid-back show.
Uniformly, to enter this "contest", apparently you must be under 25 and live in a bedroom at your parents' house. From a video entertainment view, the vids are exciting as watching Grandpa sleep on the sofa after the ball game, but just watch the economy of motion with the hands--it's a technical masterpiece how Fun Two simultaneously dampens and sustains the guitar strings. If you search, there's over 25 hopefuls and folks who play guitar can see that
some of these kids are hoaxing it to win their 15 minutes in the Web limelight.
I think MTV should host a Canon Rock-Off with Eddie Van Halen as one of the judges. And I think our moderator Gary Eden should do a video!
My Best,
Gare
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