6 and 12-String Guitar

VINYL FORMAT. With the 1969 release of 6-And 12 String Guitar, Leo Kottke established his pre-eminence as a guitar virtuoso and composer of quirky, pop-inflected pieces. Harmonically adventurous and technically dazzling, this album showcases Kottke's penchant for infusing traditional elements of folk guitar with more modern, even impressionistic harmony and tonality. Kottke inspired a revolution in acoustic guitar playing, and this record provided the opening volley. "The Driving of the Year Nail" starts things off with a relentless fingerpicked chug, featuring splashes of open harmonics executed with the delicacy of a ballerina. Kottke proceeds to combine the familiar with the strange - each of these brief pieces (around three minutes and under) has the effect of being simultaneously charming, and a little twisted. For example, "Vaseline Machine Gun" starts with "Taps" played with a bottleneck slide, then morphs into a thumb-and-slide frenzy. Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" is the exception, given a straight and loving reading on six-string guitar. This is pure steel-string joy, with liberal doses of irony and ecstasy.