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Is accoustic guitar more middle class than electric guitar?


TrevorGil

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Is accoustic guitar more middle class (upper-middle middle class) than electric guitar?

Are there more plebs that play electric guitar than accoustic guitar?

I have looked and some bands with electric guitar in them and they look very ruff, very ruff indeed. I saw a video of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and they only had a sock - totally unacceptable behaviour to the middle class circles that I mix in myself. I wouldn't like the neighbours to think that I supported this sort of behaviour. If they thought that I supported such chav behaviour, they would talk and the news would travel fast. I have had a very middle class upbringing with a very middle class education, and I don't want to degrade myself to all this.

 

Accoustic guitar seems more tame, appropriate, obediant, safe, and... well, just very middle class.

 

Would you agree?

 

I currently have a Gibson ES-335, but I am having second thoughts. I can't take it back to the store though as the neighbours might find out and their view of me may change somewhat for steeping down to taking an item back for a refund. I may just have to put it away in its case and buy an accoustic instead.

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Is accoustic guitar more middle class (upper-middle middle class) than electric guitar?...

 

 

Really good question. Is the electric guitar a tool of the bourgeoisie? Or is the acoustic guitar a tool for bourgeoisie oppression.

 

Historically, the electric was the preferred weapon for bourgeoisie oppression of the lumpenproletariat. The acoustic guitar has feudal origins.

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The acoustic guitar was originally the poor man's piano. It was the proletariat's parlor instrument and the women played it to entertain their menfolk.

 

The electric guitar is a perfect example of technology's continued hybridization in the can versus should arena, opinions being varied as they are, ushering in the amplified vacuous causes of youthful rebelliousness. Electric guitars don't fit into a class structure. They began in an orbit out where anything classical, conventional, traditional and respectable were uninvited if not barred altogether. Now, with the aging of its own generation, it has become exactly that which it originally rebelled against, as well as passe and a marker of a brilliant but brief past.

 

All along the acoustic guitar weathered fairly well with the common music ear and it still does with one difference: It has been developed into a highly prized instrument of quality craftsmanship and sound. It isn't your granny's $10.00 parlor guitar anymore. It's now eclipsing the role the piano symbolized in the class struggle and has become the instrument to learn.

 

The electric guitar never played a role in the class struggle because it wasn't meant to. If anything, it highlighted it from its distant orbit.

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...

I currently have a Gibson ES-335, but I am having second thoughts. I can't take it back to the store though as the neighbours might find out and their view of me may change somewhat for steeping down to taking an item back for a refund. I may just have to put it away in its case and buy an accoustic instead.

 

It depends on what color your 335 is. Some of them have a traditional Gibson jazz box look which is very respectable...

Gibson67ES335TD_SB090294_16.jpg

 

but some look like PRS wannabes and need to be kept hidden from the neighbours...

12334072_800.jpg

 

 

 

.

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Maybe we should ask Ritchie.

 

While his former bandmates are still playing "Smoke on the Water" in sports areas for their finale he does sometning like this...

 

[video=youtube_share;sfhUhOQiouc]

 

It seems he has given up his attempt to look and play like Yngwie Malmsteen and is going for a more traditional approach to the guitar with a bit of a Robin Hood look.

 

 

 

.

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The acoustic guitar is definitely more upper middle class unless you are a down on your luck blues street busker.

 

Remember that Clapton's 335 sold for $847,500 at auction - I'm going to call that upper middle class

 

I'm going to call that a house. A very nice house.

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I'd speak my mind if I could just remember where I last laid it down. Brought to mind fun book, a bit dated, "Class: A guide through the American status system" by Paul Fussell. It is the middle class wannabes that worry most about their status and how that is reflected in all they own, from brand of toilet paper to guitars. The ultra rich and down and out don't care, they are the freest of all that, and both drink cheap wine in plastic cups

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I'd speak my mind if I could just remember where I last laid it down. Brought to mind fun book' date=' a bit dated, "Class: A guide through the American status system" by Paul Fussell. It is the middle class wannabes that worry most about their status and how that is reflected in all they own, from brand of toilet paper to guitars. The ultra rich and down and out don't care, they are the [b']freest of all that[/b], and both drink cheap wine in plastic cups

 

I was exactly that until I married into the ranks of class warfare. It was all downhill from there. I coulda been a non-contend'a.

 

 

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Prompted myself with post to get out the book, which I will now quote about guitars (shows how much I lub you guys):

"Guitars (except when played in "classical"--- that is, archaic --- style) are low by nature, and that is why they were employed as tools of intentional class degradation by young people in the 1960's and '70's. The guitar was the perfect instrument for the purpose of signaling these young people's flight from the upper-middle and middle classes, associated as it was with Gypsies, cowhands, and other personnel without inherited or often even earned money and without fixed residence."

I can imagine Robert Johnson dragging an upright piano around behind him while rambling from town to town.

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