Sometimes people ask me to explain exactly why writing about a new band every day is a good idea, a question that is hard to readily answer.
After chuntering some platitudes about how I believe in new artists or want to put something back, I quickly change the topic, knowing full well that the prior words aren’t totally true, but that I couldn’t think of a better thing to say.
But finally I have found a definitive item to justify what I do. It’s this video of noodling guitar oddball Steve Vai entirely unselfconsciously playing a three necked guitar. Of course, by using the word ‘playing’, I actually mean ‘ludicrously shredding for ten minutes as a rapt audience of middle-aged men whoop excitedly’.
Raliegh Moncrief is probably not a real name, and so at least the most ludicrous thing about this artist is deliberately affected.
He doesn’t spend half an hour on stage plucking at a ridiculous instrument whilst pulling disturbing sex-faces – instead he concentrates on making thrilling, loopy little pop songs like Guppies.
Music like this, or one of its longer companions Lament For Morning, is exhilarating in its spontaneity and its rough-edged vigour; cycling madly, writhing, thrashing, looking to evolve before our very ears.
Raleigh Moncrief // Lament for Morning
And so, Raliegh Moncrief is, indeed, one of the reasons why I write about new bands every day. Wildly inspired, hungrily creative and entirely unpretentious. Almost exactly the opposite of Steve Vai. Super.