Search - Scotty Anderson: Red Hot Guitar on DVD

One of the worst in the HotLicks series....

Gregory L. Rogers | St. Paul, MN | 08/28/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"You can usually tell how a Hot Licks video is going to go by one of two things: the first thing the host says when the camera is on them, and if they ever say things like 'I don't know what note this is--I just know it sounds good'.

Scotty is a great player; no doubt about it. But he's not a great instructor. The production of this video is the most bare-bones of any HL video yet. It looks like they just grabbed Scotty on his way to a session and said "Hey, here's $1000... just play guitar in front of the camera for the next hour".

Yes, I said hour. Usually I get excited when the timer rolls past 45:00 and the lesson is still going--bonus guitar! This video mercilessly continues on past 1:05.

The video setup is questionable. Because of the camera angle, most of the video is looking straight into Scotty's crotch. There's no backdrop of a stage or random classic guitars or amps. Just a plain white room (no black curtains).

The guitar playing, again, is incredible. Scotty opens with the well-worn, but always tasteful, Mystery Train in 'E'.

From there, he speaks maybe a total of 60 words through the whole video. He just plays until he stumbles across something clever, says 'Watch this...', plays it again at half speed (which is still 2x as fast as you or I can play), then continues on with what is essentially an hour long vamp.

Again, he's super talented, for what he does. If your aspiration is to play 'country shred', fitting as many notes as you can into 8 bars, this might be worthwhile.

If you want to learn something without pouring over the tabs and running the 'slow motion' feature on an endless loop, I'd pass this one up.

This DVD falls at the bottom of the Hot Licks pile, along with Buddy Guy and Danny Gatton.
"

GREAT TELE PLAYER

Steve L Morrison | HUNTINGTON BEACH,CALIFORNIA | 07/18/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"WHEN I SAW DANNY GATTON PLAY, IT JUST BLEW MY MIND. I DIDN'T THINK ANYBODY COULD EVER TOP THAT. THAT IS UNTIL I PURCHASED THIS DVD. THIS GUY IS JUST INCREDIBLE, HE'S GOT IT ALL. WHY HE IS NOT A HOUSEHOLD NAME IS BEYOND ME. I BELIEVE YOU NEED TO HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE ON THE GUITAR TO BE ABLE TO COMPREHEND THIS FANTASTIC PLAYER, BUT YOU CAN ALSO BUY THIS JUST FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT. THIS DVD HAS MOTIVATED ME TO BECOME A BETTER PLAYER, IT SHOWS YOU JUST WHAT CAN BE DONE ON THE GUITAR. YOU HAVE TO JUST DIGEST A LITTLE AT A TIME AND ADD IT TO YOUR PLAYING. BUY THIS DVD, THIS IS FANTASTIC!"