Paraty Club Show

The Paraty Club show…two thumbs up!  You never know what to expect in China, but we were happy with the results of the April 1st show on the outskirts of Shenzhen, China.  The sound wasn’t so good, and seemed to get progressively worse, but the show was fun and energetic and the crowd was responsive and fun.

I had the idea of opening with Madonna’s “Hung Up”, which features the prominent lick from Abba’s “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme”.  That’s not an easy lick to play – especially on guitar.  Yngwie Malmsteen did a cover of “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme” and, of course, I listened to it again to get some ideas.  But, what I noticed was:  he’s playing it wrong! He’s playing a much easier version which only consists of a d minor arpeggio followed by an a minor arpeggio.  Both are the same pattern too.

What’s extra interesting was that when I started trying to figure out this lick, I was playing it the same way that Yngwie was – just by listening.  Interesting, I wonder if this was the same way the he evolved his version as well.  When I played against it, I realized it wasn’t quite right.  The real version is more complex.  Here’s some tab that I created of the correct version:

So, am I pretending to be a better guitarist?  HECK NO!  But, I am baffled at how he got it so wrong.  The challenging part in the lick above is the last two measures – the F arpeggio followed by the quick a minor arpeggio (with the extra F note thrown in), and then the other a minor arpeggio (different position) followed by the d minor arpeggio.  I’m still amazed at how well Yngwie plays given how much he moves around.

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Video coming soon!

Here are some pics: