Breaking the Record for World's Largest Guitar Ensemble
Six years ago today, I hopped a Red Eye from Los Angeles to Kansas City, MO, and then drove across the border into Kansas City, KS for a live music performance. Only I wouldn't be in the audience; I would be on the stage, or out in left field as it were.
June 3rd, 2007 was the day 1,683 guitarists set a new world record for World's Largest Guitar Ensemble. The song we played was Deep Purple's legendary (and legendarily easy to play) "Smoke on the Water".
There was a live band brought in by radio station KYYS-FM to help us play along, on a stage set up in the left field concourse CommunityAmerica Ballpark. The ages of the guitarists ranged from single digits to septuagenarians and the majority of the players had acoustic guitars, but some of us felt the need to "go to 11".
There were definitely others there besides myself and the tall dude in the cowboy hat standing behind me in the picture above. I brought along a cheap but gutsy Memphis amp that ran on eight AA batteries and a Danelectro "Black Coffee Metal Distortion" pedal. But the dude behind me, came really prepared to rock.
For starters, he was wielding a Dime Razorback series by Dean Guitars. He had a small but loud amp, powered by a marine battery. Most impressively though, this guy actually played quite a bit like the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott. It was quite surreal hearing the mix of the straightforward cover band, my amp and Pantera-like grooves from behind me.
This was easily one of the funnest things I've ever taken part in. The record for World's Largest Guitar Ensemble has been broken several times since, most recently by 7,273 guitarists at a festival in Wroclaw, Poland last year. The way I see it, someday, someone should organize the legion of Southern California guitar players and convene on Dodger Stadium or the LA Memorial Coliseum to push that number even higher.
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