Kelly Rosenthal: Youtube Guitar Hero

I was unsure if I should write about Kelly. I've been tossing it back and forth in my mind because I've got mixed feelings about her. Anyways, why not? As always, I was looking up covers on Youtube and decided to look up covers of "Stairway To Heaven" (Led Zeppelin). There are a bunch of great guitar covers, a few good vocal covers, some drum covers. It's such a great song, I don't know why everyone doesn't pay homage to it. So, I came across Kelly Rosenthal, sitting around, playing "Stairway To Heaven" on an acoustic guitar. She had a backing track going, but that didn't take from her performance. It went along smoothly and I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. The whole way through the video there was a little button above that said "Fast forward to 3:13 for the solo", but I waited. When I got to 3:13, I made my decision. Kelly had a completely different aura about her the second she had the electric guitar in her hands. Maybe I just like how she plays electric guitar, more than the acoustic, but you can decide for yourselves. Needless to say, she blew me away with the Page's solo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0VENHAKIQc

Feel free to comment if you disagree with me by the way. I just think her electric sound was far superior the the acoustic sound. She just seems to get caught in it more. As I do, I looked around her guitars covers for a while, enjoyed a bunch of them, including "Black Magic Woman" (Fleetwood Mac/Santana). The thing about the way she plays "Black Magic Woman" is that she makes it seem as if she's playing in slow motion. You should check it out if you like Santana. But, what you should definitely check out is Kelly's top 25 guitar riffs. She notes that they're in no particular order, which I appreciate. I really think she should make a follow up to these 25.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVfh0UqvOzE

Great stuff right? It's not the fact that she can play all those riffs it's the fact that she's got a great tone, which I don't find as much as I'd want to on youtube. Okay, so now that we've established that she's a fantastic guitarist, let's talk about her original stuff. She was a part of this band called "Say Chance", that broke up a week or two ago. You can still buy merchandise and stuff, for a short time. You can check them out on Facebook or just google them and you'll find a website. I wanted to find out a little more about them, so I checked out the website, and lucky for me, Kelly had written to biography. You can check it out, but essentially she came across Taylor Broom and Maddie Freeman online, singing at an open mic, which led her to contact them. After that, they somehow got something going, after meeting up (despite living in different parts of the U.S.). I listened to a few of their originals on youtube and a song called "Miss You Now" stood out to me. It's great. It's how I imagine John Mayer and Jason Mraz sounding together, if they were women. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_L5p_8N_-k

Good stuff, isn't it? Well, check them out on Facebook or anywhere else you'd like. You can also find a page for Kelly Rosenthal on Facebook. I found it quite curious that Say Chance had something like 12,000 likes on Facebook while Kelly has accumulated something in the ball park of 32,000. Maybe she should write some solo originals. I know I'd buy an album of instrumentals by her. But, I am most curious what her voice is like. I mean, Hendrix hated his own voice, but thought "If Bob Dylan can sing, so can I." So, why not? Anyways, subscribe to her youtube now! It's KellyIsMusical, and listen to her guitar cover of "Slow Dancing In A Burning Room" (John Mayer) and tell me that she hasn't got a great tone.

© Alex Hamel