Just heard Fred Cockerham play and sing his "Long Steel Rail". Beautiful. He played it at probably 75%( at most ) the speed most people play it nowadays, and it sounded 150% better than most people play it -- at least to me. He actually slowed it down enough that I could understand the words, imagine that.
How is it that the playing of OT music has apparently become a speed competition through the years? "Long Steel Rail", for example, is actually a blues song, intended to convey a feeling of sadness, or emptiness in one's life. How the heck is that feeling properly conveyed by performing it at the speed of "Earl's Breakdown"?
