Ah see? Now that's it. Until he learned too much!! I wouldn't know Dave Davies style if he hit me over the head with it, even though I liked the Kinks and even saw them live in 1965! But how can you LEARN too much? Now I'll give you this: learning the guitar, scales, how to use modes and arpeggios and playing over changes is a PROCESS of learning. Most people get stuck in the process or don't get to the finish line, or you don't hear hem at the finish line, or further along in their process. If a person is playing and it sounds like scales either your hearing could use more expansion or the player hasn't learned them well enough If it sounds mechanical, then it is and he's playing mechanically because they haven't found a home in him yet. Maybe with Davies, his sheer, raw exuberance was done. He was every young then, where sheer, raw exuberance lives.
I can play very fast myself. But I don't really listen to a lot of those shredders. It's not my style. And after a while, who's pushing the boundaries any more in the shred style? It's all about the music. If it don't move you, it don't. But Shawn Lane was never really one of those shredders. He had so much more going for him.
Part of me agrees with you: how can you learn too damn much? Absurd. But I dunno: everyone might have their time, and way of 'peaking'. Maybe for some, they peak as cavemen clawing at strings and it does something special. I agree about getting caught in the 'process' - I'm a victim of that in some ways. I can play reasonably fast, and it's fun too. And I like soloing, which I sometimes do reasonably well, and sometimes suck at.
But back to 'learning too much' - learning is about focusing, being selective, because one can't learn everything. Therefore, like a bonzai, it is a form of disciplined distortion (think of a ballet dancer's body - a beautiful distortion wrought through endless learning (through drilling) of technique). As a form of distortion, it opens some doors, closes others. She will prbably never be a good discus thrower, for example. If I rigorously learn a particular musical system to the point that its rules (which connote a viewpoint) are wired into my system, then even if I choose to break those rules, i do so as a reaction to them, or in relationship to them. I.e knowing them intimately alters my ability to create in ways that can be positive and negative. So, yes, learning 'too much' is possible in that you become distorted. Maybe 'too much' is the wrong turn of phrase, but you have fashioned yourself in a certain way, and it'll preclude you coming up with certain things. And... you REALLY don't know the guitar solo to 'You Really Got me', dude? Damn, it rox!
At any rate, I have enormous respect for you and for your music. We'll just have to agree to disagree. It's actually quite ironic: I am a self-taught, highly idiosyncratic, musically illiterate musician who is in the process, at this late age of trying to become more literate, even though most of what I write (especially my piano music) is apparently not in Western key signatures, and due to a lot of it being quite legato, and improvised, is not in a fixed time signature either. But I do have some technique, particularly on guitar. I practiced scales and such for years, albeit in an incredibly self-limiting way. But now I am seeing those limitations for what they are: limitations, a form of distortion I've impossed on myself, with my antipathy to western notation, and so I am trying to become more educated. it will be interesting to see the new growth, but other doors will close, though perhaps not as firmly since I am learning so much at a later age; 'As the twig is bent, so grows the tree'.
