The Big 5 Is Alive!
Why you shouldn’t miss PG’s latest bite-sized video series—whose fistful of questions coaxes refreshing candidness out of pro players of all stripes.
It's been close to a year since we all suddenly started hearing about the videoconferencing software whose name makes us think of tiny, affordable multi-effects pedals. Zoom's stock price more than doubled within a month of the pandemic lockdown as it became an invaluable communications tool for huge segments of society and industry. That includes PG. Our Rig Rundown, Hooked, and Riff Rundown series (among others) were/are no longer safe to film in person, but we're still able to produce them thanks to “face-to-face" Zoom calls.
And now we're stoked to announce that the software that makes it so easy for politicians and regular folks alike to accidentally humiliate themselves in front of the whole world has enabled us to add yet another arrow of video awesomeness to our quiver in the form of our new Big 5 series.
What I love about Big 5 is that it's fast and fun—but also that it consistently finds our guests being refreshingly candid, even a little vulnerable. Each Friday a new Big 5 episode highlights a pro player—perhaps famous, perhaps just getting started—answering the same five questions:
- What's my favorite guitar?
- What's my desert-island album?
- What's my biggest guitar-culture pet peeve?
- Which guitar hero of mine would surprise my fans?
- What's my secret weapon?
More often than not, the answers … reveal a surprising amount of goodwill and common ground hiding within our community.
Big 5 offers a little bit of everything in five or 10 minutes of YouTube time: gear talk and demo nerdery, cool-music/musician revelations, a bit of honesty and introspection about our collective quirks (something our community doesn't really talk enough about), and just enough interview-question weirdness/vagueness to guarantee a surprise or two. Even better, more often than not, the answers—whether coming from a shred head, an indie rocker, or a singer-songwriter—reveal a surprising amount of goodwill and common ground hiding within our community.
So far, we've run the Big 5 past Billy Idol sideman Steve Stevens, Porridge Radio's Dana Margolin, Fuzz's Charles Moothart, Death Valley Girls' Bonnie Bloomgarden and Larry Schemel, and Elizabeth Moen. And in the coming weeks we'll be releasing episodes featuring Dream Theater's John Petrucci, Suuns' Ben Shemie, Miss Grit's Margaret Sohn, Gus G., Vinnie Moore, and more.
If you're looking for something a little different in the guitar-vid space, be sure to head to our site or subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don't miss any more Big 5s—or anything else our crew Zooms together for y'all, day in and day out.
Here's our Big 5 playlist with all current available clips:
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