My journey through life within the cocoon of musical self-imposed isolation began with the advent of the first of the portable enablers, the cassette-playing Walkman.  I nurtured considerable (and inexplicable) disdain for these devices until I actually obtained one, a cheap Sony knock-off sometime in the mid-80’s.  The playlist was linear and unchanging, and varied only as much as the number of mixed tapes you could afford to make or how much FF or rewind your battery power would permit.   I similarly held out when iPods emerged, for reasons which have now faded beyond understanding.  I have always found these things double-edged: an upside in  the impenetrable wall of the aforementioned isolation, the soundtrack added as a layer to the mundane and routine; the walk to class, the dishes, the mechanical chores of life, exercise.  The downside is the silencing of the inner voice, something I’m becoming increasingly aware of.   However, I think the single greatest aspect of the iPod to me was a very unexpected one, the quasi-mystical power of randomness, the shuffle.  A large library means that you are no longer on a rail of predictability but can experience startling jogs of memory, superimpositions and the introduction of the long forgotten into a present and novel context.  As irrational as it may be,  it is eerie how often what I really “need’ to hear but didn’t know appears, how often it sets up a string of resonant truth so strong it feels undeniable and material.  I recall hearing Jeff Buckley’s version of L Cohen’s Hallelujah for the first time – something I didn’t even know I owned, that had come to me in a block of 500 songs (the so called Rolling Stones “Top  500 Songs of All Time”, courtesy one of my siblings), and it stopped me dead cold, and reduced to weeping with the emotion of it.  I recall standing on the platform waiting for my commuter train to the city (see “mundane”, above) watching the sun creep up wards, just as “Watch the Sun Rise” by Big Star shuffled on.  The other day it was Freedy Johnston’s “Bad Reputation”, and I had no idea that was exactly what I wanted to hear until it shuffled, followed closely by Brother Joe May, in an incandescent “Mercy, Lord”, blasting his microphone to distortion in sheer Gospel power…  Have those two tracks ever been juxtaposed together, ever, in anyone’s personal listening experience?  More on randomness in later posts, I fade to the mundane,   

Some of the herd

Big Red, or How EVH Wrecked My Axe

There are quite a few instruments here at Crazy Stranger Studio.  Many come and go, touching down for visits before passing into the ether though a few persist.  I stare at the older guitars and wonder at their stories.  Some have had unquestionably active lives and others a sad life of case-bound ease, and I can only guess at their relative states of mind.  However, with a few I can document most of the course of their histories, and none have had a tenure in my life as long as the guitar referred to in this house as "Big Red".  I won't discuss my first guitar much beyond that it was a white Asian-built BC Rich Mockingbird, which you could pick up in the early 80s for $300 or so.  If I had half a functioning brain cell at the time I would have bought the vintage Kay/Silvertone /Harmony pieces that couldn't be given away back then, but "regret" will be a subject for future posts.  I was living in the city during the summer of '86 at a buddy's house, and GAS compelled me to start looking for a "real" guitar.  I don't recall why I was looking for a Strat exactly, but I was drawn to a classified ad and arranged to go "meet" the instrument and its current owner.  The latter was in a heavy metal band, and the backstory was that he had bought Red and it had been stolen, then recovered after a couple of years.  Red's original case was long gone, replaced with a scarred, tattered and stenciled road case (heavy!).  I paid $600 (I think) and it was mine.  I remember the bass player for the now former owner's band grimacing at me hatefully as we were leaving, grunting out "you gonna give him the CASE too??"  At the time, every trip across Queen's Park to class was accompanied by Van Halen's "Fair Warning"... it was imperative that Red would be immediately modified with a bridge position humbucker and mini-Schaller tuning machines.  This butchery was carried out, and in an agony of regret from my 45 yr old perspective I never asked for the original pickup or machines back.  Big Red was the guitar that stayed as others came and went, carried through move after move and lapsing silent in long gaps when other aspects of life took over from music.  I was shocked recently to see that people now pay upwards of $2K for these "vintage" pre-American Standard era Strats - I mean, really?  In its mongrel state however, with its bowling ball-like polyU finish clear coat worn through under my right forearm, Big Red remains largely undesireable to the mainstream buyer and likely tied to me for life.  Technically, it's one of the very last "big headstock", 3-bolt neck guitars off the line at Fender before the Dan Smith era, a body with pot codes dating it to 1981 but a '79 neck serial number - not uncommon as Fender attempted to use up parts.  It is 9 lbs plus of Northern Ash, with a transparent wine red finish and a very thin veneer rosewood board on slightly V'd and oddly slender neck.  It is also a "hardtail", a term for a non-tremolo Strat that I didn't learn until much later, and also a feature that makes Red relatively rare but also unattractive to all but a niche of Stratocaster players. The infamous humbucker is a very early model DiMarzio Super Distortion II.  Red has a hard, clear, bright tone that makes it very distinctive from the other Strats I own and have owned since.  If you care to, the Chance clip elsewhere on this blog features me playing Red through a tiny Roland microCube.  I long to hear what that original rear pickup sounded like... and yes I know I can drop a set of Lollar's in there anyday of the week but that's hardly the point.  I hope Red forgives me for the mutilation, and I feel fortunate to count this guitar amongst my oldest and dearest friends. 

From the archive - early rehearsal clip of "Chance", summer of 2008