Retro gear inventory circa '92

Looking around the studio for receipts for an inventory list and found a bunch of pics in an old folder; I suppose the idea was to document my gear for insurance... this must have been around 1992 or so.  Having a couple of nice amps on hand did not appear to make me very happy!!  Brought back memories of that crappy apartment I had in grad school for sure.  Many, many appalled rehearsals there.  My main recording setup was the old Yamaha FX500 sitting on the wood shelf behind me directly into the Tascam Porta 1, both of which I still own BTW!  Big Red of course, which I also still own.  The Peavey Renown 400 I still have but I never should have sold that silverface Deluxe to my left; it was magic and made everything sound amazing (here speakerless for some reason??).  Rose-tinted memory of it induced me to buy another on eBay a few years ago but it was nothing like what I remembered this one to be.  The Mesa Mark II I also regret selling - this was the personal amp of one of the music store managers I often dealt with and I snapped it up when he finally broke down and sold.  I got tired of lugging it from place to place in various moves (man...so heavy) and there was nowhere practical to really wind it out, even at "low" power (60W) it was loud beyond belief.  At its full 100W it required an external cab attached and would think it could have taken down a small building.  Man, I look so young....

Shamed by Bob and Wayne

I subscribe to Premier Guitar, one of the newer gear-porn rags out there, for the old school print addition.  My concession to the new-fangled way of things is to have figured out how to "like" them on Facebook, which resulted in being buried under a barrage of posts from them at all times of day and night.  I generally enjoy these, but I was hit with a double-whammy of shame like a knife in my heart from two in particular over the past couple of weeks. 

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan

I was astonished to see Bob Pollard interviewed in the current edition - that is Guided by Voices Bob whom I blogged about back in the fall.  I cringed a bit anticipating him subjected to questions on gear, string gauges etc but I thought the questions were sensitively done.  The knife-in-heart was the following:

What’s your relationship with the guitar like? Is it a tool or a source of inspiration?I’ve always considered it primarily, if not solely, a vehicle for writing songs. That was the reason I needed to learn how to play to begin with. A friend and I started at the same time—around 1975 after I graduated from high school. After about a year or so I had gotten to the point where I was proficient enough to write. I got together with my friend to check out our progress. I had 50 or so songs and he knew the entire lead from “Aqualung” note for note. My point being that the guitar serves a different purpose for different people.

Funny how such a simple statement can really bring it home sometimes.  I've wasted so much time on "practicing" or playing things that really go nowhere and create nothing.  There was a period during grad school when I obsessively logged every little playing idea that came to me in handwritten tab, and I still have all those packed sheets though have only glanced at them a few times in the intervening 20 years or so. Maybe that was a bit much in the other direction, but I'm way overdue to re-prioritize back into more creative application.

The other was a bit more gear oriented but in a similar vein:  Premier does entertaining "Rig Rundowns" whereby they video interview an artist (or the artist's tech depending on the magnitude of celebrity and/or availability of said artist) usually backstage before a gig and get them to walk through their ... uh... rig, like guitars and amps and pedals and stuff.  More astonishment when the latest of these was the formidable Wayne Krantz, whom I greatly admire.  

http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/22218-rig-rundown-wayne-krantz

Even in guitar circles Wayne is pretty obscure, despite being an innovator and overall astonishing virtuoso and musician.  As I have mentioned in these pages I ran across his book "Improviser's OS" some time ago and have more recently watched and re-watched his series of instructional videos for Guitar World, which are great.   Wayne's Rundown stands in stark contrast to many of those posted by Premier and again instigated some serious soul searching - some of the things we learn from Wayne:

• "I don't know much about guitars".... ( I almost fell over at that one...)
• One loaner guitar (albeit a loaner from John Suhr) is plenty
• A bog-standard, stock (borrowed) Deville sounds good enough and works fine
• His trademark Jubilee Marshall was an eBay acquisition that he uses not because it's such a great amp, he's just "used" to it
• Pedals strewn around the floor like we all did in high school and then carried around in a bag can be preferable to the high tech powered pedalboard monstrosities of today.  I mean, like EVERYONE seems to have those things these days, Premier's current issue is devoted to it.
• Pedals again chosen if they work and sound "good enough"

The message coming through to me is: work with what you have, it doesn't have to be the best or greatest or definitive whatever - if it's functional you can work to get the best out of it.  I felt the burn of shame at this gazing around at my 15 or so instruments and piles of gear. 
Ok, enough - kudos to Premier for putting the focus on two greats way out of the mainstream,

I taught myself to play guitar

I was reminded of a worthy highlight from 2014 the other day, so in minimalist fashion I'm going to throw that out here and avoid a more comprehensive year-end synopsis of events.  David Fair from the indie legend band Half Japanese on How to Play Guitar:

"I taught myself to play guitar. It’s incredibly easy when you understand the science of it. The skinny strings play the high sounds, and the fat strings play the low sounds. If you put your finger on the string farther out by the tuning end, it makes a lower sound. If you want to play fast move your hand fast and if you want to play slower move your hand slower. That’s all there is to it. You can learn the names of notes and how to make chords that other people use, but that’s pretty limiting. Even if you took a few years and learned all the chords you’d still have a limited number of options. If you ignore the chords your options are infinite and you can master guitar playing in one day. Traditionally, guitars have a fat string on the top and they get skinnier and skinnier as they go down. But the thing to remember is it’s your guitar and you can put whatever you want on it. I like to put six different sized strings on it because that gives the most variety, but my brother used to put all of the same thickness on so he wouldn’t have so much to worry about. What ever string he hit had to be the right one because they were all the same. Tuning the guitar is kind of a ridiculous notion. If you have to wind the tuning pegs to just a certain place, that implies that every other place would be wrong. But thats absurd. How could it be wrong? It’s your guitar and you’re the one playing it. It’s completely up to you to decide how it should sound. In fact I don’t tune by the sound at all. I wind the strings until they’re all about the same tightness. I highly recommend electric guitars for a couple of reasons. First of all they don’t depend on body resonating for the sound so it doesn’t matter if you paint them. And also, if you put all the knobs on your amplifier on 10 you can get a much higher reaction to effort ratio with an electric guitar than you can with an acoustic. Just a tiny tap on the strings can rattle your windows, and when you slam the strings, with your amp on 10, you can strip the paint off the walls. The first guitar I bought was a Silvertone. Later I bought a Fender Telecaster, but it really doesn’t matter what kind you buy as long as the tuning pegs are on the end of the neck where they belong. A few years back someone came out with a guitar that tunes at the other end. I’ve never tried one. I guess they sound alright but they look ridiculous and I imagine you’d feel pretty foolish holding one. That would affect your playing. The idea isn’t to feel foolish."

 I had never heard of these guys but as it happens they have been around forever (well, 1975 anyway...).  However, I had seen and been deeply affected by  Jeff Feuerzeig’s documentary `The Devil and Daniel Johnston`  a few years ago., and just found out he also made a documentary on Half Japanese called `The Band That Would Be King`. Have to source that somehow.

In a more morbid vein, I found out poking around on the web that Kurt Cobain was wearing a Half Japanese T shirt when he died - Kurt says, regarding number 38 on the list `Kurt Cobain`s Top 50 Albums`` (http://www.angelfire.com/rock3/nirvana81/kurttop.htm):

Half Japanese - We Are They Who Ache With Amorous Love

Kurt says: "I like to listen to Jad Fair and Half Japanese with headphones on, walking around shopping malls - in the heart of the American culture. I just think that, if people could hear this music right now, they'd melt, they wouldn't know what to do, they'd start bouncing off the walls and hyperventilating. So I turn up the music really loud and pretend it's blasting through the speakers in the mall."

 Check this stuff out and feel all those anxieties and insecurities you cling to around gear, technique, and competitive self-importance start washing away.....

Keep your minds open

Yet another RIP birthday went by this week which reminded me to follow up on my mention of bass-oriented YouTube discoveries back on the Maine vacation in August...  John Francis Anthony (Jaco) Pastorius, y'all, b, Dec 1, 1951.

I really do love the bass as an instrument. I own one, a very nice late 90's Fender Jazz in a classy tuxedo black/white scheme  and yes I can hack away in clumsy "it's the bottom four strings of a guitar, except lower" fashion but I can hardly claim to actually PLAY bass, for real.   I have a deep regard for those who truly can. 

I'm not even sure what I was originally looking for but in a stream-of-consciousness Youtube session one night on vacation I ran across an old Hot Licks instructional/demo video of Jaco, from 1986:

[sorry all, original link to video is dead, will replace if/when it becomes available again]

I started in casually watching but quickly realized what an astonishing, historic document this really was.  Jaco, arguably the most innovative bass player ever to live interviewed by towering bass legend Jerry Jemmot, and a live jam with John Scofield and Ken Dennard!  It is heart rending viewing knowing that within a year of filming Jaco would be living on and off the streets in the throes of mental illness before being beaten into a coma and eventual death in a Miami alley. 
I really started taking notice after the blaze of technical command and precision at 14:03... and another breathtaking display at 18:10 and an amazing off the cuff jam duet at 21:46...  Maybe this wasn't Jaco in his absolute prime but it is such a joy to watch one of the greatest that ever was.  One thing I found striking in the discussion on influences (54:11) it boiled down to Elvis, whatever was on the radio; eventually Jerry himself in the Atlantic era, Bernard Odum, Bootsy Collins, James Jamerson, Paul Chambers, Gary Peacock.  So in other words, nothing out of the ordinary - same people and things that influenced everyone else at the time, but he just took it way out into outer space. 
Jaco seems just a hair "behind the beat" here on the questions, a trifle hesitant but lucid and together.  Tons of great content for any stringed instrument player, and worth the watch just to see Jaco grinning madly in full command going toe to toe with John Scofield.  It blows my mind to think that he came to such a tragic end; just shows you it could happen to anyone. 

You don't really care for music, do ya?

I missed posting this earlier in the week so it's a belated birthday RIP to Jeff Buckley for Tuesday Nov 17th.  Felt odd to learn that we were so close in age - that he would have been 48. It's one of those nearly alone in a dark house in the gloomy early winter pondering mortality kind of nights; I say nearly as daughter no 1 is locked away upstairs in self imposed isolation and no 2 is with Mom in Cincinnati on the first US Cheer competition of her season.  Today/tomorrow would also be brother JP's birthday; first one for which is no longer with us.
I went through a  Jeff Buckley bender a few years ago after an extremely emotional reaction to his iconic "Hallelujah" that just rotated in at random on the iPod one day - I didn't even know I had the track, which came in the "Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs" collection gifted me by younger brother PW.  The song seems to be everywhere these days.   Most recently I was aghast to be attending a school band concert and the junior choir launched into it.... a heavily sanitized and lyrically dumbed-down version as it turns out, though nonetheless made me want to laugh and scream at the same time.  I was holding my breath and squirming to have to hear a bunch of children actually singing "There was a time when you let me know.... What's really going on below....But now you never show it to me, do you?"  but thankfully they never went there.  I love everything about his "Grace" version, from the exhalation into the mic at the very beginning through the great playing with what I consider to be the best guitar sound ever.  Speaking of which, I was astonished to run across this video on YouTube and find I was too late to buy THAT guitar!  I would have wavered at the $60,000 it went for, especially some crazy '83 top-loader of all things, but was cool to think it was out there and available for a short while...

Of course the hilarious thing about it, for those wise to the Jeff Buckley lore, is that it wasn't even his.  It was a semi-permanent loner from Janine Nichols, one of the artistic directors for NYC's St Ann's, who finally got it back at Jeff's memorial service following his death (see definitive article at http://www.mojopin.org/pages/telecaster.php).  I think it is a great example of the artist being far more important than his tools, an extraordinary player shining on a rather ordinary instrument that no collector would give a second glance.  For those who have actually read this far and are still thinking "Jeff who....?" I refer you to the fine BBC 4 doc linked below.

http://vimeo.com/41954163

(photo above top from Premier Guitar FB feed; no available credit)

The pride of Chapel Hill breaks my heart

I had yet another "satellite radio moment" in the car the other day when a song I'd never heard came on, from NC indie legends Superchunk.  The song was identified on my display as "Slack Mother" though it quickly became evident by first chorus that the title had been selectively abbreviated.  As far as songs worth screaming along to at a red light with the windows down in the last days before fall sets in, I don't think you can do much better.  Another one I totally missed back in the day, and this one considered to be one of the seminal indie hits of the '90s??  Well, better late than never.  A quick YouTube search revealed many worthy live versions but this one is my fave so far -

In any event, as is always the case with YouTube I was pulled down the "related link" rabbit hole and hit on a cover that Superchunk did for the AV Club program "AV Undercover".  AV creates a list of 25 songs every year and invites bands in to perform a song of their choosing in their Chicago office.  As a song is performed it's crossed off, so the later a band comes in the fewer songs they have to pick from.  As the program is in its 5th year there is quite a collection of on their website, and I spent several days working my way through them.  For the first couple of seasons they had the bands perform in a little round room a bit larger than an ensuite bathroom, which I thought was really great, though recently they have moved to a "bigger" venue.  Some highlights for me were They Might Be Giants doing "Tub Thumping", Nada Surf's beautiful melancholy "Bizarre Love Triangle" and a terrific cover of M Jackson's "PYT" by the Wood Bothers.  The hit that started me down the path though was the aforementioned Superchunk cover of the Cure's heart-breakingly great "In Between Days", one of my favorite songs of all time :

If the embedded video isn't working trip over to the AV site and burn a few hours watching through some great tunes,

http://www.avclub.com/video/superchunk-covers-the-cure-38884

Let me tell you something... children

So the Maine vacation is over - this year with some additional drama by way of an emergency appendectomy for older daughter T (all is well thankfully, and our sincere kudos to the fine folks at Midcoast Maine Hospital in Bath).  I always bring a guitar and have best of intentions for major woodshedding and iPad recording while I'm there but never seems to materialize according to plan.  Despite this, some inspiration came from unexpected, non-playing sources.  Before the hospital adventure kicked in I received word through facebook that Guided by Voices was simulcasting their show from the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park NJ on August 23rd via LiveNation.... I managed to catch a good chunk of the 2.5h + set in real time before flaming out, but caught the rest the next day, luckily, as LiveNation only kept the complete show up for a few days.  Only clips remain, though I will try to update if someone posts a complete version.

  https://screen.yahoo.com/live/event/guided-by-voices

What a great, great show - some cosmic moments as Bob kicked in "I Am A Scientist" twice, but even more freakishly,  I was thinking at one point "wow, it would be great to hear them do "My Valuable Hunting Knife"...." and it was literally the next song they played!! Rob drank himself into a stumbling collapse towards the end - I suppose this is part of the GBV legend but I wish he would take better care of himself.  There are not many artists that I truly admire and respect while having a deep internal resonance to their music, and Bob Pollard would be up at the top of that short list.  My introduction to the band came only a couple of years ago after a mention on the masterpiece TV show "The IT Crowd", followed by a purchase of the "Human Amusements at Hourly Rates" "best of" collection.  If you know anything about Bob you'll know what a joke it is to think his output could be surveyed on 2CDs, however it was enough to knock me over completely, and it became an ever-present soundtrack to what I think of now as the "2288" era, pre-2013.  Beyond the music itself though, I concur with Jason Wendleton who stated on his blog that "the band is a symbol for what it means to be an artist".  Jason does a great job running down some of the essentials in his tribute so I'll just refer the interested to it here:

http://defendingaxlrose.com/2012/05/06/your-next-favorite-band-guided-by-voices/


I've been thinking of putting a picture of Bob sternly frowning down on me in the studio for when I get lazy, tired, and complacent to remind myself of what true creative discipline is all about.  More on vacation inspiration in subsequent posts with a couple of thrilling discoveries in the low register vein, amazing archival videos of the late Jaco Pastorius and Larry Graham.

(Sorry, no photo credit available for above but it was taken from GBV's Facebook feed)