I need some juice...

For anyone out there feeling in a downturn of blues (besides myself), let us share in a perfect moment of Zen as contributed by John and John of TMBG,

wild spiders crying together

News flash, friends:  US-built vintage guitars from Fender and Gibson are ridiculously out of reach for the ordinary player.  Startling revelation, I know.  There are still "sleeper" models disdained or ignored by collectors from these companies - my favourite acoustic guitar is my 1949 Gibson L48 that I picked up on eBay for around $1200, which has a carved spruce top made by the same hands that carved the L5's of the time (quick glance on 'Bay shows one non-cutaway '49 L5 up at around $7500 US at time of writing).  That being said, several years ago I applied some research towards affordable alternatives and began to develop a great fondness for the undervalued American builders of the 50's and 60's, specifically Chicago companies Kay and Harmony, and Guild to the end of the Westerley, RI era.  The Guilds I own are serious professional-grade instruments that make no apologies to any Gibson ever made; the "others" are in a category unto themselves.
Clearly there were always pockets of admirers of these instruments out there and the 'net is dotted with sites that attempt to catalog information and models.  The growing success of the Eastwood company producing relatively inexpensive reissues, and players like Jack White commanding increasing influence in the present, however, has very quickly increased the amount of attention placed on the formerly downtrodden.  The aforementioned escalating vintage market has also left others besides myself scouring different pastures for what is affordable and available from the dawn of the rock 'n' roll era.    Which brings us to the inspiration for today's post, a comment I read in this month's "Premier Guitar", in a review of a guitar from Montreal-based builder Nic Delisle.  This guitar, Mr. Delisle's "The Forty-Four" model, is in essence a copy of the Harmony H44... with a base price of $1900!! 

"It wasn’t long ago that Harmony guitars of the ’50s and ’60s were considered ill-suited to serious music making. But such guitarists as the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach and Marc Ribot have made amazing, signature sounds on these (once) affordable axes. And in their wake, players, collectors, and even guitar makers have reexamined the merits of these guitars while driving prices on the vintage market ever higher."

Nice to have been ahead of the "value" curve, and I suppose I should send Dan and Marc a quick note of thanks for driving those prices up.  Meanwhile, take a look at the "real thing", a Harmony-built Silvertone S1429, stamped "F-61" inside, meaning build date fall of 1961, five years before I was born.  Backstory: if I recall correctly I was looking for a Meteor, and through intense net searching landed on this piece in Lemoyne, PA store BCR Music.  The 1429 was essentially a blinged-out Meteor, built by Harmony for Sears, with fabulous 6-ply body binding (!!!!), 3-ply on the neck, 3 DeArmond pickups with individual switches and 6 tiny fragile nonstandard good-freakin-luck-ever-replacing vol/tone knobs.  I paid too much at the time, but it was one of those crazy "under the bed for 40 years" stories, and I rationalized that I may as well have one of the nicest ones in existence.  One of the quirky things about it is the neck, which on 99.99% of guitars tapers to be wider at the body end than at the nut.  On this guitar the taper is minimal, giving you the feeling like you're playing a giant bi-sected pencil strung with wire.  The non-height adjustable pickups sit housed in fabulous solid rosewood surrounds and I tend to clunk my pick against the middle one, which I hate, and was one of the things that turned me against my hog-backed Gibson ES-175.  The Silvertone tends to be the least played guitar in my "aggregate", and since I'm not a "collector" and have an internal barometer that compels me to get rid of guitars I don't play, I haul it out regularly determined to sell, plug it in... and hesitate.  I mean, it sounds unreasonably good - amazing, really.  The DeArmonds have the reputation of being some of the best guitar pickups ever made, and I have to say while my experience is limited (see above, re. "out of reach" vintage guitars) they are like nothing else. Big, airy, and crazy high output for the time - like one of the best single coils ever but with the added dimension of the fully hollow body.  Feedback prone like all hollow bodies, but not overly so.  Sigh.  I may still succumb to the lure of some other high-value item I would play more (just saw a Guild X-170 in my local area!!), but for the moment the coolness factor prevails.  Speaking of coolness, I did a quick search on "Fall of 1961" and landed on a terrific poem by Robert Lowell, called "Fall 1961" - this is an excerpt, but Google it for the rest and its resonance of the tone of the time,

All autumn, the chafe and jar
of nuclear war;
we have talked our extinction to death.
I swim like a minnow
behind my studio window.

Our end drifts nearer,
the moon lifts,
radiant with terror.
The state
is a diver under a glass bell.

A father’s no shield
for his child.
We are like a lot of wild
spiders crying together,
but without tears.

Done, done, on to the next one...

Honestly, in the '90s the Grunge thing was remote for me.  I was aware of Nirvana and I thought "Smells like..." was a great song and video, but I think I was just out of their demographic when it was current.  Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters were different though.  I have vivid memories when my kids were toddlers of driving to the store solo with "Blackout" or "Monkey..." at pain threshold volumes; and when One by One came out in 2002 "All My Life" clung on to me like a personal anthem, and still feels that way.  We caught the "Them Crooked Vultures" tour a couple of years ago, and it was mind-blowing to see Dave drum, like he was about to fly apart at the atomic level.
So, given all that, many thanks to JA for forwarding the link to Marc Maron's recent WTF podcast of his interview with Dave, who is out promoting his new documentary "Sound City".  So rare to see/hear/read an interview out there in the music press that reminds us of what it's all about, the joy and love of making music.  Dave comes off as funny, open, engaging and the luckiest guy alive to be doing what he's doing, check it (and the movie) out, hopefully it will wash some of the accumulated jaded cynicism off you like it did for me:


http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_353_-_dave_grohl

Why My Practice Regimen Sucks

Those who know me know my "other" hobby is fitness, though the details concerning my long history along those lines are probably best left to some other forum.  The two worlds do collide however, and most significantly at the level of procrastination and apathy - the constant war against the inertia preventing productivity in either endeavour.  As a scientist by profession and training I love gathering information, though the sick irony is that the very act of "researching" (gear, guitars, bodyweight workout regimens, etc etc etc) is an escape from actually "doing".  Verdict is still out on the opportunity:cost equation in my life overall but I do get some value out of meandering beyond simple entertainment, occasionally.  Case in point:  I'm a fan of Arizona fitness expert Charles Staley, who has written many sensible articles on facets of fitness and has also devised the Escalated Density (EDT) system.  I sat through a 7 part seminar series he has on his site entitled "Why Your Workout Sucks", in which he makes a case for why those who engage in "exercise" programs are greatly disadvantaged compared to those who train as "athletes". The idea is that to simply work out for the sake of it, with no application, is a set up for poor results, dissapointment and failure:
http://www.staleytraining.com/articles/charles-staley/2009/summit-videos.htm
In one segment CS mentioned one of my most favourite books on this topic, "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield.  This is a book I should read once a month, it is such a blunt and unapologetic slap in the head to all the excuses, lies and twisted bullshit my mind can create to stop me from the "doing".  SP terms the procrastination enemy "Resistance", and describes its origins, how to recognize it, how he beats it down.   It's easy to see how Staley's exerciser vs athlete concept directly applies to guitar playing and music, at least to me.  It is so easy to lapse into a mechanical mentality with the guitar, eg. playing tons of scales and patterns  with no goals or focused plan except perhaps a quest for speed.  Practice becomes a painful and dreary thing to be avoided, exactly like the "exercise" mentality described by Staley.  I was confronted with a similar idea some years ago now in the excellent article by Chris Juergensen "Where Do You Go From Here?" (http://chrisjuergensen.com/where_do_you_go_from_here_article.htm).  You could make yourself busy for life just "playing" (ie. "exercising") and in the end have done nothing of value in terms of actual songs and created music you can share, and in fact be unable to actually play anything at all.  The Staley seminar really brought it home though, just how much of my practice time is unbalanced to things that help me the least (dexterity, single line improv) and how little to what would make me a better musician ("athlete"); learning entire songs, bringing what I know to performance standard, comping, and most importantly developing the translation of an inner voice, songwriting, and just getting out to play with other people.
In defiance of the Resistance sucking me down, I made a feeble but significant effort last night to act on one of those items on my "Someday" list.  I took out Wayne Krantz"s "Improviser's OS" and picked off the first 3-note structure that I fixated on (1, 3, b3) and took took a crack at his suggested practice plan, which is to play just (ONLY) those notes in one key in a given 4-5 fret span and improvise music.  In C that's C, E, and Eb....kind of 2/3rds of a C cowboy chord in first position, right? Minus the 5?  So you have 2 open strings at least.  It was a wierd experience, but in a short time I had the looper on playing an eerie atonal (C, E Eb containing) ambient backdrop, and was deep into hypnotic wierdness - and what's funny is after I dropped it and went back to playing "regularly", what I had been through affected me.  I was certainly more aware of "other" non-tonal elements like dynamics, bending, vibrato, etc which you really need to make music of THOSE few notes.  It was really worth it and I ended up feeling like I had tapped into myself and learned something.  
OK, no resolutions, I just need to try to apply myself more like an athlete and fight the Resistance, one small step at a time - as Steven Pressfield puts it "Most of us have two lives.  The life we live, and the unlived life within us,"

Bleed? What bleed?

Deep into the post Christmas doldrums now, but the Appalled was busy in pre-NY Resolution mode, working towards the standing resolution to record more sh!t, or at least be in the same place at the same time!   Several songs recorded despite the challenges of a constantly but unpredictably voiding sump pump adjacent to us, a Mario Galaxy Wii battle, steadily mounting room temp, and an amateurish mic placement resulting in a rather significant slap-back echo of guitar bleeding profusely into J's vocal mic.  I actually think it turned out fairly cool.  

A few that we have never put down before, including "Lighthouse" and the full "Mirage", "Shortcut", "CSL", and "Momentary Life".  The newest one was also aired in unfinished splendour, a song that I referred to as "gbgbv" (I finished watching "Watch me Jumpstart", the excellent Banks Tarver doc on Guided by Voices - picked up the guitar and there it was so working titled it "guided by guided by voices"), but now am thinking of as "Phantom Limb", the idea of having something that's part of your being lost, but you still feel it's there.  Sorry, no pics this session. 

Back From Hiatus

Before our annual family vacation trek to Maine to close out the summer, J visited Crazy Stranger for the first time since completing construction.  We got a chance to run over some of the newer songs from the past year or so, and it was great as always to hear the tunes we've never played before come together in the same room.   Was left with action items to finish a couple of things of course.  Looking forward to the fall and a new year -

Why So Many

I have been asked many variations of the basic question “Why do you need (have) so many guitars?”, most recently by a sneering  10 year old visiting my home, if I recall correctly on the insidious extension of “playdate”  termed “sleepover” which meant she had some expectation of being catered to like the prized and coddled thoroughbred she believes herself to be, and to be fed pancakes, whipped cream and strawberries after keeping me up half the night on a candy-fueled bender.  Sometimes this is accompanied by a corollary of blinding insight, “You can only play one at a time, ya know, eh?”.  I thought of a lame reply once (“Why do you have so many pairs of pants??  You can only wear one pair at a time, ya know, eh??”) but it feels flat and weak;  far better to return with stony silence and a look of incredulity (the old, “How very, very sad for you, that you have to ask such a ridiculous question” look) or the indefensible  “Because I DO”.  However, deep self analysis suggests the real reasons are far more complex, and can be grouped into the general categories of Pathological and Non-Pathological.  Pathological reasons for the needless acquisition and maintenance of expensive objects will be discussed in future posts. 

Thankfully, I have never been much for the hero-emulation that appears to drive the guitar market to a great extent – to have a ’59 Les Paul like Jimmy Page, a Strat/ES335/SG like Eric Clapton, Epi Casino like John Lennon.  Gibson and Fender have gone to unbelievable extremes in catering to this market, apparently composed of lawyers, doctors, and other non-music professionals with money to burn by making painstakingly detailed reproductions of instruments associated with a particular player, eg  the Andy Summers Telecaster, Rory Gallagher Strat,  at astronomical cost.   The same element has driven specific models of vintage Fender/Gibson instruments out of reach for the average consumer.  My real interest lies in “sleeper” models, high-value niches in the current model portfolios, though this does not address the present subject of “Why”.  The “need” for the specific qualities of an instrument as defined by sound, playability, etc are the practical considerations, and beyond the scope of the current post.  Aesthetically however…..they represent a high art of form fused with function, in some cases a brilliant synthesis of utility with economy as mass demand and industrialization influenced design and manufacturing (Leo Fender).  In some cases, a manifestation of ingenuity, skill and painstaking craftsmanship, (Lloyd Loar and beyond, the Golden era of Gibson instrument design).  In short, they are beautiful and I love them.
 
Case in point – my recent applied comprehensive search for a Les Paul (sparked by encounters with the lovely black LP Custom owned by buddy DC) led me to not one but two instruments, a fabulous late ‘90s Westerley RI Guild “Bluesbird”, and a Gibson Custom Shop ES-137, formerly owned by Rich Fortus (Guns n’ Roses/Thin Lizzy).  Not once did I consider an SG.   I acted as an enabler in the recent acquisition of an all black 2010 Standard by nephew G however (I drove him to the music store), and the seed thereby planted grew to a hesitant nagging: what was I thinking?  Is this not the best possible compromise – roughly half the cost of a new LP Standard, lightweight, versatile, high resale value and with a legacy of history as long as almost any electric guitar model in existence?  The way I look at the iconic models is not through identification with the players who used them as much as the psychological aspect – these are the tools used to make the music of history.  There is no excuse.  You do not need anything else.  With an SG, I am on a level playing field with Angus Young and any of the great multitude who have picked one up, like Thom Yorke in the Radiohead “Live at Astoria” DVD, hitting the first chords of “Prove Yourself”. 

In this case, there was a zero-cost way of testing my hypothesis, prevail upon G’s kindness and generosity and borrow it – just get it out of my system, and move on.  Alas, it is one of the coolest things ever, light as a feather, falling somewhere between LP and Stratocaster but not either.  It is beautiful and I love it…..Oh well.  At least I can delude myself partly by asserting that SOMEONE needs to act as a custodian of these things for future generations, right?