Why can chasing after guitars on eBay and Craiglist sometimes be more fun than playing them?
There's a 1979 Gibson SG Custom out there that has my name all over it. Rare as hens' teeth, and surprisingly affordable despite that. But I shouldn't spend the money. No, I really shouldn't. Really...
In truth, I already have too damned many geetars. If I end up buying that one, or another high-end SG, I will have to start selling some stuff. Not so much for the money, but just because I don't have any more room in my dismal little studio to put them. You can only play one at a time. ;)
The thing I hate most about selling guitars is not the loss of them--I won't sell one anymore that I truly treasure--but instead the whole process of eBay listing, annoying buyers, PayPal fraud anxiety, shipping hassle, etc. Every time I sell a guitar on eBay, I thank my lucky stars I didn't go into the retail business.
On a more creative note (or non-creative), I've been playing a lot and getting my chops back after a bit of a layoff, but I'm not really feeling the creative urge at the moment. What I really need to do is get some percussion groove going and just play a bunch of something over it. It'll happen.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
I'm still here...
Nope, haven't abandoned the blog or this project. I just had a busy, crazy time last week and have been exhausted. I haven't actually *produced* any music, but I managed to *consume* a lot of it. I saw the band Yes twice within the span of a week, and also went to see Symphony X as well. Not nearly enough sleep was had during that period.
I also played a whole bunch of Gibson SGs at various stores this past weekend, because I'm on a big SG kick at the moment. A couple of months ago, I got a knockoff version of a '61 SG Custom, made by ESP in Japan, but the damned thing, like all the early '60s SGs (and the recent versions that have gone back to those specs) are neck-heavy as hell. Let go of the neck while you're wearing the guitar on a strap, and the damned thing dives right for the floor.
Gibson modified the design in the '70s and '80s to have the neck set further into the body, and that presumably makes the guitar balance better. With that in mind, I've purchased an '86 Gibson SG Special from a dealer in New Hampshire and will take delivery within the next week or so. It's a cheapo variant of the SG, and if I like that one, I'll probably get a more upscale version from that same era. They were all over the stores when I was a young guitar slinger, but I was purely a Les Paul guy back then. I didn't realize just how round and warm the SG tone can be, but still with some bite. The first thing most people associate an SG with is the scrawny, brittle tone that Angus Young of AC/DC gets. But you can get a very liquidy tone out of it if that's what you want--with less of the brightness that a Les Paul has. Very different animals, even if made by the same company. Here's a pic of the guitar I bought. It's very RED:
Here is my ESP Edwards knockoff of the '61 SG Custom. See if you can spot the structural differences where the neck meets the body:
It's crazy that such a small thing can make all the difference, but playing a guitar that doesn't hang properly from a strap is a very uncomfortable experience. The long-ago Gibson designers must have been having a few too many martinis with their lunches in 1960-61 when they designed that puppy to replace the Les Paul, which went out of production for several years. The original '61 SG's neck joint was so fragile (not a large point of contact with the body) that the guitars started falling apart right away, and Gibson was faced with massive warranty claims. They spent the next 10 years continually redesigning the SG, and finally settled on a design that lasted for basically 20 years--until the vintage guitar craze hit in the early '90s, and the dunderheads at Gibson decided it would be a good idea to make the SG all vintage-y and craptacular again. The original SGs play and sound fantastic (as does my ESP knockoff), but the balance problem is a killer.
Note, however, that I don't know for a fact that the '86 with the deeper neck joint will actually balance any better. I'm basing that hope solely on years of reading about these guitars and playing many guitars of different types. We'll see in a week or so, I guess.
I also played a whole bunch of Gibson SGs at various stores this past weekend, because I'm on a big SG kick at the moment. A couple of months ago, I got a knockoff version of a '61 SG Custom, made by ESP in Japan, but the damned thing, like all the early '60s SGs (and the recent versions that have gone back to those specs) are neck-heavy as hell. Let go of the neck while you're wearing the guitar on a strap, and the damned thing dives right for the floor.
Gibson modified the design in the '70s and '80s to have the neck set further into the body, and that presumably makes the guitar balance better. With that in mind, I've purchased an '86 Gibson SG Special from a dealer in New Hampshire and will take delivery within the next week or so. It's a cheapo variant of the SG, and if I like that one, I'll probably get a more upscale version from that same era. They were all over the stores when I was a young guitar slinger, but I was purely a Les Paul guy back then. I didn't realize just how round and warm the SG tone can be, but still with some bite. The first thing most people associate an SG with is the scrawny, brittle tone that Angus Young of AC/DC gets. But you can get a very liquidy tone out of it if that's what you want--with less of the brightness that a Les Paul has. Very different animals, even if made by the same company. Here's a pic of the guitar I bought. It's very RED:
Here is my ESP Edwards knockoff of the '61 SG Custom. See if you can spot the structural differences where the neck meets the body:
It's crazy that such a small thing can make all the difference, but playing a guitar that doesn't hang properly from a strap is a very uncomfortable experience. The long-ago Gibson designers must have been having a few too many martinis with their lunches in 1960-61 when they designed that puppy to replace the Les Paul, which went out of production for several years. The original '61 SG's neck joint was so fragile (not a large point of contact with the body) that the guitars started falling apart right away, and Gibson was faced with massive warranty claims. They spent the next 10 years continually redesigning the SG, and finally settled on a design that lasted for basically 20 years--until the vintage guitar craze hit in the early '90s, and the dunderheads at Gibson decided it would be a good idea to make the SG all vintage-y and craptacular again. The original SGs play and sound fantastic (as does my ESP knockoff), but the balance problem is a killer.
Note, however, that I don't know for a fact that the '86 with the deeper neck joint will actually balance any better. I'm basing that hope solely on years of reading about these guitars and playing many guitars of different types. We'll see in a week or so, I guess.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
AC/DC
My wife and I went to see AC/DC tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington DC. Great show! This is the first time I've ever seen them live, which is kind of sad considering that I bought Back in Black when it first came out in 1980. It was one of the first five or so rock albums that I ever bought. I may even still have that original LP somewhere, though I also have the most recent remastered CD version.
The band isn't quite as energetic now as they were back in the day, based on the footage I've seen. But they still put on a seriously high-energy show. How the hell Angus Young keeps running around the stage like a madman at his age is beyond me. I'm 12 years younger than Angus, and I can barely get out of bed some mornings!
My wife made a good point after the show: songs like "Back in Black" and "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" are so iconic, that it's almost weird to actually see the band playing them in front of you.
And what great songs--the show was packed with the sort of classic hard rock that never sounds dated or out of style. Even the songs from their new album Black Ice were very good. I haven't liked any new AC/DC album in a long, long time, but the songs from this one sound damned good.
Brian Johnson is a better frontman than I thought he'd be, though I'll always think of AC/DC, at heart, as being centered around the late Bon Scott's menacing snarl:
The band isn't quite as energetic now as they were back in the day, based on the footage I've seen. But they still put on a seriously high-energy show. How the hell Angus Young keeps running around the stage like a madman at his age is beyond me. I'm 12 years younger than Angus, and I can barely get out of bed some mornings!
My wife made a good point after the show: songs like "Back in Black" and "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" are so iconic, that it's almost weird to actually see the band playing them in front of you.
And what great songs--the show was packed with the sort of classic hard rock that never sounds dated or out of style. Even the songs from their new album Black Ice were very good. I haven't liked any new AC/DC album in a long, long time, but the songs from this one sound damned good.
Brian Johnson is a better frontman than I thought he'd be, though I'll always think of AC/DC, at heart, as being centered around the late Bon Scott's menacing snarl:
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
What I did with my day off
I had the day off work on Tuesday for the Veteran's Day holiday. Did I record anything? No. Did I play guitar at all? No. What the hell did I do, then? Well, I did a lot of work on arranging my studio properly. It has been in a state of unfinished chaos for weeks, after I got a Roland V-Drum electronic kit and had to tear up the room to find space for it. Folks, I live in a dismal little cave.
With my little bout of housekeeping today, hopefully I'm closer to building an atmosphere more conducive to creativity. I've got some ideas percolating.
Coinciding with my acquisition of the Agile 12-string electric this past weekend, I've been listening to a bunch of '70s-era Genesis (back when they didn't suck). The Trick of the Tail album, in particular, has been in my CD player regularly. This was the first album after Peter Gabriel left the band and Phil Collins took over on vocals. Believe it or not, they made it two whole albums before the "Phil Collins suck factor" took over. That era of Genesis featured lots of 12-string electric from both lead guitarist Steve Hackett and bassist/rhythm guitarist Mike Rutherford (who discovered his own suck factor some years later with Mike & the Mechanics).
Here is the title track from Trick of the Tail, which is one of the poppier tracks on the album but also a longtime favorite of mine. Note the big ol' bushy beard on Phil Collins. Yes, he was a prog musician at one time, and a damned good one. Really.
With my little bout of housekeeping today, hopefully I'm closer to building an atmosphere more conducive to creativity. I've got some ideas percolating.
Coinciding with my acquisition of the Agile 12-string electric this past weekend, I've been listening to a bunch of '70s-era Genesis (back when they didn't suck). The Trick of the Tail album, in particular, has been in my CD player regularly. This was the first album after Peter Gabriel left the band and Phil Collins took over on vocals. Believe it or not, they made it two whole albums before the "Phil Collins suck factor" took over. That era of Genesis featured lots of 12-string electric from both lead guitarist Steve Hackett and bassist/rhythm guitarist Mike Rutherford (who discovered his own suck factor some years later with Mike & the Mechanics).
Here is the title track from Trick of the Tail, which is one of the poppier tracks on the album but also a longtime favorite of mine. Note the big ol' bushy beard on Phil Collins. Yes, he was a prog musician at one time, and a damned good one. Really.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
12-string interlude
No big fancy posts about my grand scheme today. I picked up a 12-string electric guitar this afternoon and have been mucking around on it since. Because I don't have a camera in the house at the moment, here is the web page for the model I got:
Agile AS-820 12-string electric
For me, 12-string electric is very evocative of '70s prog, and I think my next recording will be a moody, Pink Floydian thing. I've already got a little 12-string part mapped out for it. Get your bongs ready...
Agile AS-820 12-string electric
For me, 12-string electric is very evocative of '70s prog, and I think my next recording will be a moody, Pink Floydian thing. I've already got a little 12-string part mapped out for it. Get your bongs ready...
What is this "album" you speak of?
Here are a few thoughts about why I'm doing a blog format instead of the usual musician's web site.
I grew up in the era of the LP. A package that came with a big ol' piece of cardboard artwork in addition to the music. I vividly recall reading all the liner notes to such albums as Moving Pictures by Rush and Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. The music was the main point, but the package that I bought at the record store was so much more than that.
This was greatly diminished by the arrival of the CD and its shrunken packaging. It has largely disappeared altogether in the age of the iPod.
Problem is, the total experience that I felt contemplating the little pictures in the Physical Graffiti inner sleeve doesn't translate to the era of disposable mp3 music. You kids and your background musical noise...you need to be immersed in something bigger and more mysterious.
I'm hoping to create something larger than just a bunch of musical noise. What Led Zeppelin never did was text. Does anyone want prose along with their music? Heck if I know. But it ain't costing you or me a dime, so bear with me. You didn't get to read real-time accounts of the Rolling Stones trying to get it together to record an album did you? So maybe I'm adding some kind of value. Somehow.
The artwork is the final piece of the puzzle. I have a copy of Adobe Illustrator on my computer, along with a bunch of raw artistic ambition. Why create album artwork when you can create song artwork? I'm planning to create some kind of image to go along with each piece of music. One Day in August popped out of my subconscious before I could come up with such a plan, so it will have a plain, yellow-on-black cover, rather than actual artwork.
Speaking of covers, shouldn't I have ordered One Day in August to be pressed into CD packages by now? Maybe I should do that. Or should I? To be continued...
I grew up in the era of the LP. A package that came with a big ol' piece of cardboard artwork in addition to the music. I vividly recall reading all the liner notes to such albums as Moving Pictures by Rush and Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. The music was the main point, but the package that I bought at the record store was so much more than that.
This was greatly diminished by the arrival of the CD and its shrunken packaging. It has largely disappeared altogether in the age of the iPod.
Problem is, the total experience that I felt contemplating the little pictures in the Physical Graffiti inner sleeve doesn't translate to the era of disposable mp3 music. You kids and your background musical noise...you need to be immersed in something bigger and more mysterious.
I'm hoping to create something larger than just a bunch of musical noise. What Led Zeppelin never did was text. Does anyone want prose along with their music? Heck if I know. But it ain't costing you or me a dime, so bear with me. You didn't get to read real-time accounts of the Rolling Stones trying to get it together to record an album did you? So maybe I'm adding some kind of value. Somehow.
The artwork is the final piece of the puzzle. I have a copy of Adobe Illustrator on my computer, along with a bunch of raw artistic ambition. Why create album artwork when you can create song artwork? I'm planning to create some kind of image to go along with each piece of music. One Day in August popped out of my subconscious before I could come up with such a plan, so it will have a plain, yellow-on-black cover, rather than actual artwork.
Speaking of covers, shouldn't I have ordered One Day in August to be pressed into CD packages by now? Maybe I should do that. Or should I? To be continued...
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Explained in November, part II
Ok, I promised a little more explanation on what inspired me to do a 48-minute improvisation on One Day in August. No technical mumbo jumbo in this post, just a bunch of YouTube.
First and foremost, my guitar playing on this piece was chiefly inspired by Frank Zappa. Anyone who knows his style probably figured that out right away, but for the rest of you, here's some prime Zappa guitar playing from Halloween 1977 at the Palladium in New York. And ladies, he's shirtless!
Frank's 1981 album Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar is one of my Top Five. Three LPs/CDs of his live guitar solos, removed from their original context as links between songs and presented as pieces of beauty in their own right. Since I've gotten away from heavy metal and back towards fusion jazz, the Zappa influence has reemerged in my playing big time, and it's all over One Day in August.
The second big influence for me was saxophonist John Coltrane. I will be posting a lot in the future about Coltrane's influence on me as a musician, but for now, just enjoy this beautiful example of the best improvising musician who ever lived. As a bonus, it features the astounding piano playing of McCoy Tyner, who is another big influence on me. More about him later, too.
Here's another clip of live Coltrane, from the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival. No video to go along with it, but just some of the most amazing soprano saxophone ever. Coltrane in full flight makes me want to go break all the boundaries, and I think you can hear a little of that on One Day in August. Not that I come anywhere near Coltrane.
These videos explain my musical inspiration more than words ever could. Tomorrow, I'm going to try and explain how One Day in August fits into my overall musical goals, which would be a very good transition back to explaining what the hell it is I'm doing with this web site and with a bunch of recording equipment in what used to be our spare bedroom.
First and foremost, my guitar playing on this piece was chiefly inspired by Frank Zappa. Anyone who knows his style probably figured that out right away, but for the rest of you, here's some prime Zappa guitar playing from Halloween 1977 at the Palladium in New York. And ladies, he's shirtless!
Frank's 1981 album Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar is one of my Top Five. Three LPs/CDs of his live guitar solos, removed from their original context as links between songs and presented as pieces of beauty in their own right. Since I've gotten away from heavy metal and back towards fusion jazz, the Zappa influence has reemerged in my playing big time, and it's all over One Day in August.
The second big influence for me was saxophonist John Coltrane. I will be posting a lot in the future about Coltrane's influence on me as a musician, but for now, just enjoy this beautiful example of the best improvising musician who ever lived. As a bonus, it features the astounding piano playing of McCoy Tyner, who is another big influence on me. More about him later, too.
Here's another clip of live Coltrane, from the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival. No video to go along with it, but just some of the most amazing soprano saxophone ever. Coltrane in full flight makes me want to go break all the boundaries, and I think you can hear a little of that on One Day in August. Not that I come anywhere near Coltrane.
These videos explain my musical inspiration more than words ever could. Tomorrow, I'm going to try and explain how One Day in August fits into my overall musical goals, which would be a very good transition back to explaining what the hell it is I'm doing with this web site and with a bunch of recording equipment in what used to be our spare bedroom.
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