October 31, 2007
BOB'S DRIVE-IN
...this is Bob. Bob is not scary....
I wish I had a happier shot of Bob, but this is all the internets can provide at this time. Bob is a most talented songwriter/writer/poet/genius, a sweet guy, one of the more engaging conversationalists of my life's acquaintances, and an all-around fine human being. extremely valuable around a bandstand. aside from his intellectual gifts, he is also a born entertainer. if there were any justice in this world it would be guys like Bob who get MacArthur "genius" grants...oh well. We were in a band called Doomster back in the early 20s and it was a great experience playing opening slots for Bix Beiderbecke and Jellyroll Morton. but then Bob moved his family upstate, and ever since then we've only had the very occasional opportunity to hang out, or even play. We played a benefit show at Dixon Place about six years ago, so it's been a while now....this ought to be fun -- if it happens. November 30 is the night! reunion gig, they're telling me. where? don't know. but there's a whole lot of talented and able musicians ready to jump in if/when Bob says the word. Unfortunately, so many venues have closed in the past few years that I wouldn't even know where to start--Bob had an in at CBGB (our first introduction was over the bar at the cbgb gallery--I was drinking 'em; he was pouring 'em) but now that's gone too. oh well, I'm sure a way will be found. the will to make it happen, the enthusiasm, and dare I say love is ready in abundance...I only wish I could say that the new tele will be ready by then, but I doubt it. warmoth won't have the neck ready for at least a few more weeks...
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
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October 30, 2007
DAMN THE TORPEDOES
...the real deal...
last night I got involved with a documentary on sundance all about the career of tom petty. I was transfixed. the wife says that bogdonavich directed it. so be it. for my money, one of the better rock docs I've ever seen...it doesn't hurt that the guy has had an incredible career...along with his own managing to somehow keep a band together for three decades, be a rock artist who also has had plenty of hit singles, and who has been a collaborator, friend and partner to such figures as bob dylan, george harrison, stevie nicks, jeff lynne, ringo starr, roger mcguinn, roy orbison, eddie vedder and johnny cash, I mean it's a pretty impressive resume...
and oh my lord the guitars...did I mention the guitars? he and mike campbell have quite the collection...old teles, strats, ricks, gibsons, you name it...
interesting sidebar they brought up--the number of major musical figures who lost a mother at an early age (and/or had a contentious relationship with their fathers)...which might just go some ways toward explaining my own personal perspective on things...
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October 29, 2007
PLAYING FOR THE OTHER TEAM
...I'm just saying...
I've never seen a gay porno movie, but just looking at this action photo from the NY Times, I'm thinking that if you remove the uniforms, the postures and facial expressions seem just about right...and you know schilling, he always wants to be in the middle of things...
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October 28, 2007
October 26, 2007
IT'S A PROJECT
CLICK HERE TO SEE GLORIOUS SLAB OF SWAMP ASH
(you may wish to right-click/open in new window/tab)
...the grain insane twangs mainly on the...
first you glop a bunch of oil-based wood filler on the surface...sound it down as flat as possible...then glop and sand...then glop and sand again....the start spraying stuff...
one hit of sand & sealer...
it's on...
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October 24, 2007
WE LOVE HIM TOO
“He is a friend for life, and the relationship we have shared has helped shape me in ways that transcend the game of baseball. His class, dignity, and the way he respected those around him — from ballplayers to batboys — are all qualities that are easy to admire, but difficult to duplicate. I have known Mr. Torre for a good majority of my adult life, and there has been no bigger influence on my professional development. It was a privilege to play for him on the field, and an honor to learn from him off the field.”
--Derek Jeter, in a press statement released today regarding Joe Torre.
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October 23, 2007
THE GREAT ONE
...kissing bug boogie, whatever that is...
if you want to see perhaps the greatest telecaster player ever, certainly the first (he and his partner, pedal steel player speedy west, also seen/heard here, were the very first fender endorsees), check out the instrumental break starting at 1:33. that is, unless you're a big tennessee ernie ford fan, in which case sit back and let 'er rip...
his name is jimmy bryant. the guitar you're hearing is a very early fender telecaster, played through a very early fender tube amp...all that and matching cowboy shirts...
...
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October 22, 2007
GUITAR HERO ALERT
...easy, right?...
today's multimedia youtube offering features a cat who totally baffled me when I first got a hold of his first instructional video...one part chet atkins, one part jazz standards wonk, and one part tele specialist as per gatton, buchanan, lee, mason, bryant, nichols, donahue, etc., his technique is flawless and the output is dizzying...but after a few years of banging around some of these ideas--spending time with chet atkins arrangements certainly helped--it's starting to look less and less like egyptian hieroglyphics...and since I full intend on ripping off as much as I can from him, it's only fair that I give him a little feature on my twangy little weblog...
his style--atkins-influenced, rockabilly-informed, vintage country template featuring lots of jazz standards--played on a telecaster--is a significant part of the inspiration for the current tele build. I'm shooting for a tone that's in this ballpark, with perhaps a bit more oomph and jangle...
his name is Scotty Anderson. give him a listen...
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"A WORD A DAY" ADDRESSES A MOTHER'S BROKEN HEART DEPT.
[from today's "a word a day" emailer}
A reader wrote:
Dear Anu,
Some time ago I wrote to ask if there was a word in any language for
a parent who has lost a child. My husband and I lost our son in the
insane war in Iraq. You sent me a kind reply saying no. I am submitting
this Pennsylvania-Dutch word, zeitlang, I found in the paper:
http://ap.lancasteronline.com/4/pa_exchange_amish_shooting
I shared it with some other Gold Star families who liked the word and
description. Yesterday was Gold Star Mothers Day*. I hate it. Everyone
in the family is suffering, not just the mother. I like the sound of this
Pennsylvania-Dutch word, perhaps because of my German heritage. So my
family, my brothers and sisters in sorrow and I remain forever zeitlangers.
Sincerely,
Diane Davis Santoriello
Proud mother of 1st Lt. Neil A. Santoriello KIA 9-13-04
(dianesantoriello at hotmail.com)
The English language has the largest vocabulary of any language but there
are moments when all those hundreds of thousands of words in a dictionary
might as well be random scribblings with little meaning. We can't find a
single word to describe what tugs at our hearts.
Pennsylvania Dutch is a dialect of German spoken by 17/18th century migrants
from south Germany and Switzerland who had settled in Pennsylvania. The word
Dutch here is a variant spelling of Deutsch (German language). Zeitlang in
German means "while" (from Zeit: time + lang: long). The sense mentioned
in the newspaper article is not found in German, but that doesn't mean one
can't extend it. After all, that's one of the ways a language grows. And what
good is a language if it can't give voice to our deepest sorrows and joys?
shit, sometimes language is the only thing left...I like this word. it provides a balance to some words we already know. words like: tyrant, despot, autocrat, absolutist, tycoon, oligarch, martinet, paper tiger, hollow man, empty suit, torturer, liar, coward...you know, words that might be used to describe the late Lt. Santoriello's former commander-in-chief...
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October 19, 2007
SO LONG, SKIP
...O Captain! My Captain!...
Letting him go is a mistake. Let's face it, with the young pitching they have in Chamberlain, Hughes and Wang, I could manage the Yankees next year...
Mattingly, Girardi, even LaRussa, it hardly matters...let's see who wants to be made to please the court of the Dauphins Steinbrenner...
I'm not being sentimental. Torre just brought an underachieving team of directionless veterans to the playoffs...he couldn't pitch those games himself. Should he have rested Wang? Brought stronger bug spray? Is the current condition of the club really so unsatisfactory as to let go one of the winningest managers in history? Let's face it, if Torre hadn't done such a good job, if they'd finished in 3rd place, or worse, we wouldn't just be watching him move on--we'd be talking about who's going to replace Brian Cashman right now...I only hope that in six months we aren't talking about who w're going to get to replace Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte or Jorge Posada...
Joe Torre managed us past the Braves in '96, managed one of the best lineups in MLB history in '98, with a WS sweep, humbled the Mets in '00, and was with us during the high drama and heartbreak of '01...I'm satisfied. And oh yes, most of the time, he beat the Red Sox.
RESPECT.
[post press conf follow-up: the dauphins steinbrenner made no move to negotiate, gave no sign that torre was indeed wanted....very pussy...too worried about the negatives surrounding a blunt dismissal of such a highly-competent man, who unlike themselves, actually had to work hard in his life to achieve what he did...good thing the season is over because right now the yankees disgust me...]
...
this is the stuff that reranch sells for filling and leveling open-grained woods like swamp ash. I'm using the one on the left: "natural"...this is why fender sprays its off-the-rack guitars with plastic polyurethane goop--because it takes many somewhat tedious steps (unless you're brain damaged like me and perversely enjoy working with the natural wood) to get the grain cavities filled in, surface sanded then blocked off with sand & sealer compound, before you can even start applying a single color coat of lacquer. you think priming an interior wall surface is a pain? well it is, but mainly because rooms are big. believe me, if living room walls began as raw swamp ash, very few of us would have a "deep" "glassy" perfectly flat surface gleaming from behind the couch...but I've now finished/re-finished and built five fender-style instruments (two strats, two teles and a jazz bass)...this one ought to manifest improvements--professional grade, custom shop quality ought to announce itself in both sight and sound...should it not? yes well, it all starts with a petroleum distillate goop application which is stinky, messy and painstaking...
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let me bury this one--it doesn't merit its own post, but I find that I am holistically and empirically disenchanted with the new Radiohead album, "In Rainbows"...I've been a big fan for a while now, even met them backstage during the "OK Computer" tour when my friends Teenage Fanclub had the opening slot (nice chaps, all). Brilliant, brilliant recording artists. the sort of musical enterprise that makes me want to hear what they came up with in the studio each and every time, as the promise of greatness always outweighs the possibility of failure--and so far, their batting average has been exemplary, to my ears....I dug "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" (or "Kid B" as I liked to call it)...and was a big supporter of "Hail to the Thief"...but this one, pardon my french, basically sucks (come to think of it, Thom Yorke's solo "eraser" record left me similarly disinterested, but that was just the singer's one-off, right? Still, I count exactly one uptempo song that raises my pulse even a fraction (track two, if it matters). I had this thing on my ipod for days, waiting for that eventual run-through when the light bulb went off and spiritual sparks flew and my walking tempo fell into sync with the drumming. but that never happened...one reason might be a certain symptom I've found befalls many a major label artist--they forget to mix up their tempos. this album, to me, is one long series of rewrites of the same song, or to be fair--same formula. start with some sequenced drums, layer in some guitars and/or vintage synths (Jonny Greenwood still commands our respect and awe when it comes to pure soundcraft), and then Thom Yorke's familiar bleating...what? huh? weird fishes? oh right. so non-linear. you must be a fucking genius and I'm just an old fart who likes loud noises and shiny objects...
every few years something arrives to clear away the crap....in the late 70s, punk rock kept the forces of disco and hobbit metaphors and "progressive" radio and middle-aged hippycraft at bay...the 80s saw the influx of hardcore and great indie bands sufficient to the task of drowning out the flocks of seagulls...the 90s was a time when some of the indie bands went somewhat mainstream and there just seemed to be a lot of everything at once, as file sharing and downloads began the slow death of the CD...fast forward to present day, when I'd formerly thought that Radiohead was one of the last truly great bands with cool records, an engaging live show and something to say...but this latest one, I feel will be remembered more for its marketing strategy than its music. I disagree with the mainly positive reviews I've seen from the host of phone-it-in record reviewers who are clearly more in love with the idea of Radiohead than they are interested in the business of meting out objective commentary regarding what is, in essence, an incredibly boring listening experience. but one nice aspect of having lived through times like the punk explosion or the indie revolution is that you have a ready supply of good records for times like these when even the standard-bearers start to sound a little stale and there are scant few around to take up the charge of greatness (if the arcade fire or modest mouse or the decemberists are the best one could hope for, that's a rather depressing thought)...they're not as fresh as when they first arrived, but they still have that aspect that is so missing in today's disappointment du jour: they're fun.
so what'll it be today? rocket to russia? meat puppets II? zen arcade? repeater? daydream nation? how about roger the engineer? sure why not. anything but the latest trifle from the world's greatest band...
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October 17, 2007
DAVE'S BOTTOM BITCH
...thudstaff INDEED...
I've been wanting to show this one off for a while now...I haven't made time to get the internal pickup connections sorted out, but all the cavities are shielded with copper tape, so that's just a fun little afternoon exercise waiting to happen. now that I've started the tele project with the first application of grain filler (!), I expect I'll be down in the studio more regularly...this particular instrument is my first ever fender bass build, and I'm pretty proud of the results: reranch trans orange lacquer, with about 15-20 coats of clear, wet sanded and polished...the grain on the one-piece swamp ash body looks DEEP...and I have yet to throw a strap on it, but just picking it up, it feels light and resonant...the pickups are duncan antiquities...all black hardware, with the trad jazz bass bridge. maple neck with rosewood slab, gen-u-ine celluloid tortoise pickguard . not much more to tell...bass guitars, for all their size and grandeur, are fairly simple pieces of technology. the only complicated thing, the electronics, is exactly what I'd been procrastinating on...so there you have it, about to be born--another magnificent bastard turned out by the pclef workshop of tone slabbery...
oh yes my droogies, hit that pop-up image for an eyeful....(opening in a new window or tab seems to work best for me--ymmv)....
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October 15, 2007
OLD TIMEY GUITAR PORN
...oh lawd I been changed...(click the pic)
came across this old jpg from about four years ago...thought I'd throw up a pop-up...the natural finish strat (a '74) is now refinished in lake placid blue metallic nitro, with chrome lipstick tube pickups and a flame maple neck w/brazilian rosewood slab...the neck is in the pic was also a replacement, but that eventually went to my humbucker-loaded frankenstrat...the then-esquire's black body was replaced with a fiesta red swamp ash body (I started upgrading a fender tele, converting it at first to a one-pickup (harmonic design super 90) esquire, and I ultimately "replaced" everything, piece by piece, ending up with a proper telecaster --when I added a seymour duncan antiquity, installed in the neck position, it became a telecaster again. the chandler lap steel remains stock to this day...
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LISTEN YOU
...a wide stance on the issues...
Tremendous weekend—short(ish) session at a bloody good record, recorded four songs with just solo acoustic guitar. Sitting in front of a Neumann M-147, a Royer 121 ribbon mic and an AKG 451, running those signals through daking and great river boxes, listening to it played back, is damn humbling. It’s like listening to one’s own breathing but every little bit of spittle and phlegm is echoing and reverberating like the grand canyon. I’m not entirely satisfied with my performance—one of the four is perhaps ok but net result is that I’m ever more determined to refine my abilities to where I can meet the high tolerances of this sort of gear and send these out into the world without blemish, and hopefully a bit of musicality and swing…thinking of posting one or two of them here on the site…
Reunion with old high school buddy. Great guy, very nice to reacquaint with someone who knows me so long, and who doesn’t require too much explanation. And his retold memories often impacted along the lines of “oh. Yeah. That’s what I was like…” this, and much laughter, and he finally got to meet my wife and child. It doesn’t get much better…the neighborhood is filling up with Halloween decorations. The weather is just starting to turn. I love this time of year.
I sprayed one coat of clear lacquer on the new tele body, just to “lock it in.” when the reranch supplies arrive, I’ll start with grain filler. Hopefully by the coming weekend I’ll be done with surface prep and moving on to color coats…assuming the shipment arrives. This company uses yahoo shipping, which is totally weak, because who thinks, right before ordering something, ooh ooh I’d better log into yahoo? But then you can’t receive any shipping information once it’s in transit…
thought about, and rejected, the idea of installing a bridge with piezo "acoustic" pickups built in. it might be fun, and sound cool, but you want to know the real reason? it costs $170. that's a whole lot of bread, for something that really doesn't sound "acoustic" at all...
Downloaded the new Radiohead. Pretty cool. I’m more fond of the new Weakerthans actually. Fits my mood of late, and good songs. Radiohead’s getting a bit—how shall I say?-- operatic, I suppose, for my tastes…then again maybe it’s just a grower not a shower…
Lost my ATM card while hanging with the homey…drag. Takes 5-7 biz days just to replace…meanwhile, I need the damn thing! City living is fueled by plastic, no two ways about it…I guess this puts a little delay on the next tele-related purchases. I’d meant to space them out, now I have to…
Bill Cosby on “Meet the Press” kicked some serious ass yesterday. What a nice change—instead of listening to a bunch of overpaid political science majors screech and preen over the style points of the candidates, MTP aired a full hour of two serious men discussing a serious issue, with substantive ideas, contrarian, common sense attitudes, and high intelligence. The aforementioned cliché-mongering politicos might even have described it as “raising the bar.” If I thought any of the people they were hectoring for change even watched MTP, I might even think of it as a public service…
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October 12, 2007
MYSTERY TRAIN
here's another photoshop sketch, the only difference being that I'll still have the trad ashtray bridge...
me likey...
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October 11, 2007
LITTLE BITS OF BAKERSFIELD
well I looked and looked for a jpg of a blonde tele with no pickguard and came up empty, so with a little help from photoshop, here's the updated sketch of the tele project goal....I "filled in" the pickguard to get the sense that it's all wood, and plopped a cream p-90 over the standard neck pickup. it doesn't get much simpler than this...but if this enables me to combine the year or so I spent working on jazz standards, the summer I've spent working on chet atkins / merle travis / tommy emmanuel style thumpick/fingerstyle, along with the residual choppery informed by years of high volume les paul and stratocaster abuse, this might just turn out to be just the ticket. and let me tell you--the grain on the body I just bought is gorgeous...it ought to really pop through the finish beautifully...
now I just need a perfectly shaped stick of hard rock maple...and some tasty magnets...
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A SHREW HAVING SOME MEDIA FUN WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT DEPT.
If you are one of the many who is understandably outraged by Ann Coulter’s recent comments regarding the viewpoint of Christians that Worldwide Jewry need be “perfected,” then I join you in your outrage but cannot sympathize with any shock or surprise you may feel at these comments. I imagine that if you call yourself a Christian as well, then this must have an added sting. That is, unless you are a Christian who holds no illusions about the history and practice of the faith you profess. Because the fact is that Ms. Coulter was expressing something that can indeed be traced back to the Christian churches’ practices, policies and official edicts going back centuries and leading right up to the present day.
Raising the specter of the Crusades barely registers a nod these days, since the events are nearly a millennium old, and we no longer send our armies into the Middle East to sort out religious, territorial and resource-related disputes. Right? Oops. But what of the 19th century? The pogroms against the Jews in Europe, particularly Russia, killed thousands and sent so many more from their homes into poverty and disenfranchisement. Too far back, you say? This practice continued into the early 20th century. Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times (Ms. Coulter’s favorite paper) from 1903:
"The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia (modern Moldova), are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Orthodox Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, "Kill the Jews," was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47-48] and the injured about 500. The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babies were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews."
The mob was led by priests. Perfected indeed. We do not need argue over the relativist relationship between Hitler and the Church of Rome, nor do we need mention the 1929 Lateran Treaties, whereby the Church ensured its own survival by allowing Mussolini to reign terror on its parishioners. No, these would have only tangential reference to an attitude permissive toward the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Not as if Mussolini and Hitler had any connection.
What I find truly fascinating in all this (and more than a little bit depressing) is how one can trace the real source of religion’s power to functional illiteracy. That, and monarchy/dictatorship, a form of government with which the Catholic Church, for one, had a very direct participatory role for centuries. Cheap shot, you might say—that was oh so long ago. What can we point to in the modern era, which would rebut the judgments precipitated by these unattractive eras of Church rule? I’d suggest we look to modern situations where the Church behaves with impunity, i.e. without any overriding authority to place limits on its influence. One simple example might be the USA, where a fundamentalist Christian President looks the other way, as his fellow confessors violate the church/state divide proscribed in the Constitution to denounce civil leadership, even endorsing specific candidates who hew to their particular philosophy, all the while retaining their tax-free status as a “church.”
Another example: Rwanda. After years of poo-poo and oh that’s a shame by the thousands of parents whose children hadn’t been raped, the Catholic laiety would seem to be returning to business as usual, as the news items recede into memory. But during all that time of flinty embarrassment, I never heard a single Catholic (I know many) mention the Church’s active support for the side doing all the killing in Rwanda. The bishops there were not only there as witnesses to the genocide, they actively gave lip service and endorsement to the parties doing the killing, who were after all of the same denomination. Nor does it get the press it deserves over spreading lies about condoms and AIDS in Africa. Africa, where no press ventures, from whence no headlines come, where the Church still has a profound influence on a large, mostly illiterate populace. Unchecked power, and you can make of the results what you will, but the facts are plain to see. So please spare us all the rebuttal that the wrongdoings of religion are part of history and not still a significant force shaping current events.
Yes, you may even allow that these points have some weight, but what of Coulter and all those soon-to-be perfected Jews? Well then, what of the functional illiteracy of one who would read a book by Ann Coulter? The fact is, I’ve barely hinted at the enormity of the myriad atrocities against worldwide Jewry that Christianity has committed (paging Mel Gibson). If I attempted to type them all out, I’d be here all day. So Ann Coulter, as false prophets go, is top-tier, a self-made millionaire who preys on the ignorant and gets rich doing it (a familiar ring, yes?). We might imagine her statement coming from someone like Ahmadinejad without qualification. But sitting as she is, so closely to so many of us, it’s not quite as easy to find the comfortable distance, it it? Donny Deutsch, to whom she made the original observation, claimed this morning that he’s declaring this particular style of messaging to be “over.” Thank you O lord of the metrosexuals. I can tell you from my own professional perspective that folks in ad agencies make such absolutist declarations every day of the week. Just as the church does, or folks like Ms. Coulter do (they know that if the notion takes hold, then the belief, perforce, becomes the perceived reality). But saying doesn’t make it so. Ms. Coulter quite obviously moves well outside his immediate orbit of influence, only swooping down on occasion to sell some books (and boost his ratings/profile). She can be indicted for many lies and misstatements and ought to be held more accountable. But in summarizing the basic postulates of modern Christianity as per its historic attitudes toward the Jews and Judaism, she is dead-on, 100% accurate.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
"It's so way beyond that. I'm like awash in the glow of the wonder of the resilience of the human spirit and the fucking mystery of existence. It's fucking sick."
--Cris Kirkwood, in this week's Onion, on his recovery from heroin addiction, incarceration and his return to The Meat Puppets, one of the great unsung bands of my lifetime. With parallel input from his brother and bandmate Curt, it's a great interview...
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October 10, 2007
BLONDES HAVE MORE FUN?
...let there be no doubt that this object came from a tree...
good news today...the reranch store re-opened for business, so I put in my order for the lacquer and grain filler I'll need to get this body finished and ready for assembly...and nice timing since last night the body arrived from usa custom...I like those guys. they have more of a small business, be nice to customers vibe than their larger corporate competitor at warmoth. I just wish their prices were a bit more competitive. then again, it's all customized to tolerances of a hundredth of an inch...and you know what they say about getting what you pay for...
forward! we begin surface prep on the morrow! ...at least, once the stuff gets to my house...I just thought that sounded good...
in male friendship news, I seem to be on a bit of an easy downhill section of this journey...looking forward to an always-enjoyable recording session this weekend, with my man mark at his world famous recording studio, and coming along most likely will be perhaps my oldest non-family friend, chris, who I haven't seen in perhaps a decade--so what do we do? we go to a place where I'll be locked in an iso booth for five hours....that's ok, then we'll head back for a (rainy?) bbq and a catch-up...and perhaps most significantly I touched base with senor thudstaff this week after 8 weeks of angry silencio...one of those friendships where fallings-out tend to happen every once and again...but this time there've been significant areas of concern which have little to do with me...so I wish him strength and fortitude in his recovery, and his recovering...
so then, the pictures above and below show a vintage blonde fender finish on a custom shop telecaster. below is a closer look. this is about what I'll be shooting for with mine. but the neck pickup will be different, and I might not even bother with a pickguard--yes dear reader I've abandoned the goldtop/stain/bindings les paul approach...for now...I think the blonde will be simple, traditional, and I'm looking forward to aging it beyond its years...
on the morrow!
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October 09, 2007
I'M NOT DOWN
..wait 'til next year...
If it's true a rich man leads a sad life
That's what they say, from day to day
Then what do the poor do with their lives?
On judgment day, with nothin' to say?
I've been beat up, I've been thrown out
But I'm not down, oh I'm not down
I've been shown up, but I've grown up
And I'm not down, oh I'm not down
On my own I faced a gang of jeering
In strange streets
When my nerves were pumping out
I fought my fear in, I didn't run
I was not done
I've been beat up, I've been thrown out
But I'm not down, no I'm not down
I've been shown up, but I've grown up
And I'm not down, no I'm not down
So I have lived, that kind of day
When none of your sorrows will go away
Go down and down and hit the floor
Down and down and down some more
Depression
But I know, there'll be some way
When I can swing everything back my way
Like skyscrapers, rising up
Floor by floor, I'm not giving up
So you rock around and think that
You're the toughest
In the world, the whole wide world
But you're streets away from where
It gets the roughest
You ain't been there
I've been beat up, I've been thrown out
But I'm not down, no I'm not down
I've been shown up, but I've grown up
And I'm not down, no I'm not down
"I'm Not Down" by The Clash (Strummer/Jones)
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October 06, 2007
WHAT WAS I THINKING
...determining the color of my parachute...
thinking about the upcoming build...at some point subsequent to the eleborate and time-consuming step of applying grain fill (which I am perversely looking forward to), I'll be spraying some color lacquer on the body. up to today I'd expected, without any second guessing, that my needs would be rather simple--a simple fender blonde finish. semi-transparent, vintage-approved, as per early 50s specs. it's a color that ages well, would show off the grain of the one-piece body nicely, and it is one of the easier colors to apply. I did a butterscotch blonde tele last year, and it came out great. . a few color coats of blonde lacquer, then about a dozen coats of clear coat and it's basically done-choose a pickguard, probably white or tortoise shell, have it cut for the soapbar then screw & solder...but then I noticed something. the one-piece body lacks the open channel--the gaping cavity which is where the pickup leads travel to the output--it is this very opening which makes a pickguard mandatory. but now that's merely a cosmetic option. interesting. and since I instructed that the neck pickup route be made large enough to accomodate a P-90 (in place of the small chrome neck pickup that fender teles usually have), it suddenly seems like I'm heading in a less traditional direction.
so, allowing that I might very well leave off the pickguard, what then is this guitar going to look like?
without a pickguard in the center, there isn't a visual anchor to set off what is basically a simple semi-transparent stain. "blonde" is basically a white wash with a yellow/gold tinge (which becomes more visible over time). so what now: options.
the picture is my quickie photoshop rendering of what might happen. I'm now getting a bit fancier, with a gibson-approved goldtop finish. I've always loved the look of a goldtop with a cream-cover P-90. I'm not about to come into possession of a goldtop les paul any time soon. so perhaps this would register as a sidelong homage to the other genius invention of early electric guitar craft--the '52 les paul, whose debut occurred within a year or two of the telecaster's (and which typically was presented with a goldtop finish and two P-90 pickups with cream covers). we'll see, maybe I'll shoot the top gold and the rest of it blonde. or some other trans tint to show off the grain on the back and sides, with the top opaque. maybe add a strip of binding around the perimeter....it could be a very sharp-looking instrument...and hey, scotty moore played a goldtop...
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October 03, 2007
SWAMP ASH
...a bell is a cup until it is struck...
well it's just a piece of wood now but in a few months it's going to sing for its supper and bark at the moon...
new baby, new guitar, it's that simple...
when caroline arrived I built a white stratocaster as commemoration and it's served me well...I'll honor the little man with a telecaster....infancy and guitar-building work in tandem pretty well. you do a little bit each day, the gradual process is relentless but does have its share of down time, whether it's a coat of lacquer drying or a nap. and, of course, both cry...
(and in about a year's time, both learn how to talk)
starting things off with a 4-pound one-piece slab of twangy and toneful swamp ash.
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October 01, 2007
A LIFE WELL LIVED
Oonah Buckley Clarke
March 16,1941 - October 1, 1998
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