Post festival blues

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Photo: © G L Wilson, 2011

Please forgive the lateness of today's blog post. I've been at Guilfest all weekend, and haven't long returned home after a long journey. (The weekend's blog posts in my name were scheduled beforehand on Friday). On Saturday, the act that struck me the most was Alice Gold (pictured above). She normally performs with a band, but her bassist was involved in a motoring accident (and is thankfully OK), so she decided to play a solo set - just voice and guitar - and she was brilliant. Thanks to David, my brother in law, for the recommendation!

Another highspot of the day was watching Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel who actually finished their set with their biggest hit, "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)", a song which I heard he rarely plays live - or else does a reggae version. The acoustic guitar solo played by Robbie Gladwell brought a tear to the eye. Fantastic!

Photo: © G L Wilson, 2011

Sunday's highlight, for me, was Public Image Ltd. John Lydon was on good form and supplied the quote of the weekend with, "It's nice to see so many children. Your children are safe with Johnny..." Guitar duties were taken by Lu Edmonds, who played electric saz on several songs and on "The Flowers of Romance" also employed what looked like a 12-string banjo played with a bow.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Sad news: "Würzel", former Motörhead guitarist, reportedly dead at 61

guitarz.blogspot.com:

For today I was planning on doing a small piece about a couple of custom guitars as used by Motörhead. However, it's with a kind of sad irony that another Motörhead-related story has turned up; believe me, I'd much rather be blogging about the guitars.

According to various sources such as the Motörhead online forum and Facebook, former Motörhead guitarist Michael "Würzel" Burston died yesterday (Saturday, July 9).

The guitarist had recently been working on new material with his new band, Leader of Down, who had previously announced the release of their debut single for early 2010.

For more information see here.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Adam Ant plays his telecaster

guitarz.blogspot.com

The previous post suddenly awoke in me the strong urge to show to all of you the magnificent Adam and the Ants in their time of glory, and maybe reveal something beautiful to some people who were not teenagers in the 80s in the UK!

bertram

  Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Tony Peluso, RIP

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Sad news. Tony Peluso has died aged 60 of heart disease. He'll probably be best remembered for that classic solo and outro in The Carpenters' "Goodbye To Love" (above).

Carpenters lead guitarist Tony Peluso dies (Yahoo News)

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Mike Cooley of Drive By Truckers and his weird Tele

guitarz.blogspot.com:

You know what I'm like. I see a weird guitar and I just have to identify it. So, last night I was watching Later... with Jools Holland which had Drive By Truckers among the studio guests. Of course, my eye was caught by the guitar being played by the singer/guitarist Mike Cooley. As can be seen in the photo opposite, it's a Tele-style guitar with a droopy-looking lower horn.

It turns out that this guitar was built by Scott Baxendale, who has also built several other guitars for Drive By Truckers. The guy's got quite an impressive CV in the world of guitar restoration and building, having worked for Mossman Guitars, Gruhn Guitars, Hard Rock Cafe among others and having been responsible for the care and maintenance of the Grand Ole Opry Museum collection. His clientele also includes Steve Howe, Henry Rollins, Tito and Tarantula, The Vines, The Blasters, Jason Isbell, Centromatic, Shooter Jennings, Hank III, Charlie Louvin, Jorma Kaukonen, Butch Walker, Rilo Kiley, The Black Crowes, The North Missippi All Stars, Booker T. Jones, Mick Jones, Franz Ferdinand, Justin Townes Earle... the list goes on and on! (Although I thought Booker T. was a Hammond organ player?)

By the way, I'm not sure who to credit for the photo reproduced here. I found it here and apologise in advance for borrowing it but it does illustrate my post quite nicely.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Devo's Bob Mothersbaugh and the Blue Potato guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

As a big fan of Devo I am excited that they are releasing new material for the first time in 20 years, and from what I've heard already it sounds like classic Devo!

I was also pleased to see that guitarist Bob Mothersbaugh is once again using the Ibanez "Blue Potato" guitar that he lost and was later reunited with. You know how we love wacky guitars here on Guitarz, and Bob's one-off Blue Potato is one of my own very favourites.

Watch Devo performing "Fresh" here.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) and Travis Bean aluminium-necked guitars

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Here's a recent email from Gary:

I've been a religious follower of your blog the past couple years and I have a problem here that I'm sure you're used to getting millions of e-mails a day about. I've attached some pictures of a guitar played by Stephen O'Malley of Sunn O))) and many other droney, experimentaly type projects. Note the T-shaped cutout on the headstock. It also appears that it has an aluminum bolt-on neck with a large tongue that fits into the body. And are the strings through the body and into the tongue (essentially the neck itself)? I don't see myself as anything close to an expert on guitar design but couldn't that offer some massive sustain? I recently bet a friend of mine that I could find out what it was before him so any help whatsoever would be greatly appreciated. And any insights you might have into the guitars design (like me being ridiculously wrong for example) would be awesome.

Hi Gary

It's a Travis Bean - which were a forerunner to the metal-necked Kramers. You are quite correct about the construction of the guitar and yes - they are known for their massive sustain.

See the Guitarz archives for a Travis Bean "display guitar" (that looks cruelly butchered) and a little bit of info.

There's also a TB1000S on eBay right now:

Thin Lizzy's Brian Robertson can be seen playing a Travis Bean in some of the band's videos from the 1970s. I'm pretty sure that Bill Wyman played a Travis Bean bass in the Stones for a while too.

G L Wilson

NB: Please make sure you are reading this Guitarz post at guitarz.blogspot.com and not on a Scraper blog that copies posts without permission (and steals bandwidth) so as to profit from advertising. Please support original bloggers!

NIN Epiphone Les Paul Gothic

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Nine Inch Nails have created an eBay account especially to sell off their old stage gear - guitars, keyboards, amplifiers, drums, staging, anvil cases, cables, rack/outboard gear, guitar effects, pedal boards, etc. Some items are in working condition and some items, such as this Epiphone Les Paul Gothic, are trashed.

Who in their right mind would pay over $400 for a broken Epiphone Les Paul? Oh... Nine Inch Nails fans. Without the NIN connection, it's worth just a fraction of that. Looking through their past sales there are broken Gibson and Epiphone Les Pauls that have sold for thousands. Crazy!

It's sad really. People are bidding on this (admittedly, not very exciting) guitar, not so they can repair it and make it playable again, but as a NIN souvenir.

I can feel a rant coming on. Isn't trashing your instruments on stage a bit of hoary old cliché now? I find it incredible that bands insist on resorting to such tired worn-out "shock tactics". Even Pete Townshend seems embarrassed by it these days.

I can understand bands want to put on an incredible show, to create a spectacle, but come on... use your imaginations!!! Let's see something NEW and different and exciting. Hell, you could even amaze and excite us with some incredible musicianship! Ever thought of that?

Trashing instruments is up there alongside on-stage nudity and self-abuse as the tired old clichés designed to shock which any self-respecting artists should avoid. Is that really the best they can do?

G L Wilson

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Play that guitar, mouse man!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I've been looking for this almost surreal clip ever since I first saw it on The Jack Docherty Show back in 1997. It's David Bowie performing "Scary Monsters" in a stripped down 4-piece band situation.

Kudos to Reeves Gabrels for being able to play the guitar in that mouse mask! As I remember it, the mouse costume had been featured in an un-related item earlier in the programme.

Anyone know what Parker Fly model it is that Gabrels is playing? Looks custom to me.

Watch the video here (embedding has been disabled so I can't link in the usual way).

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!