10.25.09
Posted in Instruments at 6:40 pm by Administrator
…a friend of mine sent me this photo….
That is,left to right, Guy singing on the Silvertone Amp,Sarah playing the Silvertone Jazzmaster copy (Guy’s guitar,I think),Rob on my Dad’s Ludwig Drums (check out the size of the bass drum..and the tom had the skin riveted on so the only way to tune it was by moving a flame over it) and me on the Lafayette. My other sister Wendy would join us a little later…Sarah would wind up on keyboards,Rob would switch to guitar,Wendy took over on guitar from me and I wound up on bass..with the amazing Steve White holding down the drums.
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10.18.09
Posted in Instruments at 7:13 pm by Administrator
We started working with a great Metro D.C. area drummer named Dodi.He was a true rock star..100% attitude but with the talent to back it up. And like most rock stars,he had a passion for all things in the lifestyle…and he loved guitars;he would buy and sell and trade them. Because of this hobby,we wound up having some interesting guitars on stage…I had two alternate basses from his collection,one of which was the Dan Armstrong clear body:
The other bass was an 8 string bass made by Hamer:
There was also a Fender 12 String Coronado that Roy or Mike played:
The other guitars were fairly standard_Rob:Black Les Paul (left handed),Mike:Telecaster,Roy:Strat.
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09.25.09
Posted in Instruments at 12:38 am by Administrator
It’s hard to believe that September is almost over. I’ve been searching though my memory to try to tie up some “loose ends” as far as the “late early period” of gear. There was definitely some construction involved,as we made some guitar cabinets out of actual cabinets and we somehow wound up with an almost full fledged P.A. system. Things didn’t really pick up steam until a few years later when we found ourselves stateside. It was time for me to have my own bass..so I picked up a Gibson Thunderbird.
I’m guessing that my brother influenced me with this purchase..it is a totallllly boss design and sounds great..similar in tone to the “trebly” character of the Rickenbacker bass. The huge drawback is that it is weighted so that the neck is heavier than the body,thus making it necessary to hold it up with the hand that is fingering the frets..and that can really cramp your rock moves.
This bass was rocked out through an Ampeg SVT Head with an SVT “8 x 12″ speaker cabinet….complete overkill for 98% of the gigs that we were playing. The head alone weighed around 100 lbs…and of course we had it in a road case. This beast put out massive volume (360 watts RMS for you tech heads) and never failed.
We had become friends with a great band called “Captain Tunes and his Note Guns” that was playing one of the clubs in St. Thomas. Ralph Damann was the bass player and he had hand made his bass…he was a fantastic luthier as well as an amazing bassist. I talked Ralph in to building me a bass..it was a work of art. Unfortunately, I never got totally comfortable with the tone and,much to my regret,traded it in……after my brother excitedly brought a 1965 Fender Precision Bass to band practice that I fell in love with. I still have this bass…and I’ll have a photo and a little background on it next.
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08.30.09
Posted in Instruments at 5:02 pm by Administrator
..I was stuck in Connecticut for two years with only a 12 string guitar,one that was virtually unplayable. My parents had bought it for me and really made a point of asking me if it was a decent guitar..which I assured them it was..and it was..for about 5 minutes. After that,the distance between the strings and the fretboard required a superhuman strength to just play a chord.
But by the time I discovered this, I was in Connecticut…
Outside of the cafeteria at the school,there was a spinet piano.
Now..we grew up with a Steinway Baby Grand piano in our house…my father and mother were both amazing musicians and my two sisters took piano lessons early on (but not from my mother who was the music teacher at school). Piano always seemed intimidating (and not as cool as guitar) so I never had much interest in learning to play it. But I needed to play something that wasn’t going to permanently cripple my left hand or I was going to lose my mind. So I started out plunking a little every day until the layout and the chord possibilities started
to slowly make sense. The first song that I could play all the way through was ” A Whiter Shade Of Pale” by Procol Harum, one of my favorite songs (and records). Of course,my fingering was completely wrong but it was the beginning of my “keyboard” journey…and a whole new area of “gear lust”.
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Posted in Instruments at 4:35 pm by Administrator
As we all made our way through high school,my brother and sisters and I spent some of our years in the states which made it difficult to keep the family band ( with drummer Steve White) intact.
So,at the age of 12, my sister Wendy put together an all girl band with her pals Jessie and Cameron. Says Wendy:
“We eventually decided to add a guy to the group who could actually sing and play lead (he had an SG – way cool). He insisted that we have a Theme Song, just like the Monkees, so we called ourselves Nucleus. Still remember the chorus to our “Theme Song”
“Hey hey swingers, one and all
we’re a brand new group, wer’re the center of it all
Nuuuuuuu – cleous!”
Unfortunately, no known photos or recordings of Nucleus remain.
Please contact me if you have access to any of these.
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08.28.09
Posted in Instruments at 9:30 pm by Administrator
Somewhere around the end of high school, we wound up with a white telecaster that my sister Wendy played.
We also wound up with a Wurlitzer electric piano that my sister Sara played…or was it a Rhodes? I’m pretty sure that we bought it from Steve Boone of The Lovin’ Spoonful who happened to be playing in a band there at the time. I think that Rob was playing the aforementioned SG and I wound up with a borrowed Gibson EB3.
I know that we bought a bass amp from Steve that he had toured with..the Mighty Magnatone. This thing was serious…I think that he told me he toured with two of them.
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Posted in Instruments at 4:37 pm by Administrator
..that came through were an inspiration,musically and of course,gear wise. There were quite a few clubs for such a small island (approx.13×2 miles) and lots of bands were more than willing to come down over a Christmas or summer holiday for an adventure in the sun. We had a Grand Funk Railroad cover band,a few top 40 bands and a hard rocking group called the Masque who eventually became Orleans/Buffalongo. (The G.F.R. cover band played in a great bar called Duffy’s in Creque’s Alley,both of which are immortalized in a song by The Mamas and the Papas).
We saw all kinds of cool guitars (Les Pauls,Flying V’s) and most of the bands had some kind of keyboard (Wurli/Rhodes/Hammond)….
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08.27.09
Posted in Instruments at 11:16 pm by Administrator
Matt,Steve and Rob
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Posted in Instruments at 11:09 pm by Administrator
..as we start to head into the REALLY cool instruments. Rob kicked it into high gear with the purchase of a Les Paul TV Model for $ 65.
I thought that Rob’s guitar had only one knob….I do remember that the sound of this guitar had an extremely high “Holy Sh*t!” quality going for it. Rob traded this guitar in for two other guitars,a Melody Maker and a Gibson SG…and he gave me the Melody Maker for my birthday..that was some great year.
(Imagine the red guitar without the pickguard.)
I seem to remember a lot of trading around of things….
(A quick search on Ebay lists the TV model as currently going for $ 4,000 to $ 24,000.)
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Posted in Instruments at 5:35 pm by Administrator
..a little backtracking…
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the amp at our first actual “band” gig..it was a pool party at Guy Jackson’s house. Guy was the singer and he had an amp that we used for the P.A. system.
He was very cool but didn’t want to sing after that gig. His house was turned into a hotel and the beach on the property became part of a resort.
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