Secret Plan to Kill Internet by 2012
GR8.
Elijah Few
WE ARE BEGINNING WORK ON DESIGNING OUR WEBSITE WE ARE BEGINNING WORK ON DESIGNING OUR WEBSITE WE ARE…………..
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Number one truth about blogging
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Hope
Imagine if twitter were real life, people you don’t know strangely following you around like mutant lemming zombies while you go about your daily business announcing with automaton like vapidity the how’s why’s and where’s of your daily business……not using it has helped clarify a suspicion…
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Rakaia River cover
- Image via Wikipedia
Back in late 2007 I was rolling around the south island city capital and looking for musicians to collaborate with: I ran across Elizabeth from The Hidden Truth who wanted to cover the Rakaia River Murder Song and here’s her demo…
Rakaia River murder
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Roadie
I’m embarking upon a 6-8 week road trip through the great wilderness and will set up a page here somewhere to document the photogrpahy and anything else interesting that happens.
Loopstation
A few months ago I put a video together to introduce the RC 20 XL Boss Loopstation as a practice pedal for Jam*rama.
Sustain Ability part 2
The Blackbird Rider. Awesome.
It sounds like the raven haired ghost of a southpaw bluesman ridin’ them blinds on the run from his own shadow. It isn’t though. Its the BLACKBIRD GUITAR COMPANY’s steel or nlyon string carbon fibre, CNC routed, ultra modern solution for the guitarist on the run!
The Blackbird Rider features an all-hollow uni-body shell setting it apart from any guitar in the world. That is the body, neck, and head are cast in one-piece with the sound board, fretboard, tuners, etc. added to that main component.
Forming the main component in one-piece eliminates the weak and sound-absorbing joints associated with standard guitars. This patent-pending construction relies on the incredibly strong and stiff properties of carbon fiber as well as plenty of unique design features to create the strongest, most resonant small-bodied guitar available anywhere.
What makes these things ultra cool is that the entire guitar is hollow and acts as a resonating chamber. There’s a sound hole in the HEAD of the guitar as well as within the body – BUT in an unusual position where the top horn would normally be. Also because they’re made from carbon fibre they come as tough as old boots – bring it on!
AND, Just like the revolutionary Model T Ford you can get them in any colour – as long as it’s black! With such an unusual symmetry in design these things look like the geometrical offspring of a Futurists dream. In those softer moments when Darth Vader gets the blues and an oily black tear wells up in his cyborg eye you know that this is the piece he reaches for.
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* HELP. * HELP. * HELP. * HELP. * HELP. * HELP. * HELP. * HELP.
The Elijah Few Project…
Its changing.
I have a conundrum – on a personal level I have songs pouring out of me which just don’t make it through the high end of production fast enough. With the sights set upon world class production there is a vast vacuum between song writing song production and song release. Not one song has been finished yet. In a long long time – for alot of very complicated reasons. THe production incidentally is AMAZING.
1. I write the song
2. the production starts….
3. nothing has been released….
This creates a barrier to authentic performance as without the production finished the song can’t be performed by the band that hasn’t been built around the production. It’s questionable if this kind of production lends itself to authenticity anyway – THESE SONGS aren’t meant to BE PRODUCTS.
I`m thinking that a parallel way to produce this material is to produce it quickly with simple live in the studio acoustic performances from a small band with a few overdubs, a much more organic method – alongside a high fidelity production process with a focus upon polished, slick, detailed, top end expensive production.
That might happen later.
I think that these songs are ALL ABOUT a small, focused, ambient intimate, edgy sound rather than a large grandiloquent superslick big numbers production.
What about hand drawn and printed, hand made, highly limited edition c.d.’s, or even L.P’s sent direct from us?
That way the songs do NOT stagnate. That way songs get made and finished. That way people can play them and they don’t sit here on this website rotting like carcasses.
I’d rather have a small number of fans who actually really listen, enjoy and connect with what I do than 10,000 who buy a product because these songs aren’t products at all…that way the songs and the people who want to listen get the kind of production they deserve. Most of these songs were written in 2005 and 2006, one of them in 1996. I think it’s about time the pen was put to paper on the final chapter.
Its up to you……..
Also, wouldnt people rather have something to actually play and listen to rather than watching these songs creep along the floor, on this website, like broken spiders, slowly looking for a way out into the light? Im thinking about selling the songs on sellaband…
I`m asking you guys cause you are the first 26 people who are going to receive these songs.
Something along these lines….if at all possible
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Sustain ability part 1
In a rapidly changing world sustainability is perhaps the most pressing issue for ourselves. That we are unable to think as a species living within and amongst and as part of the biosphere is a problem and a conceit that we may ultimately pay a rather large price for. Whatever your politics the bad news is tonewoods are likely to become more and more an exotic rarity than a standard material as the worlds forests are depleted. The good news is that many manufacturers are beginning to produce guitars from alternative more ecologically sound materials and the possibilities for sound and form are set to become infinite!
So…every now and then we’re going to have a look at some of the alternative materials available to the modern guitarist.
These Mada semi-acoustic guitars are absolutely stunning to look at and come in a vast range of funky colours. And that’s right because these things ain’t for no SQUARES baby – there isn’t a corner in sight.
Looking as though they were designed by the smoothest hipsters determined to produce an ergonomically clean yet futuristic blend of less-is-more styling these guitars are the hybrid taste of your favourite ice cream parlour and a set of french curves. Hot Damn they’re cool!
The MADA caimes body is an organically shaped semi-acoustic electric guitar body made of hemp pulp and is not carved or milled like traditional guitars. Design has revolutionized the production technique. One form without any linings or bracings. With its edge-less organic shape, MADA develops an unmistakable, wonderful sharp and organic sound. The permanent transition from impact sound into airborne sound is essential to the sound. That’s how resonances are formed. This makes Hempstone® the perfect 3 dimensional molding material for music instruments. The material consists of 100 % hemp fibres and contains no plastics, which would close these resonance-gaps.
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Interview with Bluesman Darren Watson
That’s the soulful sound of Darren Watson, a resonator, a valve mike and a truckload of talent turning up the heat!
Last year I had the lucky chance to interview Darren Watson when I was writing for the Jamarama Guitar Blog and this year I was lucky enough to see Darren just recently cooking up some great blues tunes at the Ruby Lounge in Wellington whilst enjoying some fine, fine ales amongst the company of like minded blues rock afficionados.
What particularly caught my attention was Darren’s band. They were tighter than two coats of paint, never overplayed and the bass man was definitely off the hook – as fluid as a lavalamp in zero gravity.
Darren also cooked up some serious glass finger bottleneck on the stratocaster that really had the place buzzing. Every now and then the band segued into classic guitar motifs, such as Jimi Hendrix‘ melody hook from Third Stone From the Sun; and, I was pleased to see Darren bashing the ole guitar with his fist every now and then to generate some feedback. Something we can ALL relate to. It was a versatile set and a great show with plenty of varied pace and Darren’s range, tone and fidelity are something else – not only that Darren Watson is a great guy so go to his show – say “hello”, and check out his records at www.darrenwatson.com.
Here is the interview from last year and what will impress upon you immediately is Darren’s no-nonsense, down to earth unpretentious approach to the guitar, the blues and life in general; it’s a guitar lesson in itself!
Today I`m going to spend ten minutes with highly accomplished south pacific blues master Darren Watson. You may not have heard of Darren but in a career spanning three decades Darren has worked on the bill with such blues luminaries and giants as Robert Cray, Koko Taylor, George Thorogood, Billy Boy Arnold, Doug MacLeod, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Dr. John and Keb Mo . . certainly no bunch of blues slackers by anybodies stretch of the imagination and a real testament to Darren’s skills as a musician.
To those who remember New Zealand music back in the day, in the ’80s, or those who have even a passing interest in blues, the name Darren Watson will always bring on a smile. As the founder and leader of Wellington powerhouse band Chicago Smoke Shop, Darren enjoyed a 6 year stint in the public eye with chart singles like Mind On My Sleeve and I Can’t Live Without Your Love.
He has been nominated a colossal six times for New Zealand Music Awards for a body of recorded work that includes two Top 40 albums and singles and three critically acclaimed solo albums including 2002’s Tui Award nominated ‘King Size’, and 2005’s stunning and genre breaking ‘South Pacific Soul’.
Darren is the real deal when it comes to blues guitar. I’ve been listening to guitar myself for 30 years and Darren has style, taste, timing, technique and tone…and just what the hell else is there?
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QUESTION 1.
Jake:
Hi Darren, kia ora, How`s it going man, and how`s the weather up there, blue enough for you ?
Darren :
Heh heh… not today, bro`! It’s nine degrees and raining! Wellington in springtime.. heh heh
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QUESTION 2.
Jake:
Darren, our readers are more often than not beginner guitarists so I`d like to start by asking how, when and where you first became seriously involved in the guitar – was there anyone in particular that helped steer you in the right direction?
Darren:
I grew up in the era just after The Beatles broke up so their shadow loomed large in my life. That, and my cousin was guitarist in a pretty popular band in NZ in the 60s – the Librettos – so I got to hear a fair bit about how cool rock n’ roll was. I played some drums, piano and trumpet before I actually thought I had settled on bass. My first couple of years playing was on bass . . a regular rightie Macca heh heh…. in my DREAMS!
But, yeah then I stopped playing in covers bands at about 17 and started taking guitar seriously instead. About the same time I discovered blues for myself.
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QUESTION 3.
Jake:
And, did you start out with a high-end guitar like a gibson 335, or like most of us, begin playing on a rotten old plank from Walmart? (myself – I had an old plank but I had to take a ferry from the fretboard to the strings the action was so damn high!)
Darren:
LOL…. No way man. My first six-string was a nasty Carlos Les Paul copy. The neck warped within a couple of weeks. Grin* A total P.O.S..
I didn’t have my first real Strat` until we had a record in the charts when I was twenty-two!
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QUESTION 4.
Jake:
Okay. So, do you have any advice for those who are struggling to get to grips with the instrument? Can you remember your early days, and which artists really inspired you back then?
Darren:
I am really lucky in that music has always come really easy to me. I feel like I have always understood how it works, even before I had NAMES for things. Getting to grips with the guitar was all about mechanics for me – and I think it is for a lot of people – you know, finding a technique that works for them. I don’t buy this idea that there is only one ‘right’ way to play.
As for inspiration on guitar, I was hugely inspired by the ‘lefty-upside-down’ players like Albert King, and Otis Rush. Also really got into guys using different techniques and tunings – like Albert Collins and Skip James. You can’t go past early BB King either. I mean his 1950s stuff is almost without peer vocally and for the guitar stuff. I also like Robert Cray and early Jimmy Vaughan with the Fabulous Thunderbirds. I reckon Cray is the most important guy in blues today – he’s actually got his own voice. Too many Stevie Ray Vaughan clones out their, may he rest in peace one day…..
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QUESTION 5.
Jake:
Well Darren I`ve got to say I agree with you there. And why is the blues a great place to start when approaching the guitar? is it because there are a range of styles and forms from the simple to the highly complex that allow players such a depth of expression ?
Darren:
I think it’s because to make it sound good you really have to get to grips with rhythm and your sound. There’s nowhere to hide melodically or harmonically. If you just wail away playing scales you are guaranteed to sound shit in my opinion. It forces you to be inventive with time.
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QUESTION 6.
Jake:
That`s a smart smart answer people! Right Darren; you`ve got a killer guitar tone – what`s the deal with your guitars and amps, have you got any particular amps and guitar combinations that you prefer for electric blues playing?
Darren:
Thanks man. I have really concentrated on this for most of my life. I used to think it was about gear but the older I get the more I realize it’s mostly in the hands. You can line up 30 people playing through the same gear and they’re all gonna sound completely different. Having said that, great gear helps plenty. At the moment I’m mostly playing a Fender ’59 ThinSkin Strat through a Headstrong Lil King-S. It’s like a souped-up blackface Princeton, LOL, but not as souped up as a MK1 Boogie! I run a HBE compressor and a MXR CAE clean boost into the amp and that’s it as far as effects go. The comp for slide and the boost for… um, well boosting. Grin*
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QUESTION 7.
Jake:
Awesome Darren, just awesome. I just love the MK1 Boogies; but they`re definitely supercharged amp’s. The MXR CAE clean boost sounds great – and unusual; I’ve never heard of one before. Cool man.
For those out there just beginning to become familiar with the language of the blues are there any fundamental scales that you tend to use ?
Darren:
I’m a big believer in playing the changes and not getting too hung up on scales. Most of my favorite blues players aren’t big on the minor pentatonics like a lot of blues/rock players tend to be. I get modal from time to time but I really don’t think about it too much. I teach people how to use their ears and play the changes first. Too many people I hear playing in music shops and (God forbid!?!) sometimes on stage sound like they’re running exercises as solos. Rambling and phrase-less. I actually think we can all learn from singers and wind instruments. BREATHE in between those phrases, baby! Heh heh Make the notes count. Soloing is basically composition on the fly – so let’s have some hooks. I would rather play a fat groove than solo anyway.
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QUESTION 8.
Jake:
(smiles) Yeah Darren; I`m with you on that one it’s saxophonists for me!
So, when it comes to playing acoustic fingerstyle blues what do you look for in your guitar sound – I see you`re using a `58 Gibson LG-2 – could you also tell me what’s so special about this instrument and how it informs your playing?
Darren:
Oh man, that guitar is a total babe! I’m so lucky I found her. It’s the first small box I have found that lets me really dig in and doesn’t choke. You can also play whisper quiet and the tops are just so silky sounding….. I’m in love with that guitar, man. It cuts without ever sounding nasty and there’s not a hint of nasty boxiness. But it’s also not a boomy strum box like the D28 etc. They’re o.k. for some stuff but for what I do a small box is perfect and this is about the best example I’ve played.
Jake:
I May have to translate that for our readers a little Darren!
I think what Darren is saying is that this guitar allows him to really rhythmically groove, like a steam train, without losing any tone or characteristic timbre and clarity at high or low volumes. Here is what it sounds like:
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QUESTION 9.
It would be great Darren if you could pick five inspirational records and maybe give us a short explanation as to why they resonate with you:
Darren:
1. BB King – Live At The Regal
The ultimate blues performance? Probably. BB King at the peak of his powers. 40ish and taking no prisoners. The band swings like a whorehouse and even the audience is amazing.
2. The Fabulous Thunderbirds – Girls Go Wild
This album totally changed my life. Recorded in 1978 but it sounds like it could’ve been made in the 50s. I discovered Jimmie Vaughan and (harmonica great) Kim Wilson through this album. He was channeling all the great old blues players here – and his tone is to DIE for. Unlike Stevie Vaughan who was all about flash and brute strength, Jimmie had sweet touch and a rare economy of phrasing that puts Stevie in his place I reckon. If you haven’t heard this album I suggest you try your darndest to pick up a copy.
3. Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombnes
I was at high school when I saw a clip of Tom on TV. In a world of vapid synth-pop and dumb ass post-punk pop this record really spoke to me that blues, jazz and weirdness could still be grown and merged successfully. I’m a huge fan to this day. Not particularly about guitar this album but then neither am I really – I always reckon music counts above petty things like what it’s played on.
4. Top Of The Stax – Various Artists
Steve Cropper is a big hero of mine as a writer and a session master. He plays on most of the tracks on this Stax records compilation. He never played two notes when one would do – and how about the total genius of reversing the chords for the intro of Midnight Hour to make the riff for Knock On Wood. And getting away with it! Brilliant.
5. Muddy Waters – His Best 1947-55
This guy did more to teach me about TIME and tone than anyone else ever did. This is the best Muddy compilation and avoids a lot of the later crap that Chess Records led him into in search of a hit.
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QUESTION 10.
Jake:
Thanks Darren – these are great great discs and I think your comments about timing will really, really help some of our readers. Finally I noticed in some of your early performances with the big band sound you`re rocking a rather large quiff that gives you the suave yet dangerous appearance of a riverboat gambler – does this help at all – and can it be performed without blues supervision?
Darren:
LOL – yeah well at least I never sported a mullet, bro! 
Jake:
Fantastic !!
Well there you have it everybody , THE WORD from none other than south pacific bluesmaster Darren Watson. Thank you Darren for talking to us and for giving us such an invaluable insight into your approach to guitar and for sharing your time.
Darren is available for one on one lessons if you are in New Zealand’s beautiful harbour city capital of Wellington.
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If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat !!
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Songwriting
Lorelei from the Performing Songwriters United Worldwide group on facebook has posted a thread regardgin what songwriting means to the group and there are already very interesting responses coming back from everyone.
You can have a look at the thread here:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=110532175707&topic=12599
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Exploding plastic inevitable
Change has always been infinitely inevitable and therefore occuring within an increasingly minus-infinite timespace…you can’t do anything about it.
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Bullshit
The puff & grandiloquence of the spiel is often inversely proportional to the capability of the product
Truth
THE TRUTH ABOUT really great SONGWRITING is that it HAS NOTHING TO DO
with industry, money, production, success, acceptance…
THE TRUTH ABOUT great SONGWRITING is that it HAS EVERYTHING to do with PEOPLE, and their stories, OUR STORIES, the past the present and the future. It’s about having something important to say about matters greater than oneself. AND a song can be whatever you want it to be as long as you mean it; that way a song takes on an energy and a life of it’s own beyond the here and now.
It’s that simple. Like riding a bicycle.
Sundown Sunflower
Written in 2005-6. More soon.
Money
look out for this in your friends – do they change colour around money? if so – ditch them.
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Defiance Belief Money Murder Masterpieces
I believe everybody has a record in them. Just as everybody has a novel within them. A great masterpiece. An idea. A vision. A dream. The popular misconception of a rational world is that dreams are merely the misshapen accidents of the subconscious. Not everybody is listening. Not everyone is a believer. Every dream is different.
The question is “HOW FAR are you willing to go to get it finished?”
“HOW FAR are you willing to go to realise it?”
A massive change in direction may be on the cards; after 4 years collecting dreams from the bone people & the landscape a new adventure might be upon the horizon.
An ill wind of red tape comes at a crucial time for the creative process too….
and even though I feel the ship is sinking : it isn’t. People involved are all talk about time and money, their equity. Invisible money, big words. Some are saying the songs are dangerous, ugly, horrible, frightening…
“We need to appeal to as many people as possible, to sell as many units as possible so people who are investing their time can make the right returns on our investment.”
“We can’t use the word cripple Jake.”
“You cant sing songs about murder, suicide, hanging children and heroin.”
“You can’t write that; The Lord of the Flies: no one wants to hear it.”
I think I just did.
If the songs are upsetting the children; if they’re touching a raw nerve, then there must be some truth in them. And they will remain. I may have to take them elsewhere - a shame – and lose the effort and the belief of those hereforto involved; but the songs have become gargantuan moai, vast monolithic edifices, looming down from the sky: what they stand for as much as what they actually say is an important quest for fulfillment, the map of the difficult journey and the search for truth.
Being true to oneself and honouring, one way or another dreams, ideas and change. We can honour change by accepting it and hurling our dreams, ideas and vision like golden kites to fly defiantly in its wake.
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Prince of Cats
d7 am Eminor
those Eyes that never left the ground,
g7 C d7 am em
no-one made a single lonely sound – around
F G C am
the skeleton people with tight yellow skin.
F G C am
sleepin` all day, on heroin,
DM F
the neighbours only found him
C C/B when the buzzards fill’d the sky.
Dm F
pouring all the kerosene
C C/B am
in your singing eyes
descender G – Gb – E
ONE day
the ground will swallow you up -
ONE day
in the tear blown eyes of god
you ain’t nothing but dust,
G D am C
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song,if you aint got long
d7 am Eminor
I watched you break the furniture, the french flags in tatters,
the guns from your battles warm & beating
AM E X 4 end on G
lazy beside you, your head in the stream…
lazy beside you your head in the stream…
lazy beside you your head in the stream…
G D am C
a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song,if you aint got long
a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song,if you aint got long
F G C am
frosted glass hangs about her,
guilty men leave the graves of their fathers
DM F
are stringing u p the children
C C/B and
for heavens sakes why ? .
DM F
the neighbours only found them
C C/B am
aft’ the buzzards fill’d the sky.
descender
cause in the tear blown eyes of god you aint nothing but dust.
so take a look around, because the circus has left town
and all the heroes are gathering rust.
God
if you talk to god you are religious…if he talks to you; you are psychotic
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Open D tuning Richie Havens
Don’t limit yourself and think that playing the guitar is all about technique – and don’t for one second think that
open tunings are really all about slide guitar glass finger playing. The idiosyncratic style of seminal folk maestro, peace messenger and Woodstock Festival icon Richie Havens illustrates a far more expressive and luminous emotionally complex language born of a primitive, feeling based approach to music and the guitar that speaks effortless volumes. Havens is as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky when he picks up the guitar and he plays it like he means it, like he can save us all with it.
If anyone ever needed a reason to pick up a guitar and sing, Richie Havens must have a thousand of them running through his being because his opening performance at the 1969 Woodstock festival in New York is something so inspirational to behold it’s nothing short of a call to arms, the divine fiat heralding the apocalypse, the second coming, the end of time encapsulating all the hopes, dreams, tragedies and fears of the festival, the decade, the generation and the human race. It is an epic moment in musical time.
Coming on first at the Woodstock Festival Havens mesmerised the audience for around three hours and was called back for encore after encore. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual “Motherless Child” that became “Freedom”.
At the end of the day when you pick up that guitar, you have to play it like you mean it, make it yours and own it; no matter how you play it. SO, tune to open D and head on over to Richie Havens website here for the basic chord voicings he uses to play in the open D tuning. And Get playing.
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“E tu, Brute!”
The Romans had spaghetti. We’ve got our systems. Let’s take over the world.
The Competition
…everyone jumping on the same bandwagon? The wheels ain’t never gonna fall off.
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Duh Management
If we redesign our website and talk alot of trendy marketing adwank then maybe no-one will notice our product is the same old piece of mediocre shit it was last year?
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Lord of the Flies
…some dreams are destined to become the ephemeral, transient, fleeting, angels of the imagination, or fragile, brittle, creatures of clay…
Not all seraphs effloresce into beautiful flying colour; some may fly but fall earthbound from heaven – the filthy offspring of rotting flesh cast to the wind…
this song is in progress.
DREAM BIG or DONT DREAM AT ALL
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13
Back in `o7 – an improvisational jam live with cool jazz guitar messenger Wellington’s D-mas…
13
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I call it thirteen cause
“Now there’s number on every man.”
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Smalltown misery
2005
after spending time at the docks and at the historic pub in the valley:
” I asked Davey to come and cut my lawn, but he never blaady did it. It was 6 feet high – he said a chinaman used his lawnomower to hang himself between the boats…”
All the bars are drunk right dry
like Napoleon came here to die
with a sacred codex that ever ry body else..er seems. to… know
pour yaself another bourbon and wait until-a timeball comes down
old ghosts’ll dance the rattlebones in prsion cells across the town
beneath the chapels that falling down
we all fall down
But that was back in `69, when the Queen of Bath went down the sink
Mack says “yowa goddamned liar” and then storms outside to think
but back in the bar with a cluster of stars he had stolen from the trinket sky
“Never turn your back on a drink” says Mack, but we all know that hes’s a lie
IN walks the local providore, who’s brought his cross to bear,
And drags behind a broken anchor; a sextant and a rusty square,
where rusty hulls of dying fleets are drowning in the Irish bar,
the guitar maker plays the barb wire whilst speaking to his guitar.
silent russian sailors are drinking poison in the seafront hotel
the flaking paint dolls head lampshades glimmer for a different clientele
gramaphonic histories from
broken trombones groan their mysteries
to the people that know me well
I didn’t see the time fall, didn’t hear the midshipman’s bell.
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In the Air
2006
Let not your heart
be so sad baby
jesus gonna meet me in the air
meet me in the air, air
you know my time is soon
meet me in the air
we’ll meet behind the moon
i been trying to reach you baby
in the mountains and the sky
in the distant echo of my memory
it’s no shame for you to cry
meet me in the air
you know my time int long
meet me in the air, maybe
soon I will be gone
upon the clouds, upon a white horse shining
steadfast, faithful and true
eyes aflame and with a head of many crowns
and with a name that no-one knew
met me in the air
you know my time is gone
meet me in the air air baby
you know my time is gone
21st century existential religiosity blues
In `06, out on the plains a second hand bookseller with a good collection of religious pamphlets, guides, and other ephemera immediately struck upon a small azure blue pamphlet, nothing heavy like the apocrypha – a New Testament piece. When the cover opened, apposite to the frontispiece, etched in the dark blue ink of a fountain pen a handwritten note became the inspiration for this song.
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Life Support
Written in ‘96
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173EndHTML:0000002769 StartFragment:0000002369 EndFragment:0000002733
Flick the switch and turn off the machine
[Cauterise] my soul and set me free
Please help me god I cant breathe
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703
I only wanna see the sun
(x2 first time)
Collide with space and slowly burn away
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002712 StartFragment:0000002367 EndFragment:0000002676
Cant we heal can we repair ?
Hurts so bad
Hurts so bad
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703
I only wanna see the sun
(x2 first time)
Collide with space and slowly burn away
Dont cry…the wires
Dont lie, desire…
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703
I only wanna see the sun
(x2 first time)
Collide with space and slowly burn away
Flick the switch and turn off the machine
[Cauterise] my soul and set me free
Please help me god I cant breathe
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703
I only wanna see the sun
Collide with space and slowly burn away
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000003633 StartFragment:0000002370 EndFragment:0000003597
Don’t try to cut the wires
Don’t try to cut the wires
Life support it isn’t life
Life support its just a lie
——————————————————————————————————————————————-
13 years after recording this into a YAMAHA MTX3 4 track, here’s what I laid down as a guide; just faster:
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Best Ten Records of the Decade
about ten minutes
- Image via Wikipedia
Lists:
‘handy’, convenient; essential for buying vegetables, but absolutely hopeless when it comes to music, that is of course unless you ARE a vegetable…All too indicative and symptomatic of the atrophied, leprous A.D.H.D. riddled malaise of the modern mind which when flooded with such a multiplicity of choices, can’t make up its own….mind…..anyway…
I thought I would have a go at listing my favourite ten records of the decade about to close…it was difficult…very difficult…After 5 minutes I began thinking in terms of genres, then I began thinking about exactly where I was between the mock apocalypse of the millenium and circa 2005: in hell, for a while approximately. Then I began to consider artists I liked, those whose music I wanted to buy and not steal, those who were cool, those who were not..the usual self indulgent, self reflexive rubbish. During the latter half of the decade I had been on the other side of the world with nothing much at all and had more or less stopped buying music listening to music mostly made prior to the millenium – 30`s, 40`s, 50`s, 60`, 70`s, 80` and 90`s…ad I mean from the previous 4 centuries as well…what happened to Dizzee Rascal?
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1. Cheik Lho – lamp fall – click here
2. Dunjen – ta det lungt – click here
3. The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered – click here
4. Various – now is the winter of our discount tents – click here
5. Radiohead – in rainbows
6. Arctic Monkeys – f.w.n
7. Coldplay – viva la vida
8. Beck – sea change
9. The Beatles – let it be naked
10. The Streets – a grand don’t come for free
11. Townes Van Zandt – texas rain – click here
12. Kora – Kora
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Infinity in an hour
בַּהֲכִינֹ֣ו מַיִם שָׁ֣ם אָ֑נִי בְּח֥וּקֹו ח֝֗וּג עַל־פְּנֵ֥י תְהֹֽום׃
Last year I did alot of flying – to the studio – for day long guide takes sessions with a plank of a guitar, in the heat.
A strange routing to the desk, a lack of sleep, the pressure of fast decision making regarding choosing parts, the arrangement of these plus the vocals and the lyrics, the tempo and the need to get back on a plane at the end of the day, all added up to a situation which was not ideal…apart from top end Schoeps microphones & digidesign hardware, plus a feted Stratocaster.
The point is that looking for perfection can often become a barrier to achievement and it applies to everything…
Perfect takes forever, Good takes time, S*** takes just 5 minutes. You choose.
It doesnt matter, the guides are done and we can spend time, or forever, getting things as close to perfect as we want without disappearing into the black hole.
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2D or not 2D that is the question.
Facebook – it’s getting a little bit cranky – with three blogs plumbed into a couple of pages the whole thing is sometimes barely operable. BUT it’s better than lonliness isn’t it?
Is it? Or does all that social media bullshit just mean we have huge internet bills, no real friends and another dirty habit?
At an interactive shindig last week a very smug and “high on my own geek bullshit job” ad-rat in a cheap suit told me that web 3.o is on the way. Man, I had to laugh:
“Well, maybe 2.5″
“Does that mean its only half fucking baked?”
Apparently A.I. means “sites” themselves will “do the talking”; sounds great. BUT will they do the dishes and mow the lawn too? I haven’t visited many sites intelligent enough yet to make toast. The concept of a “site” really sums it up as an area of containment, but what the hell, we’ve built most aspects of our culture to contain and imprison, like our cities.
http://www.uniservices.co.nz/pageloader.aspx?page=1484d8d0d82
Unless one is reading being trapped in 2d is poor experientially: transforming electric into magnetic or other energy forms means we can permeate the air with data and subsequently display information in “air” or in mind: then we will be free from the tyranny of the screen/device; able ultimately to control/manipulate/communicate data in a telepathic omnisphere. Which is problematic - at what level is thought language (signs and signifiers)?
“Machines” using organic chemical reactions could match speeds of (self?) reflexive sentience. In what could be an organic/digital/biological symbiotic technolosphere people universally connected through thought consciousness create infinitely realtime instantaneous “social networks” (freed from hardware/ownership/cost/expense/control -or trapped by them) meaning natural collective egalitarian change effected through consensual ideas at the speed of the synaptic / immediate…
heads will explode.
Sometimes though when I look at our dirty, filthy world with its entrenched notions of war and violence, a “media” focus upon shallow consumerism, greed, an industrial complex that values fossil fuels and pollution combined with disease, inequality, suffering and overpopulation, plus our inability to coexist with each other and the hollow conceit of our self annointment as “king of the animals”, and the privilege of the few over the may then I think we are, if not as a species, but as governments/controlling bodies dumb, selfish and stupid enough to f*&k it up.
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The Dead Hendrix Vapour Trail
- Cover of Band Of Gypsys
If there was ever a soul sacrifice made to the celestial guitar gods, it was Hendrix himself…exploding into flames at the Monterey Festival; Hendrix burnt away in a three year vapour trail of psychedelic drugs, hard touring, alcohol, groupies, invention, and innovation – notwithstanding the management, money and alleged mafia troubles that followed in his infinitely surfed wake.
If you are baffled by the countless re-iterations and compilations floating endlessly around; the remixes and terrible bastardisations such as the “Midnight Lightning” album (Alan Douglas hiring modern musicians), or “Loose Ends” (which clearly showcases shallow greed in using out-takes from the cutting room floor), add to this the blatant mis-branding of Hendrix’ work with Curtis Knight and the many more myriad compilations on offer – take heed herein…
To help you navigate the shark infested waters of the Hendrix legacy here are 6 Essential Hendrix albums that distill the the soaring, expressive talent and vision of Hendrix’ legacy both live and in the studio…
- 1.Are you Experienced – 1st album – : FIRE & BRIMSTONE
The Jimi Hendrix Experience first album fuses gritty rock, psychedelia and feedback in a blistering rocket fuelled journey to the centre of the cosmos. This is as close to ‘classic’ rock as Hendrix gets with pumping riffs, weird chromatic guitar solo’s (”Purple Haze”) and a lyrical disposition (especially in “The Wind Cries Mary”) that combines Dylanesque surrealism with the hip acid talk of the American Summer of Psychedelic Love. This album is filled with triumphant feelings of revolution, victory and optimism, which burn like bright flags amongst a speudo-existentialist spacescape that flirts with ideas of depression and death beyond time. It’s a fervent and heady mix of grass roots psychedelia and Jimi’s earthy hands on approach to tonal exploration, distortion, feedback and elemental urgency on the guitar ensures it burns white hot, like magnesium at midnight.
- 2.Axis Bold As Love – 2nd album – : WATER
Despite leaving the original mastertapes of side one in a London Taxicab The Experience Second album is another triumph.
The second Experience album leans more heavily towards a more complex lyrical mysticism and lucid poetics with songwriting of a more deliberate meaning and intent in opposition to the hard rock rattle and hum combustion or interstellar immediacy of its feedback soaked predecessor. Hendrix also blends the fervant science fiction, metaphysics and exploratory lyricism of his psychedelic ideology and imagination with a more refined approach to instrumentation and a more nuanced style. The tentative, fragile lyrical tragedy of “Castles Made of Sand” hones more Dylanesque metaphor through the collapsing time of backwards guitar, whilst “If 6 was Nine” screams the experimental battle cry of the counter culture, like the dissembling miles of a bullet from a revolutionaries’ musket in slow motion.
Hendrix of course still manages to coax never before heard techniques and sounds from his guitar, more melodic jazz funk influences (from his R&B chitlin’ circuit days) whilst channeling his mysticism and revelatory existentialism across a range of genres. There are unmissable ballads that exemplify the duality of the time; the hopes and fears, the real and the unreal as much as showcase his unique melody / chord phrasing: the birdsong love poem Little Wing and the homesick art-rock of Spanish Castle Magic. The final track Bold as Love is arguably one of the greatest arrangements of synaesthetic lyrical metaphor, melodic rhythm guitar and majestic lead ever written and recorded.
3. Electric Ladyland – 3rd album – : TRANSCENDENTAL
Take the previous two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums and throw in some voodoo blues, low down groove, funk, rock and roll, orchestration and then blend into a transcendental, love apocalypse masterpiece of songwriting, guitar playing prowess, musical exploration, ufology, time travel and the foreboding sense that the world is coming to an end. The sheer emotional intent of the guitar playing alone on this double album absolutely shines through as Hendrix delivers masterpiece after expressive masterpiece.
The stellar guitar piece “Come On” hermetically seals Hendrix’ Rock and Roll prowess, expression and technique beyond time and space as he launches through a blistering high octane guitar marathon whereas “Voodoo Chile”, featuring Steve Winwood, pushes the blues guitar envelope to the end of the universe and back again with such archetypal and quintessentially natural phrasing wrapped within a live studio performance that literally kicks out the jams and destroys them. “The Burning of the Midnight Lamp” features more sonic experimentation recorded in a vacuum of depression, until it breaks into a vivid and wildly oscillating wah wah solo while “Gypsy Eyes” conjures up the rattling bones of African witchcraft with Hendrix’ dead blues spirit traversing the ghostplane in search of his lost love.
On “Long Hot Summer Night” Jimi fuses colourful story telling with more achingly soulful and fluid guitar then amplifies Bob Dylan’s skeletal masterpiece “All Along the Watchtower” with the sonic emotional import and smouldering sound and fury of God and some of the most memorable guitar playing ever.
By the time we reach side three Hendrix extends his themes into the soulfull jazz grooves of a “Rainy Day” before embarking on the ambitious philosophical, revelatory opus of “1983’s” melodic escape from the apocalypse into the sea. Through an undulating series of musical meditations, phrases and undeniable hook sequences that range from delicate washing tremelo descents beneath the tides to swinging grooves, the war chaos noise of the machines above, and heraldic anthemics of emotional release and salvation; Hendrix single handedly invents ambient and closes the chapter on the decade with an ambitious contemporary guitar symphony. The musicianship from all throughout is unparalleled and this record doesn’t date because of its scope, resounding energy and ambition. If you were to own one Hendrix disc, this is it.
4. Nine to the Universe – studio jams – rare jazz-blues improvisations – awesome and tight
This is what happens when Jimi Hendrix rocks into the studio to have a jam and the sonic results are absolutely off the hook. With more of a leaning towards a modal approach to the guitar Jimi proves that literally everything is in his hands as he manipulates his stratocaster and amp to deliver a huge tonal range within the context of a progressive jazz-blues fusion jam session. If you are new to Hendrix this might be a little too like abstract expressionism for you but if you’re looking to expand your musical expression on the guitar without resorting to gratuitous effects and cheap tricks this is a great place to start taking lessons from the master.
5. Band of Gypsys – live – the once in a lifetime guitar mastery of epic sonic genius that is machine gun
After disbanding the original experience Hendrix returns to New York with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox to deliver a more loosely organised series of extended songs and groove laden hooks centred around the opposing themes of war and peace. Never to be underestimated, Hendrix is at the peak of his sonic creativity and effortlessly recreates the sonic palette and experience of the Vietnam war on Machine Gun, producing some of the most mesmerising guitar tones in the history of rock in an astonishingly complete performance. Hendrix flaunts acres of infinite sustain and tonal feedback control, combined with tremelo induced ufology and science fiction sounds in an engaging live performance that proves EXACTLY why he is history’s most mind blowing rock instrumentalist. Hendrix’ intent though is not only to transport you into a world of complete sonic guitar mastery but also to inspire spiritually through the kyuss of great hooks, timing and melody (Power to Love).
6. The Jimi Hendrix Concerts – a great compilation of live recordings
This collection of recordings showcases the original experience at their best and includes the absolutely monumentous tonal mastery and feedback genius of Are You Experienced performed live – possibly another one of the greatest moments in guitar history. You can hear the feedback soaked guitar bouncing off the back of the auditorium and feel the hairs stand up on the back of your neck too as Jimi manipulates his signal in ways that the original studio recording could never achieve. This has to be heard to be believed. This is what the Experience sound like live on a great night and they’re absolutely burning it up. If you cant get this disc then get the LIVE AT WINTERLAND album instead.
7. Beautiful People – If 60`s were 90`s
Some old friends of mine throw the War Heroes offcuts into the remix liquidiser to repackage Hendrix for the early 90`s chillaxation-house groove scene. If you like the idea of Hendrix with “modern” beats then this might be right up your street. The stand out cuts are “Get Your Mind Together” and “Sea Eventually”. Remixes with PM Dawn sounded absolutely incredible at the time but never officially materialised. If you want your Hendrix licks, melodies and riffs served up in a dreamy, groovy back-beat sauce with a focus upon the nouvelle cuisine sampling of a chillaxed club mix then this is the gelato h’ors d’oeuvre you’re after. Rilly Groovy. Rilly, Rilly Groovy.
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Choosing Guitars, Pick ups & Amplifiers
The options for choosing pick ups are absolutely vast these days but if you are keen on the sound of Fender guitars Fender are now producing their own Fender Special Design dual-coil ceramic Noiseless™ pick ups in Stratocasters, so these, which Clapton (using the vintage model) and Jeff Beck have in their current signature guitar models should be pretty good. In the Fender Telecaster they are using Samarium Cobalt Noiseless™ Telecaster pickups.
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When you are choosing a guitar the best course of action is to try and find a guitar that really has that magic feel, playability and sound for you. Spend as much time as you can playing as many guitars as you can and trust your intuition and gut feelings. | |
| List of Gibson Users | List of Fender Stratocaster Users, and Telecaster Users |
If you’re thinking of buying a Fender piece off the shelf then consider the sound that Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer, or Keith Richards achieve with a telecaster and then maybe have a listen to some Stratocaster users – Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher or Jeff Beck.
If you are considering an off the shelf Gibson plank then maybe have a listen to Johnny Winter, Ronnie Wood (Faces), Leslie West (Mountain), Joe Walsh, George Thorogood, Mick Taylor, Freddie B.B. and Albert King, and, Bob Dylan.
There are two main styles of electric guitar pickups: single-coil and humbucker. Single-coil pickups are most commonly seen in Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars.
| Mick Taylor interview | Keith Richards interview | Mick and Keith Cant you hear me knocking |
The humbucker is basically, two single-coil pickups stacked on top of each other. They are the steroidal muscle car pick up of the guitar world and produce thicker, punchier tones. Humbuckers are seen in all kinds of guitars but are most closely associated with the Gibson Les Paul. It’s called a hum bucker because it was designed to do exactly that – buck the humming noise that permeated the world of the early single coil.
What you`ll find is that country rock or blues players often choose single-coils, while heavy metal music is predominantly played on guitars with humbuckers. There are however clear indications that in exceptional hands any guitar can create unique tones and sounds.
It is well worth remembering though that the “magic guitar” sound you are looking for is one that has a unique voice, one that seems to communicate your personality, one that literally speaks your language. There is no limit to your imagination either and you can combine any array of pickups you like.
| Johnny Winter | How to play like Johnny Winter with Andy Aledort |
At the end of the day the pickups you choose will become a highly individual matter and it is well worth taking the time to choose a pickup that suits your style and the sound you want to squeeze out of your guitar.
Spend some time listening to some of your favourite records and use the internet to find out what kind of guitars, amplifiers and equipment the artist is using. Cruise on over to GUITAR GEEK and check out what your favourite recording artists are using. You`ll be very, very surprised at some of the ways guitarists choose to create their sounds, from the complex through to the simple…
| Leslie West/Mountain | Leslie West/Mountain | Leslie West/Mountain |
When you want to select a guitar start by playing the guitars unplugged so you can gain an insight into the feel of the neck, the balance of the machine and the kind of tones it makes before amplification. Take your time and try as many as you can. When you think you’ve found a guitar that really feels right then you can plug it into something! Strangely enough it really is a case of looking for that particular instrument that has a certain “Je ne sais pas” or X-factor; trust your instincts and never, ever think about the finish, the looks or what you’re told is good and great.
Are you going to be playing live to 500 people or just playing at home? Will you be recording with your amplifier in the studio? Or will you be having a small jam down at your local bar?
These are the types of questions you should ask yourself when thinking about an amplifier to begin with. Having a huge stacking amplifier set up with a head and cabinets is great for high volume applications but difficult to move and incredibly loud. Personally I would suggest a valve amp but at the end of the day use your ears carefully. A Fender twin sounds markedly different from a Marshall amplifier for example and a Session highly different from a Peavey.
Most of your overdrive and distortion can be achieved through your choice of amplifier. Look for an amp with both a clean and an overdriven channel – then you can switch between the channels or combine them with a footswitch.
At the end of the day a good guitar and a decent amp will deliver a huge range of tonal and sound possibilities and characteristics before you go anywhere near effects or pedals.
Try clean sounds first with all combinations of pick up and tone control possibilities on the guitar and then play with the controls on the amplifier as well. Roll all your tone on and off across each pick up and do the same with the EQ section of the amp.
Then do the same thing with the dirty channel and a distorted sound. The combine the two and listen to the results. Spend as long as you can and concentrate on what your hear. It may take you an hour, a day or a even week. I used different Marshalls, combined with Fender Twins and a few others before I settled upon Session Amps for a while.
Then if you really want to kick out the jams try some distortion boxes.
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Guitar Effects
Guitar effects. What a vast, eclectic cornucopia of the weird, wonderful and downright useful there is these days. You don`t need a burning stratocaster or the Jimi Hendrix account at New York`s Legendary Manny`s guitar store to find yourself spoilt for choice with a bewildering array and vast multiplicity of choices.
What I`m saying is that there are thousands of them. Back in the early 90`s I used Zoom effects – their half rack midi controlled 9050`s were completely wild at the time and offered convenience, portability, stereo output and ridiculous amounts of parameter control. It sounded like Steve Hillage on speed or the Ozric Tentacles. Of course there is a far simpler route to guitar sonics – use your hands, a bit of reverb and maybe a Loop station or a Hot Cake, or VALVE distortion pedal. All you have to remember is that it`s up to you.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with too much tap dancing unless you really want to. Maybe try some digital modelling if you`d prefer instantaneous sound emulation. Or if you really prefer the sound of an L.P. to a compact disc settle for something more traditional like a quality distortion pedal and a valve amp. I know a few artists who still dig that whole 2 inch tape scene in the studio and don’t like recording to digital at all…..
…it’s almost as though digital could be described as throwing ice cubes into a metal bucket whereas analogue is the sound of hummingbirds drinking from a waterfall…LOOK AFTER YOUR SIGNAL;
I’m in two minds bout it myself but sometimes you’ve gotta compromise and in a cut and paste world digital sure is fast!
The secret is to use your ears and your hands. Not your eyes, or your wallet or the company`s advertising spend or endorsees. Remember being unique, or just being yourself is where it’s at! The Edge from U2 has popularised an entire sound and melodic approach from intelligently using delay (and some beautiful skeletal arpeggios), Tom Morello kicked the ass out of the wah sound with a Digitech Whammy pedal with Rage Against the Machine, Jeff Beck tends to just let his fingers do the talking (with a bit of tremelo bar), Buckethead takes the Carlo Gesualdo route to chromaticism more often than not, although he is capable of playing incandescent, measured shining melodies…when he wants.
| Rage Against the Machine | Bucket Head | U2 |
After years and years of experience what I will say is that turning on and off one or two effects at a time (without scrolling through menus) gives you plenty of time to focus upon what you play, less margin for error and a simple set up is alot harder to jump out of and handle when everything explodes, spontaneously combusts or evaporates. When it all goes wrong CAN YOU still plug straight into your amp and get through the show? Having kicked dodgy pedals off the side of the stage and plugged straight into an amp instead I know how I prefer my rig and I once ran a toaster in my effects line, timing the toast so it would pop up at the peak of a solo. Sounded and tasted great!
Get the sound you want in the way you want – that`s all you need to consider. Perhaps the greatest thing about effects pedals is stomping them into an early grave and building up a small graveyard of dead ones. Last count I had seven dead effects units and that was just from a couple of years in one band. So it’s worth pointing out that if you play in a fiercely proto-pyrotechnic punk rock environment with flying beer, flying people and god knows what else buy pedals that are sturdy and crafted from tough metal…or concrete. I lost a tooth from a flying bass guitar once and that was just at a rehearsal.
Under my desk I run a Boss Drive Zone OD20, BOSS RC20XL Loop station, and a Line 6 Echo Park into a small line 6 amp set to the clean channel. I have the option to run out in stereo into the Marshall Valvestate VS230 to the side of my desk….
Live I prefer just one distortion unit into 2 amps for a Stereo mix. As an example of what can be done on the road to the temple of LESS is MORE…
…here is David Gilmour’s guitar set up for around 1970-2, an awesome period in his career especially with the Live at Pompei Performance. It’s Stratocaster based of course!
Guitars
- 1966-67 all stock Fender Stratocaster with a white alder body, white pickguard and a rosewood 4-bolt neck with a large headstock.
- Fender Telecaster of unknown date with natural brown body, white pickguard and a maple neck.
- 1969 all stock Fender Stratocaster with a black alder body, white pickguard and a rosewood 4-bolt neck with a large headstock.
- Gibson J-45 acoustic steel stringAmps
- 3 Hiwatt DR103 All Purpose 100W heads with Mullard 4xEL34’s power tubes and 4xECC83’s pre-amp tubes. Controls for normal volume, brilliance volume, bass, middle, treble, presence and master.
- 3 WEM Super Starfinder 200 cabinets with 4×12” Fane Crescendo speakers with metal dust caps.Effects
- Vox wah wah
- Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face (NKT275)
- Binson Echorec II
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Cool Brittania – Space Rock, Punk Rock
Back in the late seventies, prior to the arrival of PUNK ROCK, with its garland of spit, safety pins, anarchy, piss, shit and the dirty, unkempt rebellion of anti-authoritarian posturing, Steve Hillage took the psychedelia of the late 60`s and infused it with the kind of production techniques it really deserved. Hillage took multitracking, phasing, and sequences of fractalised incandescent echoes to a new level and combined them with more formal song based hooks and ideas with a lexicon firmly focused upon metaphysics and what everyone nowadays calls new age spiritualism. What makes his music even more interesting is that it occupies a holistic space somewhere amongst Pink Floyd and the Canturbury sensibilities of remarkable song writers such as pyschedelic pioneers Kevin Ayres and formidable lyricist Syd Barrett.
Despite his psychological unravelling Barrett’s songwriting capabilities remain some of the most superlative, exciting, individual and exceptional in the history of English music – after the Beatles. And, although there is very much to be lauded in Pink Floyds work many ascertain that without Barrett they became nothing more than the exegesis of Waters’ paranoia and latterly nothing more than a Gilmour solo act.
Towards the dying days of the 70’s Hillage’s progressive guitar-rock and psychedelic fusion leanings helped build a reputation that became synonymous with spacey, ambient soundscapes and musical “excursions”. 1978’s Green album, which was co-produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason is an exemplary and landmark recording in this respect that, with both power and sensitivity focuses upon a pantheistic ecological message of oneness, salvation and elevation.
Of course Hillages “hippie” music was eclipsed, perhaps even smashed into a dust, by the D.I.Y. auto destructive madness of anarchy, punk rock and “dissent” at the end of the decade.
The Steve Hillage sound remained immortalised in the consciousness of a whole new generation principally by the UK “Festival” band The Ozric Tentacles. Ten years after Hillage released “Green” the Ozrics pioneered a new wave of acid soaked, techno space rock into the 90`s “dance” and festival scene updated with hard pounding beats, shifting time signatures, the use of eastern and exotic modes and instruments.
After the collapse of Thatcherite ethics in the 80`s the British music underground, fuelled by political unrest and the flood of drug fired madness exploded across the media and across the country in revolutionary fervour. Looking back from here, you can clearly see the high tide mark etched across the British landscape and we’re now living after the flood! Guitar Pedals never replace playing ability, groove, talent, technique, vision and expression but can really help having the brain of Hendrix sitting in a little box on the floor. At the end of the day its all in your hands, and your head.
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Dead America
The Decade from Hell is drawing to a close…
…this one has been an indictment of humanity, and one that cast a curse across the death of the American dream and the end of the American century before it. One in which they dug up the fathers of freedom and the ideals of liberty and justice, made of them straw martyrs; soaked in the oil and blood of heroes, innocents, war and greed; lay them out to burn for all of us to witness. God bless the American corpse. The Devil take the warmongers, the banks, the silent few…
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Jesus Drifter
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…stormy rough-hewn glory recorded in about 10 minutes using the inbuilt microphone on a laptop, a wineglass, drumstick, table leg and guitar… a missionary song -
It was one friday morning three years ago
when he appeared the way a cigarette smokes
a name of warning, a lonely sermon about the war
with the truth
He said “theres only them and us, the good lord above
And now; just me and you”
Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face,
hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.
[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]
With Blood yellowed eyes and dirty nailed hands
We sealed with signs our terrible plans
Lord strike me down
You dance with the devil else you don’t dance at all
In Jackson town
[break - fall, break - fall, break - fall]
[for the last time, to take the last chance, for the last last time]
Fate and circumstance had brought us together
But memory believes before knowing remembers
I coulda bit my tongue in two when he shot her down
Love and hate is all we got, all we really need
And all we believe.
Take two stolen pistols down that dirty old road
Past a pillar of salt and a yella column of smoke
Hi Ho Silver lightning and away we go, Hi Ho, Hi Ho
A bloodless coward and a prodigal son
A one armed messenger with the rebels gun
Get outta here Judas, you’ll kill us all
(he shot me down)
So sing a song of six cents
And a pocket full of rye
Hoist me like a mainsail…HI HO HI HO HI HO
Swinging through the sky
Onward christian soldiers
Marching as to war
“I never meant to kill her”
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
Where the grapes of wrath are stored
(lord forgive me , please forgive me now)
Stamping out the glory
(lead us not into temptation)
Stamping out the glory
(And forgive us our sins)
Sho.. he was standing at the side of the road when I come around the curve standin there face and no face, hangdog determined and calm too like he done desperated himself up for the last time.
(c) jake edwards may 2008
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How to be Unique
- Cover of Miles Davis
Consider the John Butler Trio for example; how many fellas do you know who use an acoustic twelve string with a wah wah and a gravel box? It certainly makes for a unique sound. Throw in a stand up bass and a drummer with a really frantic percussive style and you have a sound chock full of grit and character: earthy, organic, rootsy and soulful with plenty of bite too. What a combination.
You may use use an old suitcase for a kick drum, the grill for an oven as percussion or modify your instrument yourself. Roland Kirk, who named himself after a series of dream-visions, and plays several reed or home made breath instruments simultaneously fuses ragtime, free jazz, hard bop, and musique concrete with early electronics.
Consider David Bowie`s career in oddity or Tom Waits scarecrow-drifter, hobo junkstore, down and out, rag and bone man blues, achingly sentimental ballads, and grotesque, vaudevillean strangeitude. Jimi Hendrix reinvented feedback on Machine Gun, fused Baudelaire with Dylan on Bold as Love and was last seen on Nine to the Universe anticipating Miles Davis.
Carlo Gesualdo the Italian music composer, lutenist and nobleman of the late Renaissance was famous for his intensely expressive madrigals and bizarre chromaticism. Lutenist John Dowland might be the melancholy blues master you need to augment your Robert Johnson, Freddie, B.B. and Albert King collection.
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Captain Beefheart`s shifting time signatures, surreal linguistic complexities combined with Dr. Zeuss like syllogistics in a gritty, avante-garde, psychedelic blues hyperspace inhabited by the drunken ghost of Howling Wolf drinking absinthe from Miles Davis` open skull.
Beefheart was constantly prototyping – if you want to keep it real, consider yourself in beta.
Almost everyone you can think of who has made an impact had something different, something unique. Look for it in your own music. Look for it in your self. Make it your own – commercial viability is never a useful litmus test for success or achievement – always do what you want and if somebody likes it, great.
And above all IGNORE EVERYBODY.
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Fat Les Paul Tone
Jamie from the US has asked “How do I get a fat tone from my Les Paul?”
Should be easy right?
Well, tone is a particularly personal matter but also comes in as many flavours as ice cream. There is no single method, set up or solution. Alot of TONE variation is achievable simply through your guitar to start with. Experiment with your pick up choices: if you use your neck pick up you will find the tone becomes more warm, more naturally rounded, rich, arboreal and smooth. Experiment with the E.Q. on your amplifier, try combining both channels.
A tube or valve amp such as a Vox AC 30, or a Sunn amp will also help. Tone is also a matter of how you approach and play each note; literally how you attack the notes! It’s all in your hands wuite literally.
It`s best to experiment with as much gear as you can. If you cannot get hold of a valve amp try a valve based pedal – maybe an Electro Harmonix English MuFF`n or Big Muff PI. These things`ll give you a fat range of tones from Clapton through to Leslie West and more. You could of course hitch a ride along the digital highway and look at stuff like the Line6 Variax guitar and accompanying amps which perform digital modelling algorhythms on your signal to give you sounds that emulate vintage, classic and modern equipment. Using digital gear is the fastest, easiest way to achieve and emulate famous tones and sounds.
Have a listen to and compare the classic guitar track Freddie King’s Hideaway by the following three artists
A:Johnny Winter,
B:Eric Clapton, and
C:Freddie King
This will give you an idea how different guitars and amplifier combinations contribute to tone in both a sonic and a stylistic way. Dont quote me on it but I think:
Winter used to favour a Music Man amplifier and a Gibson Reversehead Firebird.
Clapton used a 1962 Les Paul Standard with PAF pickups and a 1965 Marshall Combo.
Freddie King used a Les Paul and Gibson 345 stereo.
Winter Clapton King
The heavier the gauge of strings you use will contribute to depth of tone too. A heavier gauge equals a bigger, brighter and more substantial TONE but are therefore harder to play and require a higher action.
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Best guitar Solos
- Image via Wikipedia
This post started out as a best guitar solos post, but, it has mutated into a great players post and has begun to encompass hooks, riffs and more. I mean, you just can’t exclude Keith Richards from a post about great guitar can you?
I had a rummage around inside my head and here, in no particular order, are some great guitar players. I’ve named the specific tracks in the videos. Most of these artists are HOT on anything they play…
If anyone out there would like to offer up any more superlative examples then please comment.
1. Snowy White (on Peter Green’s) Slabo Day
2. Jeff Beck Where were you
3. Junior Wells & Buddy Guy Stormy Monday
4. Chet Atkins Kicky
5. Eric Clapton Blues Power Live on Just One Night
6. Jimi Hendrix Are you Experienced Live at Winterland UK L.P.
7. Billy Corgan Soma
8. Johnny Winter – Mississippi Blues
9. Dire Straits Sultans of Swing
10. Alvin Lee Live (with 10 years after) I’m going Home
11. Roy Buchanan The Messiah will Come Again
12. Santana – Soul Sacrifice
13. Ry Cooder – Paris Texas
14.Rolling Stones with Mick Taylor - Cant You Hear Me Knocking ?
15. Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Alien
16. Nirvana – Smells like Teen spirit
17. Otis Rush – unsolo on I can’t quit you babe
18. Jimi Hendrix – Bold as Love
19. David Gilmour – skeletal arpeggio from S.O.Y.C.D.
20. B.B King – Sweet Sixteen live in Africa 1974
21. Jimi Hendrix – Machine Gun
22. Adrian Legg – Pedal Steel without Pedals
23. Eric Johnson – Song for George
24. Radiohead/Jonny Greenwood – Airbag
25. Rory Gallagher – Too Much Alcohol
26. Son House – Death Letter
27.King Crimson - Discipline Album
28. George Benson-Breezin’
29. The Edge / U2 -When I look at the World
30. Django -Honey Suckle Rose
31. Keith Richards -Happy
32. Sonny Landreth -Zydeco Shuffle – almost everybody slides
33. Joe Bonamassa -Sloe Gin
34. Freddie King -Woman Across the Water
35. Scotty Moore - That’s Alright Mama
36. Albert Collins - If trouble was money
37. Mississippi John Hurt - You’ve got to walk that Lonesome Valley
38. Robert Cray - Don’t be afraid of the dark
more soon
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Wear
Baby loves BUTCH!
Space for Sale
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Thangyaverimush
I`ve mustard sandwiches
I drink therefore
Playing Unique Guitar
- Image via Wikipedia
There are a lot of players out there doing the same old, same old…. Being unusual really, really helps stylistically. What it means is bringing as much of yourself into the equation…for many it usually means finding:
A: a guitar that works for you – I’ve found one, so far, in 25 years – you`ll only know it when you pick it up!
B. actually having something to say with your guitar and f**king well meaning it – that way you`ll always sound real.
Here are a few interesting players who are definitely onto something unusual and unique!
Keith Richards – 5 strings only and G tuning – D, B, G, D, G (high to low)
Django – predominantly two finger playing style as other fingers were badly burnt
Robert Johnson – almost supernatural physical technique beyond the horizon
Mississippi John Hurt – earthy brown-dirt piedmont picking sounds like molasses, & golden syrup
Charlie Christian – pioneer of amplification
Jesse Lone Cat Fuller – one man band blues-folk player who invented the Fotdella bass machine
Jeff Healey – Being blind the guitar is played on his lap
T bone Walker – played behind his head, with teeth and before Jimi
Jimi Hendrix – uses teeth, lighter fluid, art-destruction, plays behind head, innovative
Jeff Beck – one of the early feedback pioneers, also uses unorthodox approach to neck-scales-tremolo etc
- Image by ultomatt via Flickr
Frank Zappa – watermelons in easter hay and shut up and play your guitar – theme from the 3rd movement of sinister footwear
Stevie Ray Vaughan – uses half step down tuning
Eric Mongrain – a highly melodic tapping style (see also Kaki King for a percussive style)
- Image by jack o’diamonds via Flickr
Jimmy Page – used a violin bow and a theremin on occasion
Alvin Lee – completely unique English sound and style – live, using a drumstick for a right hand, incredible
Johnny greenwood, Adrian Belew, Reeves Gabrels – completely insane sounds
Robert Fripp – loops and frippertronics
Frank Gambale, Alan Holdswoth, John Maclaughlin – jazz fusion of various degrees
Paul Ubana Jones – mind blowing and unique style
Fred Frith – avante garde un-guitar playing
Richie Havens – open D tuning tour de force
The Edge -underrated master of skeletal arpeggios soaked with melodic feeling – redefined rock/pop guitar
Adrian Legg – idiosyncratic individual picking style complemented with technique & taste
Son House – unimaginably authentic individualism
So, do what feels best even if it`s unusual and strange!
Do what suits you. Do what you like. Use your limitations to your advantage & if you only know a few scales – there`s no limit to what you can do – explore them fully in all senses. You dont have to be blind, crippled or named after a fruit, but it might help…a little.
Why not try practising underwater, great for making those leagues below sea-sounds.
Later this week I`ll be travelling to the earth`s core to conduct electromagnetic, heat exchange, tone experiments.
Personally, Ive got my Strat` set up with the bridge in a unique way that “should” leave the guitar out of tune. It came about through an accident where I ripped the unit out of the body years ago and the tremsetter fell apart. It`s now become part of my overall style…it`s great.
Cheers, Jake.
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Prince of Cats II
Some people believe the Ouija board, the talking board, is a simple toy, and some consider them to be highly dangerous objects, capable of opening holes in the fabric of space and time, communicating with Daemons and Elementals. I`ve been working on the Prince of Cats;
those Eyes that never left the ground, no-one made a single sound;
around the sullen faces, maudlin like the poems of inarticulate men staring;
the skeleton people with tight yellow skin. sleepin` all day, on heroin, the neighbours only found him
aft’ the buzzards fill’d the sky.
ONE day the ground is gonna swallow you up - cause in the tear blown eyes of god
you aint nothing but dust,
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song,if you aint got long
I watched you break the furniture, watched you cut the pillows, the french flags in tatters,
the guns from your battles warm & beating lazily beside you, your head in the stream…
sing a sad, sad song, so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long
frosted glass and crystal pendants hang about her, and guilty men leave the graves of their fathers
on mentholatum painkillers are stringing up the children…
and pouring kerosene in your singing eyes because one day the ground’s gonna swallow you up
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long,
so sing a sad sad song, if you aint got long
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fragments of BUTTERFLIES…your face, splattered in blood, and HONEY when you aren’t moving too much, i taste the tiny spots of blood on your shallow breath, sure I fractured wrists. split your skull into a half. who gives a *ck if I cant * anymore. burning useless. your waxy stinking flesh on a sunset beach. in front of the police. dance.drink and rape&fuck and screw. and fight.take it away.take me away. god and television. god and vomit. government fabrication. pretty yellow DAFFODILS. can technology stop me? because i am running. things.
Driftwood guitar guide
…working fucking hard on sorting through demo tracks recorded hastily under pessure when I wa flying up to the studio alot. It’s time consuming and of course, as everybody knows the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune still fly, and smart so keenly.
Myself right now, well I moved back down south;canned my job – it was sucking the life out of me - living in an old spare room, next to the washing machine and that’s thanks to the charity of the only real friend I have; with little beyond a bmx bike, some clothes, one laptop, recently collected second hand literature, two mint condition old blues LP`s (muddy waters & ???), a painting, two vases I don’t need, one stratocaster and one beaten up hofner for slide playing, a collection of rocks, pauau, a dreamcatcher bricolage of found objects, talismans, feathers, trinkets, rosaries, crosses from as far afield as Barcelona, London, and Waikakahi, Hawea…
One day hopefully I’ll eulogise nostalgically about the good old days when I had nothing…and the washing machine was god.
down at the studio november `08 I cut this guide on the plank:
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Antisocial Nepotism
We’re currently ‘working’ on the whole Facebook side of things. With three blogs being set up to bleed slowly into the atrocity that is the Face Book Elijah Few page: you can sell your soul to us, dirt cheap by clicking here and becoming a fan. Music, maybe, soon, but I’m going to spend the new, few days sun listening to the sea beneath an ancient arch; with a beat up guitar and sheets of paper blowing…waiting for collapse. One day reality will collapse beneath the vast weight of virtual nothingness we are creating – god bless the future because it’s already fucked up.
Mind
Make up your own mind.
It doesn’t matter how you do it.
Everywhere;
seek out miracles; in the mundane and in the everyday, learn to look and write them out across your name.
have heart, have faith, & follow no man’s code,
write them on the water, make them your own,
On the Road
Desolation angels everywhere….I’m on the road, thank god for freedom; after the sting of disappointment and the hard earthquake work of a tectonic shift is gone comes the mellifluous colour-tones and taste of time, motion; mountain, river and ocean, vision and celebration, dedication and devotion.
Be the water – you cant stay in one place too long but unlike the million raindrops falling on the glass around you – avoid the path of least resistance. Take the difficult road and be prepared to die for what you believe in…risk everything to complete your vision…just to write and breathe; songs, messages, art that eat worlds…
Broken bones and broken stones
… embrace talent and celebrate the gifts of others, embrace your good fortune and the power the great spirit sends you; the power to change, transform, connect and grow….fear not your detractors – they are weak and do not understand, they are just the dust in your mouth, the dry sand of windblown bones forgotten in the dance of life…
Fill up the sky with broken stones……Fill up the sky with broken bones…
The hand of the SPIRIT was upon me, and set me adrift upon a bone filled valley; “Son of man, can these bones live? breathe tendons and flesh and skin and breath?”
Suddenly a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. tendons and flesh and skin covered them, from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live
they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army…
we are the bone people…
If.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
Rudyard’s IF represents more than adequately the struggle and difficulties of being an outsider, a traveller with no real destination, a tree broken off from its roots, driftwood amongst a million lonely stones, dispossessed, lacking in direction. Encapsulating a moment ‘beyond’ time and space in the mind of the lone individual, fraught with the vicissitudes, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; in the eye of the storm & the heat of the battle silent volumes speak.
Eulogy for a flying machine
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[I will not reduce my music to soundbites; will not compromise; will continue to self doubt; will continue with fits of madness; will do what I want and when; will believe, trust and exist within the great spirit; will learn to accept the daemon; will re-purpose the music altruistically; will not rest; will be patient; will make mistakes; will enjoy the journey; will fight fire with fire & I will burn in hell for it all sooner or later....]
I’m off the road temporarily; and, beautiful as it is, the city seems wholly a vestibule of atypical middle class anglo-XXXXXXXX aspiration and all the dysfunctional bullshit that people THINK goes with it. All the bullshit that will kill your soul, tie you down and really limit your consciousness.
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World Gone Wrong
I woke up this morning and crudely, using a cassette recorder, quickly threw down the lyrical amendments I`d written to the world gone track asi t played in the background.. so that rehearsal can start across the water. the sun is shining. it`s rough but a good guide…burning hearts…golden hearts scattered, lonely in the road bleeding…what does it feel like really breathing?
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Death Perfection Records II
….and all I feel is a world gone wrong; a new song idea – as ugly as it is beautiful…leaves a taste on your lips that’s just bittersweet. Turei has sent through a very, very rough demo – all the way from Aotearoa, so I put my knife down to the paper and started cutting…
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Hallelujah’s not enough
What does it feel like?
With so much trouble in the world
An` no matter how hard we try
What does it feel like…really breathing?
To fill up the sky….with broken stones
you know you cant lay down and die now and you know you’re not alone so
Don’t be a liar now because written on the water in a world gone so wrong….
We’re golden, yeah, and i`m holding; on (what are you thinking?)
Storms will come, yes in this world gone wrong
So bring them on – yeah.
Tuhoe, Dublin
Cherokee, London – its the same old song…
Don`t you think its gonna be a better day tomorrow?
There`s no dishonour in wanting to be free,
so sing along:
golden hearts, in a world gone wrong, burning hearts (what are you thinking?)
broken hearts, empty hearts can sing
on.
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
We laid our wheels down to the road – we`ll fight forever lay our souls down to the road
We’ll get the hell out of forever in this bucket of old ghosts – we`ll fight together burning flags and gold
triumphant shining in your tear blown eyes
Glory and despair
all your banners, all your lies…
golden light shining through in your smile
in your smile, golden lights,
in your smile
It doesn’t matter what they bring to the op-en door – I cant change the song I sing, its written on the wall
Thay cant sell you anything to replace your dignity – like the ghost of yesterday knockin` on your door
knockin’ on your door….(what are you thinking?)
Dispossessed of all you have what does it feel like
When they’ve taken everything that you lived for
What does it feel like…really breathing?
To fill up the sky….with our stolen gold
you know cant lay down and die now and you know you’re not alone so
Don’t be lying to yourself now because written on the water in a world gone so damn wrong….
golden hearts, in a world gone wrong, burning hearts (what are you thinking?)
broken hearts, empty hearts can sing
on.
golden heart.
burning heart.
shine on through. (dispossessed of all you had)
broken heart. (what does it feel like)
burning heart.
Is it the wine on the lips of women you havent met
Or the salt petre match of the cigarette
The blood stained red of the tv set
The white and the blues
that you cant forget…
golden hearts all gone wrong. golden hearts all alone. golden hearts.broken hearts.
what are you thinking ? shine on through
(scattered on the road lonely bleeding)
Songwriting, Production, Dylan and Experience
A friend writes of songwriting, and I`m presuming he means quality songwriting of prescient import like Townes Van Zandt or Bob Dylan…and in quality writing I prefer to mean writers like Faulkner, Steinbeck, TS Eliot, Shakespeare and the like? Certain genres create different spheres of discipline though it is true – but if we consider Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan to be the hyperion of writing achievement then I don`t think just anyone can do it and I don`t think everyone has something to say. Certainly not of value.
Alot of people substitute melody, production or style for lyrical content and allow marketing in all its myriad guises to persuade them of qualities that are simply nonexistant. We live in a world in which people are increasingly ignorant of history, sacrifice, emotion, trauma and the hurt of others. We live in a world divided into those who think and feel with their hearts and minds and those who think they can feel.
- Image via Wikipedia
Some people have a god given talent with a pen and it clearly shows they have been around and experienced what life has to offer - without this experience there is nothing to offer the song writing pantheon but secondhand echoes and dull inarticulate reflections of life`s mirror.
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The Hypocrisy of Absent gods
We separate ourselves through a broken language from the surrounding milieu. Both bird and tree are the same. A guest here says god is an astronaut – if he is; then his ship must be in for repairs or he has abandoned us for a cleaner, less f*&^ked up planet and people elsewhere? Do the quantum notions of great astrophysical thinkers, the musings of Von Daniken or the ’superstition’ of pagan systems offer us any further respite?
How do you know but every Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?
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Arch Kings of Mediocrity
Make your life a labour of love… a cluster of stars; there is no fast track to glory…victory comes not from a simple strategy but from passion, love, necessity – fire. An eternal fight for meaning over mediocrity…years on a ghostly ship and no end in sight look for reflections dancing across the surface of the mighty river. Pieces of the puzzle do not fall immediately from the sky but people appear intermittently in the mist upon the horizon….like the terminal moraine of vast and varied existence on the edges…but that would be futile. We do not have the time for that.
What is writing real emotions? Being able to operate on a median level, taking your experience – the place, the settings, the immediate, the transient fleeting glimpses of the past, the literatures of your own belonging and fusing them together with an imagination that gleams like the flashing of a shield.
You’ve gotta be able to shine….and listen to the rivers speaking.
The journey will set you free…
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[Elijah Few] (51)
[Guitar Machine] (18)
[Ratty Says] (26)
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Son House: Retribution, Shamanism and the Devil
I first saw House when I was maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and, it changed everything for me.
House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution. His early experience as a baptist preacher
bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism. House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches. It was House who, speaking to awe-struck young blues fans in the 1960s, spread the legend that Johnson had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his musical powers…but he musta been talking about hisself.
I got a letter this mornin, how do you reckon it read?
It said, “Hurry, hurry, yeah, your love is dead”So, I grabbed up my suitcase, and took off down the road
When I got there she was layin on a coolin’ boardWell, I walked up right close, looked down in her face
Said, the good ol’ gal got to lay here ’til the Judgment DayLooked like there was 10,000 people standin’ round the buryin’ ground
I didn’t know I loved her ’til they began to let her downYou know I didn’t feel so bad, ’til the good ol’ sun went down
I didn’t have a soul to throw my arms aroundYou know, it’s hard to love someone that don’t love you
Ain’t no satisfaction, don’t care what in the world you doYou know, love’s a hard ol’ fall, make you do things you don’t wanna do
Love sometimes leaves you feeling sad and blue
The mighty Son House. The real deal; spent the first half of his life in the Steam Age and the later half working on the New York Central Rail line. If this man`s music doesn’t move you – nothing will. You must be dead. In my humble opinion Son House is the greatest blues player of all time…
House was born in 1886 (officially) 1902 in Clarksdale, Mississippi and in his mid twenties, inspired by Willie Wilson, he bought a guitar and played alongside Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. Son House even spent time on Parchman Farm for killing a man in self defence.
House`s sounds are characteristically steam driven rhythmic explorations of disturbingly apocryphal and intense gothic desolation, loss, isolation and spiritual retribution. His early experience as a baptist preacher bleeds through and informs his vocals empowering them with an incantatory, mesmeric resonance that borders on Native American shamanism.
House`s lexicon occupies a position of such emotional lucidity and trail blazing acuity that much of what followed after him could be viewed as incomplete, inchoate gestural cliches.
This is the voice of the Wicked Messenger, when he rolls back into town.
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Plastic Hollywood necrophiliac celebrity blues
In the sixties people were mobilised against the war in vietnam, youth culture was finding it`s footing…but the world has been reduced to a quintessence of dust & there`s a recession – perhaps it`s economical, perhaps it`s intellectual, perhaps it`s at the heart of everything, Mr. Kurtz – quantum thought, belief and mysticism. Does anyone read Kerouac or Steinbeck? What the heck? Is everyone wrapped up in a load of irreverent Hollywood plastic surgery necrophiliac celebrity lifestyle televisual bullshit? Another day another city…. or, lost in the wilderness writing lyrics of disposition and seeking unification through re-immersion, or reconnection with landscape…
“The project has gone beyond having a single production value input for me, I`m actually really taking the project beyond the simple idea of it as a product from or for the studio, it`s become more than a product that`s just x, y, z; I’ve invested myself completely into it, it`s become a spiritual and personal project.
“I think I spent so long working on the songs, investing them with time and travel, that they grew out of real experience, the road, loneliness, instability and at the time a connection with only the land.”
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One against nature
Religious people have told me that this is a music of god and called me to play in their church. They are right but Amerindian pantheism, paganism and the church of biosphere is more important to me than allegiance to some mere singular “god” – or vain organised form of deceit – Maybe its all imagined in the solipsistic mind of god – we`re just a part of the universe, emboldened enough to consider self, although more than mere particles held together electrically, an experience – I don`t want to be their damnéd messenger.
Another weekend of recording & mixing is fast approaching – we`re looking to retrack and track as much as possible – songs we tracked a few months back with a plank of a guitar prior to our involvement with Mojo Sound in Wellington.
Inspiration II
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The lone fight of the Individual
“It`s peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with mobile phones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self identity. It`s a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that`s got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that…” Bob Dylan.
I possess a certain love-hate relationship with plenty of things. I think we all do – if we`ve got our heads turned on at all. Acceptance of things because they are new or modern is a blind faith & preserve of shallow, hollow hearted fools. Just recently I read a Dylan interview in the Sunday Times, & although Dylan is around twice my age, I have to completely echo and agree with his sentiments.
Technology has so much to offer and yet can take so much away, remove us from real experience and right now perhaps, it`s creating a generation of automaton`s who live their lives through the vile excreta of mass media. A generation that can`t read or write and with no comprehension of the ideals of individualism, courage , rebellion and struggle. We have to fight homogenisation – everywhere on every level.
Post apocalyptic burnout low-fi blues
After a couple of weeks off playing an electric I decided to fire up my under the desk guitar rig which consists of a loopstation, a delay and a distortion box into a Music Man amp. After four hours it was about midnight and I was pretty burnt out but I whipped through the footage real quick and here are some random guitar snacks for anyone who gives a damn….
Ecology & Consciousness
I watched the Motorcycle Diaries yesterday.
I had no idea that Che Guevara was killed in 1967 – that wasn`t so long ago; and with the help of an American Government Agency apparently. Disgusting.
Heroes, freedom fighters, mystics and warriors of consciousness from Jesus to Geronimo, Byron, Malcolm X and more have been persecuted and ripped up by the snarling rats of the “establishment”…
Recorded with no rehearsal and no tune up a couple of years ago whilst travelling aound Aotearoa. This song deals with american history and politics in relation to the 911 terror attacks, the New Orleans flooding and the Tsunami.
Kennedy and Lennon shot down like dogs in the street by parasitic filth and an explosion of increasingly sophisticated advertising together with media, intellectual, and parabolic corporate ownership of the intangible and esoteric: land, time and space- Exxon, Clear Channel, SKY and god knows what else; to help us all feel good while our minds are repossessed and our lands are ripped up.
Since 1967 So much has changed but the human machine. Ugly homogenisation of towns and village streets across the U.K. by monolithic edifices of corporate greed, the blight of surveillance, drunkenness, violence and crime are all allies in an unconscious response…
Travelling around the South Island in New Zealand convinced me that there is a reasonable argument for fighting against eco-terrorism, exploitation and standing up against irrelevant modernisation and the damaging pollutants more often than not labelled as improvement or whatever else bullshit lexicon beaurocrats and other official madmen can use to subvert, bend and lie about the truth. Does anyone care? There are people out there who do; let`s connect.
Our relationship with the land is an integral part of our consciousness. The land is not capable of a lie. More soon.
Light Water Religion Life and Death
- Image via Wikipedia
Music can be inspiration, divination and self exploration within the ancient church of self; your DNA possesses and encodes evolutionary time…….the ancient “church” is everywhere; that is everywhere we haven`t desecrated it with base architectures and pollutants often incorrectly disguised beneath a veneer of language such as “progress”, “industry”, “change” and more. Water is the carrier and light is the messenger.
Liberte, equality, Egalite…
freedom, equality, egalitarianism; the hypotheses of European Revolutionaries remain still only ideals enoded into arbitrary signs. I recently picked up a copy of the 1962 Freedom Movement songbook – unity & music were at the centre of social change.
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Taking care of business
Well, its a dirty old world we live in and music is dirty business that`s for sure. Is it possible to separate your art and your integrity, your ego and your conscience from the business of your product?
Sure. There`s no product without a business model or a channel behind it. Similarly there`s no revolution without subscribers to it`s system of belief or even it`s system of belief marketing. Does that mean Bob Dylan was an out and out liar or just a business man with his finger on the generation/brand pulse? Who knows and who damn well cares?
No-one. Because whilst the deep rooted ideas of the sixties may have made their way into current day thinking osmotically – the world hasn`t changed, except perhaps for the fact that we`re all hyperconnected, climate change will kill our species, eventually; all marketeers are bare faced liars and science battles god in an unsuccessful war of attrition. He wrote some great numbers…man. Jesus.
Wicked messenger
Undisclosed message from the edge of hell:
Dear X,
There are two sides to the story and I`m not having mine drowned out…its about bringing the fire and the rain;
about FIGHTING for freedom and saving the land/ our minds from the unrelentless onslaught of media lies, deceit and manipulation in an orwellian world under surveillance, financial manipulation, systems of terror. ….focus upon integrity, justice, egalitarianism – this is actually a wilderness / road project, ELI-JAH wanders like a ghost through the landscape – vital to our survival. I want to hear and feel some fire; grasp a cluster of exploding stars. it isnt about saftey – or knocking off the corners…it isn`t about towing the fucking line, it’s a matter of faith not fear; love not hate and life beyond death.
Here is an interpretation of the Song November `08 [george vocals]:
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Who do you want to be
…European history is littered with the blood of martyrs, saints and the common man killed in the name of untouchable conceits, beliefs, money, freedom and more than anything else the land that no-one owns.
A couple of years ago I suffered a bereavement. I was twisted up driving around going through my own personal hell at the time. Last time I saw her she was “recovering” and glowing like lightning. I knew I`d see her again. But I was wrong & this really brought the world down around my feet. A year later I was driving across the empty plains out of my mind when I came across a lonely chapel in what I`ve recently found out was a utopian community set up by a man with vision. Doomed to failure all that remains of this mans great dreams are a set of four empty gravel avenues, and the chapel, lined with sycamore trees. I think there may have been a murder there; a tragedy of some kind. I went into the empty chapel, got down on my knees and began to pray. I wrote this close to that that time and threw it down just now as fast as I could. It`s not a lament but a vision too so I guess we all have a streak of idealism on the road or in searching for hope or dreams…
Who you want to be II
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I know its loose as hell, loose as hell; an improvisation around a textual idea…
Guitar Riffs
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Here `s a snapshot of an unfinished riff that was recently used in the Auckland Xmedia lab, unmixed and pretty much raw straight into Logic. Followed by another riff thrown down when I fired up Logic and my midi controller for the first time. Play Loud.
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Songwriting VII
You Lost it All
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George has sent over here to California a new song “You lost it all”. Even though it`s been slung together – he likes to keep things understated and there`s a certain amount of ambivalence and oblique refraction, whatever that means, in the lyrical content although musically it has epic and tragic leanings…meanings are fairly diffuse. I’m glad to hear you hacking that acoustic up G.` the future looks bright because this style of writing offsets what I`ve been delivering quite dramatically.
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Make what you want of it and read between the lines but I can assure you that the knives are out.
Drowning ants fall from the ceiling, freezing water`s somehow leaking and the floor`s too cold for kneeling in unsuccessfully appealing to some god.
Blood like cold needles that slide; in my veins – corpse candles hanging in the trees and circling stones.
“I never had the shine of a coin in my pocket” the road mender sighed and every one laughed blood, a hundred sagging mouths.
Needles & Grey angels
When you have a song idea it`s best to get it down fast. The germ of an idea is all it takes and I `m not here to produce; simply to document in the roughest infancy the intimacy of the idea and capture the moment of inspiration rather than process it.
blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
you fell from heaven in the yellow rain
steal the flowers of the day
singing fragments of a tender song
black embers of a time now gone, burning embers
crosses and candlesticks, conquests and cathedrals now forgotten
little grey angels surround all your gallows
little grey angels surround all you girl
they all scatter just like shadows
they all shadows you cant hold on…to
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(c)jake edwards 2009
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Simple versus Complexity
After four years with no acoustic guitar writing songs on borrowed planks and often times on my beloved stratocaster with a collection of maybe 6 guitars left to decay, rot, decline and gather dust, rust and cobweb somewhere in an empty cupboard on the other side of the earth I have finally found a plank for myself. Its a simple rather than a complex machine…An old hofner F-hole! Fortunately the gods here have smiled upon me and hooked me up with Mojo Sound in Wellington for recording with some pricey pricey guitars…
With a mellow, aged, ochre, molasses and diesel sound this baby is just built for percussive, skiffle styles, slide lead lines. It`s great even if it rattles like tthe eeth in an old desert lost skull, and the actions higher than god…
Ive been using my phone for years now to record stuff ..modern technology makes me sick.
Ive just started working on a new song with this new blues guitar but I can`t.
I`m surrounded by more technology right now than used to launch the hubble telescope, video cameras, sound interfaces, computers – windows and mac, photo cameras, mixing desks, amplifiers, electronic drums, p.a.`s and I cant record a single damn riff into any of it…so I`m using my mobile phone and I wish I had a cassette recorder…complexity is the enemy of creativity…
“Blood like cold needles that slide in my veins
You fell from heaven in the yellow rain
Stealing the crimson flowers of day
Black embers shone of a time now gone
crosses & candlesticks, conquests, cathedrals now forgotten”
Freedom movement
Blues Talismans
aeons ago, almost another lifetime – arriving on the plains with a guitar, a bicycle and a rucksack 6 months in the fields taught me the titan majesty of mountains & rivers. I traveled around as much as I could and I slowly built talismans and people, gifts, and found objects into a huge feathered dream catcher onto the rear view mirror of my van which was my accommodation on excursions across the island…
Four years have passed - working in a city, a beautiful city, flying to the capital to record songs that came out of the rivers, mountains, hills and plains…but, this beautiful florid city is sucking the life out of me…I need to work to pay for the recordings, to work in the city to make enough money, but it doesn`t make any sense…
Here are the contents of the slowly assembled “dream machine” mosaic of minds and matter:
…rekiie healers handmade amulet as gift, antique remnants of barcelona spain cathedral prayer beads-rosary the crucifix lost, amerindian ex-girlfriends animal gift from 1999, southshore plastic toy handgrenade, 2006 kaitorete feathers from long walk, emo cow print new brighton bracelet plus two brass bracelets unknown origin, maori doll wellington, plastic sun amulet mid-canturbury plains `06, paua earing and purple feather (now decayed) (both found objects), silver watchchain early 20th century from U.K., american indian silver handmade ring – white feather, working pocket watch trinket originally japan from friend (returned). semi-precious rock collection from Longford river, Waikakahi/Jacobs Bay/Rangitata & Rakaia bed/Motukatuka point – Pauau from Wahine Park, Purau and east coast S.island bays shells…
Paranormaloid Redemptive Blues
Wicked messengers return
Verse
E G flat E
Back down from heaven `Lijah brought the broken/widow`s sun
E C A
Raven fed by demons fighting
E G —slide— A
Pursued by Ahabs demon jezebel
E C D
On Saianai the winds did chime farewell
E C A
And with earthquake fire murdered demons thereupon
Break
E
Dem bones bem bones
D A
Gottem on the inside Why not on the outside
E
Dem bones dem bones
C A
Why not on the outside Gottem on the inside
Chorus
B7 G flat
Tell me what you know
D7 A
Reap just what you sow
C G
Tell them what you`ve learned
B7
The prophecy returns…..the prophecy returns
Verse
E G flat E
Forty nights in silent heart he hid
E C A
From the threats fled of Princess Hate
E G —slide— A
And her King Jealousy, who kneels & curses
E C D
Crowned in barbs his violent verses whilst he prays
E C A
And in defiance of this prophecy I burn
Break
E
Dem bones bem bones
D A
Gottem on the inside Why not on the outside
E
Dem bones dem bones
C A
Why not on the outside Gottem on the inside
Chorus
B7 G flat
Your words they burn like bones
D7 A
Falling off the world
C G
Falling off the world
B7
The prophecy returns…..the prophecy returns
Verse
E G flat E
Across the waters dividing chariots in a haze of fire
E C A
A whirlwind blew from out the sun
E G —slide— A
Ascending true into his god look down upon
E C D
Her broken body burning in the parking lot
E C A
Feast upon by hellhound wailing like a thousand dogs (c) Jake Edwards 2005
Paranormal Blues
The song Architecture of Destiny is an loosely constructed homage to the autistic, but multidimensional City of Glass, The sublime House of Leaves, Beckford`s Vathek and intertwines the everyday, matter of fact relational breakdown, difference and decay within the broader context of an “architecture” of pre-ordained bad luck. I journeyed today with a psychic to an abandoned school built in the early 20th Century;
We live in a supranatural world.
There`s obviously a supernatural tradition innate to the blues lyric and the historical context from which the early blues pioneers emerged.
It`s a subject of great interest both for its pseudo religious supranatural leanings and the degree to which this tradition has been perpetuated… The lone artist, soaked in liquour, absinthe and opium, an artist struggling with, for or against the elements or humanity in defiance of tradition, change, oppression -a freedom fighter channelling the forces of good or evil through a talismanic or demoniacal engagement to the guitar, the pen or the cause. A vocal tradition hoodoo-esque, incantational, evangelical, proselytising, confessional, mean, base or sexual…it’s blue.
Smoke wood whiskey river blues
We`re using the custom martin guitar to re-record the Rakaia River acoustic guitar tracks and there`s a world of difference. We`re also using Jamesons Irish Whiskey as it gives a warm, mellow tone – this music is made by authentic musicians who play with their boots off and their glasses loaded. Our mix is beginning to sound exceptionally smooth, with complex flavours of toasted wood, spice and sherry, superbly mellowed by time…Elijah Few recommends Jamesons Irish whisky, and, for Scotch The Balvenie and Lagavulin. Now it would be easy to suggest that the mystical otherness of the whiskey has infused our recording with the warmth and oak mellowed manuka tones we`ve been seeking but the fact of the matter is that now we`re using 8 grands worth of acoustic honey.
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Mojo Sound
Thanks to Pete at Mojo Sound here in Wellington we`ve just picked up the Aston Martin of Martin guitars – a custom model Martin valued at around 8 thousand dollars. This particular Martin has an acoustic tone that is smooth, rich and highly natural; bright, lively and warm with an entirely even response across the strings. Its a breeze to play and when simply strumming an E chord resonates with rich, manuka, gently oscillating overtones.
Mojo Sound have a great range of amplification as well as acoustic and electric models in stock: great Fender, G&L, and Fernandes electrics, beautiful sounding acoustic Martins and L`Arrivee models and some of the best amplification we`ve seen for awhile.
The Wicked Messenger
Dylan`s wicked messenger is a lesson itself in palimpsest – layering obscurity, ambiguity and obfuscation. I used to jam with Kenny Jones and the very first Faces album, after the Small Faces disbanded, had a great cover of Bob Dylan`s Wicked Messenger. I`m back in a recording studio for the next week and the results will be here – The Elijah Few project is now being supplied guitars by MOJO SOUND in Wellington – and who else… they understand tone, check them out. Here`s a riposte to Dylan’s pseudo-western-biblical mysticism. What really shines about Dylan`s John Wesley Harding album are the hidden depths beneath the veneer of simplistic chord structures and arrangements, the economy of the instrumentation and production. Dylan took three days to record the Harding album. I spent no time at all getting this into a camera (2007).
Robert Johnson: Terrorplane Ghost Walker
- Image via Wikipedia
Robert Johnson; there`s a lot of hoodoo wrapped up around the man, in particular that he sold his soul to the devil down at the crossroads in Clarksdale. Originally, Son House suggested, Johnson was not regarded as a good musician at all but after the trade with Satan he returned with the blazing skills and blues mastery of a demi-god. Much of the early blues protagonists framed their content within the context of african american hoodoo/religious belief wrapped up in the historical context of migratory diaspora and most of the cliches of the blues narrative are more culturally rich in meaning than they might at first appear. The simple cliche alone of “the highway” is extrapolated and interpolated by numerous artists over the last 90 years by Bob Dylan alone many times across his recorded work. A great bridging work for the blues to the present date is Michael Gray’s ‘Song and Dance Man III’, which illustrated Dylan`s reappropriation of the blues through other song forms.
The narrative and folk tales, the telling of lies or competitive tales, the healthily obscene “putting in the dozens”, the long and witty toasts and the epigrammatic rhyming couplets which enliven the conversation of folk negro and harlem hipster alike, have their reflections in the blues.
Paul Oliver`s book “Conversation with the Blues” (1965)
There`s a great thesis here about the concept of the Trickster, which leads me onto what I`ve talked about previously with regards to Radioheads re-appropriation of the blues through a series of post modern metaphors and the Sublime. Eric Clapton himself has suggested that Johnson`s cross tempo work is unparalleled and Johnny Winter makes use of this technique also.
In the following video Eric Clapton, another “guitar hero” whose early songwriting capabilities and exploration of new genres (e.g. Cale & Marley) seems to be wholly forgotten now, talks about Robert Johnson and plays “Stones in the Passway”.
It`s a great place to start exploring what Robert Johnson has to offer and why he is who he is. It also illuminates the sheer technique, the impact of the unusual, that is often confused with something arcane, mythical, metaphysical, divine and otherworldly or more specifically in the blues with superstition, an encounter with the Devil or other dark force and the conceit of a conspirational universe. It’s also interesting to note that the cross tempo section Eric Clapton discusses is a technique that many artists have plagiarised or emulated: Johnny Winter and Rory Gallagher have used it in varying degrees throughout their careers.
At any rate as much as Johnson’s technique was formidable and undeniably unique recordings have always sounded odd: his voice always seemed pitched too high and anyone who owns a gramophone knows that speed is ultimately the choice of the listener. Anyway, it seems that we may been listening to Robert Johnson at too many revolutions.
Touched.co.uk are offering Steady Rollin’ Man – 24 tracks of Robert Johnson slowed down – click here. I.M.H.O. this is the way Robert Johnson should sound and you can read all about it here.
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Desolation angels
So go on down to that big old river and sit on down amongst a million lonely stones. Contemplate your past and your future, where they collide. There isn’t really much worse a man can do than kill another man – destroy his gods, his belief. Truth is you can do it any number of ways – words, lies, deceit – try to break his spirit. It can be damn hard not to give way to your anger if vengeance, revenge or retribution are on your mind. A flood comes suddenly and without warning. The river song: a complex intertwined sequence of real experience, fictional events and the influence, recollected, of a million literary tragedies…of dynasties and histories, rendered unto dust…and washed away…Each river is a beautifully human and poignant book- a condensed history of human experience.
Rakaia River Sneak Preview
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..Before mankind filled our heads with illusion and filled our hearts with lead we could define ourselves by our rivers and our mountains. We stood in good relation to the earth, took what we needed, we didn`t measure the harvests of our environment in profit. We measured in participation and celebration. A pantheistic way, a reason for celebration. The Rakaia River Murder tells of a Trail of Tears, in dead landscape metaphor, vengeance, redemption and freedom. … are you dead already? Hollow?
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Old guitar
What is it about old guitars, old planks, old timber, old gold even? Who knows? Analogue or digital? I`d definitely rather listen to an L.P. or even better still a 78 on my gramophone.
If you write from experience you will develop a sense of place, character, a message, tone, symbolism, imagery, and figurative language, metaphor and simile. Ignore everybody and never even consider any filthy dirty money. Remember though the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Today I picked up the awesome Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee – Midnight Special album and the Muddy Waters` album I`m ready (produced by the mercurial Johnny Winter). Waters` style is particularly inspired in it`s use of Microtones. I also managed to find the 80`s Hendrix compilation Crash Landing which I hadn`t seen for twenty years or so. My old friends in the band the Beautiful People sampled alot of it on their release If 60`s were 90`s.
Well, it`s a very simple and easy methodology I use when it comes to songwriting. After 20 years of blistering licks, absorbing the music and magic of feedback, of tonal exploration, of distortion, of brainwashing with as many records as I could get my head around I found that alot of this “learning” would get in the way, that alot of equipment, amplifiers, effects, preconceived notions, riffs, hooks, rhythms and ideas just don`t even help with writing a song. It`s like writing, you can pin it down to a set of motifs, a set of ideas, devices and techniques…but these alone do not a great piece of work create. You need genuine experience. Remove from view all the pillars in your sight. I find the hardest guitars to play, and don`t mess about with any kind of notions of playing finesse as you can see in the video on my other posts. Writing a song aint about playing the guitar.
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The long road to Freedom
WE live in an age of surveillance and ORWELLIAN control by drug companies, oil companies, banks; telecommunications companies and systems – a world in which the basic inheritance of life such as air, water, LAND, speech, time and perception are increasingly monopolised, trademarked and owned by the few. My life and my work is informed by an increasingly rare commodity – FREEDOM. You can find it between the leaves of a thousand years of knowledge…
A book is a bomb. A book is a time machine.
A book is a recruitment device. A book is mantra. A book is terror.
A book is enlightenment. A book is life. A book is death.
A house of Leaves and a city of Glass.
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Rakaia River
original video version of the Rakaia River Murder song. This version was recorded into a camera whilst living on the floor at a friends house maybe 4 years back?
(I wrote all this song near Rakaia from 2005-2006 and recorded them in 2007).
I`d been out on the road, travelling around, living in a van. Hanging out. It was a metaphysical journey. 6 months re-reading Desolation Angels on the inverse hemisphere.Anyway, I didnt tune up too tight, didnt rehearse at all, placed the lyrics on the floor and hit record on a cheap Canon camera. I separated the audio and the footage later. If I can find it I`ll dig it up and post that too.
As usual I was using a borrowed plank of a guitar, but its better than nothing. Heres a rough rough compressed MP3 mix of the studio demo thus far, ignore the damn tuning issues:
Rakaia River one
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Eye of a Needle
another 2005 song but conjured up from the south island wilderness, out there somewhere in the gold country…again, was recorded into a cheap camera, off the cuff one afternoon – I was living on a friends floor for a while.
There`s no focus upon quality, production value or even delivery here, just making a recording from emotional and metaphysical experiences out in the wilderness, travelling light, living in a van, on the road.
Guitar science.
Rock guitar
Casting crosses, curses and true tales of life
the river became central to my experience…at the end of my time, the mother of pearl crucifix I wore around my neck for a decade had cracked and broken – on my last journey through the gorge cast my crucifix into the waters …When I came back into the countryside the following year, the river welcomed me in high flood, submerging islands, wreaking havoc. I was inspired by true tales – real lives. sometimes anger and the devil will blind and trick you; choose the way of the gun and a vengeful Miltonic god or cast yourself asunder, through the tides.
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Way of the Gun Lyrics
Loneliness, happiness and in between. Back in time when I lived on the other side (of the world) I sat in an interview and watched the twin towers exploding in outrageous fury right in front of my eyes.
Much like the Kennedy assassination we all knew there were going to be a few survivors, scapegoats, betrayal, fury, greed and a litany of lies, hollow promises and bitter recrimination. Every time I drive by that twisted, burnt, heat melted, white hot new york metal, the skeletal remains, the old bony fingers pointing helplessly skyward into space, to a god looking down upon the shame and the deceit, the lies, the cowardice and the damage done to the hearts of every man woman and child alive, breathing and capable of now understanding what a hollow piece of rock we inhabit, and what a terrible thing we have doe to ourselves.
I usually write out about four pages of spontaneous poetry or material and work backwards from there. Some of the material comes directly from headlines recollected from memory. Betrayal, fury , suspicion and greed came through the television. I try not to watch it.
I spent at least 6 months, more like a year, cutting down the words, ridding them of complexity, making them simple and making them count.
[your television will help you objectify our gross global cultural output: there is very little beyond the smattering of charity, hope and faith except for violence, sex, death, destruction, greed, monopolising, pollution and a vast modern ACEDIA.]
(c) Jake Edwards 2005
911. kennedy. CIA. FBI.
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Guns and Money
Death perfection records
I wrote previously here about perfectionism. My recent day long recording session with a plank of a guitar, a boiling hot studio, a strange routing to the desk, lack of sleep, the pressure of fast, fast decision making regarding choosing and recording guitar parts, the arrangement of these plus the vocals and the lyrics, the tempo of the song and the need to get on a plane at the end of the day, (which meant not using a Martin acoustic) all added up to a situation which was not ideal. Ideally I’d like a Martin acoustic, plus my Strat into two Session amplifiers for a great stereo mix. But hell who wants to let go of their Martin and leave it to the vicissitudes of baggage handling, not me no way.
Anyway, this is just the preliminary working arrangement – I`ll get a player and or their guitar for the final cut, the real deal takes. No time or room for perfectionism this time around.
The point is that looking for perfection can often become a barrier to achievement and it applies to everything. You have to do what needs to be done sometimes. Its like playing a gig with a hangover – turn it on like a tap or go home. Every test is a test created only by yourself.
Perfect takes forever, Good takes time, Shit takes 5 minutes. It`s the fourth time around.
Rakaia River Murder Lyrics
SO go on down to that big old river and sit on down amongst a million lonely stones all tired and old muddy coloured its no good driftwood company
There`s a storm rolling in inking up the sky downwind
So she goes down to the edge of the water and fills her pockets with stones
whilst behind heer crippled daughter weeps and moansThree bells toll in the clock tower warning
the water`s gonna rise by the hour of morning
the moon goes down while the wind blows up some meaner weather
black topped seeds rattle the rakaia riverTheres a storm rolling in inking up the sky downwind
She slowly sinks into the fast flowing water
pulled way down by the weight and the cold
there`s no prayer and no way that we oughta
let anybody knowMeet me where the waters freeze, beside the telegraph trees
And set your crosses free down upon the water
Go call the priest to say a prayer down into the canyon
Her rusty chair hidden by a chapel abandonedTheres a storm rolling in inking up the sky downwind
Eyes shining like the moon on the stones
Eyes smiling the crippled daughter
As her mother walks homeTheres a storm rolling in inking up the sky downwind
You were warned vengeance in the sky
vengeance in the sky
(c)Jake Edwards 2005
Ive been holding onto these particular pieces of paper for about 4 years from continent to continent.
(I wrote this song near Rakaia and recorded it in 2007).
Rakaia River First demo Mix
Well after finding myself back on the killing floor I`ve finally managed to get some time together in between dodging the exploded portions of my life that are falling out of the sky, to post some of our preliminary music work. Here it is, the song took 3 years experientially to write, maybe more; here`s one extremely hot day`s worth of work using the aforementioned plank and the good old stratocaster. Not bad for a days demo work, composition and maybe a quick twenty minutes of mixing and a little e.q.-ing. Shame the acoustic tuning is all over the joint. No matter, Ive got some very very special guitars lined up for the real sessions, this is just the precis.
It`s hard to understand probably exactly how crucial the overall feel is without some insight into the lyrics. I`ll post them soon under the Rakaia River category.
So here`s the compressed MP3 version.
Rakaia River Murder one
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When you aint got nothin’ nothin’ to lose
You can`t make something out of nothing, but too much nothing will make a man feel ill at ease. Worldly possessions; you cant take them with you. But this is the 21st century too. Better be sure to put a value on the things you really care about, because at the end of the day, nothing material counts for jack shit. Look after your soul and travel light. Ignore the media and don’t buy any of their crap. Suddenly I own too much and then Suddenly everything evaporates. Maybe I bought into myself too much.
1.fender stratocaster, leads, pedals, small amp, pair of cans, small midi keyboard
2.laptop, hardrive, leads, mbox mini
3.Small pile of books
4. small car
5. Bicycle x 2
6. rucksack with clothes, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 caps, 1 broad brim hat
7. large collection of rocks, pauau, and 1 cactus.
8. couple of paintings, a few pictures, mobile telephone
9. pile of cd`s including Subterranean Homesick Blues, 6 cassette tapes, Big Lebowski & Dylan other side of the mirror dvd
10. battered hofner side guitar
Having said all that it sure is uncomfortable without table, chairs, or bed. Sadly though at the end of the day you only have yourself; and yourself to blame. That last breath you breathe is gonna be mighty lonely but at least its brief. There`s only the in between. Truth might get in the way of a good story, but life’s cold hard realities will never get in the way of a good song…
