I'm not an Italian - an interview with Pepe Rush

"I wish people would stop calling me Italian and some call me a Cockney Italian, I am neither I am part Russian, Swedish or Finnish, Belgian, Irish and English." - PR on facebook, 2015.

My first contact with Pepe was in 2008. I started this blog with a piece about his earliest fuzz box, and he commented on the post, we swapped emails, I friended him on Facebook. I interviewed him in June 2011 for my zine Good Fuzzy Sounds, published later that year.

In 1965, when London's guitarists were waking up to fuzz, Rush was 22 years old, and was right in there, coming up with 4 different pedals in the next 18 months, but he soon moved away from pedals and eventually from musical equipment altogether.  Pepe's first pedal was the Fuzzy, based on the origInal American Maestro Fuzz-tone, followed by three iterations of the Rush Pepbox, marketed and then manufactured by WEM.

Along with his daughter Lucy he has now produced a new reissue of the original Pepbox, now available from Macari's in Charing Cross Road, London. To celebrate this event I'm publishing the full interview.

S - how did you get involved in electronics?

P - When I was about 12 or so I came home from school one day and my grandad was building an amplifier, a valve amplifier, and I sort of helped him with it - I didn't know anything about it but I helped him, and it interested me. Then later I worked for a company servicing radios and things, called Ivoff's, a big company in Oxford Street, and then I worked in a recording studio for a while, and then I started my own studio up. My dad was conducting at the Talk Of The Town, and he was earning quite a bit of money from it so we started this small studio in Berwick Street, off Oxford Street around 1959. And then I started building amps.

S- Did you make an amp for Jet Harris? I found a reference to this online somewhere

P - No - I don't think I did, but there's a picture of him using one [of our amps]. I knew Jet Harris because I recorded a demo of Apache, their first single. They were recording something for Jerry Laudon, and they were the backing group for it, and they said 'we're set up, can we record this demo?' So I recorded it and they all said it was better than the one EMI recorded.

Anyway so I got into that then I started building disco equipment, I got a factory round the corner from the studio for the disco gear. I built a mixer for the London Palladium in 1968, and did some stuff for ATV, which is now Central Television. I built the Palladium another mixer, a bigger one in '78.

S - You built some stuff for Pete Townshend too?

P -Yes, I built his home studio, including some limiters that he still uses on all his recordings. I may start to make them again as he keeps telling me I should make them.

S - So in 1965, you were involved in quite a variety of things

P - Yeah - amplifiers, mixers, we used the name Rush Electronics

S- Do you remember hearing fuzz for the first time - the new sound?

P - Yeah - someone brought in a fuzz pedal one day - they were raving about the sound it made - so I just thought 'oh, you overdrive a transistor, and it'll do it, so we just made some circuits up and modified it, tweaked it until it sounded right.
We made some and sold them to a few different groups, and then Charlie Watkins came along and he wanted to do a deal, where he took over production.

S - Where was the Pepbox sold?

P - They were sold by me personally first of all - people would hear about it and come up to the factory in Portland Mews, and we'd sell direct. That's how we sold the amps as well.

S - There's an advert for the pedal that lists some of the bands that used it - was that a kind of sponsorship /endorsement thing?

They either bought them or Watkins gave them to them - he gave the Beatles a couple but they were ones that I had made because they were in my case. A few other groups used them but I don't remember who they were now.

[illustration used in the Good Fuzzy Sounds zine - the ad copy goes: for today's great new "fuzz" sound - FRACTURED SOUND - chosen as the greatest by the Animals, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Zoot Money and many other top pop groups!]

S- There's a famous photo of John Lennon with one in the studio in 1966 - was that a prototype?

P - No, I built quite a few like that, because Watkins weren't really tooled up to build them themselves first of all. We made them and gave them to him and he sold them on, then after that he took over making them and was giving me a commission on each one he made, and when he stopped giving me the commission we fell out over it. They went over themselves, modified it and starting putting it in their amplifiers, and not giving me my commission and that's when it all went wrong.

My dad wouldn't sue them, my mum and I both wanted to sue them, they were both in the business with me, my dad said 'no, leave it' and Watikins was laughing, he got away with it.

S - So there the red wedge - around 65-66, and two versions in the grey flatter wedge and then the long flat one...

P - Yes - then WEM slowly took my name off it.

S - So which version of the circuit is the new Rush Pepbox reissue? The three transistor Germanium version?

P - Yes - the original germanium.

[note - germanium transistors can be awkward to work with - the existing Pepbox reissues already on the market are the later silicon transistor version.]

S - So the pedals thing was really a side-line to the main amps business?

P - Yeah - well it was quite important - we made money out of it, but it wasn't  the main thing i did.

S - Did you have any contact with other people making effects?

P - No - I always tried to keep away from other music business people, they are all crooks.

S- When the deal with WEM finished you didn't carry on making pedals?

P - No - I was into other things.

S- The main source of info about you in print and on the internet is this interview with Pete Townshend in 2007.

P - I think I've read that - he calls me a cockney Italian, which annoys me as I'm not!

S -He mentions that you were involved with Apple Corps and 'Magic' Alex Mardas

P - I sold the Beatles or Apple Corps the circuitry for the first Palladium mixer, and we made the metalwork for the modules for him, for the Apple studio, but he modified it, and completely ruined it. It was a perfectly good mixer, professional standard, it was passed by the technical department at  ATV, but he just completely messed it up, it was all distortion and noise and everything else. He was a bit of a con-man.

S - What did you do next?

P - By '68 I was building mixers, and I was doing Pete Townshend's stuff so I'd got away from the distortion and the gimmicks into recording equipment, or sound reinforcement stuff. I've built a lot of different things, some limiters, some peak programme meters, a professional type of meter, not like the VU meter, and amplifiers… I built a studio in the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, on the Reeperbahn. There weren't many companies around then making mixers and stuff like that, so it was great.

I moved from the West End up to Southgate in North London - I started doing different jobs and I was doing stuff in America modifying mixers - they were sending the stuff over here and I was modifying them. Then I moved out of music stuff and into bank communications in the City, quite a bit of that, it was really good money, but in 1992 my house and workshop burnt down, so everything finished, it all stopped, and I'm slowly getting it all back together again. It was a bit of a shock losing all your workshop, and all your tools and instruments, test equipment… and that's it really.

S - the new prototype for Macari's, you're working on that at the moment

P - Yeah - I'm waiting for the boards - I thought it would be easier to use a proper pcb rather than doing it hard-wired, so that's done, and my engraving machine got damaged, the chap's got the metalworking gear so he's going to engrave the panels for me too.

I've been in touch with David Toop - he loaned me his flat box Silicon Pepbox for me to trace the circuit, but we're not using that circuit; I said I'd give him one of the new ones, he said I'll write an article on it anyway.

S - You're going to send one to Pete Townshend too…

P - Yeah, I'll let him have one because he's on at me to make this limiter. He's a good guy - I haven't seen him since about 1972, but we speak and exchange emails and stuff. He gave me a guitar to use with it. It's an Ovation - I thought I was just going to borrow it, but when I spoke to his office, they said oh no Pete said you can keep it. It's nice, it's got all gold plated bits on it, quite a good sounding guitar. Someone suggested I could get a few thousand pounds for that, but I'm not selling it, that would be disgusting, it was given to me - I'd give it back to Pete if he wants to sell it . He's always been straight with me, I've always been straight with him.

He was always very serious about things, He lived near me in Soho, a few hundred yards away.

S - So did you just bump into him?

P - No - I put a sound system in a place in Putney High Street, on the corner of the Upper Richmond Road, and The Who played there, when they were really small, and their PA amplifier had gone wrong - it was a Vox, and the chap introduced me to him and he asked me to fix it, so I said 'yeah, I'm in the West End', and he said 'where? I live in Brewer Street' I said 'oh yeah I live in Old Compton Street, we're right on top of each other'. So I took it and fixed it the next morning and he came round. He met my dad, who was a professional session musician, and they talked - my dad knew his dad, Cliff Townshend, another musician, and we chatted and he used to come round.

Later I used to cycle down to near Eel Pie Island in Twickenham [where Townshend moved to after leaving Soho], with a guy who worked for me. We used to get Chinese takeaway and once we were riding up from the Chinese place, from the river and he was at his garden gate. He said 'what are you doing over here?', I said 'Oh, we've just got some food, we're going to go and sit on the river bank and eat it' and he says 'ah - come in - come and sit in here', so we went into the kitchen, he made us tea and ate our takeaway - and that became a regular thing. We'd go up and he'd mess about and I'd tweak a few things on his mixer or his limiters and that's when we used to see him a lot. The last time I saw him was just after my Dad died, in 1972, and then I sort of lost contact with him, and then I got back in contact again. He was really pleased to hear from me and soon we were chatting like old times. He's a nice guy.

 

1950s Spanish Electric Guitars - early solidbody electrics

Well... maybe I set my sights a bit high for this blog - I wanted to do really detailed posts including everything I knew about each guitar or pedal or whatever, but that needs time and good photos, and I don't have the motivation for that anymore, so I will not be geeking out quite so much from now on, but I will be doing more blogging more often. You can find more pics of most of what I talk about here on my Flickr page

Ok - here we go with:

Older, more basic guitars

I got interested in old guitars because of their individuality. In the 90s, I basically got anything interesting that came my way that was cheap, mostly '60s guitars - some I've kept, some not. I was very influenced by a book called Bizarre Guitars that a friend loaned me  - it's a Japanese book of photos of weird MIJ guitars from the 60s mostly - Teisco, Kawai, Hummingbird, Guyatone etc. I wanted a Japanese 4-pickup guitar! But as time has gone by I've found myself moving towards older more basic one-pickup guitars.

The oldest guitars (and the most recently acquired ones) I have are also the most basic design, from the early to mid 1950s. Various companies added pickups to archtop guitars from the 1930s onwards, but solid body electric guitars were just being established in the 1950s. Flat top solids are often referred to as Spanish Electric Guitars.The ones I have are made up of three pieces of wood - a long middle piece that forms the neck, and two pieces attached on either side that make up the body. The necks are not adjustable, but they probably have some kind of metal reinforcement.

The Harmony Stratotone(s) 

The single pickup version (H44) was introduced in 1952, and was available until 1957 or '58. It predates the Stratocaster, a totally different instrument with a similar name. The Harmony company already had a long history of making stringed instruments up to this point, but this is their first solid body guitar. The earliest ones don't have the model name on the headstock, just the company name with a kind of 'wave' graphic underneath. In 1953 they switched to a stencilled design, incorporating the 'atomic musical note'. I think mine is a 1953 because soon after the edge of the body became a bit less rounded. I bought this a body only, and collected the rest of the of the parts on ebay. The scratchplate/pickguard and knobs repros. I had a repro bridge too, but decided I liked the sound of a solid metal bridge - the one on there is a modified Hagstrom micro-matic bridge without the saddles. This is what it looks like now:

In 1954 Harmony came up with a 2-pickup solid Stratotone, and called it the H88 'Doublet'. It was only made for 3 or 4 years. It has the same body as H44, but but different pickups, and an 'ebonized' fretboard with block inlays instead of dots. It was promoted as a top-of-the-line professional model, and has a smoother feel and sound to the single pickup mode. l prefer the feel of the H88 over the H44, but like the sound of the pickup on the H44 better. Too bad! The guitar is mostly original. It cane with the original bridge, but again I prefer a solid metal bridge - this one is brass - another modified Hagstrom part, shown here:

Kay K-125, 1952

The other guitar of this early solid 'through neck' design is made by one of Harmony's main competitors, Kay. Both companies were based in Chicago (as was Valco, another company whose guitars I like) and they are generally assumed to be cheap crap by most guitarists, who only remember their entry-level guitars and later import models. Harmony probably had the edge in terms of quality, but Kay guitars can be good too (though my direct experience of them is limited). This is the K-125, Kay's first solid, from 1952. Construction-wise it's pretty similar to the H44, but it has a longer scale length. It's not clear who came first.

1952 catalogue image showing original finish

 
The Kay also has a slimmer neck (more prone to bowing), and a different pickup. Unlike Harmony, who bought pickups from Gibson and DeArmond-Rowe, Kay made their own pickups - the one on the K-125 is usually referred to as a blade pickup, or as 'Thin Twin' pickup, after the hollow-body model played by Jimmy Reed. The tiger striped plastic pickup mount a control panel are the coolest things about this guitar is purely aesthetic terms, and they are in great condition, along with the original knobs and switch.

Mine has been through the wars a bit, and was the victim of a hippy refinish and headstock repair, probably in the 70s. I stripped it and tried to stain it a chestnut/rust red, with limited success. I think it looks better than it did before at least. I have the original wooden bridge, but put on a modified Bigsby bridge for a brighter sound with more 'attack'. The neck has a bow, which is not too bad, but may have to be addressed in the future.

It originally had a short lead hard-wired to a hole in the edge of the guitar by the tailpiece. If it had been the original lead I would have left it, but it wasn't. I found it irritating so I filled that hole and made a bigger one for a standard jack plug and plate in the side between the knobs. I got some oval-head wood screws and 'aged' them so they wouldn't look too shiny and a repro 1950s Gibson-style jack plate:



Why do I like these guitars? I like idea that they were built before rock'n'roll, that they are the first generation of solid body electric guitars and 60 or so years later they are still going and sounding great. The Harmonys feel very solid, they have huge necks by modern standards, but I learned to play on a big neck, even though my hands are on the small side. It feels comfortable and right. The Kay is lighter, and has a few problems, but it still sounds and feels good. If there were affordable new guitars on the market with something like this vibe, I would be interested, It's fun to tinker and experiment with old guitars, but a new guitar with no issues would also be welcome. I've been keeping tabs on a new UK company called Raw Guitars - they have some interesting ideas, but I suspect they will be pricey when they launch properly next year. In the meantime, check out the designs on their website.

Good Fuzzy Sounds!

All right - I've done a zine about fuzz - it's called Good Fuzzy Sounds, it's written and illustrated by me, is 28 pages long and costs £2 or €3 or $4 post paid.

It covers my own first experiences of fuzz and diy pedal-building, a detailed two-part history of early fuzzy sounds on records  up to 1961, leading to the Maestro Fuzztone in the US and the Tone Bender in the UK, the growth of internet fuzz geek networks, the mythology of the mojo transistor, and interviews with Pepe Rush, an early fuzz innovator on the London scene, and Devi Ever, graduate of the internet DIY pedal scene and modern fuzz goodess. Plus 'my favourite fuzz', a true life story comic strip, drawings of all 33 of my fuzz pedals, and fuzz luminaries such as Gary Hurst, Vic Flick, Big Joe Sullivan, Lee Hazlewood, Glenn Snoddy, Craig Anderton and many more. It's all fuzz, all the time, printed in red on beautiful pale blue paper. It even explains what fuzz is if you don't happen to know. It's a winner!

Pay by Paypal in the currency of your choice, and don't forget your address. It will probably be in a few shops and distros sometime, but for now it's available direct from me only. Email address for Paypal - thesimonmurphy@yahoo.com - £2 or €3 or $4 postage paid.

Reginald Johnson - Godfather Of Turntablism!

put the needle on the record!
Originally uploaded by simonm1965

In the summer of 1927 the manager of the Theatre De Luxe cinema in Leeds replaced his orchestra with one man and a Brunswick Panatrope - a dual turntable record player. Rather than just playing records over the films like other Panatrope operators, Reginald Johnson, a skilled musician, recognised the full potential of the machine to develop an entirely new technique of musical presentation.

By October Johnson had a library of 250 records, and was combining sections of 25-40 discs per film, marking the segments with chalk, working from a complex cue sheet, and changing the needle on each deck for every record played. I don’t think he did any intentional scratching, but I think there’s reasonable grounds to name him the Godfather of Turntablism.

In Defence of Trash

Ohio Express - Pinch Me (Baby Convince Me)
Originally uploaded by simonm1965

Bubblegum music evolved from the more commercial singles-driven teen side of rock, and the more cynical side of the music business. Bands like Tommy James and the Shondells, Paul Revere and The Raiders, and the Strangeloves - an imaginary band dreamed up by the Feldman, Goldstein + Gottehrer production team, and obviously the Monkees. These pioneers rubbed shoulders with novelty acts like The Royal Guardsmen and in 1967-8 bubblegum was born, through capitalist osmosis. It's key elements were crass commerciality, dumbness and superficiality, with a strong element of producer-manager-record company control, quickly reaching the point where the 'bands' didn't exist at all, and it didn't matter. Arguably it's the beginning of pop as we know it.

At the end of his influential rock'n'roll history book The Sound of the City, Charlie Gillett spares a few moments to sanctimoniously castigate the producers of this new low in rock music as he saw it, describing it as "the blight of the late sixties… music planned entirely as product, not as anybody's art." If he could see and hear what was on the manufactured pop horizon in the '70s and beyond, maybe he wouldn't have been so dismissive.

Sure - bubblegum records were not performed by 'proper' bands or written by serious social commentators or sensitive artists, but they knew what they were doing and they did it right - they had tunes , killer choruses and a good beat - what's the problem? There's good and bad in any genre, but the best bubblegum came out of the Kazenatz-Katz circle - Super K Productions, on Buddha and many other labels, big and small. You might object to the nasal vocal stylings of the ubiquitous Joey Levine, lead singer on hits like Yummy Yummy, Quick Joey Small and many others, but that's a minor issue you just have to come to terms with. If you really can't take it, there's always the super-smooth Archies lead singer Ron Dante to groove to. The Archies were already a successful comic book franchise when Don Kirshner (the man who brought us the Monkees) made them into an animated tv series and pop hit machine, with the help of Brill building king Jeff Barry. They are more bland than the Kasenatz-Katz outfits, but still had some excellent tunes. Plus they aren't even pretending to be real, they are fictional, two dimensional! The Banana Splits had some good songs too - the fact that you had to collect coupons from cereal boxes to get them doesn't detract from this.

Bubblegum was churned out on rockin' poppin' production lines - inane but catchy songs by manufactured groups with silly names. Nobody condemned Berry Gordy for this kind of approach in Detroit 10 years before, so why doesn't bubblegum get any respect? Because rock had apparently 'grown up' during the '60s. Singles were out and albums were in, "real music" was either going down the blind alley of blues rock in the search for authenticity, or disappearing up it's own arse looking for the lost chord, thanks to Sergeant Pepper. The best bubblegum records, on the other hand, were 3 minute pop blasts following to the golden rules of Mark E Smith's three Rs - rock and roll and repetition - dig it! Who would you rather listen to - Eric Clapton or the 1910 Fruitgum Company?

I dream of forming a bubblegum covers band that everyone will love - we would have a wide repertoire of little known gems like Pinch Me and Sweeter Than Sugar and it would be super fun to play! Will my dream ever come true?

http://www.bubblegum-music.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7XRAlzNYs&NR=1

While writing this I discovered that Don Kirshner died a few weeks ago in Florida. He prettty much started it all, for better or worse. And after I'd finished it I also found another piece on bubblegum by my old pal Bob Stanley (him again - mentioned in the last post too) from a couple of months ago - never mind, eh?

1989

Manic Street Preachers first London gig Originally uploaded by simonm1965

A diversion from my usual stuff... 1989 was the year I did my last music fanzine - I did 8 or 9 issues between 1984 and 1989 - most were called Adventure In Bereznik, but the last few had other names, but always with Bereznik in the title. But this isn't really about that so much as it is about a band I haven't thought much about in the last 20 years, but millions of other people have - Manic Street Preachers.

The main source of info on the band's early years seems to be an article in Record Collector, the end of which focuses on the roles of Kevin Pearce and Bob Stanley in getting them their first London gig, and then reviewing it. I was friends with Kevin and Bob, and Kevin had told me about this amazing band who would blow me away, so when they played with the Claim (an excellent but obscure band, one of Kevin's faves) I was there. As the '80s drew to a close, good bands were thin on the ground. 'Independent' music was going corporate and embracing pre-punk 70s rock, which we seriously disapproved of at the time, and of course Kevin always had great taste. Of course there was never a 'fanzine mafia' at all, but this kind of lazy journalistic hindsight would probably have included us.

I was introduced to the band, and probably gave them fanzines. The setting was inauspicious, but typical of the kinds of gigs I had been going to several times a month for years. The lack of a stage wasn't unusual, nor was the damp patch in the corner. I don't remember much else, except that they looked really young and were very nervous; but like a small controlled explosion, they lit up the drab upstairs room of a central London pub for an instant. The set flew by. I remember we laughed (as Bob mentions in the RC article), but it was more like a nervous laugh - they didn't make sense - how could they be so serious, look so silly, but be so amazing?! I didn't talk to them much but they had a friend, like a sort of older brother figure, who wasn't quite their manager, but had something like that role, which included talking to people and being friendly. I think he probably drove the van too, and he gave me a copy of Suicide Alley from it after the next gig in Shepherds Bush soon after. I really don't remember, but for some reason the name Martin came to me as I was writing this.

Anyway, the Record Collector piece also mentions Richey's campaign of writing to fanzine editors to promote the band. So Richey wrote to me too, enclosing a photo. I don't think I have the letter anymore, and I I didn't write back, but I was looking for photos of a band I was in in the '90s when I found the photo. All this time had passed without realising I was in it.

I'm not 100% sure the photo is at the Horse and Groom, it might be from the Shepherd's Bush gig, but it's London, 1989, they are wearing the right stencilled shirts, and they are the support band. I'm there (at the front, in the white t-shirt in front of Richey), as is Kevin. I'm not sure if can recognise Bob from the back of his head, but I think I can see him too. I kind of wish I could say I've been a fan ever since, but I haven't - in my world this was their peak, and I lost interest pretty quickly, but it was a good night.

atypical outstruments

This was published in a zine about the A-Band over the summer, and shows some of the diy instruments that I play. People ask me what I play in the A-Band quite a lot - and this is why my answers are a bit vague. I used to draw comics quite a lot, but slowly gave it up.... There are photos of most things illustrated in this set.

Den Outing: DJ-ing at Kira’s 40th

When Kira asked me to play at her birthday party on Friday night I was flattered and jumped at the chance!

I love DJ-ing, but rarely get a chance these days…

My first regular outing was at the amazing before-it’s-time rock’n’roll cicrus that was Kitsch Bitch in the late 90s, first at what is now the Buffalo Bar, and later at Madame Jo-Jo’s. I varied my sets a lot but would try to get in something like Slow Down by Larry Williams or Sonic Reducer by the Dead Boys, or the National Anthem of Rock’n’Roll – Louie Louie. Rocket No 9 by NRBQ didn’t go down so well, but I’m glad I played it once at least.

After that I was invoved in a much smaller bar thing called the Imperial Pop Museum, with Matthew and Bob, in a place on the edge of Shoreditch, before it exploded into the hipster hell-hole it is today. We would play mostly 60s soul and pop and bubblegum between us, with some psych and garage punk, but not enough to spoil the generally calm vibe. I can’t even remember the name of the place. It had a sort of mod/James Bond theme; I expect it’s closed or has been made over by now.

The next request for my services came from Transfabulous, a trans arts festival run by some pals. I played at a couple of nights for them at the Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green around 2006/7 I think, playing more uptempo 60s and 70s soul /disco and some 70s punk sort of stuff – Mighty Real by Sylvester was the best received of the night – it was great to see people dancing and loving it!

The next call came from Kira's pal Iris at the Moth Club at the St Aloysius Social Club near Euston. I had free reign here to play whatever I wanted, pretty much a mixture of all of the above, plus stuff like Totally Wired by The Fall, Memphis Soul Stew by King Curtis and the mighty Shack Up! by Banbarra, which I’d only recently bought, after knowing the weedy version by A Certain Ratio for many Years. I enjoyed the DJ-ing, but got busy working on my MA so had to drop it.

And after the 45 party this January, Kira asked me to play at her 40^th party underneath the Westway in another social club type place, the Maxilla. It was a great night, with a band playing Ramones and AC/DC covers and Wreckless Eric’s Whole Wide World and a big friendly crowd.

These are the records I played, mostly in order if I can remember. I play all 45s as they are easy to cue up and are cut loud. I only had 40 mins as the band played later than planned, but I didn’t mind…

The Name Game by Shirley Ellis – a good fun record to start! Nobody cares that it sounds exactly like her other UK hit the Clapping Song.

Rip Her To Shreds by Blondie is just one of their best songs! Kira lived in New York for a while and I knew she loves this stuff as much as I do.

Ride Your Pony by Lee Dorsey – no particular reason to play this other than it’s great – it’s got more of a funky New Orleans sound than the also-great Betty Harris version.

Jumpin’ Jack Flash – Rolling Stones – just another brilliant record, by a band at their absolute peak I think. In the back of my mind I also connected this to Kira through a friend of hers, but I really only played because of the line “I was rayyyzed by a tooth-less bearded hag!”

All I Want by Snatch – Kira is the best connected person I know, which is evident in every issue of her ‘dotty anti-fashion magazine’ Cheap Date and the excellent Cheap Date Guide To Style. Amongst her pals is one half of Snatch. She was invited to the party, but I don’t know whether she made it - I don’t think I would recognise her now anyway. This was the most obscure record in my set – I’m glad I played but not many people were dancing – time for the secret weapon:

Rapper’s Delight – Sugarhill Gang – INCREDIBLE record, and luckliy Kira loves it too! Once a bit over-exposed, I hadn’t listened to it for years, though I’ve heard lots of it in samples! I auditioned it last week and it blew me away. My only dilemma was whether to play the radio edit or the full 6 mins – with time short I went with the edit, but I think this was my favourite of the night along with the next one –

Shack Up! – Banbarra – for so long I just assumed A Certain Ratio wrote this, but glad I found out the truth, because this is one of the best dance records ever, and the anti-marriage message is cool too!

So – you’ve got the dancefloor full for 2 records – what do you play next? Something you love and hope they’ll like, risking the momentum, or something similar to keep it going? Well, floor-fillers don’t come any better that the last 2, and I had to choose between The Night by Frankie Valli which I totally LOVE but not sure how well-known it is, or Shame Shame Shame by Shirley & Co. I cued up The Night, but changed my mind at the last second. As a DJ your duty is to make people dance, not play your favourite records and hope. SSS is a groovy enough tune; I don’t love it – but people danced!

I kept the funky feeling going with Polk Salad Annie by Tony Joe White – I heard this a while back on someone’s CD player as I walked past the maket stalls setting up in the morning on my way work. It sounded good so put it in the box this week. It went well, but sometimes records drag a little on the dancefloor if they are too long, and this one did I think.

Next up another NYC record – New York Groove by Ace Frehley – this is one of the oldest records I have that I still play and love – sort of genre-defying glam-rock disco bubblegum. Kira is a fan of Frehley’s incredibly mean but funny ghost-written biog Kiss And Tell.

And back to some hard 60s soul – Let’s Wade In The Water by Marlena Shaw – excellent in every way, the original Chess version with the trumpet fanfare at the beginning beats the more piano-y rendition, because it’s longer and has better ad-libs at the end. I love the ever-expanding water-fish-boats metaphors in this this song, which are many miles from its origins in the slavery era – at one point Shaw refers to herself as a “fish-flappin’ mama”!

Feeling the minutes slipping away now, it’s got to be time for I Love Rock’n’Roll by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. A Kitsch Bitch staple, this song was subsequently lost to hipster irony for several years. We want our record BACK! It is not a joke, you wankers! Possibly the best guitar sound on any record ever, and yeah – I do love Rock’n’Roll.

I was going to follow this with Get It On by T Rex, but decided just in time that the only thing rock’n’roll enough to match it would be Born To Lose by Johnny Thunders and the fucking Heartbreakers. “I can’t HIT IT!”

And getting towards the end I allowed myself one indulgence – Head Held High by the Velvet Underground. The floor thinned out a bit, but then who has the energy to dance to 5 records in a row? Not me.

Last record - a request by Charlotte – Nut Rocker by B Bumble & the Stingers, which perfectly epitomises one facet of the great rock’n’roll dumb/brilliant dialectic. Of course the crowd love it and one and the preceding DJs, Poppy, comes over to congratulate me for playing it – she calls it ‘a real stormer’ and she’s right.

While the next DJ set was setting up I got one more, so naturally I went for Lucille by Little Richard. I love the way the backing track sounds a bit muffled at the start and his voice just slices it all open!

So, yeah - I had a blast DJ-ing - thanks to Kira one more time, and to everyone for dancing. Playing records is the easiest thing in the world, but keeping people dancing can be hard, so I did pretty well!

Email me through the address on my profile page if you want me to play records for you too.

the Lou Reed story

Another post about 45s - reworked from a mini zine I did in this, my 45th year. The illustration is from there too.

The Velvet Underground are one of my favourite bands and I like some of Lou Reed’s solo stuff but this one is a different kind of thing. It’s by the Jades, one of Reed’s first bands and his first record, from 1958. I had a ticket to see him on a sunny day in Brighton, and went down early in the hope of getting it signed. I waited by the stage door with a few other geeks for a couple of hours, and eventually he turned up, with Antony Hegarty and an entourage of about 8 people.

He seemed in a good mood as he passed a perfunctory few seconds with his fans. I waved the 45 at him to get his attention, and it worked. He whipped it out of my hands - intrigued, excited even - “Oh my god – where did you get this?” – the inevitable answer Ebay did not go down well, and suddenly he was much more interested in telling Antony about it than talking to me. He told A that he was 16, his first record etc, and "… of course it's terrible".

At this point I tried to get back into the conversation by piping up/ butting in with '"I thinks it's alright!" which earned me a withering look and no further comment. Further awkwardness ensued when I had to explain how the special pen I got worked. Still, he signed the label + sleeve 4 times in all, and quite legibly for a change.

The Single I Was On

Third in a series of posts about 45s - I'm 45 this year, I had a party and played 45s all day, and wrote a zine about 45s for the people at the party, and these themed posts are reworked versions of the pieces in the zine.

It was always my dream to make a single, to contribute to the sum total of rock'n'roll happiness in the world, and I came close to this with my car-crash drag punk band Six Inch Killaz around 1998, but it was not to be - you can blame Wayne Morris. The only single I'm on is a hopelessly obscure record by The Legend aka Everrett True aka Jerry Thackray, recorded a decade before. In truth it's quite bad but I do kind of like it, just because I'm on it. I think this is the way of it with Legend records. I remember buying his 2nd Creation single Legend Destroys The Blues and being appalled. I complained about it to Alan McGee and he said 'well, I like it cuz I play drums on it', and Dave Evans who was in McGee's band Biff Bang Pow piped up with 'yeah - and I like it cuz I played bass on it'. At least I liked the cover.

So anyway - I was quite a close friend of Jerry in the '80s, after falling in with the early Creation records crowd, and shared a flat with him and a couple of other friends in north London at that time. I also played music with him as guitarist in the Legend band for a few years. We would occasionally play with bands he/we were friends with, and put out a couple of records. One was a 12" EP for John Robb's Vinyl Drip label, and one was a 45 for Philip Boa's new Constrictor label, in 1987. I co-wrote one side of the single with him I think, but it's the other side I like (or kind of like). I play bass.

It was recorded and mixed in a day at a tiny recording studio near Green Lanes in north London, where the TV Personalities recorded their Privilege album. The owner/engineer guy was only ever referred to as Wilson. Jowe Head from the TVPs produced and played melodica and toy piano. Amongst the other toy instruments and stuff on the floor was a snare drum with SWELL MAPS painted on the side, which was exciting! It was a treat watching him do his noise magic with admittedly quite weak source material. Alex Taylor, who had recently left the Shop Assistants, sang on it too. She had moved to London to launch her new band The Motorcycle Boy. It was a pleasant easy going day with plenty of time - most of my other studio experience is of rushing to record 7 or 8 songs in a few hours, including mixing.

Philip Boa was (and still is) an alt-rock cult figure in Germany, and his label is still going. He was a friend of Stephen Pastel somehow I think, and one of the many people + bands who slept on our floor when I shared with Jerry. Waiting for the bus at Golders Green one night he told me how his life was changed when he travelled to London to see The Damned after hearing their first single New Rose (which I don't have) in 1976…

Old Records / 1965

saville
Originally uploaded by simonm1965

In my youth I used to read NME from cover to cover every week, and the charts included top tens from 5, 10 and 15 years ago. As the cold death-grip of the '80s took hold I started to notice more and more that the records in the 15 yrs. ago chart were better than the current chart or the mostly even worse 5 and 10 yrs ago charts, and these were only the ones I knew from listening to to Jimmy Saville's Old Record Club on Radio One on Sunday morning.

Saville was almost a proper DJ at this time despite the haircut and cigar, and he played charts from random years, with Ramsey Lewis' version of The In Crowd as the theme tune. It was good, even though he did say 'guys n gels guys n gels' quite a lot.

So I started buying old records, from charity shops and also from Record & Tape Exchange, where thousands of old singles with no sleeves were only 10p each in the basement. There were some good shops in Canterbury where I went to college, including one which seemed to be where a local Northern Soul DJ sent his cast-offs. I wasn't concerned about condition as I had maintained a strict avoidance of hi-fi equipment, preferring basic record players and 'music centres'.

1965 - A Good Year

I would probably say 1966 was better on balance, but I was born in '65, so here are the 10 best singles I have from that year, in no particular order.

Let The Good Times Roll - Alvin Robinson
Jenny Take A Ride - Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels
Don't Talk to Strangers - The Beau Brummells
Midnight to Six Man - The Pretty Things
She Don't Care About Time - The Byrds
The Duck - Jackie Lee
The Barracuda - Alvin Cash and the Registers
Whittier Blvd - Thee Midniters
It’s Growing - The Temptations
Out In The Streets - The Shangri-Las

Honorable mention - (I Wish It Could Be) 1965 (Again) - The Barracudas

45 Revolutions Per Minute

singles box
Originally uploaded by simonm1965

I'm 45 this year and did a little zine on the subject for a party where I had all my 45s in one room and friends came round and we listened to approx 10% of them for about six hours straight.

Last year on my birthday I made a joke about playing singles all day on my 45th birthday, and when I started thinking about my birthday, just after xmas, I thought that seemed like a good idea
A day of vinyl indulgence. There isn't enough room to have all my singles upstairs, so most of them are under the stairs to the basement at any one time. I do occasionally have the urge to hear this or that record from downstairs, but rarely is the urge strong enough to go and find it.

I decided to do the zine because records and zines go together. I started doing zines in 1984, around the time I started to get into seeing bands, buying zines and buying records every week. I
carried on doing zines and comics with a few gaps here and there until about 10 yrs. ago. So - another one. A lot of the time what I've written here is an exaggeration of my real thoughts, because that's what my 80s zines were like - lots of exclamation marks!

So the next few posts will be based on pieces from the zine - starting with:

"Why I HEART Singles"

Yes - 45s ARE the ultimate music format. They are explosions of ephemeral pop art instant gratification, yet they are unbreakable under normal use and will be left behind with the cockroaches when our civilisation dies out in a few hundred years!

In the '80s I knew a foolish fanzine writer who proclaimed that he would only EVER buy 7" singles, that he had sold all his LPs, and would NEVER buy a CD in his life. I'm not like that, but I do like 45s best. DJ-ing with them is really easy too, as they are quick to look through and cue up.

On a good single you get two short blasts of music, cut loud, the best 2 songs available to to the artists at the time (with the exception of Phil Spector and Kasenatz-Katz productions), plus a decorative label, maybe a pic sleeve or insert to enthrall and entrance, maybe a cryptic message from the band in the run-out groove. It's all you need.

It's an undisputed fact that the 45 rpm vinyl single of a given song will nearly always sound better than an album or CD version, because they are mastered and sometimes mixed differently (at least from the '50s to the '80s) to sound best coming out of a radio - punchier, treblier, attention-grabbing.

Though I don't take notes I can usually remember where if not when I bought a particular single, and often how much I paid for it. For many years the most I would expect to pay for a used single was 50p or £1. Girls Are Out To Get You by the Fascinations on the original American label - an in-demand Northern Soul classic - was the first record I paid £5 (as much as an album) for, from Rocks Off in Hanway Street in 1983.

Even as a pre-teen in the '70s I gravitated towards singles - I bought various novelty releases in dumb way - coloured vinyls, picture discs, a single shaped like a bar of chocolate - the song from the Yorkie advert - but I don't have any of these any more. But I do still have a lot of singles. One of the few singles that I have from that time is 'Carry On Wayward Son' by Kansas.

Den-Time Summer/Autumn 2009

Strange things happen with time in the Den. Like in a science fiction comic strip where they go to space for 10 years but when they return only a week has passed. Yeah - it's just like that.

So a lot has happened, and I'm just going to sum it up in one post to get back on track. Fuzz and guitars have taken a back seat over the summer. I was briefly involved in a history of UK fuzz boxes project, but that stopped suddenly and unexpectedly. Should be interesting if it's ever finished, but without me. Meanwhile I've got more interested in the low-tech electronic music thing. I've built two new instruments (both based on the STEIM Cracklebox) and I've been playing live and recording with the A-Band, and also with my pals Deathline. The 123s had an outing to Birmingham to play our friend Tamsin's birthday - we dressed up as the (Fabulous) Stains and played their apathy-chic punk classic "Waste Of Time". I've also written music to go with some Werewolf incantations I found in an old book by Elliott O'Donnell, which I'm hoping to record soon.

But the A-Band has been my most consistent distraction/activity - recording in London and singing with Astral Social Club in May, then 8 gigs over the next 4 months including Salford, Newcastle in July and Edinburgh in August, plus a few in London. Here's some of what I wrote in my notebook on the July trip:

Writing about the A-band isn't so easy. I'm not attempting any history, but suffice to say it started in Nottingham in 1990, fizzled out some years later, reformed in 2004 and started up again with many new members in 2007, including me, although I didn't do much until May this year. There is no set line-up, no songs or riffs or rehearsals, anyone who turns up can play, musicians and non-musicians. Each time we/they play the band has a different name, always beginning with A, sometimes decided in advance, sometimes on the evening of the gig. There is something like a shared sensibility, but with so many people involved, even this is shaky. There are vague practical ideas discussed, like who plays first or how many people play at once, when loud/quiet etc, but these are not musical per se, and a frequently forgotten anyway. Beyond this it's spontaneous, veering in and out of noise - it's been called 'ambient hardcore', but there are quieter moments also - an acoustic gig this year even. At the Klinker, there were 15 people playing, it was very chaotic.

Though I have approx 20 guitars, I don't play guitar in the A-Band. I have played the video tape ribbon controller gtr thing, and the Duo Tone Party Time oscillator box, plus this year's additions the Cracklepuss and the Cracklele. I do the A-Band for fun. I'd been wanting to play live music again, and the A-Band is perfect for me right now. I mostly stand at the back.

Salford

There's an amazing old terracotta Picture Palace-type cinema near Islington Mills, the venue, but typically it's converted to a church now. The rest of Salford is pretty dead, and reminds me of Detroit - a big change from gentrified metrosexual Manchester across the bridge. I don't expect much to happening at the venue, but it would be good to get a soundcheck for once. Does it make any difference with the A-band?

Well - yes! the sound man was very conscientious and all the bands soundchecked, and the A-Band (Adorno's Allegory of blah blah) were really great tonight! This is the first time I've really 'got it', and it was quite magical. There was room in the sound for me to be heard without playing full blast, and even though a load of people joined in it seemed to hold together with some kind of intuitive structure, with a beginning, a middle and an amazing end! I won't list the players, but here's Stewart Keith's summary of the gig from the band forum:

Started with a duet of Greta on theremin and Andrea (glammed up) on table leg & banjo), with Simon in the background. They played and played and played while we all watched (our cue for going on one at a time was Andrea switching on the vacuum cleaner, which she seemed to think somebody else was going to do) So that went on for maybe twenty minutes and sounded incredibly wonderful.

Then we went on one at a time - Meg, John (John mostly played piano throughout), Gary (melodica), Joincey (new synth toy), Stuart Arnot (trumpet), me (percussion), and Lenty (guitar). Played for a while and then one at a time off again leaving just John doing a piano solo, and then everyone back on again, more music. Andrea at the piano, and a fit of screaming hysterical laughter - genius!

And so to the chaos finale, extra members joining us (Simon & Kate from the Ceramic Hobs, Gaz & Cara & Rhiann from Barbarians) and lots of metal bashing (we'd found four huge metal tubes out in the yard, and we had a hammer. Rhythmic whacking of metal, Greta singing with a contact mic on her throat and later on metal that she bashed (a terrifying sound), and eventually everyone in a rotating circle of piano players.

Next night in Newcastle was total noise chaos and a bit of a let-down by comparison. Stewart destroyed a vacuum cleaner, I got tinnitus. Someone videotaped it, but I haven't seen or heard it.

Edinburgh

Due to the persistence of Karl Waugh, the A-band were invited to play a residency in a small pub cellar venue for a week at the end of August, playing at midnight every night, as part of the Free festival. Audiences were small but often enthusiastic /participatory, and overall it was fun. More than 50 people played over the course of the week and each night we were called An Audience With ... followed by the name of an absent member. I played 3 nights in the middle of the week, and only later found out that the night after I left it was An Audience With Simon Murphy. Here some more note book bits:

Tuesday - 10 people (most of whom I had never met before) plus 5 who join in spontaneously. Lots of metal bashing and cymbal crashing. I played the Cracklepuss, DuoTone and a mic into a delay pedal, with a mixer - able to have all going at once or individually. Couldn't hear much, but everyone happy afterwards.

Wednesday - much smaller A-band, and audience even smaller! Martin has arrived from Totnes to join Karl, Stuart G and I. A more restrained set, but still good; a couple of people join in, including a guy who spontaneously sings, and afterwards says we remind him of Faust.

Thursday - Stewart, Chloe and Sharen arrive. We all have dinner together and the gig later is great. My amp is only battery powered and runs out of juice half way through, so I have time to watch the band for a while, take some photos, then play my gizmos straight into one of the venue mixers, and anything else within reach, which is the A-band way. I was sad to miss the last gigs of the week, but also glad to be going home after tiring of the Edinburgh crowds, drunks and tourists.

A photo of my Edinburgh stuff, including my two main A-band instruments over the eight 2009 gigs...

the DuoTone Party Time

Just a silly name I added to Ben's Simple 40106 Tone Generator, that I built from a schematic at Experimentalists Anonymous. It has two oscillators, so DuoTone seemed a good name. Party Time was the brand name of an old record player I had in the 80s. I put it together in 2006 and used it in it's stock state for a couple of years, and then added a small transformer to the output (for a 'warmer' sound) and a proper on-off switch + LED, and a big red 'circuit bend' switch which connects one pin of the 40106 chip directly to the output when you hold it down, raising the note a step or two at some settings. It's very loud has a super-wide frequency range, from ear-hurting highs to bowel-rumbling lows.

the Cracklepuss

Variation on a Dutch 70s noise classic - there are a few schematics floating around, make sure you use the corrected STEIM version if you make one. For some reason my one generally produces much lower bassy sounds than the chirps and squawks you hear on the YouTube clips etc. I think I must have made a mistake somewhere, but I like the mistake. The original units have a built-in speaker - my only intentional change was the addition of a small audio transformer and a volume control, so it can be plugged into an amp. The case was an old AM radio I bought 20 years ago. You hold the left eye, and flick your fingers over the other contacts, and get low bleeps and boops.

I brought the Toy Piano to Salford/Newcastle as well as Edinburgh, but didn't play it much. It feels a bit fragile now, and was slightly damaged during the Newcastle gig. I think it's staying home from now on.

1955 Supro with 1940s P-90

I got this 1955 Supro Dual Tone body with no pickups in February. I had hoped to get some Supro pickups separately and wire them with an "in series" option, but there were problems with the neck fit and it was looking bad; more trouble than it was worth. I tried and failed to re-sell the body + neck on ebay. Meh.

Around this time I discovered an ancient pickup in the den, that upon further examination turned out to be a late 1940s Gibson P-90! How did that happen? I bought it several years ago and had installed it on a low quality '60s archtop, but took it off again as it was feeding back too much. My enjoyment of the Kent Armstrong P90 in my Epi LP Jr led to a new plan to make the Supro into a kind of Supro /Junior hybrid, complete with a route for the P-90 and a dog-ear cover and wrap tail.

But I didn't have the heart to cut up the pristine Mother Of Toilet Seat pearloid finish on the Supro, so ended up with a trad short trapeze tail instead of the bridge/tail I planned, and with the right amount of adjustment of the strange neck joint, whch I slowly figured out, there was just enough room to surface mount the P-90 with no cover. The first time I plugged it in I knew it was a match made in heaven! I still have the option to make it a Dual Tone again in the future, but for now the single pup is King. There's not much chance of finding a '55 Junior for £200, so this will do, I love it ...
I still have some shaping to do on the scratchplate /pickguard, but I'm happy with it overall. The neck joint is unusual, to say the least, secured by a long bolt through the body parallel to the neck (as shown below). Very secure, but awkward to work with. Valco patented this joint design in 1953, but dropped it as a method of attaching necks around 1958/9.


I think it's a great idea, but ultimately I think it may have worked out too expensive. As time went on Valco neck/body joints became progressively more conventional - ending up in 1968 where Leo Fender started in 1950, with 4 screws and a metal plate.

Shatterbox to Bardobox

Ah - the lure of the super-rare cool-looking fuzz! In this case the John Hornby Skewes Shatterbox! Such a cool name, in a cool wedge shaped box, cousin of the even more rare Zonk Machine! When this circuit (or at least the stripboard version) came to light earlier this year thanks to ElectricWarrior at FSB /DAM, I had just made a Kruscher (TB 1 variant) for a rabid 60s fuzz fan in Birmingham. I was happy he liked it. He asked if I could make him a Shatterbox, and I said yes. That was my first mistake. I was soon to learn that the Shatterbox is basically a crap sounding bassy fuzz with a nice treble boost added. I should have built the circuit first and told him it was crap and not to bother, but I didn't. He wanted a Shatterbox, so that's what I made him. But: it did sound pretty crap. I knew he didn't have much money and felt bad sending him a lemon, so I offered to mod it to make it sound more like the benchmark ear-hurting fuzz sound of the guitar solo in the Third Bardo garage-psych classic 'Five Years Ahead Of My Time' that he wanted. It was hard! I came close to totally rebuilding it, but managed to make some mods to fit the bill better - a louder, more trebly fuzz, combining with the icepick treble boost to go to a place where most people don't want to go. It still sounds horrible, but horrible in a good way, for his most singular needs. If I was building from scratch, I would just hard-wire the 2 effects in series rather than keeping the pretence that the fuzz sounds any good by itelf, and cut out the fuzz control completely, leaving it on max the whole time. I'd call it the BardoBox! As it was I repainted the Shatterbox to reflect it's new and more horrible guts. Hopefully he will dig it. Ok - halfway through is the solo that inspired this - have a listen.

new stuff added to soundclick page

... with the Windmill track split into 2, with different mixes, plus I've added pics and free download options for the other tracks http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=877149&content=music

Updates!

I've been building a JHS Shatterbox for Sean in Birmingham, and getting stuff together for two Pep fuzzes for The Rave-Ups in California, and designing labels and logos for my forthcoming low-level pedal building enterprise (Good Fuzzy Sounds), but there are other things going on too. First of all the poster for my guitars + pedals exhibition is up on the London Underground, from Stepney Green to Sudbury Hill and all points in between - here's one at Embankment, the exh is on until May: Plus, I've been doing some 4-track recording, using the same stuff as at the February gig, and have added a v short lo-fi phone video from the gig to my soundclick page. The new track is less extreme than what you'll hear there, and is 19 mins long - I might have to upload it in 2 parts. Here are some photos fom the gig too - in the first one I'm adjusting the Thumpa Thumpa Box (subject of a future post), and the second, playing the Monatron: Ok - proper post soon.

Windmill gig, 16 Feb 2009

feb 2009 setup (flash) Originally uploaded by simonm1965

I did a solo gig the other night and it was good. Victor (ex-homocrime collective) asked me to play at a night he was organising at the Windmill in Brixton. I was kind of viewing it as a test to see if I wanted to do this again, and I enjoyed it. There was no time for a soundcheck and I was stressed, but the whole thing came off pretty well. I had 4 sound sources going more or less continuously - a Raagini electronic tanpura (white box on floor) as a background drone, Duotone oscillator box (aka Ben's Simple 40106 Tone Generator), Thumpa Thumpa Box (a primitive rhythm box, 1970 Simonton design) into Digitech delay, Monatron > vol pedal > Jen Fuzz + Sustain > Boss DD6 delay. I tuned these all to C at first and then slowly adjusted each one in turn to make simple chords and dischords, then bringing them approximately back to unison, but the the Raagini staying on C the whole time.... the other bands, Maria and the Mirrors and Headfall were good too, but the headliners - Jer Reid's Isshi taiko drummers (billed as Tcki Tkcy taiko drummers) were astounding! The tracks on his myspace page give an idea of the sound, but live it was incredible! check their myspace page and play loud.

Den outing (no 2) - The Stratford Hoard

Eight of my guitars and nearly my entire output of diy pedals are in an exhibition at Stratford Underground station (near the entrance to the DLR platforms) for the next couple of months, curated by Alan Kane. The exhibition showcases the collections of local people, and this is the third phase - my stuff and a ton of Beatles memorabilia. The previous phase had wind-up toys, black baby dolls, lots of different kinds of adhesive tape and packets of sugar, and 8 copies of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' LP. Here I am on the day they were installed, along with a couple more pics I took at the weekend. I'll probably upload some more photos to the set on my Flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/30379212@N03/sets/72157613275768898/ also: Transport For London blurb, not up-to-date http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/corporate/projectsandschemes/artmusicdesign/pfa/artists/alan-kane.asp

Den outing (no 1) - Tokyo

So - I was in Japan for a couple of weeks with Charlotte and Kay in October, in Tokyo and Kyoto, with trips to Nagano, Hiroshima and Osaka (with our most excellent JR rail passes). I laughed, I cried, I got very tired - this holiday had everything. Whilst I didn't have guitars and pedals on my mind for most of the time, as there was just too much other stuff competing for my attention every time I opened my eyes, I did entertain the possibility of getting a guitar in Japan - I didn't really really want one, as I'd only just got the LP Jr this summer, but it seemed silly not to look at what was available, and take advantage if possible.

I did some research in advance, wanting to find older used guitars rather than shiny new ones or high end vintage guitars, so originally planned to avoid the big Ochanomizu guitar strip in favour of smaller shops elsewhere, but after wasting one afternoon looking for pawn shops in the suburbs I didn't have much time left, so I decided to go look there anyway, as it was close to where we were staying. It was quite dizzying, see hundreds of guitars everywhere. So many strats, teles and les pauls and copies, and not much else... I was hoping to see ESP, Burny and other Japanese makes, but these were few and far between, and a lot of the stock was aimed at beginners. I didn't go in any of the major vintage Gibson places as I'm not fussed with that stuff. It was interesting to see the prices of the lower end stuff - reasonable looking tele copies for about £55, but any name makes (even Epiphone) were not any cheaper and sometimes more expensive than UK /web prices. I went into about 10 shops, some 3 or 4 floors, but only one had anything really tempting - these Danelectro DC-59s, in a place called something like Big Boss Guitar Freak Emporium: I liked them, but not sure how much. They looked brand new, so I guess they are NOS (new old stock) from the 1998-2003 Korean period, as the new Chinese ones are quite different (and quite horrible). At about £200, it was good deal but not a bargain. I took the photo and looked at it a few times over the next week, and worked out I'd have time to return on the last day and get one if I wanted, and fit it in my luggage if I took the neck off. These guitars are allegedly in the "getting hard to find" bracket if you believe dealers, but really, they are still easily found in a range of colours. I'll get a Danelectro sometime, and probably a 90s one, but this just wasn't my time.