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Of late I’ve been taking many trips down memory lane back to the 80’s to be precise, my formative years as a guitarist and the decade that like it or not shaped me.

My own personal 80’s influences can be neatly divided into 3 categories

The Texturalists: Will Sergant, John McGeoch,The Edge, Jamie West-Oram, Robert Smith, Johnny Marr - Non of these guys were known for soloing,but they created atmosphere and dynamics with interesting ideas and use of effects,with Marr and sergant alternative tunings were often applied, with McGeoch just really mad ideas. They taught me lots about applying the guitar in a group situation and about using my imagination.

The Shredders: Vivian Campbell,Jake E Lee,Gary Moore,Rhandy Rhoads, George Lynch, John Sykes

A lot of fans of the first group of guitarists would probably be horrified that someone who owns a Smiths album would listen to someone like George Lynch, but thats just silly. Music is a broad church and a real player will see the good in most things. In particular this later group taught me about playing with fire and passion and also the fact that its actually quite useful to know your scales and modes. They also gave me something to aim for technically.

The in betweeners: Alex Lifeson, Reeves Gabriels - These guys could do both equally well and frequently did.

The hardware of the 80’s was in the main Stratocaster type guitars, not by Fender you understand. But by makers who in many cases started out putting together high quality components for the proffessional user like Schecter,Charvel/Jackson, Tom Anderson, Suhr, Buddy Blaze etc. The top selling guitar in North America from the mid-late 80’s was Kramer, followed by Ibanez with its high performance RG guitars. Every guitar was much the same, the usual components were

Basswood Body: Cheap, tonally neutral and had little grain so applying a mad paintjob to it was easy
22 fret neck with Jumbo frets
Floyd Rose locking Tremelo System or sometimes a Kahler
2 single coils & 1 Humbucking pickup
Flashy Paintjob

Now I’ve been thinking about a Stratocaster for a while and I’ve yet to find a guitar that really has everything I like, which has annoyed me. Back in the late 70’s many guitarists felt the same and thus the replacement part industry was born, which then gave way to the 80’s definitive guitar, the Superstrat, and of course the biggest names who made those guitars. Charvel/Jackson, Hamer, Ibanez,Schecter,Kramer, Valley Arts etc etc.

Of course Fashions changed and with Fenders reversal in fortunes comes the Irony that they now own Charvel/Jackson as well as Hamer as part of the massive FMIC group. Gibson own Kramer, Valley arts and Steinberger.

Now I’ve been thinking that as I cant find my ideal Strat, perhaps the time has come to put one together, take a used unloved guitar with a good neck and body and add the rest myself??

Hmm

Watch this Space.

Well its that time again, the smell of the crowds and the roar of a Ginsters pasty on the Motorway services at 3am.

Our first stop was the Lionheart Brothers gig at the Nottingham Bodega Social in January. Overall it was ok, but it didnt help that we had to set up on top of their backline, so I spent 30 minutes with a Marshall stack up my arse. It so close to me that I could feel it rather than hear it.

Overall things went ok, but it was shaky. We ended the set with a new song, which I’m not against, but it did seem a bit risky. The Christmas break had meant we needed to polish up a bit but the audience seemed bigger at the end of the set than at the beginning so that was something.

Next stop was Hoxton Bar & Kitchen to support Nottingham legends Six.By Seven. Unfortunately my amp had recently been faulty & allthough repaired the previos day….. a problem with noisy FX loops appeared in Soundcheck and I was thus forced to use our HoS backup rig consisting of my Sansamp TriAC preamp pedal through our singers old 1978 Marshall JMP head. The Sansamp is great, but it is reactive to the peculiarities of the amp your putting it through. Distortion was Ok, but the clean sounds just seemd too toppy and lifeless. As we’d arrived horribly late due to traffic, our soundcheck was a panic and…

Deprived of my usual tonal comforts I just played the gig as best as I could, but it wasn’t enjoyable for me. The SixbySeven audience was polite enough, but you could tell we werent really their cup of tea. We also decided to play 2 new songs, which was a risk too far. They seemed to love the first song and the last 2, the bit in the middle??

Then our next stop 2 weeks later was the Bull & Gate in Londons Kentish town. This time we were opening for Brazillian shoegazers Wry, who decided to have the longest soundcheck in the history of man. We even went out for dinner & came back and they were only just setting up the other support bands backline. As I sipped my Guinness & black I began to worry.

However my fears were unfounded, the gig went great, we’d been sensible and pulled back to playing our normal set with added discipline and aplomb. The one new song we played went down great and I even enjoyed playing the one song in the set I dont usually enjoy.

Compared to 2007, my 2008 rig remains unchanged, save for the exra delay line, A TC Electronics ND-1 Novadelay is being used for synchronous delays in “Wish It Away” and to add exta atmospherics in our new tunes.

I still havent forgotten about the £500 Stratocaster challenge, I’ll post an update soon.

Peace Out

Well well

Finally, and although a year behind schedule, today see’s the release of my bands debut album Comfort in Fear. Recorded in 2006, this album was originally planned to hit the shelves in April 2007, but a few label issues has meant it coming out nearly a year later.

Its a sigh of relief for the guys and myself to see it on iTunes at last, but also a sign of how hard it is to be an independant musician now.

In December last year we sent out our promo copies to the media via a respected PR agent. We’ve had some good reviews (Rock Sound) and some indifferent (The Fly). Buts whats interesting is by giving journalists a sneak peak of the record, it leaked onto the internet several weeks before its release date. Mainly on Russian MP3 sites.

Looking on Last FM, I can see that we have gained many new listeners through file sharing. In a way its a bonus and something that previously never would have happened.

For that I’m grateful, but at the same time I wonder how all these people with 400GB of music on their hard drives actually take in the music? Does it stay with them longer than a week, or is it merely a brief entertainment for a have now generation, who will soon revert to collective attention deficit disorder and be downloading the next new thing tomorrow.

Time will tell, so far the amount of London gigs has doubled over last year and we’ve had some pretty impressive support slots offered. Meanwhile we have the itch to create new music and to also play it live, whilst still trying to remain enthusiastic about 11 songs that we wrote and recorded ages ago.

Its a tightrope alright. But despite the difficulties its our album and thinking back to my past life 10 years ago, when I’d pretty much given up playing the guitar and never imagined recording or playing in a band again. It feels like a pretty substancial milestone and within that I feel a sense of personal victory.

To prepare myself for the onslaught of Xmas shopping I popped my copy of Journeys “Escape”on the CD player the other morning.

As I munched on my fruit N Fibre Neal Schon’s beautifully executed tasteful solo work gave me goosebumps and if anything still stands up today as an example of less is definetly more.

Schon is something of an Enigma to me. A cursory glance at his playing could lead you to believe he’s just another 80’s hard rock guitarist with a bad mullet and silly sunglasses, but there is so much more.

The son of a Jazz Saxophonist Schon was a hotshot guitarist at the age of 15 and was courted by both Eric Clapton to join Derek and the Dominoes and also by Carlos Santana…..this is while the young Schon was still a teenager???? WTF???

Schon eventially joined Santana, toured, played on a couple of albums and then formed Journey with Santana bandmate, keyboardist Jonathan Cain. They recorded gazillions of albums of varying quality and still treads the Classic Rock nostalgia circuit with a different Journey lineup regulaly. Although “Escape” is probably their biggest worldwide hit.

However Schon is also a bit of a pioneer, back in the mid 80’s he had his own brand of guitars made (well ghostbuilt by Jackson & Larrivee in fact) under the ‘Schon’ brandname long before Brian May had a stab at a reproducing the Red Special for the mass market.

In addition his latest Gibson Les Paul signature model actually has some amazing features such as a heeless cutaway and Fernandes Sustainer. It also comes with a Floyd Rose, but apparently, Neals also tried out other types of licensed Floyd, by Ibanez in order to find the perfect whammy. I wonder how Gibson feel about that.

When I saw Rush recently. I noticed Alex Lifesons Floyd Equipped LP Custom had the same heeless cutaway as Neals. So Gibson will surely do a stock production run of contemporary LP’s at some point?

Schons rig is also unusual in that he prefers using old Boss Multi FX units (ME-5’s/ME10’s/GT-5’s etc) and programme up endless big fat overdriven sustained tones with washes of chorus and echo, before running these units into big fat clean valve amps such as Hi-Watts. In a world of boutique this and handbuild bespoke rigs. Its nice to think a world class player fiddling with his FX units overcooked presets like Barry in the covers band down the Dog & Duck on a Friday night.

Back to his playing, while Schons name is littered across numerous American Melodic Rock album credits, he has made an instrumental album as well. But its his better work with Journey that shows how to really deliver raw emotion with just a few well placed licks. The guitar break in “Who’s Crying Now” is just 4 or 5 simple notes, played with such heartfelt emotion and raw passion it harks back to an era when guitar solo’s were common in pop/rockmusic.

Schons tasteful phrasing gives a nod to classic soul vocalists such as Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett and its this wider influence that marks him out as a true original.

Merry Xmas

Anyone familiar with this blog will know I have been less than impressed with Giant UK music chain Soundcontrol on a number of occasions. I have often berated both its sometimes high prices and what I percieved to be a shortfall in certain employees training & a lack of product knowledge in its London and Nottingham stores. I’ve also been less than impressed with the range of stock and have bought very little from there in recent years.

However, unlike Ishibashi Music or Chandler guitars, it is right on my doorstep, so they do get some custom out of me from time to time. So while in there buying some strings and plecs the other day I noticed my local Derby branch has appointed a guitar tech and were offering guitar setups and maintenance in a clear and very well laid out menu.

That evening I noticed that the Telecaster was rattling a bit and due to the recent seasonal changes, could probably do with a set-up. Now I have been known to do my own from time to time. But feeling lazy and also wanting to know if the service was any good. I booked the old girl in.

After chatting to SC Derbys resident guitar tech Mick, he told me he’d have it ready in a few days. I picked it up a couple of days ago and he was woried the action maybe too low. He basically said ’see how you get on’ and if it wasn’t right I could bring it back.

After an afternoon with it. I noticed that the action was probably too low for my traditional tastes. So a quick phone call later and it was back on Micks workbench and he adjusted it to my taste perfectly.

In short I was impressed. I don’t know if all SC shops do this service, but top marks to Mick at SC Derby. It reminded me of the kind of customer service I used to see back when it was called Wishers in the 80’s. God I’m showing my age now!

I still think that with many times more outlets than Peter Cooks and Coda’s, they could be a mite bit more competitive sometimes. But it’s nice to see that SoundControl have taken a step back from trying to be like Currys and have decided to be a guitarshop again. I hope this trend continues.