I've Got Blisters On My Fingers!

Everybody's got something to hide, except me and my monkey. This post has absolutely nothing to do with motorcycles. But it has everything to do with music, and without music there would be nothing at all... So, I guess that makes me wrong about this post having nothing to do with motorcycles? Here's a bouquet of wooden tools all made way before I was born, the Les Paul Gold Top would be the obvious choice because of James Williamson but the 450 is my favorite. Fred Smith didn't play a regular 6-string Rickenbacker 450 during the late MC5 / Sonic's Rendezvous era, he played a 450-12 that he pulled 6 of the tuners from and used as a 6-string. George Harrison on the other hand kept all 12 tuners on his Rickenbacker 450-12.

 

I've been spending a lot of time in our studio lately, we built this studio here in Stockholm to have a place to experiment, rehearse and drink uncontrollably back in the mid 1990's and we have been playing and hoarding old amplifiers, instruments and various types of hangovers ever since.

  

This 1966 Ampeg AEB-1 is my personal favorite bass guitar of all, a total of 1150 ever made between 1966-68. Billy Wrath, Rick Danko and George Biondo are a few of the people that were in touch with the magic of the Scroll Bass way back when...

Bungalow Bill, what did you kill? I think the Beatles are underated as a band considering how good they really were at creating music 1965-70. The golden age of VOX are from 1957 through the end of the 1960's; the JMI-era, when Dick Denney and Thomas Morgan still ran things.

  

Let's drink to the death of a clown, VOX Teardrop, Stereo Phantom XII and Tempest XII, Dave Davies sings way cooler than his brother Ray, and he had better taste in guitars too. The Kinks slayed The Hollies on so many different levels and even though you must still give props to Tony Hicks for playing almost every style VOX guitar, the #1 all VOX band of all times must've been Paul Revere & The Raiders.

Music in sea minor; VOX Grenadier 4x10" PA Columns made Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band sound real crisp on the beach of Cannes, France, 1968-01-27.

Ampeg Dan Armstrong 1969's and right behind them you can spot a dual neck Danelectro Barriton guitar. Greg Ginn vs Sky Saxon. Dan Armstrong was a genius; he used to build custom pickups for Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed before he came up with his own plexi design with the interchangeable pickups, a guitar Keith Richards used during the Stones concert in Altamont 1969.

The tone of a 1960's Gibson Hummingbird makes dark times in life seem just as absent as Brian Jones during the Gimme Shelter sessions. Paul Simon, Arthur Lee, Keith Richards of course, but also Dick Taylor made the best out of the Hummingbird. Dick Taylor was a childhood friend of Keith and one of the very first members of the Rolling Stones, but when Brian Jones joined the band he tried to force Dick to give up playing guitar and play the bass instead, so Dick quit the Stones and formed another of the greatest rock acts of ALL TIME; The Pretty Things.

If you ever get tired when 'everybody's talking' - like Harry Nilsson in 1968, I recommend this setup; Moog Theremin ran through dual Fender Twin-Reverbs and a Fender/Leslie Vibratone. If you ever huffed gas and got the audio-strobe oriented 'gas-helicopter effect' - this is what it sounds like. And you won't even have to huff gas, needless to say - it'll kill any conversation. I think there's a Theremin in just about every song ever used in every horror movie, Led Zeppelin used a Theremin live, The Beach Boys didn't - they used an Electro-Theremin which is a more controlled version of the original instrument, but still very cool. Brian Wilson is the greatest musician ever and everything good about the Beach Boys is because of him, well him and Denis. Ok well him, Denis and Carl, and even though Mike Love was the one who played the Electro-Theremin live I still have a hard time accepting him.

Somebody call Owsley Stanley!

The VOX Ampliphonic Galaxie was originally created for clarinets but 13th Floor Elevators used these amps for guitar on the 'Bull of The Woods' album. Tommy Hall rules, horizontal thinking. Selmer 1 X 18" 'crocodile' Treble & Bass cab, I couldn't seem to find its head - or my own. Cheers!!

The 'Boris the Spider' bass line require at least 200 Watts or it will sound like shit, actually any John Entwistle bass line won't sound right if played on something less than 200 watts, and it still won’t sound right unless it's played by him. The best part about the Who is – Everybody played lead.

1965 VOX AC-100 with early style 12" + 15" cab and original trolley, hi Paul McCartney and 1965 VOX AC-50 rig with a 1966 VOX AC-100 head on top. And if we succeed with not blowing up too many of these amplifiers we will have this new recording session finished real soon.

This is what I look like when trying to steal Ray Manzarek chord lines, I've been in bands on and off pretty much my whole life and the last band I was in is Henry Fiat's Open Sore, but we decided to quit recently and form a new band - this is our first recording, so it's basically into the great wide open at this point, I'll post up the music on here when we're done, until then - hold on to your white Brian Jones turtlenecks!