XCIX - ian on guitar stuff, epi 3

updates

feb 2011 - feb 2012, $150, mi-audio tubezone, -$125
february 2010 - dec 2011, $1500, 01' gibson les paul standard, cherry sunburst, -$1730

it's funny, i never liked the tubezone until the day i was to sell it. i mean, it was still a bit loose sounding and all, and i still hadn't found a sweet spot with all the fiddly knobs it came with (damn thing had 6 knobs). but i came pretty close, and working the volume on the guitar gave it a heck of a tone range. but i had to sell it. oh, at least i still got the sahasrara, which sounds good at any dial. god damn!

i should probably get a fuzz. i mean, what's the point of listening to so much hendrix if i ain't gonna get a fuzz? it doesn't make sense. and of course, someday i'm gonna get a joe b signature goldtop les paul. it's like what 3.8k USD? come on, they're giving it away here.

there was a pretty funny 9gag post about guitars lately. let me see if i can find it.
http://9gag.com/gag/2690821
love his look. i bet he plays killer.

so it's been almost 8 years since i've been playing. i like the guitar. i like the way i like it. i mean, honestly, i've never truly felt frustrated with my playing, if i wanted to play something and worked at it, it generally came to me. importantly, i play it for myself. it's like my fingers are talking to me. which isn't a bad thing because i dunno it doesn't really impress the girls anymore. hahaha. well i guess if there's one thing i don't do enough, it's playing with other people. but that's just the way it is. and yeah it's an expensive hobby, but it's a fairly liquid one, and i haven't really bought anything for awhile. and... when it comes down to it, really, music is something i feel is worth doing. the magic of stevie ray vaughan, duane allman, jimi, joe b, richie blackmore, their playing is a really big part of my life. and i'm pretty sure if i didn't listen to so much rock, i'd not have come to like classical music. i love classical music.

anyway yesterday i was just thinking to myself, golly, i played in a musical. i mean the music was all there, but it was pretty cool to have played in a musical. if i was honest i'd admit that i probably wasn't the nicest guy i could have been during those few months, for reasons unrelated to the guys or the music. does that make my recollection of it a little regretful? yeah, it does a little. but you know, feelings are feelings. i tend to fall back on my oft-cited line that i'm not used to being around people, and sometimes i think i'm making use of it as an excuse. but that's the way it is, again. a lot of the time i feel that people in general are difficult to accept, and i get a little bit detached. it's the norwegian wood in me.

anyhoo, i'm thankful to my dad for being so supportive of me. really. i think he's funded all my significant purchases. i mean my army and pre-uni pay i've never really squandered, but essentially i've been managing his money for awhile, responsibly so, and that's how i got most of the stuff. i mean, i think i've more or less been net with my buy/sells. it's funny, i admit most of the old stuff i listen to are developments from listening to purple, which is really from my dad. my dad is quite something. he's a resilient old man. we understand each other very well, and i've got a lot of sympathy for him. i know that he's more proud of me than anything in this world. well, i could probably say the same about my mom. but my dad is proud of me as a person, whereas my mom is proud of me as a son. i guess we'll try to fix that come may when i go over to adelaide.

looking at my gear, there are so many stories, but i guess none that really pop out as much as the first guitar i got. and happily enough, whenever i go back to draw on that well i find that i dig the sound it makes. it tells me that my technique isn't half bad. it tells me that i can hear the feelings in my playing. and it tells me that as long as i treat it nicely it'll be there and well. i may never play it like tommy e plays it, but i can get over on it once in awhile. hell, it was the guitar i learnt to play blurry on. now that one felt fun.

XCVIII - epiphanies

song of the week: lenka, the show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elsh3J5lJ6g

sometimes it takes a day, sometimes it takes a year. sometimes it takes whiskey. no, maybe not that. well, maybe sometimes. whatever conditions [precedent] it has, i think it probably comes from inner calm, calm that comes from a place you sink to to realise. and they're not formulated as solutions, because i don't think in life the end of one's struggles are solutions, but more, i dunno, meta-spiritually, i think in the end the most that you can ask for, and indeed to a not un-satisfying extent, get, are perspectives. perspectives are not the answer, but they explain the question, they explain your question. and i think in life that is what most people are looking for, more than answers.

as humphrey bogart famously said, things are never so bad they can't be made worse. but let me claim to understand him a little bit better, and i think he says it in a light-hearted manner. just picture it, his cigarette, his cream suit, his self-deprecating smile. it's a yogi-ism. things are never so bad, and then it's funny that they can be made worse. just watch casablanca, you'll get what i mean. things are never so bad, and it includes him cracking a joke.

just hear him in your head... "of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine..." oh! classic.

XCVII - underneath the windows of the sky

i imagine it as jumping into a big, deep, boundless (and beautiful) ocean. at first the depth and the cold and the sensory void is so strange as to be frightening, terrifying. it feels like a world apart, people live and breathe on the surface near the water but they can't hear you or see you, and you can't reach them. and as you listen to your thoughts to make sense of being surrounded only by ocean, you realise something interesting, whatever it may be. and getting used to the ocean and the ocean alone isn't getting harder if you don't find it strange that people live apart from the ocean, outside of the ocean. and someday you learn to breathe the ocean water. sometimes you imagine not the living but the apart. if anything makes sense it is things made by people who are ocean people as well. but you could breathe the ocean water if you wanted, and nothing too important comes after that.

XCVI - oh these blues

song of the week: joe bonamassa, if heartaches were nickels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDAQm2qWnYw

i decided a long time ago that blues songs weren't sad songs. they were a sort of... self-serving heartbreak songs. how can a sad song entertain? even the old timers, robert johnson, muddy waters, albert king... they didn't make sad sad songs. they sang with a sort of spirit, an identity in their blues with which they had peace. well i guess goin' down slow is a sad one. and maybe 3 o'clock blues. but hell, stormy monday is the epitome of a blues song to me and it's so gosh darn bluesy and good to listen to. i dunno, i guess maybe feeling melancholic helps you play better.

when i feel down i just feel like giving up and going to sleep.

btw, check out your blues name -

according to this, the best three blues guitarists in the world are Boney Gumbo Rivers, Blind Dog Jenkins and Texas Back Hopkins. special mention to Boney Mcgee and Brown Legs Jackson*.

* Jimi, Stevie, Eric, Joe and Duane.

XCV - regard amusé

song of the week: lorenzo and jasmine, the bickering song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV_sGkZYL24

i think that lately, i rarely feel proud about the things i can do. but i admit to occasionally, when musing over things in a light-hearted sort of way, feeling proud to a greater or lesser degree about these three things of mine, vis, intuition, compassion, and neverending power to entertain.

sometimes i wonder if there are hidden forces laughing at my quips, at my antics.