Fiddling with my Highway One Stratocaster

I spent Monday night making some tweaks and modifications to my Stratocaster. As it arrived, it had 9 gauge strings which are a little to spongy for me on a non locking guitar and it also had the standard floating trem, something else I'm not a fan of. There were a few cosmetic tweaks I wanted to make also. So I dug out the house tool-kit, found the Phillips screwdrivers and set to work. The guitar started out like this:

After a couple of hours I had flattened the trem against the body, added two extra springs to the trem block and screwed the trem claw further in so that the trem doesn't pull up even when I bend notes. Having done this and put a set of 10s on I needed to adjust the action and intonation accordingly. Whilst I had the strings off I took the opportunity to swap out the stock white knobs and covers for some after-market black ones which I think complement the big 70s style headstock and make it a little more individual. Once all this was done and the guitar was tuned up it was too late to give it good session through the amp so I had to wait until last night when I got home from work at a reasonable time and T was out having dinner with friends. This is what it looks like now:

I poured myself a whisky and played for a good two hours. I declare myself more than satisfied; I'm really chuffed with the sound and way it plays now. The extra mass in the trem and the fact it doesn't float anymore have really improved the sustain and beefed up the tone, something which the heavier strings have also helped with. The feel is much better with the guitar offering a little fight now in both the strings and the trem - just how I think a Strat should be. The extra benefit, which I hadn't counted on, was how good the guitar sounded with the volume backed almost all the way off through the Cornell amp. The tone cleans up really nicely, something which humbucker-laden guitars just don't do, and I was able to twang away once my overdriven Trower/Hendrix/Beck urges had been satisfied. It's really an absolutely super guitar now and I'm so pleased I made the effort to make those tweaks to make it "just so".

T is off to a big industry conference in a couple of weeks so I intend to use those evenings to maximum effect. I might even try and record something. Have mercy.

Genius Playlist

Here is a Genius playlist, by which I mean one generated by the new "Genius" feature in iTunes rather than a particularly good playlist. That said, I'm quite intrigued by it:

The Count Of Monte Cristo The Noisettes
Horse and I Bat For Lashes
Serotonin Simple Kid
Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me The Pipettes
Sleep On the Left Side Cornershop
Come Follow Me The Answer
Miss Modular Stereolab
Mojo Box Southern Culture On The Skids
Heroes And Villains Brian Wilson
Tangled Up In Plaid Queens Of The Stone Age
Black Cherry Goldfrapp
Rumble Link Wray
Darlene Led Zeppelin
I'm Free The Soup Dragons
High School MC5
May This Be Love Jimi Hendrix

Too Much Too Young Too Fast

Talking to Vivswindy about music and film, as we inevitably do, got me thinking that it's been a while since I put a compilation tape (playlist really) together. This will be winging its way to Vivswindy soon:

1. Aces High : Iron Maiden
2. Sister Rosetta (Capture the Spirit) : The Noisettes
3. I Am You : Nightmares On Wax
4. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast : Airbourne
5. Don't Know What to Do With You : The Mentalists
6. How Heavy This Axe : The Sword
7. Bultca Saturno : Paul Gilbert
8. Bendix 2: The Tomorrow People : Raymond Scott
9. Stick Pit : Buckethead
10. Flashlight Fight (feat. Chuck D) : The Go! Team
11. Be Easy : Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
12. Exercise 7 : Bent
13. Cradle Me : Tina Grace
14. The Wizard : Bat For Lashes
15. When the Levee Breaks : Yat Kha
16. Dark As A Dungeon : Ramblin' Jack Elliott
17. Day Of The Eagle : Robin Trower

And this is what I shall be listening to for the next few days

Guitar Design

Apropos of nothing I was talking with a couple of guitar minded chums about the state of guitar design. We had come to this topic because one of our number was looking for something "a bit different", which is shorthand for "not a strat, tele or Les Paul". This led me to thinking about those guitars and why they dominate as they do.

Of the three I think the strat is the greatest, it has the most, for its time, revolutionary design, it's functional, never out of fashion and eminently practical as a workhorse instrument. In fact it's basically perfect. It's a situation very much like when John Kemp Starley designed the Safety Bicycle in 1885 and with it invented the bicycle as we know it today (diamond frame, chain driven rear wheel, etc.). He basically got it right in one go, an amazing achievement of bold design and engineering, especially considering that the Penny Farthing was the state of the art in bicycle design at the time. Just as Starley hit the nail firmly on the head in 1885 so did George Fullerton, Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares in 1954. The bolt on neck, the solid contoured body, the exciting bright paint finishes, the whammy bar on and on. It's just perfect. I look at Tinseltroos' Strat and it still amazes me 54 years after its invention.

But does that mean that guitar design is done? Is it not worth trying anything else? Sure, there are guitars like the Parker Fly that tried to reinvent the instrument with limited success. For me, the Strat cannot be bettered in its practicality, non-fussiness of its engineering and the manner of its construction. I like basic electric guitars with all the bits bolted together; it's unfussy and if anything breaks it's quite straight-forward to get a replacement part. The only thing that might be worth playing with is body and headstock design because this is a question of taste and style rather than pure engineering common sense. Even so, there are many limitations when designing a guitar body: the neck and bridge have to fit in a certain configuration for intonation to work properly, you need to be able to rout out the right areas to install the electrics, you need to consider having enough mass for the guitar to resonate but not too much so it becomes unwieldy, although that never stopped Rick Nielsen. Finally you have to think about how it would feel like to have the guitar on: could you play it sitting down? A Flying V, for example, is a strictly standing up only instrument and that bothers some people.

The more I thought about it, the trickier the problem became but it intrigued me all the more too. So I decided to have a go. I love the proportions of my Charvel Strat, and I knew what bridge and pickups I'd want if it were my guitar so I laid out those components from scanned photos in Photoshop and started sketching body shapes around them. It took ages to come up with something that I liked aesthetically that would also work as a guitar. I finally appreciated why designing something new is so hard. Not only do you have to compete with something that is basically perfect already, but there are so many constraints that trying anything else is very difficult. In the end, this is what I came up with:

Run to the Hills, Run For Your Life

In stark contrast to the subtle and cultured exigencies of Sibelius last week, Saturday night saw Tinseltroos, Sisoftroos, AJS, JJG and myself on a train to Twickenham, the home of English Rugby Union. We weren't there for sport though, we were there to rock. Iron Maiden were playing their first show on UK soil in 2 years and we had to be there.

Iron Maiden became a fixture in our Rock Friday playlists that those of us working on the stone giant for Hellboy 2 put together to keep us going during the project and when we found out about the tour we booked tickets there and then. This was in November last year and the anticipation has been building ever since.

We arrived toward the end of the main support act. The only downside of the gig was that none of the support bands really appealed to any of us but that was a minor gripe.

Having queued for what seemed like 150 hours I finally got a T-shirt, a nice Eddie Cyborg one. Very, very 1980s 2000AD style artwork, just how I like them.

As we took our seats the stage was shrouded in black drapes to keep a sense of mystery. This was finally pulled down just as the show was about to begin revealing an ancient Egyptian themed Powerslave stage design complete with enormous painted back drop.

And then Maiden began. They began with Aces High and continued with a string of classics that kept the forty odd thousand people there very happy indeed. My highlight was probably Run to the Hills, but that's always been my favourite tune of theirs. The pyrotechnics and stage props became more theatrical and extreme as the show progressed ending up with a fifteen foot tall cyborg Eddie marching around the stage as an even larger mummified Eddie reared and writhed in the background. Top stuff.

The show finished after two hours of top-notch entertainment and the five of us, with broad grins, joined the throng to wait for trains to take us back to London.

Sibelius Times Three

I went my usual classical music going chums to the Barbican last night to see three pieces by Sibelius played by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis. The only piece on the bill with which I was in any way familiar was the 4th Symphony, which I adore for its almost unrelenting moodiness. Even Shostakovitch generally ended on a high note.

The concert opened up with The Oceanides which was apparently composed on an Atlantic sea crossing; at least in part. It was superb with the orchestra flowing and moving as a unit, unlike many of the recent concerts I've attended where I got the distinct impression that the musicians scarcely knew the score. Sir Colin, who's getting on a bit these days, was pretty sprightly once he got into the swing of things though with his woofy hair and small physique he rather reminded me of Widow Twanky as he tottered to and from the conductor's rostrum.

The second piece was Sibelius' Violin Concerto featuring Nikolaj Znaider as the soloist. As well as being worth a great many points in Scrabble, Znaider was an astonishing musician. The wonderful acoustics of the hall helped but he made every note count and played with passion and total commitment throughout. A really special performance all in all.

The 4th Symphony came after the interval and once again the orchestra really delivered. Whilst the performance wasn't up to the Simon Bolivar Orchestra at last year's Proms (I doubt I'll ever see as electric a concert as that again though) it was right up there with the best of the rest. I came out of the auditorium at about 9.30 really feeling like I'd witnessed something good for the spirit and with that I sauntered through Clerkenwell, back to Holborn and home.

Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland?

Friday night was fun. TR makes a mean margarita and I had, erm, a few of them . However I did not get utterly banjaxed as I had to be on a train to Southend on Sea by 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. Why, you cry, would Mr Atrocity be on a train to the coast on a Saturday morning? Well there's a little story attached. Don't worry it's a nice one.

A couple of months ago I treated myself, as my Hellboy 2 overtime self-present, to a new guitar amp. I sold my last one before moving in with Tinseltroos. It was lovely, but it was also 80 watts which is way too much wallop for domestic use. I had looked high and low for a low-powered (5 watts or so) valve (tube to the American readership) amplifier capable of producing those late 60s Jeff Beck, Robin Trower, Cream, and early Van Halen type sounds at a reasonable volume level. I ended up coming across Denis Cornell's amplifiers. He builds amps for Eric Clapton and Robin Trower so I figured he must know what he was doing. His amps aren't cheap but they aren't insanely expensive either and they are all hand-built with point to point soldering; none of your printed circuit boards here if you please. As part of his non-custom range, Denis Cornell builds a 7 watt Plexi amplifier which seemed perfect. After waiting for about a month the only shop in London to stock Cornell amps got a batch in. The batch of twelve amps arrived on Wednesday, by the time I was able to make it to the shop on Saturday only two remained, one of which was the red 7 watt beauty you see above. I tried it and could almost have wept, here was the fat, edgy tone I'd been trying to recreate for years. So I ponied up the cash and took the amp home.

Tragedy! It was still too loud to use at home, even on its lowest setting I couldn't get it to overdrive without serious volume, in the space of the guitar shop it hadn't seemed so loud but at home, nope it wasn't going to fly. So I jumped on the internet to see what could be done. After searching about for a bit I found that there are some power attenuators manufactured specifically for valve (tube) guitar amps and so here, I thought, I might find salvation. Before I bought one I thought I would just check with the manufacturer of my amp as to the wisdom of adding the attenuator. So I wrote an e-mail to Denis Cornell, expecting a short, formal reply in a week's time. Within the day I'd received a lengthy, very friendly e-mail in which Denis said he thought the attenuator would work, though this wasn't what he had in mind when he designed the amp. Would I, he inquired, be able to travel down to Southend with my amp and he'd see what he could do to lower the volume. This was too good an opportunity to miss and that is how I came to be on the train yesterday morning.

The taxi from Southend station dropped me at the company's address with my amp in one hand, guitar in the other. I was confused. I was standing in a street of detached bungalows, the sort that people retire to. Perhaps I'd made a terrible mistake I thought, perhaps I copied the address down wrong? I knocked on the door. A moment later a smallish grey haired gent, probably in his late fifties answers the door. His glasses are held together with sticky tape. I ask if he's Denis Cornell. He replies in the affirmative and I am invited in. Denis's workshop/tinkering area is what would have been the front bedroom had the building still been a home. Denis sat me down and pottered off in his slippers to make us a cup of tea. Looking around the room was like looking at an electrical engineer's sweet shop. The walls were covered with neat little drawers each with a hand written note behind which could be seen capacitors, resistors, potentiometers and on and on. Leaning against the wall next to the door were a variety of half constructed amps, on the work bench next to me were a variety of soldering irons, oscilloscopes and transformers.

Denis returned and asked me to explain my problem again, then he asked me to play though the amp so he could hear how loud was too loud. I did this. He unscrewed the back of the amp, scratched his chin, removed a couple of components and soldered new ones in their place. I am always impressed by good soldering, mostly because I stink at it. Denis was like the Bernini of hot tin and lead; a beautiful job. We tried the amp again, still a little loud. Another scratch of the chin another couple of components replaced. This time it was great, it was still loud but not too loud. Denis screwed the casing on the back of the amp and then pottered out of the room. He returned a moment later hauling a huge roll of red tolex (fake leather that amp cases are often covered in). "This is what we're going to cover Robin Trower's amp in" he says, "Red and black, with gold piping. Sexy eh?" I had to agree. Denis dragged his Tolex back out of the workshop and returned having, I noticed, swapped his carpet slippers for shoes. "I'll run you back to the station." he said. I could have died. Here was a guy who had not only designed and built an amazing amp, he'd invited me down to modify it to better meet my needs, he'd refused any money for doing the work, and now he was going to take me back to the station. Denis Cornell is a legend. So now I have a custom Cornell Plexi Seven, a host of anecdotes and an overwhelming desire to be evangelical about the man himself as well as his creations.

Black Ships Ate The Sky

I'm always intrigued by what I like and what I do not and why. My tastes are fairly eclectic and reasonably catholic though I would be a liar if I said I could appreciate the qualities in anything.

One of Tinseltroos' favourite bands is Current 93, a band who have tried most genres in their long career with, to my ears at least, highly variable degrees of success. At present they seem to be in a rather "post rock" mode. Post rock is a rather unhelpful name as it implies that rock is now defunct, which it isn't, and that post rock is a natural successor, which it isn't. I prefer the term "prog punk", i.e. a type of music played by people who would like to play complex prog rock but only have enough skill to play punk. The end result is usually a band with an unnecessary number of guitarists (four at one stage last night - that's more than The Eagles ever managed) and assorted stringed instruments, pianos and keyboards. A simple riff pattern will start quietly and slowly and then get louder and a wee bit faster, but never to a tempo that could be misconstrued as exciting, over the course of about seven minutes until the song is done. The singer, David Tibet in this case, will "sing" over the top of this mass of sloppy sound generally on the subject of black ships (likes his Homer obviously) and skies. This went on for nearly two hours, which was a bit much I felt.

There were some good parts to the evening though. Marc Almond did three of songs with longtime Current 93 collaborator, Michael Cashmore. The first song was transcendentally wonderful and is apparently on Current 93's last album. He then did a couple of songs of the poetry of Eric Stenbock set to Cashmore's music. Stenbock is a terrible poet, and I mean "terrible" in both its common usage sense and its true definition: this is poetry so bad that it makes the skin crawl. Almond's performance was lovely and it's a shame that such talent had to be wasted on this sub-McGonagall twaddle.

The other surprise of the night was Baby Dee. Her brand of music can be described as slightly vaudevillian, slightly post-rock (it gets everywhere these days it seems) and was at times entrancing and spellbinding. Playing both the piano and harp with equal adeptness her vocal style always feels like it is an almost painful release of energy and emotion. A real gem.

All things considered it was a very mixed evening. Had Current 93 played for an hour less than they did I think I would not feel so negatively about the performance. I can take a little post-rock, I even actively like some Sigur Rós but two hours of the same song was a little much for me. According to Tibet, this will be their last performance for "a long time". I am hoping that next time they will have found another musical genre that better suits their talents.

Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution

Guitarist magazine has as its main feature this month an article on new acts in what it is terming the "Classic Rock" genre. Now to me "Classic Rock" has horrid connotations of bad dad rock a la Bachman-Turner Overdrive. What they really mean is "Proper Rock": sweaty, leather clad, power chord toting, Gibson guitar into Marshall stack wielding rock and roll. I am, as no one will be surprised to hear, more than a little partial to this type of thing.

To find new bands of this ilk delighted me as, fond as I am of much current music, there isn't much that tickles my highly sensitive rock pleasure centres. And so your brave correspondent with naught but an iTunes account and a rainy afternoon set out to pluck the finest apples from the tree of new "Proper Rock". If you are fond of a bit of AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy or Black Sabbath, and I know some of you are, you'd do well to give the following acts a listen. If you can run to an iTunes download or two I've also listed my favourite track from each artist. I bought a couple from each to test the water. I will be buying real CDs of whole albums worth of a lot of this on Monday:

Airborne - Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast
The Answer - Sweet Emotion
Stone Gods - Burn The Witch
The Sword - Freya
Black Stone Cherry - We Are Kings
Glyder - Gambler's Blues

For those about to rock, we salute you.

All Good Things...

Last night Tinseltroos and I finished watching the last of the original four series of Futurama. This has made us both rather sad, as though a good friend has left our lives. I shall be trying to find a copy of Bender's Big Score soonest. I am generally not good with television series. Even the good ones bore me quite quickly. The only series I've got through prior to this was The Prisoner and that is probably my favourite telly of all time. And this should tell you how much I loved Futurama. There has never been a show with so perfect a geeky sense of humour. It pokes fun at the things that annoy geeks, it panders to our whims and fantasies (where, exactly, is my flying car?) as well as having characters with whom we can empathise and can share a laugh.

Today has only been made bearable by the iTunes discovery I made during the week. I finally figured out how to make a Smart Playlist that sorts a band's output chronologically. Because of this, today is a very special Rock Friday. Today we have every Led Zeppelin album, in order. It's two o'clock in the afternoon and we've hit Physical Graffiti. All Hail "Hammer of the Gods Friday".

Noises

So I didn't spend the evening playing Super Mario Galaxy after all. When I got home the guitars were staring at me with their shiny, new, silvery strings. I was also keen to try out a few different sound settings on my guitar amp simulator box thing. I found a nice bluesy backing track from a CD and layered three different guitar parts over it: one clean blues, one more hard rock and a bit of slide to finish it off. I also wanted to see also how GarageBand coped with all the different sounds and how well it mixed them down. It's completely improvised as you'll be able to tell but it's as much of a testing equipment piece as it is just me mucking about for the fun of it. I continue to be amazed at how good GarageBand is for a super cheapy piece of software. It automatically picks up when I connect the guitar amp simulator box thing and allows me not only to record from it without any latency but also sends all the audio back in to the wee box and out to the speakers so I can hear everything as I'm playing without having to use headphones. I remember trying to record anything was a huge exercise in heartache before it all went digital. Have to love technology and what it can do for you sometimes.

You can see, well hear, how I did in the "movie" above. For some reason Blogger won't let you upload just sound so I had to create a video using a still photo to go with it. Go figure.

Just call me Short-sighted Kumquat Atrocity. It's my new blues name.

Hunting and Gathering

Gibson "Faded" SG, originally uploaded by TurdOnTheRun.

I had an unexpectedly pleasant evening last. I had planned on heading home after work and spending the evening honing my practically non-existant Mario Galaxy skills. This plan was altered after I told JJG, with whom I work, about the result of my lunchtime trip down Denmark Street. For those who don't know, Denmark Street is the centre of the music retail scene in London. There are many guitar shops and I had popped into one to buy myself some acoustic guitar strings (the last of my guitars to get restrung after Saturday's efforts) and also to get Tinseltroos some strings for her Strat. I'd foolishly forgotten to ask what gauge of string she liked before heading out on Saturday.

As is customary when visiting a guitar shop I had a little look round,just out of curiosity - you know? I knew that JJG had been looking for an SG with a Bigsby trem and there in front of me was a lovely Epiphone one, in the sale to boot. Having excitedly told him about this once back in the office we conspired to leave work at 6, grab Abe (another work chum) and head back to check it out.

This we did and JJG declared himself impressed. Then, he dipped his head and said he had to show us something. He took us over the road to another shop wherein a beautiful faded Gibson SG rested - just like in the photo above. The look on JJG's face was something akin to Tiny Tim's upon being presented with the enormous goose at the end of A Christmas Carol. He's going to have to save up some more pennies to have that one but he is clearly smitten. And he's going to have pay someone to put the tremolo arm on it too but he seems to consider such things trifling concerns.

After ogling we decamped to a pub with another of JJG's friends for a few beers and to chew the fat. I treated myself to fish and chips on my way home (I've finally tracked down a good chippie in my neighbourhood which is a major bonus in my book) and having munched my way through that and a cup of tea set about restringing the last of my guitars. I offered to do Tinseltroos' guitar too but she, weirdly, claims to like changing guitar strings so I left hers well alone.

And so to bed.

Little Dreamer

Van Halen Wristsband in its New Home, originally uploaded by Mr Atrocity.

I'm sure at some point in the past I must have mentioned that there is a small group of rock nuts with whom I used to work and together we swore that should Van Halen ever reform with Diamond Dave we'd go and see them in L.A? This all grew out of an institution formed when we worked on the squirrels for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory together. Every Friday afternoon was "Rock Friday" where proper rock music was played all afternoon culminating in Van Halen's Jump at 6.30 when we all went to the pub. That was almost the only rule (along with "no ballads") and it has spread to the company I now work for and to others.

My buddy Cosmo, who now lives in San Francisco took "Rock Friday" to Pixar where he now works. It's comforting to know that the "Rock Friday" crew is spreading the love worldwide. Cosmo was able to see the mighty reformed Van Halen last month in San Francisco and, being the kind soul that he is, bought a few of us merchandise treats, mine being a delectable Van Halen logo'd sweat band. I debated where I might keep it for quite some time but then decided that it should have pride of place on my guitar strap. I think it almost certainly adds to the playability of the instrument - a little more of the spirit of Eddie is with me now.

Saturday Nights Alright For...Music apparently.

P1050270, originally uploaded by matatabby.

In my excitement at new guitars and the wonder of dogs I forgot to mention what I did on Saturday night. Tommy Dog had managed to get four of us tickets to see The L.A. Philhamonic play Sibelius' Symphonies 5 and 6 plus a few of his songs at The Barbican (or "Barbie Cannon" as my chum L calls it). We were due to meet up in a pub at 6 for a quick beer before wandering down to the concert hall. It was comfortably close enough to Schossadlerflug to walk, so thirty minutes early I trotted out of our front door and headed east down Clerkenwell Road. I had bought a new zip-up cardigan and had chosen to wear it with a suit. Though it was a cold evening the layers kept me cosy in that way that only several layers of natural fibre can - not baking, can't breathe hot, just toasty and warm.

I got to the pub a few minutes early and enjoyed watching the world go by whilst nursing my pint. Eventually my buddies arrived and we had a drink and a chat before heading down into the bowels of the worst of 1980s architecture which surrounds the Barbican. I like the centre itself, but there are a lot of soulless concrete cubes surrounding it. I hadn't been to a concert there since I went and saw Bert Jansch with L a year or so ago. It's a superb venue. Even though we had seats in the very back row we had an unobstructed view of the whole stage and crucially for me, being a little over six foot, some leg-room. It makes a huge change from the Royal Albert Hall. The performance was very good. They played the pieces in the order I'd have chosen, i.e. ending with the 5th Symphony. This worked doubly well becuase it took most of the performance of the 6th for the orchestra to get into its groove. After the interval they were really very very good. It was a really sweeping reading of the 5th and a delight to the ear. If it lacked the fire and passion of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, they certainly were supremely musically confident.

After the show (about 9.45) I decided to take a little detour and walk around St Paul's Cathedral on my way home. When you start walking through the empty streets of the financial district at night you can't help but feel a little like Rick Deckard in Blade Runner. It feels very cool. That opens out into London Wall, which marks the boundary of the old city and from there you can see St Paul's. Not only did I get to hear the bells chime 10 o'clock but I also got to see some of old London at night. I sauntered along Fleet Street past the beautiful old Daily Express offices where I saw three teenage girls attempting rail slides on their skate boards. Using a short-cut I learned from Dr. Nic I was able to cut through up onto Chancery Lane and from there, home. A bowl of apple crumble and custard warmed me ready for bed.

Lovely.

Varied Fun Shenanigans

What a difference a week makes. Last weekend I worked so by the time last Friday rolled around I hadn't had a day off in a fortnight and I was beginning to feel it. For reasons too dull to catalogue here I didn't have to work this weekend at all. Joy! Apart from my birthday weekend I think this has been my first two-day weekend in about three months. This enabled me to have some fun time!

As I've mentioned previously I made up my mind a couple of months ago that the Flying V would have to go and that all my travels around guitar shops in London had not yielded that which I sought. I put all the search terms I could think of into eBay and sat and watched as nothing turned up for weeks until Tinseltroos suggested I try the US eBay site. I had no idea we in the UK could use it but that's just my dumbness for you. This made perfect sense because not only is it a much bigger marketplace but the type of guitar I desired was very American in nature - and never really caught on here so much. Joy of joys I found the perfect model, a brand new Charvel EVH San Dimas guitar located in a guitar shop in Fort Lauderdale.

The other advantage of buying from the US is that the strength of the pound means I get a lot of guitar for my money. So I bought the instrument and then waited. Firstly I waited for the seller to acknowledge that they'd received my money. This took days during which I panicked that I'd been scammed somehow as the cash had definitely left my account but no word. Finally I hear that they have the money and that the guitar will be dispatched the next day. Days more silence. I prompt them to send me the shipping info so I can track the package and arrange to pay duty when it arrived at Customs. Silence. I begin to get very nervous. Perhaps it really is a scam? I begin to do some extra detective work. By Googling the email address that I sent the PayPal payment to I find out that the firm is a large music store in Florida. I find their 'phone number and call them up. The staff are incredibly helpful and say they will bully the guy who deals with the eBay sales to send me the info. Eventually said guy admits that the courier who took the guitar to the Post Office never got a receipt with the shipping info. ARGH! My beautiful guitar could be anywhere between Fort Lauderdale and a van on the way to our studio and neither I, nor anyone else, have any way of knowing. It could vanish and no-one would be any the wiser. All I could do was wait. Finally on Thursday a letter from the UK Parcel Force turned up demanding that I pay a hundred pounds in import duty and tax before they'd deliver my guitar. I have never been so pleased to hand over a big chunk of money for effectively nothing in my life. And then on Friday the beast turned up. Here it is being held by a happy little rock monkey.

Today we took our annual pilgrimage to Discover Dogs. This year, because Tinseltroos and I have decided which breeds we'd be potentially able and want to own we tracked down the breeders and made sure we met as many of those dogs as possible. I had a play fight with a Griffon Bruxellois (which I would have won had it not run away), as well as petting a Tibetan terrier and a Norfolk terrier. After we'd done our "serious research" we went and played with as many dogs as possible before we tired ourselves out and had to retreat to the Fulham Road for burgers and beer.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with real-life Hollywood film industry types as we try to sell them on the idea of bringing the visual effects on their next project to the studio I work at. I am a mixture of incredibly nervous and very intrigued. It isn't something I do that often because I try and avoid the whole selling side of the business in favour of actually doing the work and I think I make a pretty poor salesman but I really want to work on the project so I'm willing to be a complete whore for a morning. Fingers crossed.

Band on the Run

Last night Tinseltroos invited a couple of like-minded chums over for a screening of High School Musical 2. I, not liking musicals very much, and positively hating the two songs I'd heard from the first one took the Flying V, my head-phone amp and a laptop and hid myself in the bedroom - as far away from Zac Efron (I had to look that up) as possible. I cannot remember the last time I just sat down and played guitar solidly for nearly two hours. It felt great and I managed to learn all of Running With The Devil which pleased me greatly. I felt I was restoring balance to the universe and natural harmony to the flat by counterbalancing the singing and dancing (and occasional hysterical laughter from the audience) in the living room. I also played Iron Man, as much of Eruption as I could remember and a little bit of Mr. Brownstone to honour twenty years of Appetite for Destruction. Rock truly is a gift that just keeps giving.

It also confirmed something for me. To whit, I'm still getting rid of the Flying V as my poor wrists are sore from supporting the whole weight of the guitar. When sat on the bed the guitar wants to slide down your leg because there are no contours to keep it in place. It really is very annoying, it's a very beautiful thing but it's so impractical and it will definitely have to go.

Two Miracles and a Realisation

Bit of a mixed bag of a weekend. I've been at work for almost all of it and yet I've witnessed amazing things and made profound discoveries.

Yesterday was almost certainly the most improbable day of rugby union I've ever seen. I say "seen" but in the case of England vs Australia it was more "listened to" as I was still at work but could at least have the game on the radio. And what a game. An England side far from peak form, with injuries and a very poor record in the World Cup came up against an Asutralia side who had put in solid performances in the cup and were hungry to avenge their final defeat at home to the English four years ago. It didn't help that the chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union had upped the ante last week by saying, "It doesn't matter whether it's cricket, rugby union, rugby league – we all hate England." and latter continued, "I stand by that. Everyone does. All I'm doing is stating the bleeding obvious... If they want further proof, how do they think France won the right to host this World Cup? It is simple. No one would vote for England, and they were the only other country in the running." Strong words and with pre-match odds massively in Australia's favour it seemed like a dead game. And then England played their hearts out. In a game of gripping tension and boiling intensity England bested Australia in almost every department of the game. The scrum proved utterly catastrophic for the Wallabies who simply had no answer to the massive power that England fielded at numbers 1 to 3. With my hands shaking and my pulse racing the clock ticked down, achingly slowly, until as 80 minutes of play came to close England pulled off the seemingly impossible to win the match 12-10 and book a place in the semis.

I'd witnessed one of the greatest upsets of recent time. How could anything possibly top that? That was until the evening when France took on red-hot title favourites New Zealand. France signalled their intent by marching right up to the half-way line and staring the Kiwis down as they performed the haka. If proof were ever needed that the mystique of the All Blacks is waning this was it, a defining moment. In years gone by the haka epitomised New Zealand's ability to intimidate a side, to dent their will before the first whistle. But we live in different times now. New Zealand believe themselves to be the best rugby playing nation on earth, their team is used to crushing all before them and yet they have not been world champions for twenty years and will not get the chance again for another four. France played solidly but defensively and were hit hard. The Kiwis were 13-0 up towards the end of the first half. In times of yore that would have been that. The opposition would roll over and let themselves get crushed beneath the slick All Black machine. But since France showed in the 1999 semi-final that you can come back against the Kiwis from a massive deficit if you believe, the power of the Kiwis to have a side beaten before kick-off has evaporated. Yesterday the French were magnificent, they defended like lions and played a wiley game up front. They frustrated the Kiwis into making a petulent foul resulting in a sin-binning for McAlister. This allowed the French the room they need to level the match and then they powered home. One gets the impression that the Kiwis only know how to crush a willing opposition. They seem unable to play from a losing position. If they can't win easily, they can't win. France play brilliantly from a position of pressure and once again proved their mastery of the art. Frederic Michelak and my current favouite Bleu, Sebastien Chabal, came on for the final quarter of the game to, in the case of Michelak, set up the winning try, and in the case of Chabal to shore up the defenses and keep the Kiwis at bay. "They shall not pass".

This was a bigger upset than even the England game. To see either match is a treat, practically a miracle. To see both on a single day is definitely a miracle.

Beyond the rugby, my profound personal insight came when I realised that the Flying V I bought a while back is not the guitar for me. Tinseltroos and I have a couple of guitars out in the living room ready to be played and I noticed that I was always reaching for her Strat rather than my Flying V. I have finally realised that the impracticality of the design annoys me more than the beauty delights me and though it is a pleasant enough instrument it is going to have to go on eBay and I will begin the search for a new Atrocity Axe. I had a quick window shop on my way home yesterday afternoon and it appears that, once again, my tastes do not accord with the general populus. The current vogue seems to be for skinny indie kids in skinny jeans with fringes bigger than their heads to play 1960s style Burns and Hofner type guitars. This is all very well for those wanting to play The Arctic Monkeys but it is not going to stand up to having Hot For Teacher belted out on it. For that you need a proper guitar, built for the purpose; built like a tank. It seems that I shall have to search for something second hand. Let the eBay browsing begin.

Les Misérables - a short review

Saw this musical for the first time tonight. Here's its report card:

Story - C
Music - C-
Libretto - FAIL
Cast - C-
Set - B
Costume - C
Audience - FAIL

Overall - Semi-skimmed melodrama.

From the Sublime to the Sublime

What a wonderful weekend. I spent yesterday at Lord's watching cricket's equivalent of the F.A. Cup final or the Superbowl where Hampshire took on Durham. It was a privilege to see Shane Warne, arguably the best spin bowler the game has ever seen, and yet he ended up on the losing side. Durham played brilliantly. Disciplined batting and a quickfire 78 from the irrepressible Shivnarine Chanderpaul set Hampshire a daunting 312 for victory. Two wickets from the first two balls of Hampshire's reply pretty much did for their chances and they never looked even close to making the runs. Even Kevin Pietersen failed to fire. It's good to see a young county (in cricketing terms anyway) doing so well. Congratulations to Durham on a thoroughly deserved victory.

Youth and vigour were much in evidence today also. After a leisurely day, Tinseltroos and I walked over to The Royal Albert Hall for this evening's Prom Concert. Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela playing Shostakovich's 10th symphony (a personal favourite), followed by excerpts from West Side Story (always good fun) and finished with a selection of pieces by south American composers of whom I'd not previously heard, to whit Revueltas and Ginastera.

This group of teenagers were the best orchestra it has ever been my good fortune to see. They put many of the more famous names in classical music to shame. I have been to many classical concerts and have become used to orchestras who only seem to half know the piece they are performing. They don't hit the notes exactly together and thus end up sounding muddy and lacklustre. Their reliance on sight-reading also means they look less at the conductor who is therefore unable to get them to coalesce into a seamless whole and craft a whole sound from the mass of individuals. Not so tonight. Listening to this big orchestra was the aural equivalent of watching a flock birds change direction, as one, in flight. They were so light on their toes that the music felt as though it were coming from one giant living thing, one delightfully monstrous creature entirely at the beck and call of the effusive Dudamel.

The Shostakovich piece shifts from joy to melancholy to menace to anger throughout and they carried off these twists and turns with such dexterity and such soul and passion that I was left lost for words. They were so musical, an odd thing to say perhaps but one so often gets the impression that many professional orchestras really see what they do as just a job and if all the notes are there and in the right order that will do. Tonight's performers gave it their all. The packed hall responded in kind roaring and applauding them back for 4 encores. They were more than worth every one.

Have a look on the BBC's web-page for the listen again option for the show and see what I mean.

Update: Apparently I am not alone in thinking this.

Max Roach 1924-2007

Max Roach Quartet, originally uploaded by jazzmiddelheim.

My favourite jazz drummer, co-leader of my favourite jazz band of all time with Clifford Brown, Max Roach has died at the age of 83. A very sad day.