My Top Gigs of 2007

1. Devo - Shepherd's Bush Empire, London (26 June)
   
2. Siouxsie - The Roundhouse, Camden (5 November)
3. Julian Cope - Concert Hall, Reading (11 May)
4. Seasick Steve - Borderline, London (24 March)
5. Super Furry Animals - Oxford Academy (26 October)

Absolutely unique - the Dog Bass!

I'll let my friend, "Dog", explain:

"...the bass I've had for over 27 years. One night I got drunk and pulled all the frets off, then drunk again a couple of weeks later I tried to stick them back on again. A while after that I got drunk yet again, and decided to whittle a new neck out of a piece of 3" x 2" timber I had in my shed. That said, it played, and I have used it on many of my recordings."

[More, including soundsamples, on Dog's webpages]

Let this be a lesson to you, folks. Don't drink and perform previously un-planned luthiery this Christmas!

Ever Fallen In Love With A Guitar You Shouldn't Have?

Eastwood Guitars - those kings of the retro-reissue guitar - proudly present the limited edition Pete Shelley Starway signature guitar, based on a guitar with a partially broken body that Pete played in the early days of classic punk band The Buzzcocks. Judging by the headstock shape and those distinctive fingerboard inlays, my guess would be that the original was a Teisco - probably the E-100 model (look it up on the Teisco Twangers website).

KT Tunstall Gets Guitar Lesson From Ronnie Wood

The Return of the Reverse Flying V

Apparently - and rather surprisingly, I thought - Gibson have had so many requests to make this former limited edition guitar of the week more widely available that they've produced an additional 900 instruments in their custom shop - 300 each in natural, ebony and white finishes. See the Gibson Reverse Flying V micro-site for more details.

Comments will now be moderated. Sorry about that, folks, but there's always one brain-dead simpleton who has to spoil it for everyone else, in this case a retard calling himself Ed, who - no surprise - was too chicken to leave his email address.

Steve Miller to auction off guitars to raise money for firefighters

Look what I've just got my paws on...

It's an original 1988/89 Made in Japan Blue Flower Fender Strat, not one of the inferior recent reissues (nasty scratchplate and small headstock on those), and what's more - it's absolutely pristine! There's not a scratch on her. One lady owner, low mileage, etc.

Long-term blog readers will know that I used to have a pair of Paisley Pink Fenders from this same period - a Telecaster and a Stratocaster (pictured here on the right) - and I had to sell them as I needed the money quite urgently at the time. I've always regretted that sale, but this Blue Flower baby makes up for some of that. Wow! What a find!

US soul musician Ike Turner dies

R.I.P.

OK, Band Meeting...

Sadly, tonight in the UK on BBC4 we'll be seeing the final episode in the first series of Flight Of The Conchords - one of the funniest and most inventive comedy shows to be seen in recent years. The premise is simple: Bret and Jemaine are two naïve musicians from New Zealand trying to make it in the music business in New York, aided and abetted by Murray their usually inept manager who has a day job in the New Zealand Consulate. If truth be told, not a lot actually happens of any momentum to our two heroes throughout the series. The joy of this programme is in the ridiculous dialogue, the hopeless tangles they get themselves into, and the fantastic and often quite surreal songs that are woven into the scripts usually in the form of some dream sequence.

I believe that they also have something to do with the recent resurgence in popularity of Casio's DG-20 digital guitar from the 1980s, if recent prices seen on eBay are anything of an indication. (I played one at the London Music Show back in the early 1980s when the instrument was first launched and it was a horrible thing. Basically it had the guts of a cheap home keyboard type instrument and with sensors under the fret positions on a rubber fretboard and with nasty black plastic non-tuned "strings".)

Led Zeppelin: The guitars are as much a part of their image as Robert Plant's blond cascade: Jimmy Page's guitars are as much a part of the Zep image as Robert Plant's blond cascade. Article from The Independent.

This guitar really takes the biscuit! It looks as if someone wanted to emulate the now legendary Dobbincaster and create an animal-themed guitar. Check out those fingerboard inlays - they are bone shaped. Wacky, eh?

I reckon they could have been a bit more inventive. For instance, how about having the dog's head emerging from a kennel? As it is, the fade to a turquoise Randy Rhodes style shape just doesn't work for me.

And why not give the dog a collar and attach the strap to that as if it were a leash? That would have been quite funny.

Anyhow, this beastie is equipped with what appears to be a backwards mounted EMG-81 pickup, so not only does it look like a complete dog's breakfast, it probably sounds like one too. (For those who can't be bothered to read between the lines, I am not a fan of EMG pickups. But that's another story.)

"Great sound for heavy metal", it says. Now, had Anthrax changed their name to Basketful of Puppies as was once suggested during the anthrax scares of a few years ago, then this would have been the guitar for them.

One of these days I'm going to start up a spoof gothic band and get in a bunch of hideous guitars a bit like this.

Any ideas what this is supposed to be?

This guitar found for sale on eBay (where else?) looks like it could be a cousin of the squashed frog.