Extracurricular
I have mentioned previously being in a band.
I went through a serious bout of musically related depression not long back when all of my gear was stolen, with the exception of one lone Maxon OD pedal that had been dropped in the snow by the thieves. That pedal now picks up AM radio stations.
The gear lost, while cheap, did have some serious sentimental value. I got the Global you see in the video from my Grandpa when he died and that strat has more deployments under its belt than most first enlistment Army guys I know. The amp is a pawnshop Peavey 5150, which is a horrible choice for most types of music not related to Spandex, but it added a real gravel and blood note to our sound. I guess it doesn’t really matter, since everything is impermanent, but I miss that stuff. I also miss the thousands of dollars I spent trying to get that sound back.
That strat is, without a doubt, the best guitar I have ever owned. In my hands, it beats out any of the Gibsons or Gretsches easily and trounces any Fender, even the Americans, I have played. And it’s just a cheapo Mexican strat I bought with lawn mowing money when I was a kid and started modding. But it had some sort of strange power. Maybe just because I knew where everything on it was. Harmonics don’t translate exactly from guitar to guitar, even exact replicas from the same production run. So, it had somewhere around 12 years of experience or so that went with it.
Now I have two guitars trying to fill that sonic void. I guess I shouldn’t complain, but I miss all the gear, especially that strat, greatly. It still makes me well up and seethe thinking about some asshole kid not understanding my Grandpa’s Global or that guitar I babied for years and years. Buddha never faced the challenge of forgetting a good guitar.
Anyway, this is from one of our first shows last summer. We picked up a drummer the night before and the singer is singing this song literally for the first time. Most importantly, it shows off that amazing sound from that collection of (honestly) crap.
Well, dude, you KNOW I ain’t gonna have nothin’ good to say about a Strat; but, heck, the thing was YOURS, and it was SEASONED, and it was … well … YOURS. And so I feel for ya, losin; it and havin’ to get acquainted with sompm else.
The sound-quality of the vid is, of course, not the best (after all, it’s just video shot at an open-air concert); but I DO like rough-edged, NOISY music. When you described your band as an “electric hillbilly band,” I really expected something far less … fiery.
Thanks for embedding the vid. I’m gonna check out the rest of the stuff on the Drop Top Lincoln YouTube channel.
Joey Polanski
February 4, 2011 at 3:29 pm
THIS is good stuff, dude — especially on YOUR partski!
Joey Polanski
February 4, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Joey’s right!
nursemyra
March 24, 2011 at 1:32 pm
rough and raw. can see why you miss it… i spent some cash on a serious gibson acoustic/electric a couple years ago. but it still doesn’t feel right – like the ’85 fender balboa with the cutaway that i have literally bashed to shit… the TOP of the soundhole is shredded… sounds awful, but it’s really the only guitar i can play.
daisyfae
February 4, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Daisy: Yeah, I don’t know how to describe that tone. Open? For sure, if you find one better than anything else, never let it out of your sight.
Joey: Thanks man, we try to push a boring type of music to interesting extremes. We should have a CD sometime in the next six months or so.
Casey
February 14, 2011 at 2:51 pm
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