Finished Guitar

W the Cecil

Originally uploaded by Monem

Roll Your Own – Building a guitar from scratch

Halfway there

Originally uploaded by Monem
Here we have the halfway mark on a Chris’s senior project: a mahogany/maple semi-hollow three pickup electric guitar (only two are laid out here, Gibson humbuckers.  The third is a Tom Anderson). This is an original design, Chris and I working it out on a sketchpad before cutting.

Right To The Center Of Your Head: PMC 7067 XEX 709/10 Mfg. in UK ©1968

“It’s mono.”

“It’s not mon…” I stop. I think about it. “You’re right, it’s mono,” I mumble, “well that’s a gyp.”

“It sounds pretty good though,” says Steve.

“I guess. But you don’t get that left-right swirling stuff like with Hendrix.”

Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering, in the sun.

As side two finishes with the soft, heart-melting Julia, we both take in the idea of a new record in mono. Is it less than? I am uneasy. I paid ten dollars and got mono. I pull the disc off the Thorens and look for the hundredth time at the label, the crisp sliced apple, hoping it says stereo and I just missed it before. It doesn’t. It’s mono, the sound that goes right to the center of your head and stays there, but I am driven to deny it. Oh well. Ten dollars for a good record is OK, mono or not. Still it takes it down a peg for me, and I have to admit I feel a little burned

Takes a Licking but Keeps on Ticking: The Sex Pistols at Winterland…

Or…The Great Johnny-Hoax/Paul-Stokes/Steve-Coax/Sid-Stroked Grand Finale

“Hey, rocket to Russia buddy!!!” The couple ahead of me in Ramones t-shirts and black leather are getting impatient. I’m getting impatient. The camera and tripod dig into my shoulder. Getting into Winterland on this chilly, January evening is glacial snailness. I am here to document an event that I expect will turn out to be seminal (please refer to both definitions) at worst, and transcendent at best. But the person taking my ticket informs me that cameras are verboten. Sighing, I check my ancient Bell & Howell 16mm with the box office staff and make my way into the smoky, cavernous hall.

Yeah, San Francisco, Winterland, January 14, 1978. What is all this about I am wondering? Opening the bill, The Nuns. They are indeed tongue-in-cheek hilarious, but with Alejandro Escovedo on board they can actually rock. They give us a good squeeze, substituting the lyrics in Suicide Child from “fascist bitch” to “fucking bitch.” The best moment is a piano/voice lounge piece performed by the black-clad vamp herself, Jennifer Miro. The line “I’m so lonely, I’m so lonely, so lonely…all the men in San Francisco are gay…” eliciting cat-calls and booing from the mainly male and mostly straight crowd. I’m entertained. Then The Avengers hit the stage with avengeance; great, tight and sexy Penelope Houston fronting a rocking power trio. I am hyped. They are the stars of the evening!

Ah, but the best/worst is yet to come…the set-change music is deafening…the Pistols emerge to hoots, cheers, delirium and derision and launch into a set that is even more deafening. Loud is not the word…it is EAR-RUPTURING! My cochlea still rattle 30 years on. They are not tight…they are loose as a goose…Sid slamming away at his bass (there’s no way he played on the album) oblivious to any specific notes…it’s all just a wash of low-frequency rumble; Cook and Jones trying to keep it together but to no avail…Johnny prowling the stage like a leopard in an icebox.

For thirty-five minutes an endless hail of objects arch their way onto the stage…at one point Johnny picks up a wristwatch yelling…“takes a licking but keeps on ticking.” For thirty-five minutes the house is almost as loud as the band, trading insults and witty banter with Rotten and Co. For thirty-five minutes I am in heaven, bouncing up and down, jostling leather and mohawks and trowled-on makeup. And then it happens…an arm reaches up from the crowd and right into Sid’s crotch. And there it stays for the rest of the set. The bass playing does not improve from this obvious stimulation. And almost as soon as it begins, it ends with the band walking offstage to Johnny’s taunting, “how does it feel to be cheated?”; Sid with blond, crotch-stroker Nancy Spungen (yes, it was Nancy) in tow.

Quite honestly I feel elated, not cheated. Like Thai kick-boxing, it’s the audience that makes the show….

photo: Roberta Bayley   photo: Chester Simpson

Los Lobos Santa Cruz Blues

Los Lobos and friend

Originally uploaded by Monem

Soquel, California. Los Lobos take the stage, headlining the Santa Cruz Blues Festival. David Hidalgo brought this girl up from the front of the crowd. She gyrated and twirled so beautifully to I Walk Alone. The boys were on fire (as usual) playing a generous set that included Rita, I Got Loaded and How Much Can I Do? For an outdoor venue the sound was excellent. I dig the guitar tones these guys get from the armada of axes they keep on stage– Les Paul goldtops (both humbucker and P90 versions), Teles, Strats and Explorers. At one point Dave Alvin came in for a jam, with his fearsome white Strat. Satisfying.

North Mississippi Allstars Smoke San Francisco

Luther Dickinson, North Mississippi Allstars

Originally uploaded by Monem

Jim, if you have not seen these guys, do not delay. They burn 100% Delta fuel in their amplifiers and give as good as it gets. This was a set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, October 8, 2006. Chris, Ben, Ellen and I were twelfth row center– primo. Thank you Warren Hellman for a great music bash (every year!). Bonnie Simmons and company, too.

The Cold War: PMC 7067 XEX 709/10 Mfg. in UK ©1968

McLeod is a joker. Freckle-faced, a mess of red hair, he has no work habits but gets straight A’s. He whispers answers to me in English class, “…it’s Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn,” even though I never ask him. His father is the superintendent of our school, SAS, so he knows everybody including all the teachers. He hangs out with the watchman, a Sikh with hair down to his ass, and Yusoff the custodian, a Haji with many tales to tell. McLeod is fearless, talking to them in pigeon Punjabi or Malay; knows all the dirty words. I am his disciple since I am new to the island.

Last week in Change Alley a skinny Malay with long fingers steps in front of us and says we should go with him. McLeod pushes past him, dragging me along, and whispers “boonta” as we emerge onto Raffles Place.

“Homo,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Boonta. Boy homo is boonta; girl, woonta.”

“Oh.”

We stop at a cart and get a coke which the cartman dispenses by opening a bottle, pouring it into a clear plastic bag attached to a nylon string, then dropping in a chunk of ice for cooling. We hold our drinks by the string, sipping the fizz through plastic straws. McLeod looks up at the grey sky and begins talking.

“It’s the Cold War, man. Songs of the Cold War.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“That album. That Apple album.”

“I don’t get why they call it the Cold War.”

“Hot War– two armies, bang bang, winner, loser. Cold War– spies, missiles; they’re behind East Germany, we’re behind West Germany. Chess match, no bang bang.”

“That’s what the record’s about?”

“Yeah. The spy with the perfect American accent gets called back to Moscow from his post in Miami where he’s infiltrating the Cuban counterrevolution. But he might be a double agent ’cause when he’s home he says ‘honey disconnect the phone.’ That’s it– he’s a double agent.”

“What about the others?”

“Other what?”

“Songs.”

“Cold War. Obvious. ‘Blackbird fly into the light of the dark black night’– that’s telling someone behind the Iron Curtain to escape.”

“What is the Iron Curtain?.”

“Eastern Europe. The Soviets won’t let them watch movies or read a newspaper.”

“How come you know so much?”

“I know nothing and you know less.”

“Thanks.”

“No, you’re smart, but you’ve got to start looking around.”

“I’m trying. What about ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps.’ That isn’t about the Cold War.”

“Totally about the Cold War.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Obvious. ‘I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping, while my guitar gently weeps.’ A wise man looks at the people of the world, enemies, who are really brothers, and is so torn up he cannot even weep. Only music can express the sorrow.”

“Man, you’re so full of it! The record’s rock’n'roll, just songs, it’s not that fancy.”

“Yeah? Whoever heard of a rock song called ‘I’m Back in the U.S.S.R.?’”

Didn’t Get To Bed Last Night: PMC 7067 XEX 709 Mfg. in UK ©1968

Steve lived in Manila before Singapore, just like me, and we use all the A.S. slang like beek and assbite, which cracks us up just to say them. Steve has two pairs of Ampex headphones. He’s also got an Akai reel-to-reel, a Thorens turntable with a Stanton cartridge, Sansui receiver and Crown amp. His dad actually owns the stuff but lets Steve use it. The headphones are what make me want to come over every day. We put on a side, lay down on the sofas in the den of the big house on Bukit Tunggol, and listen. The air conditioner is loud, so we turn up the volume. It’s funny how loud you talk when you have headphones on. You have to get over the noise in your ears; you don’t realize you are shouting.

I carry my records to school sometimes, the ones I want to listen to with Steve. He has good records, too, Steppenwolf, Jeff Beck Group, the Byrds. I’m on a Jimi Hendrix kick. Purple Haze and Fire are on all the time in my head. One song, The Stars that Play with Laughing Sam’s Dice, is weird. Steve’s mom says it stands for LSD. She is the drug counselor at school, so I guess she knows. I bring PMC 7067 to school, because ever since last week when I got it I have not had a good chance to hear it. I always get interrupted by something, so I decided to just wait and listen to it with Steve. I put it in my locker, it just barely fits, and all day long I think of it there, nervous that it will be stolen, which is not rational, since its locked, but I’m nervous anyway. Class seems to take forever. Riding home with Steve and his mom in their ’66 Triumph Herald, we talk about things, softball tryouts, the Sadie Hawkins dance, but I am really thinking about listening to my record, on headphones. With Steve, because he understands music. At least he likes it, which is what we have most in common.

At the house we go into the front courtyard, a beautiful garden where vines of red and green bougainvillea explode over the walls. Ginger goes crazy as she does every time Steve comes home. She has that energy that boxers have, which I like. Steve wrestles her to the ground. The Ginger reunion runs its course and we go into the den. The maid serves us cokes and sandwiches and we change from our school uniforms into T shirts and jeans. I give the record to Steve.

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asks.

“PMC 7067– it’s Apple, man! That’s all I know about it. Some kind of experimental thing, or something.”

“OK, let’s hear it then.” Steve flips some switches and puts on the record. I sit back on a big pillow, adjust the phones and close my eyes. I hear the diamond in the groove, then the roar of a jet coming in for a landing. Man I know that sound! I’ve been on so many 707s and 727s in the past year I see airports in my dreams. It crosses my mind that PMC 7067 is an airplane number.

The jet fades in and out and a band starts in with an electric guitar twang and then a group beat that sounds like Gimme Some Lovin’. The singer comes in: “Flew in from Miami Beach V.O.S.P. didn’t get to bed last night. On the way the paper bag was on my knee man I had a dreadful flight.” So it’s a song about the jet set. V.O.S.P. is some kind of expensive booze. Steve’s parents have it in the liquor cupboard. We don’t because my parents aren’t drinkers. Then: “I’m back in the U.S.S.R. you don’t know how lucky you are boy back in the U.S.S.R.”

Back in the U.S.S.R.? I don’t get it, but it comes right at you, that’s for sure. I’m counting the instruments; it’s a full band. Rhythm guitar, lead guitar, piano, bass, drums, at least three singers. But the players could also be the singers, so it is minimum five guys.

We listen to the whole first side, which has eight songs. I cannot tell if it is one band or a sampler. There are a lot of different singers, maybe four or five. It sounds kind of, well, it is hard to describe. It sounds dangerous. The songs are about Russia, guns, the cast iron shore, people being bought and sold, people perverted, more guns. Things go out of tune and come back in, one of the lead guitar parts is all wobbly and trebly, and the rhythm is, in many places, really heavy. None of it sounds like anything you’d hear on the radio. It is strange and I like it.

“I want to get this record,” Steve says.

Un Chien Andalou: Bowie goes Station to Station at the Cow Palace

February 6, 1976, San Francisco. The Cow Palace looks big from the outside but in fact is modest by arena standards. Steve and I have a pair together, twelfth row on the floor. As we take our seats around 7:30 the place looks almost like a club– the stage about five feet high, drums, amps and mic stands set and ready to go, a roadie or two scurrying here and there. The span of the roof, with no central supports and definitely not as hangar-like as most arenas, feels low and intimate. The crowd is hard to describe. Lots of college kids like us; in fact many of our San Francisco State crowd are scattered through the hall. More than a few glam freaks, as every age of Bowie has its diehard devotees, in Ziggy and Aladdin Sane makeup, in silver lamé, in dog collars, in feather boas. All these past images are about to be wiped away by the Thin White Duke.

At precisely 8:00, the house lights dim and a large screen descends from above the stage. A film begins, Un Chien Andalou. It is black and white, silent. In the opening moments, a man and a woman are seen, she in a chair, he behind her feverishly smoking a cigarette and sharpening a razor on a stone. The moon is shown, clouds crossing its surface. The man holds the woman’s left eye open with one hand and with the other takes the razor and slices her eyeball in half. Shrieks, gasps, and “e-w-w-w-w!” from the audience. Steve says “What!” I look away, but only for a moment. Un Chien Andalou, a 1929 surrealist masterwork from Luis Buñuel and Salvadore Dali, is slicing up the middle-class American kids who came out to see a rock’n'roll cartoon. Sixteen minutes later, it’s over, but a howling feedback begins. The screen lifts and there is the band, Stacey Heyden on screeeeching guitar, leaning into his Marshall stack, Carlos Alomar on rhythm guitar, hands frozen for the moment, Dennis Davis on drums, Tony Kaye on keyboards, and George Murray, bass. We are all still stunned from the Buñuel, but now the riff starts: the chugging, churning metal metronome that is Station to Station. Joints are lit, the blue smoke rising in the white stage lights as the scronking feedback reaches new levels. A murmur in the crowd, and we see him, in the aisle about twenty feet from us: Bowie. White shirt, black vest, short reddish-blond hair slicked back. He strides casually to the stage, a spotlight finds him, and he climbs a railed stairway, stage right. He acts as if he is alone on a street in Paris. He pauses in his brief ascent, pulls a pack of cigarettes from his vest pocket, places one in his mouth and lights a match. With his head bent to the flame his eyes dart toward the auditorium and now he “notices” us, smiles. We go crazy. He hasn’t sung a note but we’re in the palm of his hand.

Bowie knows how to pick musicians. This rhythm section is heavy. I am carried away by their great playing. David too! He not only sings with great power and verve but he swings some pretty cool alto sax in a couple of numbers. But let us understand: this is dark stuff. Bowie is an apparition in Savile Row black and white. His band is black and white. The songs are black and white, from the funk of Fame to the Sinatra-meets-Elvis-meets-Godzilla of TVC 15. It is all loud and it is all heavy, and when I get back to my room at midnight I still feel the dread.