The Glory Of Fender’s Jaguar/Jazzmaster

I’m not a guitarist, as such – I’m a bass player… But I’ve harboured a love of the Fender Jaguar for many years now. Thanks to Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine it, and its cousin the Jazzmaster, seemed to be the signature guitars of the shoegaze scene, which – back in the early nineties – first inspired me to want to be in a band.

They appeared in the hands of Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr), Pete Kember and Jason Pierce (Spacemen 3) and Adam Franklin (Swervdriver) too – not to mention Sir John of Squire, who touted one in the video to The Stone Roses’ One Love and some other places.  Compared to the shred-machines that had suffused MTV and TotP for the previous five years, or the dadmobile Stratocasters that were – at the time – wildly unfashionable due associations with ‘dinosaurs’ like Hank Marvin and Eric Clapton (I’ve learned a little more respect since then) these seemed like the coolest, chunkiest, most evil-sounding six-string machines on God’s green earth. Hey, guess what, I still think that’s true, actually.

There are several key reasons why these Jags and Jazzmasters sounded so cool to me; here they are:

The whammy (or rather the Floating Tremolo, twinned to a floating bridge) system that features heavily on both of these guitars – or should I say the sound they can make – that began this whole love affair. Release in 1962, the Jaguar arrived some four years after the Jazzmaster, in the hope – some say – of capitalising on the success that it’s elder relative had found with key players on the Surf Rock scene (some other facts, which I’ll come to in a while, don’t bear this theory out, mind).

It offered a shorter neck scale (24” compared to 25 1/2”), modified (more aggressive) tone circuits and pickups (closer to the sound of a strat), but the same innovative Leo Fender designed bridge system. This bridge operates in tandem with the tremolo very differently to the systems previously seen on the Stratocaster: essentially it moves backwards and forwards when the guitar when the whammy bar is moved, preserving intonation, and the strings themselves, by preventing them having rub travel over it. Not only was this perfect for those big surf bends, it meant that when the system was coupled with the guitar’s longer than usual whammy bar, it was possible to strum entire chords with the whammy bar in hand – causing the whole chord to bend expressively. It was the effect that made My Bloody Valentine, and God knows how many other copyists.

The strings that should be fitted to this guitar are not your standard fayre: they should be heavy flatwound, 11s or more. This will not only help the floating tremolo and the sometimes problematic bridge saddles do their thing properly, they help the pickups and the souped-up circuitry provide a chunky heavier sound to the guitar. It’s what the guitar was made to take – so if you want play spider silk thin weedy little numbers, go elsewhere.

I love switches, dials, knobs and rollers – and they’re all here. If I could add randomly flashing lights, I probably would (I know this would deserve a pistol whipping, btw)… The Jag has a goodly number of options on the control front – none of which leave you doubting what they actually do. The switch on the top bout is the rhythm circuit – which sat alongside two tone controls allowing the sound to be somewhat pre-set; whilst the lower bout held three switches – two pickup on/offs and a third switch (away from the neck) which was essentially a high-pass filter. This switch has become known as the ‘Thin’ or ‘Strangle’ switch.

Check out this interactive Jaguar, for full details on all the controls…

The guitar’s propensity to feedback was initially seen as a downside… How wrong they were. In the hands of someone like Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, feedback becomes an art form all of its own.

The Jaguar is a guitar you need to understand, love and care for. Like a classic car, you have to understand the foibles of the Jazzmaster and Jaguar to have any real fun with them. Like the best sports cars, they are over-engineered too. There is no need for them to do the things they do – but life is better with such pieces of insane invention in it. Once you realise that you need to care for the trem, set it up properly, use the right strings and understand why they’re here, you can abuse the Jazzmaster and Jaguar like no other guitars I’ve ever come across. It’s unholy. I once saw the aforementioned Mr. Moore ride a Jazzmaster like a skateboard, before plonking it face down on the deck propped up by the whammy arm and manipulating the feedback coming from it like the whole guitar was a wah-wah pedal. After about, oooh, five minutes of this, he simply picked it up and began playing it again (it was The Diamond Sea, by the way – ‘Youth fans). There is nothing like that trem system, people.

Here are the masters of those screwed up bends, My Bloody Valentine – back together and still sounding ice cool.

and here’s Thurston more kicking five shades out of his Jazzmaster, and – as it happens – The Diamond Sea too (this is just the second part, by the way, the entire track was something like 12 minutes)…

It’s a small, mad, sad world…

I was a child of the NME; from the moment I first glimpsed the faded, dog-eared pages that adorned the battered walls of the form room I entered at my first day a high school, first talked to the Smiths/Fall loving teacher – who would later hand me my a copy of The Stone Roses LP and change my life forever – I wanted to know who these strange alien people were. The Sundays, The Cocteau Twins, The Swans, Microdisney, Morrisey (yeah, well, I got over that quick enough), Paul Haig, are just some of the ones I can vividly remember, and who I have bought with me…

Fast forward three years, and my own bedroom became a facsimilie of that form room: the ‘Roses self-splattered splendour, Tim Burgess walking on water, Courtney Love in silk, Kurt Cobain in shades, Mudhoney, The Chillis in fish-eye. I can see each pic vividly – I have never had the heart to throw them away, as it happens.

Behind every one of those covers, lurking somewhere within the pages – shouting at the wind, pissing on your table, berating letter-writing self-obsessed knobheads and popping bubbles of pomposity where e’re he did go – was Stephen Wells.

Yesterday could be characterised as being about loss, I s’pose… If you want to do that collective mourning thing, fine -just leave me out. I see it as being more about appreciation. I didn’t know Michael Jackson, I didn’t know Stephen Wells (but I care more about him); he’d have probably hated me… But he went a long way to shaping my views on many things – not least the dour  hoardes of overly earnest ‘but he’s speaking about my sad life’ wanker Smiths fans dreaming of loss and oblivion with one hand poking from their baggy cardigans straight into daddy’s wallet.

He moved on, and so did I… The covers faded, and I started reading Select, probably. I didn’t follow his work, and he didn’t give a single good fuck that I didn’t. It seems he just kept on being the same obsurdly literate obscenity machine that he always was. That is, until yesterday… When he died after suffering with Hodgkins Lymphoma, aged just 49.

The strange thing is, the last words he ever clattered into a laptop, from a Philadelphia hospital – on June 14th – were as follows:

“And of course all this bollocks is written by an idiot who has polished his image as an existentialist, atheist hard-man and anti-mope, forever sneering at the tribes who wallow in self-pity — the gothers, the emo kids, the Smiths fans — the whole 900-block-wide marching band composed entirely of the white male urban middle classes who are convinced that (as the most affluent and pampered human beings who have ever walked the planet) theirs is a story worth hearing. Blissfully unaware that they are but a few generations away from regular visits to the doctor who would wind parasitic worms from their beer bloated assholes using sticks. (Check out the AMA logos, those smiling beasts are not snakes.)

You could blame this fallacy on poor education, cultural deterioration, or simple moral decline.

Me? I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie.”

I’m sorry, but how weird is that?

Additional: Swells on form… From his series Stephen Wells’ America, which you can find here.

You’re Not Fooling Me… The Nolans

In the time I’ve worked in the musical instruments industry, one of the things that has constantly amused/confused me is a tendency amongst some manufacturers and distributors to put their beautiful – and not so beautiful – machines in the hands of models/celebs who’ve blatantly never played a note in their lives.

Guitar ad campaigns are often the worst offenders – where some model is asked to drape herself across a company’s latest dream machine, or make like she’s rocking out at Wembley. Invariably the results are hilarious and, frankly, somewhat offensive to the musicians at whom the pitch is – presumably – being made. Y’know what we really appreciate? Talent… And frankly my dear, I’d rather look at Lemmy than that heroically awful attempt at a G chord you’re making a complete Horlicks of right there.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was looking at some old copies of Music Mart, and then stumbled across some pics of the newly-reformed Nolans clutching six-strings. This is a pic that runs the full gamut of classic insults to the musically-minded: no strap – check, strumming with the thumb – check, a ‘wtf’ chord shape – check… Seriously, those Gibsons you are holding may as well be inflatable.

Result: You’re not fooling me…

Midweek Madness: Roky Erickson

It’s Wednesday, must be time for a garage-psyche freakout, whaddaya reckon?

Roky Erickson got busted in Austin, Texas in 1969 – he had one joint on him. One joint. The trouble was, the police soon worked out who he was; he was the wild haired singer from a rock band that espoused the dubious, eye-widening pleasures of Peyote, LSD and – frankly – any other crap they could get the guitar string-blistered hands on, probably. To say they had ‘form’, would be understating things slightly. 

The 13th Floor Elevators rocked, but strictly to the rhythm of their own see-saw – certainly after Roky was bought into the band (which already featured a jug-playing songwriter in its line-up) for his soaring, screeching vocals and the simple power of his songs. He’d alway been musically prodigious – playing the piano at 5, guitar too by his teens and writing a hit before he hit 20. You’re Gonna Miss Me was originally recorded when Roky was 18 – but would eventually reach the lower echelons of the US chart in 1966 when he was 19; what’s more, the band would quickly follow the success of that, and its debut set – The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators – with an even better LP, Easter Everywhere… And, well, that had Slip Inside This House on it.

Like many people of my age, I would suspect, that song was my first experience of Erikson’s work. However, the beaty, meaty cut delivered by an E’d-out, early nineties Primal Scream on the tribute LP Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye: A Tribute To Roky Erikson and later on their own Screamadelica, had little in common with the brittle bones of his original. Mind you, his version has certainly proved significantly more resilient to the rigours of time and fashion than the combined efforts of the Scream Team and Andy Weatherall.

Anyways, back to that single, solitary, joint. Y’see, it meant big trouble for Roky. One reefer literally changed his life; the already fragile singer – with a history of treatment for schizofrenic episodes – ended up copping for a spell in a psychiatric hospital in order to avoid a potential 10 years in the big house. That decision lead to shock treatments and heavy medication; Roky was never the same again.

He’s only just now coming back… Yeah, there were sporadic curiosities that slunk out on various labels during the 70s and 80s, but Roky clearly wasn’t well – his nadir coming, perhaps, with his 1982 claim for legal recongnition that he was, in fact, an alien… Hey, I said ‘perhaps’; maybe he is, who knows? Now though, with the help of his brother, he’s steadily been putting his life back on track since the turn of the millennium. Playing the odd gig to rapturous fans, releasing the odd obscure album with help from musicianly patrons who appreciate his unique influence, trying to get the royalties he’s owed from the leeches that spent years sucking the blood from an ill man with talent – y’know, the usual shit we reserve for some of our finest elder musicians.

But don’t worry, the world’s coming around to Roky, as it should.

Here’s Slip Inside This House; enjoy people. And if you’re wondering what that bubbling sound is, it’s the jug player. No, really.

Here’s the trailer to You’re Gonna Miss Me, one of the most moving documentaries you’ll ever see. One that charts Erikson’s problems, and the attempts he and his friends have made to pull his life back together.

Here’s Spacemen 3 playing Rollercoaster, another Roky song – co-written with Tommy Hall…

You can see Roky for your yourself in the UK this year

- specifically at the Green Man Festival.

Revooku

… Because I like to think I’m more 5-7-5 than 24/7…

The Stone Roses, by The Stone Roses (*****)

Sugar spun guitars

Arc lines of joy, and pain too

Cold, cool codas come

Sell! Sell! Sell!

The symbiotic (or parasitic, depending on how you would like to characterise it) relationship between all forms of art and advertising has been endlessly commented on. However you feel on the matter – whether you adopt the views of Bill Hicks (you want me to sell what!?!), or you’re more late-period Dylanesque (how much?) – every now and then tunesmithery and capitalism collide in quite lovely ways – mushroom cloud pretty…

As if to prove it, there’s the recent VISA advert featuring the horn-bustin’, string slidin’, summer soundtrackin’ finery of Don Thomas’ Come On Train. Having been somewhat lost during the mid-seventies, as a relatively obscure release on Vee-Jay records off-shoot NUVJ, it served later as my personal introduction to the rather amorphous idea of Northern Soul. Presumably, in 1973,  it would have hit as the scene was starting to move into the public consciousness in a bigger way, but I personally discovered it  on one of the seemingly infinite number of Northern Soul compilation  CDs have been constantly emerging since the early nineties, you can now find the original (not the VISA-ad remix, which was put together by Ian Parton of The Go Team!) on one called Cooler Shakers!, if you can track it down.

I’m lead to believe, mind you, that the fact that it was contemporaneous to its life in the clubs means Come On Train isn’t truly Northern Soul;  rather,  it’s sub-tagged as a modern soul track, the kind of music that was picked up by the more progressive DJs on the scene, at least when compared with others who were only interested in mid-60s obscurites that they could boast about digging out of vaults or archives. Apparently this sort of track selection was far more prevalent at venues such as the Blackpool Mecca, than it was at others. Yeah, I know, I wasn’t even born then either… That doesn’t mean my inner-pedant can’t love that kind of superfluous detailing – and yours should too.

As for Don Thomas himself, well, I’m working on that…

Here’s the VISA ad, featuring dancer/skateboarder Bill Shannon, doing what he undoubtedly does best. No heelies here, people…

Here’s the original track, in all it’s glory…

If you were wondering where you’d seen Bill before, here’s the music vid they lifted the concept from – same director, same star…

And here’s how I know that…

“Because everyone loves a double handclap, don’t they?”

If you have an all-out – or, like me, a sneaky – love for disco (or at least the less cheesy aspects of it), then you should check out this LP. It’s been put together by the guys at Horse Meat Disco, one of whom – Jim Stanton – was the best man at my wedding. Wierdly though, I ended up doing the DJing… Still, that’s life.

If you already know about the HMD, you will know how good this mix will be. To call it disco is not really doing it justice, I fear – it may be better, certainly more protentious, to call it tuned in with the real spirit of disco, before that got snorted and wiped across the gums by the untold hordes of coke-fiend record company trolls and marketeers. Whatever, these guys certainly know their stuff; so whether you share their encyclopedic knowledge of butt-wiggling grooves or not, this will serve you well as an effervescent little LP for shiny afternoons in the sun.

Check it out here people…

Save Our Sounds

Just come across a very interesting post on the BBC Radio Labs Blog pages.

The BBC World Service is looking to preserve endagered sounds for posterity – they believe that sounds deserve the same kind of attention as the photographic records of bygone days get.

What a brilliant idea… So, if you’ve got a mic and the inclination, why not contribute?

There’s also a natty little bit of integration with iPhone technology – and I know loads of you love that shit, so knock yourselves out.

You can read the details here.

Get recording people…

Sheer Chart Attack: June 1977

This is an article I wrote as part of a series for the now-defunct, and sadly missed (by me, anyway) Film & TV Memorabilia magazine, it was printed by them a year ago this month…  It concerns itself with the Top Ten from this week in 1977, so it seems kinda apt. Here it is…

1. Rod Stewart: I Don’t Want To Talk About It/First Cut Is The Deepest
2. Sex Pistols: God Save The Queen
3. Kenny Rogers: Lucille
4. Barbra Streisand: A Star Is Born (Evergreen)
5. Joe Tex: Ain’t Gonna Bump No More
6. Jacksons: Show You The Way To Go
7. Carole Bayer Sager: You’re Moving Out Today
8. Van McCoy: The Shuffle
9. 10CC: Good Morning Judge
10. The Muppets: Halfway Down The Stairs

Number One

Having decamped to the US two years earlier – partly in pursuit of Britt Ekland (understandable) and partly because of a row over tax (also understandable) – Rod Stewart, sat on top of the charts in mid-June. The double-A side was pulled together from tracks previously heard on his successful (and predictably titled) Atlantic Crossing LP of 1975, which had also contained the uber-hit Sailing, and its follow-up A Night On The Town (1976). As well as appearing on different LPs, and being performed by different musicians, neither of these two songs was written by Stewart himself. In fact they were the work of Danny Whitten and Cat Stevens respectively.

Whitten’s tale is now part of rock folklore, he having been a member of the squally rock trio Crazy Horse (best known for their role as foils to Neil Young) until his death from a drugs overdose in 1972. By that time he’d been central to the creation of the awesome Cinnamon Girl and Down By The River from Young’s Everybody Knows This is Nowhere set of 1969 and was, to a lesser extent, also involved in 1970’s After The Goldrush – an LP that many would cite as Young’s finest recorded work.

I Don’t Want To Talk About It comes from Crazy Horse’s eponymous 1971 LP (by which time the band was a five-piece); and with this in mind it is a shame that such a strong songwriting talent is now best known as being the tragic inspirational force behind Neil Young’s bleak 1973 Tonight’s The Night LP (and the fan-baiting unfriendliness of the accompanying tour) or as the subject matter of one of the Canadian songwriter’s darkest, and yet most exquisite, compositions: The Needle And The Damage Done.

Ironically, I guess, Rod Stewart had already lifted Tonight’s The Night – suffixed with ‘(It’s Gonna Be Alright)’ – as a song title for the biggest hit from the decidedly radio-friendly A Night On The Town. It’s certainly true to say that the tone of that rather lascivious seduction song – which featured whispers from Ekland (then his beau), and somewhat foreshadowed the pop/rock success of Rod later in the decade – could not have been further from the tone of Young’s work.

Number Two

Many people will tell you though, that Rod was not actually number one – or at least shouldn’t have been – in this week’s chart. Oh, no. The real story of this June 1977 sat brooding at number two. The Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen – a record that, amongst its many charms, came packaged in one of the most controversial pieces of cover art ever to envelop a piece of 7” vinyl – had finally seen the light of day just the week before the Queen’s Silver Jubilee celebrations were to reach a crescendo. Virgin, who released it, were the third record label to hold the ‘Pistols on their roster in 1977; EMI having lost their bottle in January, after a story had broken about Steve Jones vomiting on pensioners at Heathrow airport, and A&M having dropped them in March when they – almost immediately after famously putting pen to paper at the gates of Buckingham Palace – unceremoniously trashed the label’s offices during a party. Another, much-publicised, fracas between the band’s infamous ‘Bromley Contingent’ and ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris just six days later simply served as the final nail in that deal’s coffin.

Four days before this chart was published, and coinciding with height of the Jubilee celebrations, the band – having rather cruelly sidelined their musical driving force, Glen Matlock, in favour of punk poster-boy Sid Vicious – was in trouble again. This time it was as they attempted to promote the single (then sitting just outside the Top Ten) with a gig on a Thames barge. The barge was raided by Police after scuffles broke out and many of the band and their friends arrested. Of course, headlines were created too; the effectiveness of which can be seen in their single’s leap to number two. This brings us around to the question of whether it really was kept from the top spot.

Yes, the controversial lyrical content of had got it banned from the BBC and Independent Radio – but did it also lead chart compilers to conspire in cooking the sales figures? It is widely held, though never proven, that that figures were massaged to favour collecting returns from the (many) stores that had decided not to sell the single at all. However, others will tell you that this story in itself is simply more Malcolm McLaren-inspired hue and cry. Hey, you decide… I don’t think we’ll ever know.

The Rest

The necessity of The Sex Pistols, and other bands of their ilk, can be seen in the remainder of the chart in this week. In comparison, it’s a pretty middle-of-the-road selection; the relative banality of which is held in sharpest relief by the smooth disco orchestrations of Van McCoy – another artist who would die tragically young (at just 39, two years later), being best known for his whistle-along classic The Hustle. Around him are gathered names such as Carol Bayer Sager who, following the lead of fellow songwriter Carol King, had decided to step forward and sing herself. Sager began her songwriting career with a co-credit on Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders’ hit A Groovy Kind Of Love in 1965, and would go on to win an Oscar in 1981 for Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do). Talking of which, at four is Barbara Streisand, with a song that would win her a bald bloke too; as composer of Evergreen from the film A Star Is Born, in which she also starred.

The genius of The Muppets being a subject for another day, the final note I want to make is on 10CC. Having lost half of their volume the previous year – with the departure of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme – remaining members Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman were hitting back with a new LP, Deceptive Bends (an album graced by a gloriously surreal Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis front cover) and providing proof that they could pen hits on their own. I’m drawn to concluding with them not only for the chance to comment on the fact that the two (or should that be five?) remaining CCs had previously been members of the aforementioned Mindbenders, for they had, but also for the far more frivolous (and funnier) point that they were (at least apocryphally) another band from the proud lineage of name selection that included The Lovin’ Spoonful, Pearl Jam and (to some extent) The Sex Pistols too. So maybe they’re not so different, eh?

Take your pick people…

The Glory Of The Fairlight CMI

I’m currently researching a feature on the Fairlight CMI, which first made its way to UK shores from Australia 30 years ago this year – Peter Gabriel was instrumental in the setting up of the company Syco in order to import them, and thus got one of the first ones. But I digress…
This clip I stumbled across features the glorious partnership of Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, putting the machine through its paces. Of course, the CMI would go on to become so central to the sound of sooo many 80s tunes that it became its own cliche – but in the hands of a master, well, it kinda makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, don’t it?

Enjoy people.