Doing bad things to a Stratocaster version 1

[John Watt]

Pete Townsend and the Who did not make a good impression on anyone in the business in Toronto,
when they played Maple Leaf Gardens, and they heard about it.
First of all, coming up from the States, they refused extra security at the door.
In the States, after Woodstock, "festival seating", a legacy of Woodstock,
not putting out chairs for the audience, just opening the doors and letting people rush in,
of course wanting to be up front of the stage, people were getting killed at every show.
Eight people were killed, I think in Detroit, before they came into Canada.

But what really bummed a lot of players out was Pete Townsend buying every old Les Paul he could,
cleaning out the city, and smashing eighteen of them onstage if they weren't in tune already, what he said.
And then he brought his Les Paul out for the show.
What else can you expect from a pedophile heroin addict who knew he couldn't play lead,
not like Eric, not like Jimmy, not like Jeff, and now he's putting down Jimi, calling him gay.

Fleetwood Mac was a progressive two guitar band with Peter Green,
but "Deep Purple in Rock" was the album that set a lot of templates for arena rock.
The Doucette Brothers from Quebec, using Telecasters with stacks of two Fender twins, were better.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

John, like your comments on Pete - he is a strange character but can't accept your comments on Peter Green- never heard of the Doucette Brothers - must be a Canadian thing and Deep Purple they were in a different scene but also would say not as good as Green at his peak.

 

[John Watt]

EddieRUKiddingVare! I can't call it backtracking if I recomment, or type I'm just coming from a retro, classic rock place.
But the genres and different classes of rock didn't exist back then, so I can't sound new millennium talking about Peter Green.
The fact teddy is quoting a young B.B.King illustrates this, what was blues or blues rock.
Peter Green should have been in Bad Company or T.Rex, exciting blues vocals and songs with hit singles,
that didn't have hot lead guitar.
Look who Mick Fleetwood hooked up with in L.A. to get into pop hits.

Now, looking back, I can see why I liked the Doucette Brothers so much,
seeing them playing at the fair and a couple of outside festivals in the peninsula.
They were loud and had lots of duel harmonies, and jammed it out onstage.
The fact they played through the same guitars and amps blended it all together, really nice.
If they used an acoustic onstage you could say they were a decade ahead of the Allman Brothers.

Please don't downplay Deep Purple. Ritchie might have lost it a long time ago,
but if you listen to "Deep Purple in Rock", out before 1970, it will blow your mind.
"Speed King", "Sweet Child in Time", intense and entertaining music,
taking the British Invasion of their first album and turning it into hard rock.
They also used different bassists and guitarists, setting a new standard for funk rock,
before they just got back together to be a world class touring classic rock act.
Their last album hit the top of the charts in Canada.

Why Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac is just blues rock, in my mind,
is because I liked King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
A lot of people tried to make Roy Buchanan into America's version of Peter Green,
after Jeff Beck heard him and got him a record deal, but he didn't have the soul.
I'm going to look up Peter Green on Youtube. It's been over, uh, forty-four years.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

Cool see how you go with Greeny- He is still performing did the Byron Bay Blues festival here in Oz last year, although its not the same Peter way too much LSD and mental health issues over the years but his is still performing.

Agreed songs like Speed King are very good and I have a fair DP vinyl collection myself. I was more a KC person not into ELP much too pompous!

Have hear Roy Buchanan good player, we have had a few here in Oz and NZ over the years too but it takes something very special or luck to make it.

 

[John Watt]

Who would you say is the hottest electric guitarist to come out of Australia?
I think of INXS as being the biggest stage strutters with guitars,
but not lead guitar heroes.
Do you include jazzers?

And even though I've never owned or did any,
ACDC is the most played Aussie rock band with the biggest concerts, around here.

If you take an electric drill and spin it in front of your pickups,
you'll get the classic, onstage motorcycle sound.
That's another bad thing to do to a Strat, eventually killing the pickups.
Not as bad as vacuuming around a Strat sitting on a stand.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

Now the vacuum just sounds weird but the drill interesting might even try that one

Aussie guitar heroes there has been quite a few but not widely now outside Oz Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs would be the biggest outside AC/DC others would include Ian Moss (Cold Chisel), Pete Wells Rose Tattoo, Lobby Lloyd, Wolfmother (band), Tommy Emmanuel, Kevin Borich, Ed Kuepper.

ref http://www.australianguitarmag.com.au/2012/05/top-50-australian-guitarists-of-all-time/

1. Angus Young (ACDC)
2. Tommy Emmanuel
3. Ian Moss (Cold Chisel)
4. Chris Cheney (The Living End)
5. Rick Brewster (The Angels)
6. Slava Grigoryan (Slava Grigoryan)
7. Deniz Tek (Radio Birdman, The Visitors)
8. Jim Moginie (Midnight Oil)
9. Lobby Loyde (Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs)
10. Ross Hannaford (Daddy Cool)

 

[teddy]

I wonder why it is that we do not hear more of this sort of music from Australia. Mention Australian music and most people think of the didgeridoo. Do they not promote themselves over here?

teddy

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

I think there is Aussie music out there in the world scene, maybe sometimes its not obvious as coming from Oz. Also it terms of music developed in the Oz rock scene the biggest hurdle has always been distance from the rest of the world- most acts how what to make it in UK or US have to relocate and start again. Traditionally this is what has happened.

Current Oz acts on the world rock scene would include Nick Cave and AC/DC . Acts from days gone bye include Little River Band, Jet, Bee Gees, Olivia Newton John, Easybeats, Spilt Enz (NZ), Air Supply (Yuk), IceHouse, The Seekers, Divinyls, Midnight Oil, The Vines, Wolfmother, the Butterfly Effect etc.

 

[John Watt]

A friend of mine was talking about Silverchair, saying the singer has been ill for a while.

Yeah, Little River Band! I still find myself "Reminicing" from time to time.
It's been so long I had too look it up in the dictionary.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

A friend of mine was talking about Silverchair, saying the singer has been ill for a while.

Yeah, Little River Band! I still find myself "Reminicing" from time to time.
It's been so long I had too look it up in the dictionary.

Your right daniel Johns from Silverchair was sick for a couple of years think it was chronic fatigue but I understand he has got over that for awhile now.

 

[John Watt]

This is my newest, and best, Silverchair.
Even the video has some interesting new lightings and shots.
The average non-entertainer might not understand "exhaustion" as a reason to cancel huge gigs.
The average entertainer has a hard time getting up to that point,
unless you're really good-looking.
It's easy for exhaustion to set in then.
This reminds me that I used to be too cute,
but my line always was,
it's too easy.
I'm waiting to get older so I lose the easy ride and have to use my talents and skills.
Now that I've reached that age, I should have acted differently when I had the opportunities.
That means I should have gone for more canoe rides. I never did see a moose.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

Yep, thats is a very good Silverchair song. Silverchair got very big very quick.

So you were / are a pretty boy hey a bit like Eric Burdon maybe............ Except you play guitar!

As long as you had fun along the way

 

[John Watt]

EddieRUKiddingVare! So you know! Aaaah, "fun along the way". Every day!
It was nice for me, being on the road and living in different cities.
It got me away from the criminal scene of Welland, that was the big thing.
And I was a non-smoker, non-drinker vegetarian, trying to eat for free all the time.
So it was all fun, except onstage. That's where it all comes out and I get it going.
Eric Burdon looked like a roughneck compared to me, and was a more gruff and macho singer than me.
I'm saying macho in reference to his low-rider phase.
Tall and skinny like Jimi, a little of Ian Gillan's "Sweet Child in Time" angelic face,
lots of Bruce Cockburn lookalike comments, now that I'm letting the white hair show,
dancing and moving around onstage like r'n'b artists, with custom dance shoes and clothes,
and if you see a portrait of Dr. James Watt you'll see the family resemblance.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

Ah Ian Gillan hey, I'm reading a recent Eric's book at the moment- so that's why I made the comment I guess- strange man totally obsessed with Jimi!

Dr James Watt of the steam kind- got the picture, would if he ever kissed the sky................

 

[John Watt]

I was a big Animals fan, still singing "I'm just a soul who's out searching for good, oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood".
Was bored with "House of the Rising Sun" right away, even if I was playing it every day, back then.

This leaves only one addition this thread is crying out for,
your description of yourself.

 

[EddieRUKiddingVare]

Oh, good god. why would any one want to know that...... Yea Animals fan here too but I also could never get into rising sun, seems to much like a dirge to me but many people liked and like it I guess. Eric is great at interpreting other people's songs and "please don't let me be misunderstood" is a great one.

mmmmm me what can I say let see - I smoke cigars, drink whiskey, not a vegetarian.
Been a civil engineer all my working life really (30years), so music has always just been a hobby, always have guitars around me starting playing at about 12 - chose guitar to avoid having to learn the piano lol, glad I made that choice.

Me, I look more like Eric Burdon than Ian Gillan (about 5'8") and have Welsh/ Cornish heritage - seventh gen Aussie and love the blues.
Look a little like chandler from Friends - so I'm told.

That should be enough to worry anyone

 

[teddy]

Another Animals fan here. House of the Rising Sun was a groundbreaker at the time being four minutes forty five secounds long. The longest single up to that time. Then Dylan came along with Rolling Stone...........

teddy

 

[John Watt]

A "civil engineer", with your uncivilized approach to Strats, and other guitars?
I hope you weren't experimenting while you supervised highway and bridge construction.

I was playing piano whenever I could sit at one since I could push my fingers,
my mother's parents having a nice one just down the street.
A pianist friend in grade seven suggested I learn Cm and try to play within that key,
where I'm still at on piano. That's always fun for me, getting a chance to play keys.
Not that electric guitar has become a chore, redefining my self-made one keeps me going.

For all the malcontent talk about the original white Australians,
often just portrayed as a penal colony,
seeing you type seven generations has a more historic ring
than the former capitol of Canada, Niagara-on-the-Lake,
now moved, but famous for locals being five generations.

I've never seen an episode of Friends, and no,
I'm one of the few North Americans who never plumbed the depths of Jennifer Aniston's lonely womb.
Oh, okay, another tabloid here has her pregnant for the last three years.

What teddy is saying about "The House of the Rising Sun" is news to me.
It does have a dirge quality, and it's a beginner song for a lot of acoustic and electric guitarists,
so I'm used to hearing it jammed out all over, back then.
Even Jimi did "Hey Joe", another song like that, with lovers and guns and illegal lifestyles,
what it took to sound controversial back then, and hot and bluesy.

I'm a high school dropout, after seeing Jimi in Toronto, and that meant society in general.
I bought an FM radio the day a Buffalo station started playing album cuts from rock bands,
and carried that around with me to jobs and during travel.
I think of "McArthur Park" as setting a new standard for a lengthy top of the pops hit,
not that I ever melted in the rain.
I sat underneath solidly engineered overpasses to avoid it during long distance bike-hikes.
I even know how to rock it under there, coming away with an eight inch long, inch and a quarter diameter, cement bolt and nut.
from the Queenston Lewiston Bridge.
Fortunately, no rolling stones were involved, or I would have been down the gorge, adding one more watt to the flow.

 

[teddy]

Leadbelly

http://youtu.be/y5tOpyipNJs

This is certainly an old song performed by many in differing styles but always basically blues

teddy

 

[teddy]

And the definetive version by The Animals. For some reason this is labeled as the Doors?????????????

http://youtu.be/CJ1oZVGmTr0

teddy