It's late, and I'm really tired. A dear friend has suggested I start blogging about being behind music and what that's like. I think it's a good idea just to get some stuck energy moving. I'll be using this space simply to practice writing so much of it will be crap and some will be jewels.
My first bit of writing is inspired by the film Ghostworld. Today I feel that film. I just started a job at a large corporation that specializes in selling musical eqipment, mainly guitars. My feelings are very mixed. I appreciate having a job in these times, and have no complaints. I have a lot of experience in the field of music retail. Working for a large company is a new venture for me. I realize I have a lot to learn, mainly about marketing and selling and this is a great opportunity for me. The base pay is minimum wage but there is commission. Should I want a paycheck, I have to hustle it. So what am I afraid of? Am I afraid of anything? Or do I really find some things about this gig hard to deal with? The equipment is way more complicated and cheap than it was when I first got into retail, talkin' guitars, amps, recording devices and our cash register or phone message system!
I've been playing guitar for almost 30 years now. I've been repairing musical equipment , mainly tube amplifiers for 20. When I first started down the road of creating music, my father took me to my first real music store, a shop in Catonsville Md that is still there. Having grown up in a city that feels more like a suburb, the concept of used guitars was new to me at the age of 14. New and really exciting. I used to lose sleep over the excitement of my pop taking me to that store. My dad bought me a black hardtail '77 Stratocaster (an awful guitar! but it was mine!!!) which suited me cause it was the first used strat I had seen. I could not imagine anyone parting with a "Jimi" guitar. I had to have it. the price was $389 and my dad bought it with the condition that I had to learn how to play it or pay him back. I went straight to work on that guitar, playing up to 12 hours a day. My dad, who played a little, allways picked up this ancient Epiphone Batwing that cost only $129 and marveled at how comfortable an instrument it was and how it was allways there and how cheap for such a good guiatr. In those days it was hard to sell some used guitars, they weren't exactly vintage, just used. And if they didn't have celebrity attached to them, the collected dust.
A few months later i walked across from the music shop the street to this pawnshop and found a lake placid blue '66 strat. I remember it being beat to hell and soooo beautiful. it sang unlike mine which just didn't sound great or play as well. I knew right then that there was something about that old world craftsmanship that was so special, something that we were trading in for speed and "value". Oh, the price of that guitar was $550. The whole instrument vibrated as I played "Hey joe", and you could feel the 14 years of it being played in bars night after night. You could smell the smoke and gin and that patina is something you just can't fake.
Over the years I've seen some great music come and go, and have been blessed to have been able to be a part of much of that music. I've never been one to look back, and feel like "remember when" is the worst form of conversation there is, but lately I've been feeling sad. Not so much longing for some idealized past, but because I'm just not excited or inspired by what we are creating today. When I first got into guitar, Hendrix was my hero, along with PIL, the Edge, Charlie Christian, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday and Django Reinhart. What was uber special to me wasn't their ability or even their music. It was their outsider status. They were these living gods not to be looked up to, but to communicate with as equals. They were freaks, outcast, and subconciously they communicated those feelings to my awkward teenage self. I felt a part of this secret society when I locked myself in my room and played my guitar. I had found a way to express what is deep inside that at times had perhaps too much power. The thing that got me the most about them was how cool they were, how relaxed they seemed and at the same time how energized they were. Yeah, I was experimenting with drugs at that point, but even at the age of 14 I knew that wasn't it. By 1982 the vibration was just different. It was tense and greedy. We had moved out of the age of blind possibility into the age of entitlement. Part of my problem has been I'm still mentally in the age of possiblity and have no real tools to navigate the information age, or, minutea age. Guitar has been really square now for many years. When someone talks up my abilities I cringe. To alot of folks now being a good guitar player means sounding a certain way and playing a certain way. I've met many with 10 styles under their belt, who can really burn those styles, but yet, have no style. And I've met far too many who focus on the brand of capacitor that is in their amp and never find time to create anything or practice. School, internet, television, the most incredible weapons of mass distraction!!!!!
Fast forward to the last 48 hours. There will be no more guitars with that wonderul 2 pack a day Lucky Strike patina. But now, they put that on at the factory along with the dents and cracks. When I was a pothead teen, I could flip burgers for a summer and buy a great old guitar with lots of character and lots of stories to tell for less than a grand. Unless a kid is born rich, your options are mediocre guitars, or if you have the money, you can get something with the wear and tear built into it at the factory, the perfect fantasy that someone great played it before you. That was allways a part of buying an old beat up guitar. My imagination could soar and i could think about it's history. That's not required of todays youth. I'm sad about that. it feels disconnected.
We all do best with the information we have so for now, I'll just do my best to sell guitars and bring a smile to peoples faces. That's all I have to do. That shop I bought my first guitar at is still open, but many great little places have gone away, eaten by our violent and greedy society that for some reason digs CEO culture. A society that has a narrow version of what success looks like, loud and shiny and big big big! I don't blame us, I don't blame anyone for how we've changed. To do so would be a waste of energy. It's only change, though I'm not so sure it's progress.
xojb
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