(second block, fourth letter of the prisoners' quadratic tap code...)

image
...am here to tap through the walls.


Tue Oct, 31 2006

Things That I Don't Forget

"It took us about 2 hours to get it in the bag. Toward the end, we had a very cool synergy going on. As I stepped through my moves, I could almost feel the pressure of Duck's hand on his faders: the timing of his fades was connected to the timing of my steps through the image of our light falling on the stage in truly rhythmic composition. He left holes in his looks for my moves, and I stilled my motion in time for his accent slams.

Dino looked at it, and didn't say too much. As he walked out of the room he had a smile on his face. He returned about 10 minutes later with Bill Reeves.

'Roll tape.'"
(August 31, 1992 -- Los Angeles)

It has been thirteen months since my old mate Dino Derose died hard on the side of a road in Austin, Texas after being struck by a car and left there by someone who must have known what they had done.

To this day, that rotten person has never been found. His life goes on as before, at the expense of Dino's. The Austin police didn't care about this thing from hour-one, and so far as anyone can tell, they still don't.

I hope the creep who did this is haunted every single day of his life until he steps up to cop to it, or, failing that, that his last hours on this earth are at least as hard as my friend's were.

As for the Austin cops, well... I think you can imagine. Worthless sonsofbitches.

Oct 31, 06 | 11:23 pm

AxeBites

Various guitars I see floating by, mostly Gibson and mostly eBay.

Early Norlin ES-335 -- 1970, in Walnut ("ES-335TDW"). This is a period-piece look and feel, and arguably the sound as well but that's to cut things very finely. A "classic" 335 would be the original of 1958 in the Sunburst or Natural finish, or the Cherry Red of 1959; the Walnut of 1970 (second year of that finish offering) is not really a "classic" 335. In the history of the Gibson aesthetic, this is analogous to, say, vertically-striped polyester bell-bottoms or Bahama Blue shag carpeting. None of this is to say that they're not cool guitars, and this is a nice one. Excellent photographs.

Chrome hardware, featuring the trapeze tailpiece (like my L-47 and I've always liked it) and ABR-1 bridge with period-typical nylon saddles. Bound rosewood fretboard, with small block markers, and then the crown inlay at the machine head. These would be the T-top Humbuckers. Vintage Nazis would moan that the upper bouts are pointy (the body templates were wearing-out in the factory) and the fourteen-degree machine head with the volute signals a sometimes not-fun era of the line, but these things really do rock or moan or whatever you want a 335-type semi-hollow to do. ...which, of course, is because it really is a 335.


In the months since I've let AxeBites languish all to bleedin' hell, Gibson's Robot Guitar technology has sifted out to other models than the original Les Paul application. I don't know how it's going: I still haven't even seen one of these self-tuners. I don't see piles of them burning on the sides of the highway, nor reverent hangings in display cases over bars, so who knows? This 2008 Robot SG is ready to rock in the Metallic Red. Nickel hardware; it's the stoptail wired for data to send to the tuners, with dual Humbuckers. It's a bound rosewood fretboard, but I really like the single-bound machine head with the crown inlay. That's a real cool old-school look, right there, to set off that crazy-ass color. {nod}