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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Tue Nov, 03 2009

Russians — Not Soviets

That's what I see in this collection of "Soviet War Paintings". Josef Stalin is tagged with pointing out that "quantity has a quality all its own", in the context of Red Army armor in the field in World War II. Stalin was a wisecracker, able to turn nimble rhetorical corners to illuminate an amusing aspect of a matter if not always its essence. The essence of the matter was that "nobody endures like the Russians". I do not imagine that he ever thought that explicitly about that fact, but he took it for granted with crazy abandon, nonetheless.

Without knowing some of the artists at work in that collection and accounting for their berths in the savage reality of Soviet politics, I see little obvious propaganda in these paintings. I'm no expert but I know what I like and some of the technique runs a bit more toward Impressionism than I ordinarily enjoy, although I must say that the themes are admirably exploited. Those aware of the history may find them worth their evocations -- "Red Square parade. (November 7, 1941)": those troops marched directly off the Square into battle on the Nazi front about twelve miles away.

They did that for Rodina: the Motherland; the place where their spirit -- crippled as it is, to a Western eye -- loves to stand on the earth.

Americans have this in their history, too. I prefer to believe that it has not yet been bred out of us.

(link: Balko)

Nov 03, 09 | 12:16 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}