The auto destructive art of instrument smashing

As we humans become more aware of the forest habitats we deplete and the energy we burn, the smashing up of musical instruments has become rarer. The thought of destroying such hand crafted things of visual and sonic beauty is abhorrent. Even if instrument smashing is done on the cheap with plentiful plywood knock offs whose rapid disposal creates jobs and leads to the planting of more forests, it still looks hackneyed and wasteful … and a bit cheap.

It wasn’t always the case. Some of the greatest bands ever like The Who, The Yardbirds, Hendrix and Nirvana indulged in instrument smashing. For many of them it was an artistic statement inspired (in the case of Townsend and Hendrix) by Gustav Metzger who used the destruction of things to shock, effect emotions, provoke thought and make statements about the human condition. When great musicians went through their smashing routines it was usually as the spectacular finales to performances of great emotion, profundity, power and energy. It was just right … rock and roll ... though of its time.

Eagerly awaiting a nice old Casino ... an excuse to blog about the guitar.

Epiphone Casinos are electric guitars, but where most electrics are totally solid or have a solid centre block, the Casino is truly hollow like an acoustic guitar. The Casino has P90 pickups which are more edgy sounding than the humbuckers your see on most archtops, so although the sound is refined it also has a certain bite and mojo.

Epiphone Casinos have been prominent in some of the greatest music ever created and are especially synonymous with the Beatles. Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to own a Casino. It had a bigsby trem and, given McCartney was left handed, was played upside down. Although he was technically the bassist, the Beatles could, and did, swap roles regularly. It’s Paul McCartney playing Casino leads on songs like Drive my car, Taxman and Paperback writer.






IMO the guitar tone on these records is amazing, being in that utlra-cool, hard to find place between clean and over driven. It’s not surprising McCartney said his Casino was his favourite lead guitar.

George Harrison owned lots of guitars and pioneered the use of many like the Rickenbacker 360 12 string and the Gibson SG, though he did play a Casino on some of the greatest Beatles albums such as Revolver, Sergeant Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour and Abbey Road.




However, of all the Beatles the Casino was most used by John Lennon who after 1965 played little else. Originally it was sunburst but he later stripped the varnish for the pale yellow colour seen in loads of late Beatles footage. Maybe because the guitar could also be used as a hollow body acoustic, he found himself writing and practising with it in his hotel and living rooms all the time. So he became wedded to it, even though remarkably his Epiphone was a relatively cheap guitar and he could have owned anything.






Other sixties musicians loved their Casinos, notably Dave Davis and Keith Richards.





During the seventies strats, les pauls and expensive Gibson archtops become more popular with famous musicians. Though Epiphones made a comeback with the indie and Britpop scenes being a guitar that was free of associations with cheesy grin twiddlers and blues bores. It also wasn't a punk guitar, being way too elegant to be abused and spat at.

The 12 string version of the Casino (the Epiphone Riviera 12-string) creates the wonderful guitar backdrops to Lush's greatest records



And of course Epiphones are all over early Oasis (and NoWaySis) records...



Sally btw was a Manchester promoter - she even got our old band gigs sometimes.

The band USofA are kind of like the moon landing – a leap in progress that’s not been bettered

The sixties was a time when popular music made quantum leaps from bubble gum pop to high art and experimentation. Sergeant Pepper gets rightly credited with putting popular music into space with its huge leap in redefining the role of the studio. But the credit for the musical moon landing goes to the far lesser known album The United States of America by the band of the same name.
Listening to the USofA you have to pinch yourself to remember it’s from the sixties and not the eighties or nineties. Forget all the stuff about Kraftwerk and Gary Numan pioneering synths – USofA were there first. They also spearheaded the idea that popular music could be a high art form that can be both intriguing and enlightening. Something the likes of the wonderful Yes and King Crimson took further, but only after the USofA.
Anyway, judge for yourself….

'The Cake' overlooked at the time - celebrated in the age of youtube

One of the great things about youtube is that stuff that gets overlooked or forgotten (even in its own time) finds new life and new fans as the curious stumble on old videos.

A fine example is the band ‘The Cake’ – I don’t quite know how I stumbled on this video but there’s something very cool and surprising about it. It begins with one of the girls stumbling and made dizzy by the carousel. She for a short while looks as though she refuses to join in as the others start to sing – though this is how they always performed. As they sing they hap hazardly improvise dances with a demeanour that’s very endearing and so opposite from the more usual slick performers of the time. And like the performance the music is not what you expect, being full of psychedelic strings and an amazing reverberant rhythm. It turns out they themselves were great songwriters and well connected to the emerging British progressive rock movement of the late sixties.

Simon Cowell would have hated them, which is why I and a lot of others on youtube think they're very cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cake

More slices of The Cake

This one's kind of funny

Sharing some images from Paul McCartney's Hyde Park gig this Sunday

Sharing some images from Hyde Park this Sunday (click to enlarge)

It started with England getting thrashed to the bluegrass music of Elvis Costello.

Neil Finn cheered us up with Crowded House 

Then Crosby, Stills and Nash - with Stephen Stills on stellar form with the guitar

And then the thrill of a life time Sir Paul McCartney

Seeing Paul McCartney + CSN, Elvis Costello and Crowded house this Sunday

Although it’s going to a long drive to London and back on Sunday we’ve got tickets to see Paul McCartney with support CSN, Elvis Costello and Crowded House at hard rock calling.
Should be an amazing day – whether England win or lose.

Diana Ross's Stuart Pearce impersonation :-D

Beatles fans - check out this little kids guitar playing!

The Zombies - a great band behind so many famous songs

We were lucky enough to see the Zombies play live at the Lowry yesterday and were blown away by the musicianship and sheer number of famous songs the band’s member's have been behind. Key originals Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent are still there looking and sounding great. Whilst fellow musicians Jim Rodford, Steve Rodford and Tom Toomey were superb,- especially new guitarist Tom Toomey who flipped between a strat, PRS custom and acoustic guitars with technical skill that matched Rod Argent’s legendary keyboard playing. Anyway enough writing the music speaks for itself.




The Zombies last night










Did you know Argent and Rodford were responsible for this 'most excellent' song


And Colin Blunstone was a major part of the Alan Parsons project

The Hollies in Oslo

A friend of ours recently brought The Hollies to Oslo - we're on the front row just below the monitors. Thanks to whoever filmed and posted this - a real treat, if like us you're a fan of this brilliant band.

Every Day (Orwellian dystopias and groovy dancing)

The song Every Day features on our Manchester Times album and is about coping with injury and its lost freedoms. The mash up invokes the slavery of Orwellian dystopias by referencing some great films including 1984, Equilibrium, The Forbin Project, Fahrenheit 451 and possibly the greatest film ever made Brazil. (btw if you’ve never seen the Forbin Project it’s on youtube and well worth watching). The televisions in the mash up offer a window onto a world where people don’t watch television :-)

Pilot's Magic is perfection - not least because of some amazing guitar

Why music was great in the sixties

I guess it’s all a matter of taste, but it seems as though the most daring, inventive and engaging music came from the sixties and amazingly that music was in the mainstream, topping charts and being heard by everyone.
Although we weren’t there, it seems as though in those days there was a lot of post war optimism and posterity, a lot of new things to discover and try out and a lot old attitudes to speak out against … like imperialism, segregation, class, etc.
As well as the great bands of the decade like the Beatles, Hollies, Stones, Small Faces, etc many of the best seventies bands like Yes, Floyd, Zeppelin and Rush had started making great music.

So here’s to the sixties…




Having said all that - don't know about the dancing :-)

If you search for So Shush on twitter :-)

The Kindness of Strangers - wow what a story

Recently become a big fan of the Escape Pod podcast recently whose archives are packed with terrific quality narrations of cutting edge sci fi.

This one's particularly memorable and worth sharing...

http://escapepod.org/index.php?s=kindness+of+strangers

The Teletubbies dance to See Emily Play

This is what youtube was made for! Love this classic Floyd track. When Syd Barret wrote this I wonder if he had anticipated the teletubbies well ahead of time.

Shiny Things

'Shiny Things' is the fourth song of our third and latest album 'Manchester Times'. The song's about aspirational advertising, where advertisers suggest people can live like the rich and glamorous if they have the product. We had some fun with a youtube mash-up which includes scenes from the amazing seventies film 'Dawn of the Dead', which was a parody of shopping mall culture, where a tiny number of survivors are caged in a mall with all they could ever want to buy while being surrounded by flesh eating zombies.

Hello just started a blog

We’re mad about music and a few other things, so we’ve just started this blog to share our music, thoughts, online discoveries and anything else we might think of.