Hello. My Name Is Dive And I'm A Pastaholic.

Fuck, I'm fat!

Hokay, time for an intervention. Time for all of my more reasonably proportioned body parts to gather round and gawp in disgusted awe at my utter rotundity.

Holy shit … I wouldn't look out of place in a Mid-West strip mall, shopping for cheese in a spray can. Not being one for mirrors and only having a top view of the corpulent crisis going on in my midriff I had been only vaguely aware of the effects of rampant inflation … until this weekend.

Last Sunday, given the choice between Easter church service and traditional family roast dinner, I sensibly opted for neither and instead moseyed on down to the studio to make an unholy racket with my disreputable friends (or at least one disreputable friend and my equally disreputable little brother).

Phil has gone all gadget-happy and spent his groats on one of those new fangled moving picture screens (an Apple eye patch I think he called it). Anyhoo, he propped the thing up on an amp while we spent a pleasantly unproductive afternoon busking old songs that none of us could really remember and songs that none of us actually knew … pretty much par for the course.

It would appear that the piratical eye patch captured some of the shambolic mess on video. The upshot of which is that I caught sight of myself standing sideways on to the camera and screamed like a girl.

Fuck, I'm FAT!

As a friend has since put it: “Most people would simply opt for conventional gender reassignment, but you? You have to be different. I mean the man-boobs were bad enough, but how the hell did you manage to get yourself pregnant?”

I took a screen grab of my planet-shaped pregnancy and stuck it on the fridge door with a big red sign that simply states “DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE!” I have another sign on the kitchen door which reads “Don’t even think about it. Turn around one-eighty and get your fat, ugly arse into the gym, lardboy!”

On an unrelated note, Nokia recently took over the company I used to use to post all my music on my blog and - to improve their service - are pulling the plug on the whole thing. So if anyone clicks on my old music tracks all they'll get is a bunch of Swedish incompetence and no noise whatsoever.

Whilst the more culturally advanced among you might consider that an improvement, I'm a sadistic bastard, so here's some of last Sunday's cacophonous crap to annoy the hell out of you and to remind me to lock myself out of the kitchen.
Knowing myself pretty well, however, I predict that dieting will be a non-starter and will be replaced by the simple expedient of never again standing sideways on to a camera.

Toodle pip.

One For Speedway.

Speedway posted a nice video today of Eric Clapton and Wynton Marsalis doing a big band Noo Orleans version of one of my favourite old blues songs.

I know most of you have heard all this crap too many times over the years, but Speedway seems to think you need to be able to read music and have a natural ear to be able to play.
Well musical blindness and deafness never stopped me, so I say pick up a guitar and go for it, girl. It's never too late to start playing the blues (especially in this economic climate).
Here's a completely different version of the song: The Blind Willies (Michael and me) inspired by a Pinetop Perkins '78 record of "44 Blues" just for Speedway.

Sorry about the drop-out in the middle; very old and fragile tape recordings tend to do that.

The Blind Willies

Yet More Boys' Toys

This post is for my long-time blog-bud and musician, Vic the Groover. Guitars and drums! Yay! What could be better?

Phil bought a bunch more ludicrously expensive cymbals last weekend so on Friday we decamped to the studio to put 'em through their paces.

I brought along my Martin, Old Les and my PRS from my guitar porn stash and Phil brought his banjo for some occasional yeehah acoustic action.

Pearl Reference. You get what you pay for. This'll break the bank but holy fuck, what a sound!

 That new HHX Evolution ride (the bashed-looking cymbal in the middle) totally rules.

 Heavy metal.

 As in all walks of life the correct footwear is essential.

And yes, Phil's drumstool does have a back rest. We're old farts. What do you expect?

Phil Joins The Professionals

 So, after many months of soul-searching and trying out a myriad of instruments - and lots of swearing, Phil and I headed out this morning with our guitar spears and nets to try to catch him a nice new acoustic.

Our hunt was successful and so at long last I am happy to announce my baby brother has joined the select band of smug, grinning guitar players who own a Martin.

I was fortunate enough to buy mine off Christian Martin IV himself, nigh on thirty years ago and I've loved it more and more each and every day since.
Now Phil will experience for himself that warm glow of Martin ownership and the delicious thrill of jealous hatred from mere mortals when they ask him what he plays.

Here he is playing his sweet new baby, a 00016 model. If only you could hear it. Whooee!

And here's my old Martin D18. I love it more than words can express.

See how just holding it makes my chubby cheeks all grinny.

Oh, and in case you thought you'd come to the wrong blog, I got so sick of my photos not fitting within the narrow confines of my old template that - with some help from Petrea - I've faffed around with the layout. Whether I'll keep it this way I don't know, but at least it's wide enough now to fit my fat butt in.

Gary Moore 1952 - 2011

So farewell then Gary Moore, taken from us at the tragically young age of 58.

I'm too shocked to say much. The man was that rarest of guitar players, one with taste, tone, touch and the ability to make you scream "Holy Fuck!"

I've played his songs on stage almost as long as he has and I shall miss him greatly.

Forgive me if I pay tribute by posting myself playing the song he'll be most remembered for.

Rest in peace, Gary.

Deliverance Boy

Odd cove, my baby brother …

Usually, musicians start at the bottom and work their way up, but I fear something has gone awry with Phil. Pray allow me to explain, and be sure not to read this in the dark as it is a tale of descent into madness.

Many an age ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Raquel Welch ran around in a fur bikini, Phil was that rarest of rare gems, a world class rhythm guitarist. I've never found another one even close to being on the same planet.
Unlike 100% of other guitarists (and especially me), he was not interested in strutting around at the front of the stage, throwing dumb poses and trying to see how many notes can be stuffed painfully into a solo (older blog readers will know about my problem from bitter experience). Oh, no. Instead he realised the basic truth that eludes the rest of us: that a rhythm guitar player should only be noticed when he's not playing. And when he's not playing the music sounds WRONG.
It was great being on stage with Phil because I could play as many dumb widdly notes as possible and know that behind me the music would sound right.

And then something weird happened: he decided to take up bass.
Bass players are usually frustrated lead guitarists and it is very rare for a guitar player to "go the other way," down into the darkness of the lower registers.
But that's where Phil went and bloody good he was, too. I missed his rhythm playing but he was a great bassist.

This is where it gets creepy …
Drummers - as opposed to musicians - tend to drool a lot and sniff one another's bottoms whenever they meet up. They are not as other folk.

 And yes, The Dark Side took my baby brother and made him hit things.

 Hokay, I confess, the boy doesn't do things by halves; he's what's known in the trade as "a fucking good drummer," a treasure rarer than rocking-horse shit.

But a drummer?

Drummers are forever cursed by the stigma of Ringo.

In the pit of Musical Hell there is only one circle lower than that haunted by the screaming souls of drummers …

A short while back Phil took that final step and slid down the greasy slope into the last and deepest festering pismire of musical insanity.

 He bought a banjo …

 He has a book that teaches you how to say "Yee" and "Haw."

He has started creeping round woods and telling people, "You sure got a purrty mouth, city boy."

In short, he's gone Deliverance.

We spent yesterday playing "Duelling Banjos."

If there are any support groups out there, please contact me.

More Noise

Yesterday I spent my third blog birthday with those old reprobates the Four Heads.
Well three of them anyway, as John's on holiday Down Under.

So it was Old Dive standing in for him at Tia and Andy's wedding reception.

The weather was perfect (actually it was about three hundred degrees hotter than Hell and as humid as a sauna, but the sun shone all day) and the whole day was completely wonderful.

Except of course the band. Hee hee.

You've seen us rehearsing this one, now witness the fact that rehearsing songs makes no difference whatsoever to these guys.

Growing Old Disgracefully

Off to see Phil's new band tonight.

In the meantime, here's the last of the ludicrous rehearsal videos of me playing with Tony's band of very elderly reprobates. Boys grow old but we never grow up.
The only good bit is when it cuts off before the end as my camera ran out of memory. Yay!

I make no excuse for its utter awfulness; in fact I rather revel in it.

Guitar Porn Frenzy

Hokay … Some of my more venerable Blogville neighbours can skip this post as it is primarily for Jacques-Arthur and any recent neighbours who may not have inhaled the heady, if noxious vapours from the fœtid and unsavoury depths of my archives.

It is just guitar porn and also a load of links to me actually playing guitar rather than just dicking around like in yesterday's post.
Sheesh! What a mess that was!

Katie has twisted my arm to post the other two videos I took yesterday morning so those will be coming in the next week or two.
Suffer!
They are truly awful.

Before we get on to the guitar porn, here are a few tracks where I play some much better guitar than on the video.
If anyone is fool enough to want any more, there are lots more under the "Let's Make A Racket" label, but you'll have to scroll back a few pages.

First up is "Cold. Cold Feeling".



This is one of my favourite tracks; just a simple, slow blues, played on my Strat.
Nothing fancy, just long, heartfelt notes.
For once I actually managed to leave my ego at the door for this one (I have an annoying habit of playing a hundred notes where one would do, so this track is a rarity and all the nicer for it), though before the final solo you can just hear Paul yell at me to "Give it some sex!" which was his way of telling me to turn it up and go for it.
Hey ho.

Next up is my PRS (the one in the video).



This time I'm playing it properly, waltzing through cheesy old "Parisienne Walkway", live at the Connaught, back in 2000.



Here's Old Les (see the porn shots below for which guitar is which), widdling all over "Wild About You Baby" from a rehearsal at the Ethel Rump Memorial Hall (I kid you not).

Another Old Les track; this time standing in with the Dave Thomas Band on a completely unrehearsed amble through John Martyn's lovely "Ballad of an Elder Woman".



No flash, this time; just simple hippie fingerpicking and all the better for it.

An acoustic blues now, featuring my gorgeous Martin D-18 and recorded in my home studio with Michael on slide as part of our occasional delta blues duo "The Blind Willies".



This is Blind Willie McTell's beautiful "Mama, t'Aint Long 'Fore Day."

Finally, the infamous "Too Many Monkeys In My Tree", for more information about which, see the even more infamous "ponytail, goatee and pointy sideburns" post.



This is the song that gave birth to my current on-and-off project, "The Groovy Fuckers."

There are at least thirty-five tracks (I've lost count) hidden away in the nether regions of this blog if any of you wish to delve further.

Anyhoo:
Guitar porn …

Jacques-Arthur: these are some friends of mine who I hope you'll get to meet and play with one day.

First up is my main squeeze, a Paul Reed Smith custom built for me at the factory; serial number: PRS 44115.
It took six months of trying out various Private Stock guitars they shipped over to sort out the final spec. and another six months to hand build it, but it was well worth the wait.

The body is pre-CITES Brazilian mahogany with a thick, hand-carved Michigan big-leaf maple top in vintage cherry sunburst (machine routing tends to affect the sonic qualities of the wood; hand carving with violin-makers' finger-planes is much gentler, though inevitably obscenely expensive and only available as a special order).
The neck and fingerboard are pre-CITES Brazilian rosewood (I had A-B tested a Private Stock Brazilian Rosewood neck against an Indian rosewood neck and the Brazilian was so much more responsive; I had to have it even though it added another £1,700 to the total cost (which you don't want to know).
PRS has only got 250 pre-CITES Brazilian rosewood neck blocks and this is number 67, hence the signed and numbered back-plate.

Shit, this stuff is so BORING, but I'm a guitar nerd so please forgive me.
There's even more boring tech info on it here.

And here it is laying on my bed. Guitar porn.

Here it is again, in the studio with Phil's new Pearl Reference drum kit and another old friend, my 1984 Fender Flame Élite, truly a gorgeous guitar which I mostly use for jazz. It plays so sweetly.

And here is my beloved old custom Strat, which can be heard singing on the first of the tracks above (Cold, Cold Feeling).
This is a truly awesome stage guitar and has seen extremely heavy action over the decades.

It has Fender Lace Gold pickups and a Bartolini active circuit.
The first two of those lovely vintage Telecaster knobs do their usual job of volume and tone but the third one cranks in the active circuit so I can get infinite sustain and perfectly controlled harmonic feedback.
Cheaty, but cool!
The long note at the start of the second solo in Cold, Cold Feeling is this knob turned up to about "3". It's great for songs like Boston's "More Than A Feeling", where you need to hold notes for bloody ages, or shove it up to ten if you want to seriously party!
That sucker eats valves for breakfast, though, so I use it sparingly as new sets of Boogie bottles don't come cheap.

The guitar body is refinished in Lotus Sports Cars "Opalescent Pearl" paint (it was originally white). Phil bribed security with chocolate, sneaked it into the factory one night and used around £150 worth of paint on the job (don't tell anyone).
It looks beautiful under stage lights; all the gorgeous pearl colours wash over it as it moves.
It is finished with a hand-applied cellulose lacquer; hard to get these days outside of vintage car restorers but sonically so much better than the plastic crap they put on guitars nowadays.

The neck is a deep, round-profiled flame maple and the fingerboard is pretty-pretty birds-eye maple, cut to my favourite 21" Les Paul radius rather than the usual 17" Fender radius and fitted with Gibson fat frets.
The dot markers are abalone and get smaller as they go up the neck like my Martin D18; a more elegant solution than a normal Strat.

The switch below the middle knob cuts out the active circuit when I don't need it and a pull-switch incorporated into the same knob gives a cut in tone shaped to sound like Robert Cray (that dates the guitar for you).

The trem is a Kahler Flyer. They don't make those any more, which is a damned shame. Its a "cam" style trem rather than a pivot like the Floyd-Rose, so if I break a string it stays in tune so I can finish the song. It also means double and triple stop bends don't detune the upper strings like they do on a Floyd.
Combine that with a graphite nut and Sperzel Trim-loks and I can change a string mid song while still comping with my left hand.

Here is my delicious old Martin D-18, bought from Christian Martin IV himself while he was on tour here in 1977.
I use Gordon Giltrap Hand Wound strings on this and it sounds simply beautiful.

And of course, Old Les himself, my oldest and dearest friend and companion with whom I have shared my every secret since I was a kid.

A 1969 prototype Gibson Les Paul Deluxe, built from leftover '59 and '60 parts (the neck's a deep, round fifty-nine vintage) with those sweet mini-humbuckers added.
Way too valuable to gig with any more, I spent the price of a decent new car on the PRS to replace it on stage, though I still play it all the time at home.

So there you have it.
A boring, re-hashed post of some of my guitar porn for any archive-phobics among you.

Enjoy / Suffer (delete where applicable).

Unlistenable Cacophony

In a few weeks I shall be standing in for a vacationing John in Tony's band (four retired headmasters who gig as "The Four Heads" … Yay!) at Neil's daughter's wedding.

The band decided a rehearsal was in order.
I've no idea why; they are truly ireedeemably shambolic (in the best possible way) and rehearsal seems to have done them no good in the past, but hey, let's go with the flow.

So this morning we turned up at the studio and … er … "rehearsed" (has anybody noticed that the word "rehearse" has "arse" in it?).

This (the little video at the bottom of the post) was the full extent of the rehearsal for an old blues number.

Neil suggested let's try "Walking By Myself."
I asked "What key?"
He said "E." to which I said "E? I've only ever played it in G; oh, well, let's give it a go", and turned on the video camera.

Sheesh! What a shambles. Hee hee.

Luckily the camera is tilted at such an angle that you cannot see much except the ceiling and occasionally my ass (easily my best feature), and - thanks to it being propped between my amp and Tony's drums, the sound is so bad that Neil's vocals are lost in the cacophony … which is probably just as well … he'll do much better on the night.

This is Tony (yes, Phil; he's on one of the studio's kits).

And this is my guitar with Rob and Neil in the background.
We make the Rolling Stones look like a bunch of teenagers.

I just love the band's verdict at the end of this unlistenable mess:

"S'alright, innit?"

God help the poor wedding guests!
Hee hee.

Kids, be warned … This is what old people do when you let them off the leash. If you have old people in your family be sure and keep them locked up and sedated.

Fuck Death; Let's Play Guitar

So farewell then John Martyn.

From leading light of the seventies folk revival to grizzled, wheelchair-bound monopod, one of our finest songwriters and most chaotic and drunken performers has died, aged just sixty.



Here, as inadequate tribute is a version of his song "Bless The Weather" I played when I guested with the Dave Thomas Band (for any fans of Old Dive's guitar playing, most of the guitar here is Dave Thomas but I do have a couple of solos - you'll know it's me because I'm a noisy bastard - starting at around three minutes in and at around nine minutes in … Dave does tend to go on a bit).

For any Colonials who may not have heard of the man, I've included three songs from throughout his career.
"Songs of misery and romance" as he calls them.
Beautiful and heartfelt.
Should you have the time or the inclination please play these.
They encapsulate so much of what was special about him (and his long term collaborator and drinking buddy, Danny Thompson); the last clip (especially his expression right at the end) shows just why I loved him.

Many of us will miss him an awful lot.

Guitars And Drums

Who needs girls when you've got guitars and drums?
Hokay, so maybe I do, but I've been so long without a girl that I wouldn't know what do do with one if I woke up to find one nekkid under my duvet.
So guitars and drums it is …
Besides, they make a much better noise than girls.

Good folk of Blogville, kindly permit me a brief interlude from all those photos of beautiful buildings and instead come and join Phil and Dive down at Woody's rehearsal rooms for a good, therapeutic thrash about.

"What the fuck do I do with all this stuff?"
Because I am retired from gigging, my careful set-up routine has long gone from my woolly old mind.
Hence the look of stupefaction on my face whenever I open my box of leads.

While I'm figuring that out, let's help Phil set his kit up, shall we?
First up … The good old bass drum.
Easy, that one.

These stands are a bit of a pig to set up correctly though, so we'll leave Phil to get on with it himself and stand around drinking coffee.

That's the tom-toms done. Now where are those pesky cymbals?

Ah! That's better.
Phil has a acquired a new snare drum and a new china cymbal since we were last down here.
More boys' toys for the boys to play with.

It sounds awesome, but then it's a Pearl Reference kit and it cost about as much as the US budget deficit so if it didn't sound totally fucking brilliant he'd be doing something very wrong indeed.

Plus, Phil's a bloody good drummer, which helps.
A lot.
Here are his new snare and china cymbal.

And again from a slightly different angle.
Musicians (and drummers) can never have enough photos of their instruments.

Which is why I can't resist taking photos of my guitars.
Especially this little beauty.

Behind my beautiful PRS sits my yummy, hand-built Mesa 25th. Anniversary special; the most totally fucking glorious amp the planet has ever seen.
Oh, and my Converse hi-tops, which Phil wanted to try with his kit as he's after a more sensitive drumming shoe than his current pair of squash shoes.

Hot valves! Yay! Now we're cooking!
Round the back of the Mesa when things get warmed up.
This amp responds like a living thing. It has so much sensitivity and expressiveness it takes my breath away.
Being a Godless Heathen I know I don't have an immortal soul but I am certain that this amplifier does.

Yet more drum porn. You'll notice I was a good boy this week and carefully cropped out Phil's bald spot.

Mine - on the other hand - is there for all to see.

I make the dumbest faces when I play.
Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel would look frighteningly intellectual stood next to me on stage.

I think I must be squeezing out a fart on this one.

So … That's what flabby old folk do to relax.
Maybe I'll get back to proper posting tomorrow but I did enjoy that.

Let's Make A Racket - XXXV

Plug your ears, Dive's got his bloody guitar out again.
It's Thursday, so it must be time to make a racket.
Here's something short and silly while our Colonial friends are celebrating Thanksgiving.

Hey, Happy "We've Taken Their Food, Now Let's Take Their Land" Day, folks!

As you'll be eating that most ungainly fowl, I thought it only apt to share a couple of aural turkeys with you in the spirit of Thanksgiving.
Both tracks are from an old concert I played with Sharon and Rod; very much a "rackety raucous" kind of fun thing.

First up is Shazza belting out a mercifully brief version of Nutbush City Limits with Michael supplying the utterly hilarious keyboard solo.
Then it's one I've posted before, my awful demolition of Parisienne Walkway.

Enjoy your turkeys!

Let's Make A Racket - XXXIV

Yesterday: kittens; today: dogs.
Sheesh! Now my blog's covered in hair.

This is the same line-up as one of my all time favourite Blues Club Rackets, from earlier in that gig; a song about a dawg and its stupid owner.

Let's Make A Racket - XXXIII

Shit …

Time to cringe from another year.
I don't have any songs called "It's my fiftieth birthday; someone please shoot me in the head"; the nearest I have is The Blind Willies doing '44 Blues.

So that's what you're getting.



While you endure that, here's a photo of the birthday cake mum made for me.

Yup … sushi and noodles fruit cake …
And you wonder why I'm like I am …

Let's Make A Racket - XXXII

Fuck politics; let's dance!

For this Thursday's Racket I'd got a slow acoustic blues lined up: The Blind Willies attempt at Robert Johnson's "Come On In My Kitchen".

That's a lovely song, but I fancy something a little noisier, so I'll do another two for the price of one post and add one you've probably heard already, but which is pretty apt for the US voting public after eight years of rank insanity: "Done Got Wise".

Toodle pip!

Let's Make A Racket - XXXI

Hey, nonny nonny.

Tis Thursday and that means Racket day.
Tis also fucking freezing so I've been forced at last to put the heating on.

To compensate for last week's downer, here's a very silly song. It's Michael, Steve, Jason, Laurie and me belting out a quite ludicrous boogie-woogie version of that old blues standard "Owl Stew" (which Michael assures me is one of those bluesman's euphemisms; in this case for the Lingus family's lovely daughter, Connie … ahem).

I just had to go back and edit this in GarageBand and chop the end off as I realised Steve gives a rundown of the musicians and my "real identity" was on it.
Which is why it now cuts off neatly after Jason's name.

So … Sing along to a song about everybody's favourite snack.



The rest of you can ignore these, but Neetzy has asked if she can try painting a guitar from one of my photos.
Of course you can, Neetzy. Paint whatever you want.
There are lots of photos if you follow the "guitar" link at the bottom of the post but here are four just for me, as I can never get enough of staring at my beautiful PRS.

Sigh …

Mmmmmmm …

Yummy …

Er … Sorry about this one; it's from way back in the day when for some reason bloggers were posting nekkid photos of themselves.
It's a nice one of the guitar, though, and that's what it looks like from my perspective when I play it.

Happy Thursday, Blogville.

Noisy

Bollocks to being stupidly busy.

I badly needed a break so yesterday I took a somewhat creatively extended "lunch hour" and decamped with Phil to Woodshack - Woody's studio in Wymondham - for some therapeutic racket-making mayhem.

My PRS and my Fender you already know, but I'd like you to meet Phil's spiffy new drum kit.

It's a Pearl "Reference" kit, which basically means it costs the same as the average house … in fact you could buy several suburbs of Detroit with it in the current market.
No doubt he'll tell you more about it in the comments box but basically it is an extremely expensive and complex bunch of things to hit.

To make noise.

A lot of noise.

And here he is doing just that, the noisy fucker.

The new kit has lots of complicated and shiny pieces of metal attached to it, as well as some nice sparkly bits.

Phil is two and a half years younger than me, so sometime in mid 2012 his bald patch will be as big as mine.
We all need something to look forward to.

So anyhoo … We spent a few hours making one hell of a racket and then one of my fingers started bleeding (I'm retired from all this crap and I've not played seriously in over a year) so we had to call it a day.

Coffee … The musicians' friend.

Along with alcohol, recreational drugs and ugly girls offering you a blowie in the car park between sets … but we stuck with just the coffee.

Luckily for you guys we didn't record any of the crap we played but maybe if I can get hold of a bass player who can handle jazz (properly) we might do this again some time and post the result.