500 Words - III

To be read in a headmasterly voice …


A huge thank you to everyone who joined in for the launch of our 500 Words thang.

The quality of writing in your last little assignment was amazingly high and the range of diverse imaginings you guys came up with quite boggled the mind.
If those are any guide, then I can't wait to read this week's homework.
You've set yourself a high benchmark.

Anyone who missed out on that can read all the previous stories here, and post your own from last week's sentence if you want.

Today, however, in my capacity of Official Sentence Setter (I do love the feeling of POWER and … er … pomposity that comes with the position) I shall set the next sentence.
You can think about it over the weekend and post your stories whenever you feel like it and I'll go round and collect them all up and post links later next week (probably Thursday, but there's no telling as my calendar is ruled by chaos).
No hurry.

The rules - for any latecomers are simple:

Just write 500 words (do try to be exact; it makes it a little harder and a little more fun) including and based on the sentence I shall set.

Then post it and I'll link to all of your stories so we can enjoy a good wallow in the fertile weirdness of one another's imaginations.

Easy peasy.

Hokay …
This week's sentence is taken from Paul Auster's "City Of Glass", from his New York Trilogy.

It is:
"Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him."

As it's a short sentence this time it should be included in your word count.
Anyone who can't count up to five hundred can go stand in the corner (not you, Prudence; though next time I shall be more strict - corporal punishment is still legal on this blog).

Right!
The clock is ticking.
Pick up your pencils.
Use both sides of the paper if necessary.

What's Cooking With Dive? Samphire Season

Holy crap! I slept through my alarm and missed my thousandth post!

Er … Welcome to my 1,002nd. post.

It's samphire season. Yay!

Meet samphire.
That's marsh samphire, not rock samphire, which is unrelated and tastes like turpentine and should never really be eaten unless the only other choice is KFC.

Marsh samphire (salicornia) is - and I use this term advisedly - fucking awesome!

It is a plant of the tidal mudflats, which means we get a LOT of it around Norfolk's coasts.
Collecting it is messy, though, so I tend to collect mine from David the fishmonger, which means I don't need to wear big, thigh-length rubber wading boots.
Unless I really want to … er.

Marsh samphire is in season from June through to early September, but after that it gets a little cranky, so now is the ideal time to eat it.

Only ever buy fresh and local samphire; the imported stuff has come a long way wrapped in plastic and squashed in boxes and will be as tired, stale, sweaty and unpleasant as you would be after the same journey.

It is wonderful raw in salads, but if you do with it what I do with it then your taste buds will love you for ever.

So … marsh samphire …
What do we do with it?

Well first up, we put it in a colander and give it a good wash under the cold tap, making sure to get rid of all those little bits of cack and seaweed and sand and whatever else the tide has festooned it with.
Then just snip off any roots and it's ready for the steamer.

To accompany it, I'll just be baking some salmon very simply, hence the Le Creuset.

You'll need a nice organic onion.
Slice it up and mind your fingers.

Next up: assemble this lot in a rough stack:
- A lovely wild salmon steak;
- Your sliced onion;
- Some parsley and thyme from the plants on the windowcill;
- A couple of decent knobs of unsalted organic Irish butter;
- The juice of a whole lemon (organic - natch), squeezed over the top.

Simple.

Pre-heat your oven to Gas mark 6 or whatever the equivalent is for electric, parcel up your salmon then pop it in there and check it after fifteen minutes or so. This one took eighteen minutes to achieve perfection.

In the meantime, crank up your steamer for the samphire.
This wants six minutes. No more; no less.

This is what it should look like plated up.
The samphire is at its best swimming in butter and lemon.

If you think asparagus or artichokes have an affinity with butter, then samphire is a million times better. It is what butter was made for, believe me.

Just grab a forkful, dripping with butter, lemon and fishy juices and pop it in your mouth.
If that isn't one of the most fantastic things you have ever tasted, then you don't deserve tastebuds.

Really … samphire fucking rules!

Buy it.
Eat it.
Enjoy!

500 Words - IIa - Your Stories

Wow!
What an awesome response!

I really thought this 500 Words thing would be a little fun exercise between Robyn and Lynn and that nobody else would be interested in having a go, but boy howdy!

You guys are amazing.

And what brilliant results.

I'll post links here to all the stories that come in, so you can check each one out whenever you have a coffee break and comment on one another's.

Here is the sentence (for any latecomers, you should write 500 words including and based on this sentence, which this week is from Nabokov's Lolita):

"And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamour for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze."

And here are the stories so far (in order of submission):

Robyn's "Me and Lo".
A delightfully bittersweet tale of a daughter's fraught road trip south with her elderly and cranky mom.
As usual with Robyn's writing, the dialogue is natural and believable and the little emotional details pin-sharp.

Dive's "Prodigal".
The return of the prodigal (how weird that Old Dive should write an updated Bible story).

Prudence's "Untitled" road trip story.
A great twist toward the end of what could develop into a tragic "noir" tale or a perfect romance … the reader can make up their own mind.

Lynn's "Lo's News".
A very clever and funny subversion of a "classic" story from the twisted, fecund mind of one of our "real" writers.

Lulu's "Lulu and Lola".
A wonderful surprise from our girl of seventeen syllables; what happens when a haiku writer explodes and 500 words spill out.
I must confess that - much as I love all the others - this one just edges it for me on first reading. The Lu and Lo thing, the wry humour, the poet's observational acuity …
All this and Brad Pitt, too.
Wonderful.

Mind you, they've all been wonderful so far, and of course this is not in any way a competition; more a sharing thing and a bit of fun.
If any other stories trickle in I shall add them here.

I have particularly enjoyed the "different strokes for different folks" thang of seeing just where our individual minds wander from a fixed starting point, but I was a little surprised by the similarities of our great - and occasionally twisted - minds thinking alike; the particular words and phrases that are shared between the stories provided not a little amusement.

This sentence was deliberately long and precise and made it pretty difficult to write anything other than a road trip story; the next shall be short and less restrictive (I already know what it is, but that's the privilege of being Official Sentence Setter … hee hee).

What with your wonderful response and the general fun of it all, I have brought things forward a little and shall be announcing the next sentence on Friday, so we can have the weekend to think about it.

Sharpen your pencils …

Addendum:

Neetzy has joined us, too! Yay!

Read Neetzy's "untitled" story here.
It's a tale of a new start (in fact three) that really makes me care for the people she's written about and hope as desperately as them for a happy outcome.
Neetzy's found yet another twist on the road trip genre.
Bittersweet yet full of hope, and beautifully written.

Read Katherine's untitled story here.
A fabulous road trip / acid trip / family hell funfest, chock full of sharp dialogue and nasty, hidden truths.
Katherine is an awesome writer.

500 Words - II

Here we are, back in the beer tent at the 500 Words creative writing funfest.

For any latecomers, the rules - together with Lynn and Robyn's first stories - can be found in the previous post.
Now come on in, sit your butt down, grab a beer and a pen and join in.

As a tease to Lynn and Robyn, I (in my capacity as Official Sentence Setter … yay!) deliberately chose an awkward first sentence from a book they are not likely to read in front of their families; Nabokov's deliciously funny "Lolita".

I ensured the sentence included the name "Lo" to see how they would dodge it, wondering whether Loretta might not make an appearance, but in the event it was Lorraine who turned up.

Robyn and I both wrote road trip stories (pretty difficult to avoid, given the sentence), though Robyn rather cleverly finished her story with the sentence rather than started with it (there's nothing in the rules that says where the sentence has to appear so feel free to put it wherever it suits best).

To read Robyn's story: "Me and Lo", click here.

Robyn's tale is a delight, and I can't help but wonder if a little autobiographical detail might not have crept in there in disguise (she doesn't reveal whether the mother is wearing a hat and a false moustache).
As usual with Robyn's writing, the dialogue is natural and believable and the little emotional details pin-sharp.
I'd sure love to share the journey back home, with the music and beer and maybe a stop at Piggly Wiggly's (I have so got to go there when I get to the US), though the journey south I could definitely do without.

At the time of writing we are still waiting for Lynn's story, but she has been crazily busy getting her photography business up and running (check it out on her blog) and so can be "excused games" on this one.

If anyone else fancies a pop at it you can post your stories any time, but I'll be setting the next sentence early next week if you don't like the feel of this one.

I realise there will be some of you - like me - who have never written anything before and so might be wary of mixing it with Lynn and Robyn and some of our other real writers, so - pour encourager les autres - I have joined in with my own non-writer's attempt at a story:


Prodigal

And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamour for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze.

Now, far ahead, floating way above the horizon lay a blue line that spoke of the Sierras.
Another long day of burning heat stretched ahead of us; the sun blistering the car's ancient paintwork, beating like hammers on the hot metal, baking Lo and Mary and me as the wheezing remains of the air-conditioner sucked our mouths and throats dry of what little moisture we might have hoarded.

I recalled the last time we'd driven west.
Aunt Sarah's funeral.
The shrivelled up faces of relatives I'd not seen in twenty years staring disapprovingly at the boy who'd gone east to make his fortune, now returned like the prodigal in his tired clothes and junkheap car with that pinch-faced woman of his and their poor little girl in hand-me-downs.
Now here we were again, making a final marathon pilgrimage across this vast and unforgiving continent, back to the bosom of my loving family, the sneers and sniffy asides: "I always said he'd come to nothing."

Nothing.
I glanced across at Lo.
My shot at redemption.
She at least would appreciate the weather out here.
I felt a momentary shiver of pleasure in the stifling heat; a fleeting chill of bitter winter winds howling off Lake Michigan, biting at my baby's fingers; fern fronds of frost creeping across the insides of the windows in our dank refrigerator of an apartment.
I almost missed it.
I almost missed the roar and clatter of the el, shaking our restless sleep as we huddled together for warmth.

Warmth …
Here the sun burned the colours from the world.
We sat: me hunched over the wheel, Mary sagging into her seat, drained, Lo leaning forward, her pale grey eyes missing nothing; a mute triumvirate as the parched world rolled by us and the old engine droned.
Here a flyblown motel; a single black dog watching us from the dusty parking lot; an empty pool.
There a trailer set back from the highway; threadbare wire fence corralling a world in miniature; baked clothes limp on a washing line; the rusted corpses of cars littering the yard.

And after all the miles; after all the years; our own trailer and a part-time job for me, stacking shelves in my uncle's store.
My old life …
Lo's new life …

I watched the distant line of the mountains slowly drift downward, knowing that when it finally fell and locked itself to the landscape there would be no turning back, and secretly wishing it would stay, hanging up there in the haze forever.



Feel free to cringe, but do join in yourselves; it's actually quite fun!

Do let me know when you've posted your stories so I can link to them here and we can all enjoy them.

Addendum:

While I was writing this, our Prudence rushed in, waving her own story in front of my eyes.

Here it is.

Woah! I love that twist at the end, Pru, and your wonderful evocation of atmosphere.
And of course I had to giggle at the words and phrases both our stories share.
Great minds (or at least weird ones like ours) do seem to think alike.
I have a feeling these things are going to happen a lot, but that is half the fun of this exercise; seeing different folks' different strokes when we all start from the same place.

Okay, you lot: Robyn and Prudence have thrown down the gauntlet, Lynn is hard on their heels and even I've had a go.

You've no excuses (except Shan … hee hee).

Second Addendum!

Here's Lynn's story.

Oh, my!
You have simply got to check it out.
All I'll say is:
"Hee hee!
Too funny and too clever, Lynn."

What an AWESOME twist on "Lo"!

Excellent stuff all round.

Keep 'em coming!

500 Words - I

A couple of weeks back, Lynn and Robyn put on their writers' hats and got together for a little creative writing exercise.

They picked the book nearest to them and looked up the fifth sentence on the fifty-sixth page then used that as the basis for a five-hundred word short story.

Lynn and Robyn are both real writers so the results were always going to be good and indeed they didn't disappoint.

Here is Lynn's

And here is Robyn's.

Lynn's sentence was:
"The sweat blinded me and in one last purposeful gesture I drew together the threads linking the rhythm of our movements and knotted them in an elegant shimmer of power."

Er … not quite Jane Austin Lynn. What on earth were you reading?

Anyhoo … from that somewhat inauspicious and alarmingly racy start, our Lynn somehow managed to produce a heartwarming tale of love and respect across three generations and at the same time a tug on the conscience for poor, long-suffering Harry.
Lynn's story confirms my own view that men only grow old; they never grow up. Harry is a real delight and the perfectly named Sybil sounds as old and cracked as the Greek Sybils themselves.

There's also a lesson to us all in there about brown trousers.
Wise words, Lynn.

Robyn had a sentence from a Hemingway short story called "Fifty Grand":
"He was wearing an old blue jersey and an old pair of pants and had on boxing shoes."

From this little vignette she wove a story involving a little boy and his parents that was both charming and moving.
Robyn has a wonderful eye for detail and dialogue and in a brief exchange between her characters she told three complete life stories.
She has the knack of all great artists in that she can sketch a few quick strokes and allow the viewer's - or in this case the reader's - eye fill in all the detail almost without them knowing it.

Listen to the three of them talk - the boy, the mother and the father - and you already know them; you know their past lives and their futures, just as you do Harry and Sybil in Lynn's story.

Great writing.

So … how on earth do we follow that lot?
Well, I'll tell you …

Our esteemed ladies have been kind enough to appoint me Official Sentence Setter for a regular creative writing blogfest.

What I shall be doing is setting a sentence every week or two (depending on how busy we are outside Blogville) for Lynn, Robyn and anybody else who wants to join us (this means you) to use as the basis for a short story or essay.

The only rules will be:

- I will set the sentence and there'll be no arguing!

- The story shall be 500 words long … that will usually include the first sentence unless - as this week - it is ludicrously long, so then you can choose whether or not to include it in your word count.

- Post it when you've finished so we can all enjoy it.

That's it for the rules.
Easy, huh?

As you know I have way too many books so I'm not short of an odd sentence or two.
I shall be setting the occasional Shakespearean or Classical sentence so you can write in period style if you fancy … or not, if you don't.
There will probably be other genre pieces, too; maybe a Jane Austen bodice-ripper or a Raymond Chandler hardboiled private dick or any manner of literary oddity.
You can write in the style of the author or completely subvert the genre; whatever the hell you like.

Above all, just enjoy yourelves.
If you don't feel like writing you don't have to, but if the sentence gives you an idea then go for it.

To set you off, I have chosen the first sentence and it is from Nabokov's "Lolita" (yup).
I wanted to test Lynn and Robyn with an awkwardly long sentence that included an odd name, just to see what they come up with.

The sentence is:
"And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamour for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze."

Have a go yourselves.
So that you won't feel embarrassed, I've joined in too and shall post my own effort tomorrow.
I am DEFINITELY not a writer of any kind (as a writer I make a pretty good musician) so it's gonna be pretty awful, but at least Robyn and Lynn will post their own stories and I'll feature them here together with any others who might feel tempted to join us.

Now get writing and have fun!

WTF Monday

Click on the photo to see what it plays.

Go on … I dare you.

Katie And Dive Do Southwold - Pt.2

Fish For Sale.

Yay!
Just as well, because all the walking in the last post made us hungry.

So here we are at Darren's wonderful emporium (somewhere you will often bump into mum and Mad Aunt Janet, as well as me): the inestimably splendid Sole Bay Fish Company, situated right on the fish dock of the harbour.

What shall we have, I wonder?

Ooooh … I do love a good wet-fish counter, though judging by its expression the fish at the top of Katie's picture doesn't share my enthusiasm.

As the old music hall song goes:
"She was only the fishmonger's daughter,
But she always had a wet plaice for me …"
Ahem.

Southwold's Sole Bay is famous not only for staging one of the most hideous and blood-soaked naval battles ever fought, where the Royal Navy went head to head against the Dutch in what Pepys described the next day as "floating slaughterhouses" until so few were left alive that they had to call it a draw and limp home, but it is also the home of the best Dover Sole on the planet.
Here is the morning's catch, fresh and glistening and mouth-wateringly delicious.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm …

However, having no means to cook fish and other places to visit before we went home we plumped for plump, fresh, juicy cockles with a side order of crayfish tails.

Which we proceeded to demolish right there on the fish dock, driving the local seagulls crazy.

And afterward, we promenaded lazily back across the marsh and up the hill into town.
If you click on the photo to enlarge it you can just make out the lighthouse in the distance here.
That's where we are headed.

Here's the town sign, where the English and Dutch men'o'war are still firing broadside after broadside into one another.
Within sight of this sign is Adnams' brewery (finest in the world, according to me … and most other members of the Campaign for Real Ale), one of whose beers is called Broadside in honour of the battle and is - appropriately - a real skullcracker.

We finished our lunchtime repast with yummy (and allegedly nutritious) organic ice creams.

And then headed for one of my favourite watering holes: the Sole Bay Inn.

From the front door, you look out over Sole Bay itself from the top of the cliff, and being only a hundred yards from the brewery the beer is totally awesome!

Here is Katie about to get her first taste of the finest liquid available to humanity, "Adnams bitter".
I grew up on it and will always love its distinctive flavour of river water and old tin.
Honestly, it's won more awards than most other beers put together and is the real ale drinkers' real ale.

Katie's verdict:
"It needs to be served cold."

Ah, well … You can take the girl out of America but you can't take America out of the girl.
I shall do my utmost to educate her. I promise.

Here's the view from Katie's seat, which kinda makes up for the beer being served at precisely the correct temperature.
Click on this one for some bonus "gnarly old fisherman" action down in the bottom left corner.

So … replete, happy and with our breath an intriguing mix of cockles, ice cream and beer, we headed off, back past the quaint fishermen's cottages …

… past the Regency splendour …

… and past the David Hasselhoff Fan Club …

Until our next visit, Southwold continues its picturesque journey at its own speed.

Katie And Dive Do Southwold - Pt.1

Ooooh … What's down here?

Other than a road full of rhododendrons …

Yay! It's Katie!
Er … climbing over the car park wall to save walking miles.

We were going to send this to Cynthia with a note reading: "Help! I'm being held captive, chained by the ankle to a beach hut." but thought better of it.

Katie certainly got fit that day though, dragging the beach hut around behind her.

Anyhoo …
Here we are in sunny Southwold, braving a bitterly cold nor-easterly gale while some idiot children run around on the beach.
The sea that day was about half a degree above freezing, so not even those damned fool kids ventured into it.

You've seen the pier before, including the men peeing in the bathtub, so we'll skip that and wander right out to the very end where Katie has found the thing that keeps Johnny Hun from starting another war: our rather home-made looking Death Ray that we keep permanently pointed at Germany.

Er … Better not tell the CIA about that, they'll only want one.

The pier is where Katie and I found our future selves, sleeping off yet another carnival of frenzied debauchery.

And Katie showed how much better she is than me with a camera. Pretty, huh?

Er … did we mention we kinda fell in love?

Here is our previous attempt at deterrence … somewhat surreally used to kill Dutch folk in the late 1600s. I never understood why. Dutch people are lovely.

The red brick house - after the last Southwold posts - is now known forever as "Lynn's House".
I'm sure they'd give it to you if you only asked, Lynn.

Aha! It's those frisky merfolk with their bouncy boobies, enticing lusty sailors into the dirty habit of literacy.

There are some glorious sailing ship models in the Reading Room, together with a veritable cornucopia of seafaring gallimaufry.
Spiffing!

Here's the little house where we holidayed when I was a nipper. You'll have to go read the "Coast" posts for more about that.

And just opposite it, in the dunes, was this reminder of one of our very own Blogville neighbours.
Hi, Lupine Lady! We saw this and thought of you.

I took two shots of the sailing regatta through the beach huts but they were both crap compared to Katie's (which this is).
She not only collects postcards but appears to photograph them, too.

Wherever you go in the world, you will inevitably run up against a polite little Japanese gentleman with a camera who will offer to take your photograph.

ありがとうございました。

This is my current desktop on my big Mac.

And there we shall take a little breather in the fresh air at the end of the harbour jetty, before heading off to lunch in the next post.

Toodle pip!

WTF Monday

Does anyone else feel peckish?

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.