Les Paul, The Guitar, The Man, The Legend

Here's a good bio/obit of LP from the AP. Les Paul Dies at 94.


Yours-Truly with Vanessa, one of my 3 LPs.

Soul of '69

'Stock Stage '69: Santana Sacrificing with his Serpentine SG Special

There's a lot of coverage going on right now of the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. There were some great and historic performances of course -- Hendrix, The Who, CSNY, Sly, Janis, and more. But there was one that for me has always stood out. Not only is it my favorite performance from the festival, I think it's one of the most electrifying performances in rock history. Thankfully, it was captured on film.

Santana!

Soul Sacrifice!

The band was tripping their socks off, and you can tell! Carlos is on fire, teetering right on the edge of losing control. He has famously said that he was hallucinating so hard, he thought his guitar was a snake. He literally couldn't feel the stage under his feet. Yep - playing a snake while hovering - there's one for the ages.

And the raw spitfire tone of his SG Special and its P90s will raise the hair on the back of your neck.

The percussionists, Greg Rolie on B3, the teenage Michael Shreve on drums; it all came together in a red-hot explosion of Latin rock. Transcendence was achieved by Carlos and company on that muddy day in Bethel. If you can't feel this energy, you have no soul to sacrifice.

If you don't believe me, dig the clip, baby!

Soul Sacrifice on YouTube

And whatever you do, STAY AWAY FROM THE BROWN ACID!

Here's a great little article on Gibson's web-site written by my old friend Ted Drozdowski. "The SGs of Woodstock"

Tres Hombres Revisited!

On my new quest for vinyl, I have now received a few records, including U2’s 20th Anniversary pressing of “The Joshua Tree”. Nice. But the one I'm rockin' out to the most is ZZ Top's 1973 masterwork, “Tres Hombres”, re-cut from the original analog masters and pressed on to 180 gram audiophile vinyl.

I grew up in Texas and Billy Gibbons was my guitar God. I don't know how many copies of "Tres Hombres" I wore out trying to get his licks as a kid. To this day his earlier work (pre "Eliminator", pre MTV, pre 24-inch beard) may be my favorite rock guitar of all. I mean the guy plays like a mean motor-scooter, mama! That blues-driven, amp’d-up style is overdosed with Texas hot sauce. Mmmmm doggie!

Billy’s guitar sounds and the way they recorded and layered them were ahead of their time, and still my favorite tones other than Hendrix. Gibbons could pluck chimey, bell-like chords from a Strat or milk his vintage “Pearly Gates” Les Paul for every sonic color she had. He was one of the inventors of the "thick" tone; the "fat" sound. False harmonics, right-hand hammer-ons and pick-dives were new tricks in the early ‘70’s. He took the syrupy “Woman Tone”, established by guys like Clapton, Peter Green and Duane Allman, and added a searing harmonic liveness, like a high-voltage wire with too much juice coursing through it. You knew sparks could fly at any moment.

The Reverend Preacheth: A Nudie-Suited Billy with Pearly, 1975

So I play this record, and my jaw drops. Frank’s kick-drum socks you right in the solar-plexus, Dusty’s bass lays down the bad-ass eighth notes, and Billy’s guitar scorches. Chunky! And again, I’m listening to an all-analog signal path. Hearing the original master like this makes me really respect the recording engineers at Brian Studio in Texas and Memphis’s legendary Ardent.

The songs? Well, this is simply the most bodacious, bluesy batch of Texican tunes ever tracked, inviting us to get low-down and boogie, y’all! The LP opens with the righteous “Waitin’ For The Bus”, then busts in to the smoky, “Jesus Just Left Chicago”, a track that showcases Billy’s prowess on the Fender Strat. Then comes a helpin’ o’ “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers”, whose hair-raising solo is Billy G. at his blistering best. It’s arguably the best recorded solo of the Reverend’s illustrious career, and it still rips my head off every time.

Side two opens with “Move Me on Down the Line”, one of those long-gone lost and forgotten album cuts. It’s a surprisingly tasty little nugget of straight-up rock. And of course, buried in the middle of side two is…yes, “LaGrange”, the monstrous, monumental hit about the best little whore house in Texas. It’s a Muddy Waters riff on trucker speed and mezcal. Still love it! The opening chord riff is plucked while Gibbons mumbles (it has been reported that this was the scratch vocal, recorded by the talk-back mic while he was doing the basic guitar), followed by the big, bad chuggin’ train thang. The trio is incredibly tight here. I still admire how the first solo is a Strat and the second is the Pearly Gates Les Paul. It’s like havin’ a first course of brisket and a second of ribs.

“Tres Hombres” spins its Tall Texas Tales like a twister in a trailer-park. It’s a true Rock Hall of Famer, at least in my book.

I’ll never apologize (to Pearly or anyone else) for lovin’ that Li’l Old Band from Texas! Have Mercy!

Gibbons Gets A-Low Down 'n' Dirty!

Fathom This, Baby!

I CD I poured my heart and soul in to engineering/mixing and co-producing was recently released. "Fathom This!" is the first release in nearly a decade by Boston's Daddies of Surf Instro music, The Fathoms. I had worked with them back in '95 or '96; then we started this in '05 -- 10 years later. It took a while to get it done and even longer for the label -- Cali's MuSick Records -- to release it. But it's out and I hope everybody likes it as much as I do. I listen to it in my car regularly. It's great driving music. Twang guitar God Frankie Blandino and company have created much more than a Surf LP. "Fathom This" ranges from Surf, Spy Jazz, Western film and TV themes to, I guess you'd call it '60's Brit-influenced Beat music. There's even a "Bike-Sploitation" track, ala Davie Allan and the 60's drive-in biker-bash vibe. Sax-master Dave Scholl and Mariachi Trumpeter Tom Halter make wonderful cameo appearances.
We recorded it at my Altitude Studios and then mixed it at my house in the Flying Scotsman room.
Go to Amazon, order "Fathom This!" and ride a reverb-splashed wave!

Ghost Harmonics

Well, I have to start with something, right? I have so much I want to post, that deciding where to begin is hard. So I went to some recent posts of mine on Gearslutz and pretty much randomly grabbed one.

It's choice was not quite random, truth-be-told. I have been listening to a couple CDs I engineered and produced back in '90 and '91 by a band called Anastasia Screamed. This was a very unusual, adventurous band. You could almost call them Avant Garde, and definitely ahead of their time (Pre Nirvana "Never Mind"). The sound-scape we created was that of noisy but flowery guitars, sometimes harmonically beautiful, sometimes clashing and dis-cordant.

http://www.anastasiascreamed.com/index_flash.html
http://www.myspace.com/anastasiascreamed23

We layered electrics (primarily Fenders) and acoustics over multiple tracks. Like, the two guitar-players would both play on the basic track along with the drums and bass, and then I'd have the two of them both do an overdub pass at the same time, often playing different parts and guitars than they had played on the basic. So in two passes we had created four electric tracks. Then we'd do leads and acoustic guitars, feedback tracks, the occasional slide guitar part, and even a dulcimer or mandolin track on a song or two.

The guitar mics we used were SM57, Senn 421, Beyer M500 ribbon (my secret weapon back then, before the whole ribbon revival), and even some very nice vintage condensers, like Neumann U67, M49 and AKG C12. Pres were usually API 512B, along with the desk pres from a Trident 80B and a Neve V. Compression, when used, was usually my standard choice, the Teletronix Urei LA-3A. Nice gear huh? Recording guitar is my love and my specialty anyway, so I was in hog-heaven. And these guys were good players, albiet unorthodox. Funny thing was, they could play everything from country to blues to jazz to Led Zepplin if they felt like it. But their original songs sounded like all of those influneces spun together in some psychedelic Osterizer. The result was challenging alternative rock music, which some might even consider an acquired taste.

So I'm driving around in my car the last couple days, listening to these CDs for the first time in 1o years, and really enjoying what I was hearing, especially the guitars. And knowing full-well there were many guitar tracks, I was hearing sounds-- voices, bells, organs, etc --that I know were NOT part of the recording. And this time I was sober as a judge, unlike when we were creating the recordings. Let's just say there was a lot of "magic" happening in the studio then.

Which brings me to the Gearslutz post:
http://gearslutz.com/board/
Replying to a guy who was hearing a "phone ring" in a mix he was working on.

Phones, choir voices, horns, acoustic guitars, harps, angels...If you DON'T hear those things in your mixes you are unusual. I noticed it much more in the all-analog days, but when all those instruments combine they create overtones and bell-like sounds that become a sounds in-and-of themselves. We called 'em "Ghost Harmonics". I remember one time we were mixing this tune and suddenly this keyboard string kinda synth part just appeared out of nowhere. There were no keys on the tracks. All guitars and vocals. When we played the finished mix for the artist, they actually thought we had added a keyboard part. Nope. Overtones.