1990 A.D.

 

That year is now 31 years past.  But it’s one of the more eventful ones I can remember.

 New Year’s Eve, 1989-90.  I spent this in Paris, France.  There was a girl named Mo (short for Maureen?  I never found out – or her last name) who I met at GMU, spring break 1987, and in Paris at the Air Show in 1989, who invited me to celebrate with her sister, in her sister’s tiny apartment.  Nothing happened, and I barely even drank.  At six a.m. the sister claimed her BF would be showing up – he might have been a Marine, I don’t remember as I never met him – and I went home.  Except at that time the Paris Metro was closed.  So I had to walk, from St. Paul/Le Marais, all the way home.  I walked along Rue de Rivoli westbound as far as Place de la Concorde (guillotine long gone), took a right to the Madeleine (Catholic church designed like a huge Greek temple) and then went up Blvd. Malesherbes (est. 1861) to home.

 21.  When I got back to Maryland from Paris, I reached 21 years old, finally able to legally drink and use my driver’s license as my ID. 

 LSAT scores.  The equivalent of SATs, but for law school, is the LSAT.  Back then the top score was 48.  Coming back from Paris in late August 1989, to begin my senior year at UMCP, I didn’t have enough time to study for the September 1989 LSAT exam, so I had to take the December exam, doing my LSAT prep at White Flint Mall in October and November.  However, I was sending out my law school applications, to all the top tier law schools in the US, around the same time, so I was sending them without the benefit of knowing my LSAT score.  I returned to Paris after the semester break started, shortly before Christmas.   When I got back in mid-January, my mail was waiting for me: including my LSAT results.   37 out of 48, well below the 42 necessary to be competitive for top tier law schools, and no time to take it again (in any case they average the scores of multiple tests instead of taking the highest one). 

 So I started my spring semester of my senior year: Production Management, International Marketing, Business & Government, Business Policies, and Comparative (Economic) Systems.  By this point I had a single in Montgomery Hall, on campus at University of Maryland, College Park.  I got along fine with the other guys in my suite, for once.  I’ll spare everyone the litany of horrendous experiences, but suffice to say that living on campus among strangers gives you a form of education well beyond the classes themselves.    

 Marshall combo.  I purchased my Marshall 2554 Jubilee 1x12” 25/50 watt combo from Chuck Levin’s in Wheaton, Maryland.  Finally a decent amp to go with my Gibson SG and my Fender Stratocaster.  I still have it today, and it still sounds terrific:  a warm, full bodied overdrive.  The Jubilee series amps have a knockdown switch which makes it even nastier and hotter.  In fact, Guns N’Roses lead guitarist Slash liked the sound so much he had Marshall reissue them in his own signature series.  Later, Marshall reissued them again, the reissues recognizable as having only two front switches.  With our fixation on stacks, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that combos (A) can be VERY loud, (B) can sound VERY nice, especially since the amp section is the same design as the one in the 50 and 100 watt heads, and (C) are considerably more practical if you’re playing at home.  Depending on your neighbors, even a 50 watt combo can get loud enough to elicit noise complaints. 

 Spring Break.   Not spent in Fort Lauderdale – in fact, none of them were.  Georgetown was the first law school to let me know I would not be attending in fall, politely wishing me luck…somewhere else.  I visited Chuck Levin’s again, and saw the newly issued 1976 Reissue Gibson Explorer (itself a reissue of the 1958 Explorer, though in a color other than korina): black, with a white pickguard and Dirty Fingers pickups; these high output, exposed coil humbuckers were another departure from the PAFs which a 1958 would have had.  NICE.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

 April.  As the rejections from Harvard, Duke, etc. continued to pour in, my father in his wisdom advised me to hedge my bets by applying to second-tier law schools:  George Mason (now Antonin Scalia), Catholic, and American.  Sure enough, I got into all three, but didn’t get into any of the top tier schools to which I had applied – not even GW or U. Maryland Law (in Baltimore).  I chose GMUSL, which had a corporate and securities specialty track, which was unique among law schools at the time. 

 May.  By this time I decided to buy the Explorer.  The I one wanted was sold out from under me, so the store simply ordered another one from Gibson, and it came two weeks later.   I still have it today, the oldest of my current arsenal.  Later on I replaced the white pickguard with a mirror pickguard, and the Gibson Dirty Fingers pickups with EMG81s – as per James Hetfield of Metallica, though by now he has his own signature pickups from EMG. 

 Classes ended around Memorial Day.  My buddy Phil and I took a road trip to Ocean City for the weekend, only to find it was raining – and would be for the entire weekend.  So we drove back, saw “Back to the Future III”, which had just came out that weekend, and then Honor Among Thieves at Hammerjacks in Baltimore. 

 June.  Back in fall 1986 I had purchased a Japanese made Fender Stratocaster (black, rosewood fretboard), to replace my Strat copy.  But later I decided to sell both and buy a US-made ’62 Vintage Reissue model (black, rosewood fretboard).  I handed both over to my guitar teacher in Paris, Joel, who sold them for me.  I used that money to buy the US Fender Stratocaster, also at Chuck Levin’s, that summer when my parents visited in town briefly.  In January 2000 I traded that in for my current Stratocaster, a Mexican model with a humbucker in the bridge position, black pickguard and pickup covers, rosewood fretboard, and large 70s style headstock.  I’ve since modified it with locking tuners, a DiMarzio zebra coil humbucker, and a V-Runner tremelo. 

 June-July.  Summer Session I.  COBOL and Money & Banking.  Normally my senior year would finish at Memorial Day, the end of the spring semester.  I was on a double degree track, 156 credits.  Part of that was accomplished by taking both summer sessions after my sophomore year in 1988, meaning that summer I did not go back to Paris.  The other part was doing two things.  First, I’d be highly selective in course choices, picking classes which satisfied multiple requirements.  Second, I frontloaded any classes which were prerequisites for later courses, and left dead end classes until last.  That was COBOL (the programming language used for payroll systems) and Money and Banking.  Had I not been so clever, I might have needed the fall semester of the fifth year to finish the 156 credit curriculum, putting law school off until fall 1991.  Again, the way things worked, I was able to finish college that summer and start law school in the fall. 

 I stayed on summer campus housing again, New Leonardtown – as I had during 1988 – but this time I only needed the first summer session. On July 14, I flew back, overnight, to Paris.  [July 14, 1989 I spent in Paris enjoying the bicentennial of Bastille Day].

 From 7/15 to 8/1, I was back in Paris for the last time.  I can’t recall much of what I did, aside from Roscoe’s, FNAC, the US Embassy, i.e. the usual places I’d go.  My father was finally being reassigned back to Washington, the Dept. of Commerce building on Fourteenth Street and Constitution Ave (Herbert Hoover Building, with the National Aquarium in the basement, which has since closed).  This was ending 11 years in Paris, since January 1979. 

 We still owned our family house in Montgomery Village, rented out to tenants that entire time despite several even-year visits back.  Since we were only visiting for six weeks every other summer, as my father noted it made no sense to kick tenants out for those brief periods of time when a house is rented on a yearly basis.  The flip side was that whoever was doing the property management all that time dropped the ball big time.  The house was a mess, a prime candidate for withholding the security deposit.  My family was due to return at the end of August, with the sea shipment of furniture to arrive in mid-September.  So I had a month to do my best, with my friend Phil’s enormous help, to undo the damage of 11 years of consistent neglect.  I recall sleeping on an air mattress during that time and had the entire house to myself.  I watched “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” on VHS, rented from Erol’s.  The Village Mall had disappeared, turned into an outdoor strip mall.  And the lessons Phil learned with my experience helped him when his family moved to India but kept their house in Sterling, Virginia; he was able to act as property manager.    

 In 1984 my parents purchased a studio/efficiency in Rosslyn, on the Virginia side of Key Bridge from Georgetown, a four building co-op complex called River Place.  In 1986, our whole family stayed there – two adults, two teenage boys (my brother and I) and our 11 year old sister, in a one-room studio apartment.  Now it was time for me to live there myself.  Having lived on campus all four years of college, and at home up until that point (Maryland and Paris) this was my first place alone.  I stayed there from September 1990 to October 2004, when I moved to the place I live in now.  From 1994, when he returned from Memphis, TN until 1998, when he moved in with his wife in Chantilly, my brother Matt lived with me there too.   So for my entire adult life, I’ve lived in exactly two places outside home or college.

 River Place was nice – it had its own pool.  The Rosslyn Metro was just blocks away.  Key Bridge was likewise down the street, meaning Georgetown as well, if you didn’t mind a bit of walking.  In January 1996, I saw Motorhead at the Bayou, a club down under the Whitehurst Freeway.  When I walked to the show, the neighborhood was clear and dry.  When the show ended, the whole place was covered in 3 feet of snow.  No vehicle traffic at all, nor any snowplows.  Leaving aside snow, Rosslyn features I-66 coming in from Fairfax, Route 50, Route 29, and the GW Parkway, all in the same place.  Now I’ve seen pictures and drawings of Aqueduct Bridge, which Key Bridge replaced in 1923.  For a long time there was literally nothing at all in Rosslyn.  Then for some time from the 20s up to a few decades ago, Rosslyn was a rundown, dangerous red light district (gambling and prostitution, maybe some violent crime thrown in as well).  By the time I arrived it had cleaned up, and even featured Tom Sarris’ Steakhouse, now gone.  The Iwo Jima Memorial is right across Route 50 from River Place. 

 George Mason University began in the 1950s as the state university of Virginia in northern Virginia, University of Virginia (UVa) itself being down in Charlottesville, southwest of Richmond, and Virginia Tech being in Blacksburg, over on the I-81 corridor on the way to Roanoke.  It soon became a four year college, then a proper university, with graduate programs.  Around 1981 it acquired the International School of Law, and renamed it the George Mason University School of Law.  By 1990 it was in the former Kann’s Department store on Fairfax Drive in Arlington.  After I graduated, in 2000, it moved next door to a new, purpose-built building, with the old building fenced off, now being demolished to make way for another school building, presumably not with escalators. 

 Law school was a much more intense animal than college.   Everyone had to be an excellent student just to get in, whereas UMCP had quite a few slackers.  This hit me with a grading curve producing C’s, whereas B’s were rare for me at UMCP.  A fellow UMCP grad, Ira Mirsky, was there as well, though we weren’t close friends back at College Park.  A closer friend was John Greenside, who I knew from GMU undergrad, one of Phil’s best friends.  These days he’s married with children and is a successful attorney down in Virginia Beach.  Anyhow:  we had assigned seats, and the professor had a seating chart and would call on you by name.  None of this college business of disappearing in a crowded lecture hall.  First semester was Torts, Property, Contracts, Quantitative Methods, and Legal Writing.  I had Robert Bork for Constitutional Law in second year.  Welcome also the Socratic Method, wherein the professor gets us to examine cases and determine exactly WHY they were decided – what the material issues were in the case.  Regardless of what states we would eventually go off to practice in as attorneys after graduating and passing the bar, law school would teach us the basic principles which applied everywhere, and the basic thought processes and logic which lawyers would use as such.  It was far more than the mere black letter law, so to speak.  Anyone can open up a statute book and read a statute, or look up a case, either in the volumes, on LEXIS, or online these days.  It takes a lawyer to see the bigger picture, to spot the issues, to recognize the core issues involved in a particular situation.  This is what we learn in law school, why those three years and that J.D. are so important.

I might also add:  to practice law, you have to have a bar license.  To get a bar license, you have to pass the bar exam (except for Wisconsin).  To even TAKE the bar exam, you need a law degree from a reputable law school, or the foreign equivalent.  “Reading the law”, an apprenticeship arrangement, is a thing of the past.  We had paralegals at the law school who figured they might as well take the extra step and get that law degree and take the bar.  Some states allow attorneys who have passed other bar exams and practiced as an attorney to “waive in” without taking and passing their own bar exams.  I passed the Maryland and Virginia bar exams, and waived in to D.C. and New York.    

 In December 1990 I actually went back to College Park for my graduation ceremony from University of Maryland. I didn’t attend the general ceremony at Byrd Stadium, but did attend the college-specific ceremonies, both on the same day, at Cole Field House.  Technically I graduated on August 28, which was how I could start law school at GMUSL for the fall 1990 term. 

 Concerts.  The year started off with The Cult, on their Sonic Temple tour, at the Baltimore Arena on February 8.  That and Electric are my favorite albums.  Setlist Wiki does not have that particular show’s setlist.  Then it was Ace Frehley at Hammerjacks, in March, also in Baltimore.  In November, at the Cap Centre (Landover, Maryland), we saw AC/DC on The Razor’s Edge tour.  I seem to recall being in the bathroom when “Thunderstruck” opened the set.  Finally was seeing Hawkwind, with my buddy Dave, at the old 930 Club in DC, back when it was at 930 F Street and a fraction of its current size over on V Street.  Despite being closely after Xenon Codex, they didn’t play anything from that album, nor was there much focus on Lemmy era (Space Ritual) material, most of it being late 70s stuff I hadn’t yet heard by that point.    

Fender Stratocaster (Revisited)

 

Here was a topic I covered back in 2006, when my blog was on Myspace.  The earlier blog entries such as that one didn’t make the transition to Blogger, so I’ll redo it. 

Just this last Tuesday, I took my Gibson SG to the guitar shop in Falls Church, Virginia, Action Music, for a setup (restring, intonation, etc.) and saw they had various Stratocasters and a Twin Reverb amp.  A week or so before, I’d visited Fox Music – within walking distance, down Lee Highway, of Action Music – and saw they also had several Stratocasters – brand new (!) – as well as a Twin Reverb.  

Before I go on about Stratocasters, I’ll comment briefly on the Twin Reverb.  I’m a Marshall guy, with a 2554 Jubilee 25/50 watt combo (1x12”) and a Dual Reverb (4100) 100 watt head, 1960AV 4x12” cabinet half stack.  I love the rich, full distortion sound.   But for an amp with “reverb” in its name, the Dual Reverb (JCM900) has an extremely weak reverb sound, practically nonexistent.  A few years ago I tried out the Fender amp at Guitar Center, out of pure curiosity, and the reverb was incredible.  If there’s an amp that makes a clean sound good, it’s that one.  They started out at 85 watts, Fender boosted it to 130 watts, and then dropped it back down to 85.  If I ever wind up with another $1000 to spare, I might well buy one.  Not today.

To make matters even more interesting, marginally so, I put off finishing up the blog until after I’d done what I had to on Friday, which included a trip to Fairfax County’s courthouse.  I swung by the Fairfax location of Guitar Center, now re-opened, as it’s listed as the only Northern Virginia authorized Rickenbacker dealer.  Sure enough, high up in the rafters is a 4003 bass, and off to the side is a used Ritchie Blackmore signature Stratocaster: white, black pickups, scalloped rosewood fretboard and large headstock – for $949.  Of all the signature models, his is my favorite.  But I prefer my own Stratocaster, modified over the years (2000 to present) to my own specifications.

History.   Up until the 1930s, there were no electric guitars, only acoustic.  In the ‘30s, pickups – the electromagnetic device which captures the strings’ sound so they can be amplified - were invented, and slapped on acoustic guitars.  However, two men, Les Paul and Leo Fender, realized that a guitar with pickups doesn’t need an acoustic chamber and can, in fact, be simply a solid plank of wood.  Les Paul developed his own model, brought it to Gibson, but they laughed at him.  Leo Fender, oddly enough not a musician himself, developed the Telecaster (originally called the Broadcaster) and his invention, the first solid body electric guitar, introduced in 1948, was a hit.  Gibson realized their mistake and brought back Les Paul, who gave them the guitar which bears his name, in 1952.  In 1954, Fender upped the game with an improved model, the Stratocaster.

Initially the Stratocaster had three single coil pickups, a tremelo/vibrato bar, and was available in two color sunburst with a maple neck (to my eyes, a pale yellow).  By the late 50s, solid colors (e.g. black) became available; in 1959 the rosewood (dark brown) fretboard was introduced.   By 1965, Fender was in bad health and sold his company to CBS, the TV network.  That company enlarged the headstock, a design which lasted from 1966 to 1981.  Since then the standard headstock has been small, with various reissue models available.  The Strat also became available with double coil pickups (aka humbuckers), which are usually associated with Gibsons. 

Single vs. Double Coil.  Single coil pickups are thinner, more of a twangier sound, whereas double coil pickups have a thicker, meatier sound.  However, overdriven sufficiently, even an otherwise insubstantial single coil bridge pickup will sound almost as nasty as a humbucker.  Jimmy Page likes to remind people that the classic sunburst Les Paul he’s so often associated with, wasn’t on his agenda until Led Zeppelin II, and the first Led Zeppelin album, including “Dazed and Confused”, was recorded on the Telecaster he was using in the Yardbirds. 

Famous Players.   Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Blackmore, Eric Clapton, Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, David Gilmour, Dave Murray, Don Felder, Uli Roth, Yngwie Malmsteen, among many others.  Hendrix took right handed Stratocasters, flipped them over, and played them left handed (although there were lefthanded Stratocasters by then). 

Vs. Telecaster.  I never liked the Telecaster and have never even played one.  The lack of an upper horn, the headstock shape, etc., it still looks like Leo’s first practice attempt at a solid body electric guitar, which is what it was. 

Vs. Gibson.  As noted below, most of my guitars are Gibsons, which is Fender’s main US competitor.  Fender can and does put double coils on Strats, and Gibson has its own single coil pickup, the P90, which went on Les Pauls before the humbucker came out, and continues to feature on Specials and Juniors.  I like both companies’ guitars, and see no reason why anyone’s collection has to be exclusively Fenders or Gibsons absent budget constraints or an arbitrary preference.   

My Strats.  By now I’ve had several of my own.  I have 5 guitars: 4 Gibsons (Firebird, Explorer, SG, and Les Paul) and one Strat.  I’m not inclined to acquire more than one of any model, but rather pick what I consider the best version of that model, and the Stratocaster is yet another example.  So my progression was as follows…

1.         Applause Stratocaster Copy.  In September 1985, following my brother’s cue, I started learning to play guitar: first song I learned was “Saints & Sinners”, by Whitesnake.  And almost immediately I fixated on the Stratocaster.  But US made versions were expensive, and I had only just learned to play.  So I worked at the Visa Section of the US Embassy in Paris over Christmas holiday 1985-86 – under the guidance of a French guy, Bernard, who turned me onto Hawkwind - and in January 1986 I bought this.  Cherry sunburst with a maple neck.  Not great sounding, and the only “Strat” I ever had with a maple neck, but I was happy for awhile.

** Copies.  I may as well address this issue here.  The Stratocaster may well be the most copied guitar in the world.  In addition to faithful copies like my Applause, companies such as Ibanez, Jackson, and even Gibson have produced Strat-shaped guitars by the thousands.  Our own first guitar was an Ibanez Roadstar II, black with three single coil pickups.  I’d just as soon have a real Stratocaster, even if it was made in Mexico and not ‘Merica (California).  As Fender’s quality control went up and down over the years, some feel that there are many copies which exceed Fender’s quality.  Maybe, maybe not.  That being the case, I’ve never owned a Squier, which is Fender’s budget brand. 

2.         Fender Stratocaster (made in Japan).  By fall 1986 I was at college, University of Maryland, College Park.  My parents agreed to buy me this for Christmas 1986.  It was a Fender Stratocaster, made in Japan, black, rosewood fretboard, small headstock with standard logo.  It had a locking tremelo.  I liked it, and considered it a major improvement over the copy.  Eventually, though, I wanted a US made model.

3.         Fender Stratocaster, ’62 Vintage Reissue (made in the US).  I gave my Jap Strat and my Strat copy to my guitar teacher, Joel, who sold them for me, in June 1990.  I used the money to buy this, a US-made reissue model:  black, rosewood fretboard, three single coil pickups, small headstock with “spaghetti” (pre-CBS) logo.  Very nice, much better than the Jap Strat.  I made no modifications to this.  By January 1990 I had purchased my first Marshall, the 1x12” tube combo, 2554 Jubilee edition, so I had a nice combination – in addition to the Gibson SG ’62 reissue I’d bought in May 1989. 

4.         Fender Stratocaster, Fat Strat Deluxe (made in Mexico).  My current model.  By summer 1999 I’d fallen in love with the larger, CBS-style headstock, and saw this at the Ozzfest:  black, black pickguard, humbucker in the bridge position, rosewood fretboard, and the large headstock.  By January 2000 I succeeded in trading in my Vintage Reissue model for this – at Guitar Center in Seven Corners - and have been happy ever since.  I replaced the stock humbucker with a DiMarzio Tone Zone zebra coil (one black, one, white), replaced the stock tuners with locking tuners – just pull the string through and it catches, and stays in tune better than stock tuner – and the standard Fender tremelo with a Super Vee Blade Runner.  Pepper Keenan, in DOWN, can be seen playing what looks like one in the live video, “Diary of a Mad Band”.   Humbuckers on a Strat?  Yep, some of us like it that way, especially through a Marshall….

Aesthetics

I suppose aesthetics is officially defined as “the philosophy of beauty”, in my book it’s more along the line of “what I consider attractive, regardless of function or practicality”.   The particular application is regard to items which I think have some inherent beauty, at least in my own subjective opinion.

Guns.  I managed to acquire a Springfield Armory Saint, which is a very recent issue of the ever-popular AR15.  The AR15 is the civilian, semi-automatic version of the US military’s famous M16.   Over the years, since its introduction in the early 60’s in our controversial war in Vietnam, the military’s version has undergone several different models.

The original M16 was full auto and had a triangular handguard, that plastic thing in between the magazine (thing which carries all the ammo) and the end of the rifle.  The M16 had various problems, one of which was that the military couldn’t leave Stoner’s original design alone, and these problems were mostly fixed in the first change, the M16A1.   This model still had a triangular handguard.  Both fired full automatic, meaning automatic so long as the trigger is held.  It had a semi-automatic mode  as well.

Eventually the Army realized that soldiers were wasting ammo firing full auto and changed the gun to fire three round bursts.  This was the M16A2.  This model has a cylindrical handguard. 

Eventually they shortened it and gave it a pistol grip under the handguard, and named this the M16A4. 

Back in the early 90s I purchased an AR15, which I later sold.  This one looked exactly like an M16A2, with a 20” barrel and cylindrical handguard.   My Saint has a 16” barrel and a newfangled handguard which actually looks pretty cool.

The “aesthetic” angle comes in here, insofar as I consider both the M16/M16A1 attractive, as I do the M16A2 and the Saint.  One thing I can’t stand is this:  many current AR15s have a weird handguard that looks like it belongs on Playstation or XBOX.  Not sure where they came up with that, but Springfield fixed that problem.  All of these guns fire exactly the same, the aesthetics making no practical difference.   But I can leave my Saint out in the open and love the way it looks, without even firing it.

Mausers.  These are the most famous bolt-actions.   The original Gewehr 98, introduced in time for the Germans to get nasty against the Chinese in the Boxer Rebellion, then serving as the standard rifle of the Imperial German Army during WWI, is relatively long and has a straight bolt.  It’s an attractive gun.   The carbine I felt looks too short.   In 1935 the Germans split the difference between the two with the Kar98K, which served as the main infantry weapon of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS during WWII.   In addition to being shorter than the Gewehr 98 and longer than the carbine, it has a turned down bolt.  I purchased one in the 90s and still have it.  That’s another gun I could simply look at and admire without even shooting, though the picture above is a Gewehr 98. 

I also love the look of the Russian PPSh submachinegun with its wood stock, drum magazine and square holed barrel shroud.  These faced the Nazis in WWII but then faced us in Korea when the Chinese and North Koreans used them.  According to my cousin, my uncle tried using one – during his service in 1950-53 (not with a M*A*S*H unit!) - until he attracted friendly fire from neighboring US units.  Oops. 

Cars.   Recently I posted pictures of the ’71-74 AMC Javelin.  That’s the nicest looking AMC there is.  The ’68-70 Dodge Charger is another non-GM looker.  But for all around best looks, Pontiac gets it done.  The ’88-92 Firebird Formula, the ’67-68 Firebird 400, and many of the ’70-81 Formulas and Trans Ams, especially with the ’73-78 simpler pattern Screaming Chicken, are my favorites.   The best would be a ’74 Trans Am SD455 in dark blue with the hood bird.  Dream on.   Again, not all these cars are necessarily fast – a 305-equipped Formula looks just as nice, though isn’t nearly as fast, as its 350-equipped brother, and after 1975 with the introduction of emissions and catalytic converters killing the power, the later second generation Firebirds are slower than their beauty would indicate.   These 70s Firebirds, usually the Trans Ams, also have aluminum dashes.   If I ever get around to restoring my ’76 Esprit, I’ll see about upgrading the dash, as it has the faux-wood dash which was standard on non-Trans Ams. 

Oh, and Rally II wheels are by far my favorite, well over the honeycomb wheels I can’t stand.

Guitars.  I have the good fortune to have collected several guitars:  4 Gibsons (SG, Les Paul, Explorer and Firebird V) and a Stratocaster.  With the exception of the Les Paul, which is in Black Cherry Pearl, the rest of the guitars are in black, or as Gibson calls it, “ebony”.   All of them have rosewood fretboards, including the Stratocaster – I can’t stand maple.  I switched out the Explorer’s white pickguard for a mirror pickguard, and the Firebird’s white pickguard for a black one with the Firebird on it.  I kept the black pickguards on the SG, LP and Stratocaster.  The Stratocaster has the large, ’68-82 headstock typical of ‘70s Stratocasters – Robin Trower and Ritchie Blackmore are most often seen with those.   The SG is a 2013 Standard in ebony, the ’13 Standards being very popular as they are almost identical to the ‘61/62 reissue models.  In fact, I traded my ’89 ’62 Reissue in cherry for the current one, and while cherry was tolerable, ebony is MUCH better.   

Aesthetically I like the smaller pickguard and don’t like the ’67-70 larger one which surrounds the pickups.   Also, whether it’s on a Strat or a Les Paul, I am NOT a fan of sunburst finishes, least of all tobacco or cherry.  Finally, I love the Les Paul script on the headstock, which ruled out a Custom with its inlaid diamond. 

None of these preferences have anything to do with how well the guitar plays or sounds, and the wrong color, pickguard, or a maple neck won’t compromise anyone’s ability to extract heavenly tones with the right amp.   

But some things are nice to look at too, and I keep my guitars out on stands.  They certainly sound nice – either through the Marshall 1x12” Jubilee combo I bought new in 1990, or through the condo-neighbor-annoying half stack (Marshall 100 watt 4100 Dual Reverb through 4x12” 1960AV).

In the Beginning (Guitar)

These days I’m teaching guitar – informally.   And it brings me back to my earliest days learning to play guitar.  Here are my thoughts.

Guitar Learning 101.   My first attempt at learning guitar was at Marymount, with a teacher giving lessons, who we’ll call Mr. M.  Mr. M gave me some basic strumming exercises which bore no resemblance to any music I wanted to learn, and did not even deign to inform me as to their relevance or importance as any skill set I would need for any particular form of music.  Possibly they related to the Beatles’ skiffle origin, but again, I was arrogantly given these instructions without the least bit of instruction.  Needless to say I gave up on that immediately.

Guitar Learning 201.  Fast forward a few years – 1985 – and my brother came back from lessons with Joel (where is he now?) beaming that he’d learned the intro riff to Whitesnake’s “Saints & Sinners”.  Woohoo!  Now we’re talking.  The next week I went to Joel and started learning AC/DC and Black Sabbath riffs.  Not the entire songs or any solos, just the intro riffs.  You’d bring a cassette of what you wanted to learn, and Joel would figure it out by ear and teach you how to play it: he’d even write it down on blank tablature sheet so you could refer to that at home and practice from that. 

Of course, learning that way got us started out quickly, but eventually you realized that it was sui generis: without learning principles, you would need his assistance to learn everything and weren’t learning the basics.  Joel was happy to teach those if you wanted.  He also explained that reading sheet music was of marginal utility for a guitarist:  standard music notation was designed for classical instruments like piano and violin, while tablature was expressly designed for guitar. 

Guitar Learning 301.  Fast forward (not all that far, actually) to freshman year at University of Maryland, College Park, fall 1986.  I met a friend named Baron (where is HE now?) who showed me what I thought was impossible: he had learned, note for note, practically all of Black Sabbath’s songs – including the solos.  WHOA.  That blew my mind.  Eventually he let slip that he hadn’t figured them out himself, he simply referred to The Black Sabbath Anthology and learned them from the tablature.  However, that does take immense patience, for which he deserves superlative credit.  For my part, I did the same and learned the solos for various Black Sabbath songs, including “Paranoid”, “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, and “Black Sabbath”. 

    But here’s something even funnier.  If you listen to live material, you’ll notice that Tony Iommi, Angus Young, and most other guitarists rarely play the solos note-for-note in concert.  In interviews, Iommi admits that he never had the patience to sit down and actually write a solo that way, or learn to play his own recorded solos verbatim.   So when Baron blazed away at these solos, as I did later, we were doing something the guitarist himself never bothered to do.  Alex Lifeson, of Rush, is among the few guitarists who meticulously works out a solo and diligently reproduces it live. 

Guitar Learning 401.  By my junior year of college, I had learned the secret:  blues & pentatonic scales, from the Heavy Guitar Bible.  Once I learned these scales, picking out AC/DC and Black Sabbath solos myself became simple, and the Black Sabbath Anthology – which I’d lost moving in summer 1988 and never replaced – became unnecessary.  I even managed to learn the extended solo of Black Sabbath's “The Warning”, and the solo to Judas Priest’s “Dreamer Deceiver”, on my own without any tablature. 

First guitar.  My brother and I started out on an old acoustic we’d had for years.  For Christmas 1985 we got our first electric guitar: an Ibanez Roadstar II (black, no pickguard, rosewood fretboard) with three single coil pickups, essentially Ibanez’ proprietary-styled copy of a Fender Stratocaster.  We still have this guitar. 

            For my part, I was enthralled by the Fender Stratocaster, but I realized that those guitars were too expensive to justify a purchase by a beginning guitarist.  Over the Christmas vacation, I worked at the Office of American Services (OAS), the US Embassy section which makes tourist passports.  I earned enough over 2 weeks to buy a cheap copy – by a company called Applause – of a Stratocaster, in cherry sunburst with a maple fretboard.  By November 1986 I’d replaced it with a Japanese Fender Stratocaster in black, rosewood fretboard, and locking tremolo (we’ve since sold both guitars long ago).  But the Ibanez and Applause were my starts.

I still need to refer to tablature for trickier songs, and I never did master the skill set of the Beatles’ strumming and skiffle basics.  But thanks to Joel, I started out on guitar and never gave up.  Thanks to Baron, I learned solos - and indirectly, learned to improvise on scales.  I imagine the next level will be learning the skill sets behind the Beatles’ and Grateful Dead guitar techniques.