riffer
9th June 2006, 13:37
The recent thread on what we are playing at the moment on guitar got me thinking about stuff I've done in the past.
The year was 1989. I was playing guitar for Wellington seminal 80s punk band TAB. I was 22, skinny as, rode a CB350 and had long shaggy hair.
This is a song off the debut record, The Argumentative Bastards, about teenage frustration, drugs and unemployment. The singer, Aaron Watson, now the editor of the Capital Times, grew up in Porirua and wrote about the bored kids in the streets of Porirua at the time. Set to a slow two-chord reggae beat with a searing guitar solo at the end, it received some lukewarm reviews at the time but was ultimately classified as not radio friendly. However student radio loved it...
My inspiration for the lead guitar came from watching Pink Floyd's The Wall movie, in particular the scene in "One of my turns" where Bob Geldof grabs a guitar and disintegrates an hotel room in front of a terrified group. I tried to convey the sense of hopelessness leading to destruction of property and violence, which seemed to be a fitting statement for the times and place, I guess.
Instrumentation: Jackson Charvel Active w/EMGs, Marshall JCM800 Mk II 1987 w 1960A/B cabinets, TS-9 (modded), studio reverb. The amp was placed against the studio wall (anechoic chamber), and I used a 30 foot lead to get far enough away from it, turned everything right up and just wailed.
The trumpet-like sounds in the verses are a "swell" effect on the guitar, done by playing with the volume control.
Anyway, enough harping on. This is me, in 1989...
The year was 1989. I was playing guitar for Wellington seminal 80s punk band TAB. I was 22, skinny as, rode a CB350 and had long shaggy hair.
This is a song off the debut record, The Argumentative Bastards, about teenage frustration, drugs and unemployment. The singer, Aaron Watson, now the editor of the Capital Times, grew up in Porirua and wrote about the bored kids in the streets of Porirua at the time. Set to a slow two-chord reggae beat with a searing guitar solo at the end, it received some lukewarm reviews at the time but was ultimately classified as not radio friendly. However student radio loved it...
My inspiration for the lead guitar came from watching Pink Floyd's The Wall movie, in particular the scene in "One of my turns" where Bob Geldof grabs a guitar and disintegrates an hotel room in front of a terrified group. I tried to convey the sense of hopelessness leading to destruction of property and violence, which seemed to be a fitting statement for the times and place, I guess.
Instrumentation: Jackson Charvel Active w/EMGs, Marshall JCM800 Mk II 1987 w 1960A/B cabinets, TS-9 (modded), studio reverb. The amp was placed against the studio wall (anechoic chamber), and I used a 30 foot lead to get far enough away from it, turned everything right up and just wailed.
The trumpet-like sounds in the verses are a "swell" effect on the guitar, done by playing with the volume control.
Anyway, enough harping on. This is me, in 1989...