mark555

So here we are, with a band up and running that can play some half decent songs, we have a superb practice facility which is free to use and the two guitarists and bass player duly spend our spare time practicing at home so we can at least get things done at rehearsals. We are fortunate, our drummer is a guy we get on really well with and has constructive input and good timing, knows his job and does it well. But why do drummers seem to think that they can just turn up at a few practices and expect the other musicians to practice? I really like our drummer, he is a sound guy, just the man for the job. It is difficult to get together on a weekly basis because he works shifts, so we have to look at it every fortnight. But just now it seems like it is getting harder and harder to get the drummer to practice, we have all said we will work round him. He works evenings, no problem, we will practice in the morning for a few hours. I do not believe that the band is the be all and end all, our other guitar player had to take a lot of time out as his daughter recently had an operation to remove a brain tumour, so we were behind him 110%, and thankfully all went well. But where is the commitment these days? If you are going to join a band, you know that it involves practice. Why do drummers think that every one else can practice and they can just turn up and put the beat down?? A band needs to be a tight, unified unit that plays spot on together. It's not a jam night or an open mike night, paid gigs expect a lot, and that takes effort.

Interesting to read your blog, good to know about your son turning one and I am very interested to know about winding your own pick ups. Best, Mark.

It's 5pm here in very sunny Yorkshire, which as you may or may not know is the centre of the universe as we know it. And as I have been tidying the house for when she who must be obeyed arrives home from the surgery, I have been thinking about various guitar related stuff. Since the arrival of my brand spanking new Tokai Les Paul, which I thoroughly believe to be better than the current Les Paul Standards I see in the shop, I haven't been able to put it down, and as a result, my playing is sharpening up, something which I am very pleased about. For Years I have had a book in my chest of drawers called Jam with Thin Lizzy, Eight songs tabbed for total accuracy plus a CD to play along to. Well, I didn't need the tabs to play Rosalie, but sometimes I use them like a road map, you know, look at which road I need to be on to get to where ever I am going, then just pick on reference points. So, this last week I have been learning 'Don't Believe a Word' which was about 1975 or 76, and one of my all time favourites. I was playing what my ears were telling me what's right, but the tab was saying I should be playing the second half of the lead solo two frets up, and that just wasn't working. So, just how are accurate are these books and stuff we can download? I am all for anything that helps us play better, but I think the more we can do for ourselves, the more accurate our own judgement becomes. I now have this solo and the rest of the song down spot on, and it ain't what the book tells me to play. Happy playing to all......

Nice blog Pete, good to read about stuff I can relate to here in England. As you know, Maggie Ronson, Mick's sister was a friend of mine, I also knew Mick's brother and their mum, Minnie Ronson. When I was at the Ronson's house in East Hull, I saw a framed picture of Mick his mum had on the sideboard of him playing the telecaster.

We all love to make live music with our guitars, and it has been a good nine months since the last band I had put together called it a draw when all of a sudden the other guitar player decided that he didn't want to play in a band anymore. But I can respect that, he was after all, coming a long way and was working some long hours. So, we called it a draw and that was that. However, after a few months had gone by, Tony, our drummer, who incidentally had been brought in by Mike, our old guitarist, got in touch and said we ought to carry on. I was very pleased about that and got in touch with my friend Shaun, our bass player, about getting another guitar player into the line up. I put some ad's out wanting players interested to contact me, and sadly, very few did. I think that there are many people out there who want to play but perhaps are a bit nervous about doing it, and also guys of my age (50) seem to be more content to have their nice guitars and just enjoy them at home. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but we needed a player who had experience of playing live, and the few that contacted us were people who were looking to be in their first band. Anyway, it turned out that Pete, a mate of mine and Shaun, who we had played with before in a previous band in the early nineties, and recently played in a band with Shaun (that had never got off the ground gig wise) was at a loose end and asked Shaun what he was doing musically, and did he know if any one wanted a guitar player? So When Shaun brought this to my attention, I thought yeah - why not? Pete is an exceptionally nice guy, not exactly a killer player, but solid and easy enough to get along with and will give a proper committment and not let you down. As I like Pete very much I was pleased to have him on board. Pete is pretty minimal when it comes to gear, two guitars, one of which is a USA Telecaster in bright yellow and an electro accoustic. I myself favour guitars with humbuckers in them for the kind of music we are going to play and I am trying to persuade Pete to get a Heritage or something similar. I have recently bought a Tokai Les Paul which is made in Japan - more of that later. For weeks we tried to get an initial get together, but at Tony our drummer works alternate shift patterns we can only rehearse every other week. This is fine with me as none of us want this to rule our lives. But illness and severe colds and one of the band members daughter having a brain tumour held us back for at least two months. But eventually we managed our initial get together last night. The oldest guitar in my collection of four is my trusty old strat which I got about '88 brand new. I have never been fanatical about Fender guitars, but they are what a mechanic would define as a good adjustable wrench, able to fit different nuts. And this is what the strat is for me. It evokes no passion in me what so ever, it's a working guitar, nothing else. My next guitar is my Heritage 555 which fulfills the desire I have had since I was fifteen for a high quality semi - few 335's are even in the same ball park as this guitar, it is in mint condition and I intend for it to stay that way. But recently I have bought a stunning Japanese Tokai copy of a 59 les paul standard. Right now I can not afford a 150, I refuse to buy a modern day Gibson as they are just too over priced and not worth the money. I am pleased to say that the tokai performed fantasticly well, sounded superb and is a match, if not better than the current les paul standards out there in the shops. Tokai's that sell for the same money as Gibson's just leave them hanging on the shop wall, mine was £1000 less than a Les Paul standard and is better - that's the Japanese for you, they take what you make and make a better version of it for less money. These are guitars not only for players on a budget like myself, but for real players who are not tied to having a lifestyle brand guitar just for the sake of it. The rehearsal went well, the best number we did was the old Thin Lizzy version of the traditional Irish folk song "Whisky In The Jar". The three we want down next are All Right Now, I Can't Get Enough and Rosalie, shouldn't be too hard at all, but I'll bet we get a few more down as well next time. So now I have three great guitars, nowhere near as many as some here, but they all do an individual job. The next purchase for me is change of amp. However you look at it, the Fender amps they make these days are just not built to last. My ideal amp will be made by a local company called 'Matamp'. Completely hand wired point to point amps, these are as good as anything on the market. A small producer of amps that exports mos of its production the the states, but Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash uses them and they sound fantastic live - they will also last for ever. But for now, it is a case of getting the show on the road. Watch this space.....

After a couple of months our trusty little band of four is now rehearsing once again. Having to deal with the problems life throws up at you can put things in perspective. For example, Pete, our other guitarist, has a daughter who has had surgery to remove a brain tumour, so he has been down in London where his daughter lives to look after her and make sure all has been well. Thankfully the patient has had a tremendous recovery and is doing well. However, all this time off has slowed progression down and we need to really get things going much faster now, life moves quickly and is there to be grabbed hold of, not pass us by. So, I finally got round to starting to play in open G tuning which just opens things up for playing all those Rolling Stones songs you wanted to do. Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Woman etc all now roll off the fret board so easily that I wonder why on earth I never did this years ago. But, better late than never. We have also given ourselves a name, and we go under the snappy title of 'The Alligators' which even though I say it myself, I think it is pretty good. Last Wednesday we had a short practice and rocked it with Brown Sugar, The Promised Land and Whiskey in the Jar, next weeks numbers for adding to the list are Rosalie and Back in the ussr, so we keeping up the dance rock theme. We don't play to impress other guitarists who just want to let you know they can play better than you, we are in for the fun and giving people a good night out for little expense - how many people work long hours for a low wage and just want a few beers on a weekend and get some entertainment they can enjoy and afford? Which brings me onto another subject. How many musicians strap on their guitar and just indulge themselves? I have seen many musicians in bands play to themselves - long drawn out solo's that are repetitious and boring, with obscure scales that just have no relevance to the song. Whjat a lot of players do is forget that once they are on stage they are there and are paid to play to and entertain the audience. I have seen some fabulous players just spoil it all by their own self indulgent playing - there's a difference between entertaining and bragging, they don't go together. I am still knocked over by my Tokai, perhaps I shouldn't be singing the praises of another manufacturer on a dedicated Heritage website, but this is a seriously good guitar, and incredible for the money, definitely one of the best buys I have made as far as a guitar go's. It performs great on the songs I use it for. It causes me to ask the quetion "why spend £thousands on a guitar when you don't need to? But if you DO need to, then that's a different matter.

I have been having a sort out lately of some stuff in the house and came across some old pictures which I had lost track of a long time ago. Among them was this picture of my first band. We were a trio, and it is a funny story how we got this band going. I met Shaun and Louis, two brothers, when they moved to Wakefield from Belfast because of the 'troubles' as they are known over there. Originally from Rochdale, Lancashire, just over the pennines from me. I hit it off well with these two friendly lads, and I said to Shaun one day, Do you fancy being in a band? His reply was that he could not play any instruments. Well, I was pretty much a lousy guitar player who only knew a few chords and I didn't even have an electric guitar, just a classical one my parents had decided I was going to have if I was to have a guitar - I never did learn the classical guitar, but wish I had. Anyway, I digress. So I said to Shaun that I couldn't play much either, but if we got some gear we could practice and form a band. I eventually got a really cheap and nasty Japanese copy of a Les Paul custom with the 'Sumbro' Brand on the top of the headstock. The pick ups were horrendous, but in the days of fuzz boxes etc you could get this horrendous distortion which at least gave you some sort of rock sound. The bands we were listening to at this time were British rock bands, Status Quo being our favourite along with Thin Lizzy and UFO. Anyway, One day I was in Huddersfield ;looking at a music shop when I saw a bass guitar for £20. It was a real cheap and nasty Egmond, a Dutch brand which was along the lines of the Gibson semi acoustic basses. So Shaun got that as a starter to practice on. I had by now been playing through a Vox AC30 top boost with a Gibson Slope sided 2X12 cab with jensen speakers, and before long had traded up to a used Marshall Plexiglass 100 watt head - if only I had that am now. Back then in the 70's, the rage was for guitarists to have the new solid state transistorised amps and you could get these fantastic valve heads really cheap, especially if they looked a bit tatty. But the general opinion was that you could spill a pint of guiness down the inside of a Marshall and it wouldn't hurt it. Louis, Shaun's brother, decided he wanted a go at playing drums, so we thought why not? He found a Premier Kit used for £125 and an older friend of ours who was the best drummer in town, took us to see if it was any good. It turned out to be ideal for a sixteen year old and it was duly bought, Louis started lessons and became quite proficient as his teacher was the above mentioned guy. So, there we were with the basis of a band but other than Louis with his premier kit, the other two of us had poor guitars. Shaun had been saving hard and eventually we went off to London for the day with his mum and dad and came back with a sunburst Fender Precision, so he was now up and running on a serious guitar. Not too long afterwards I got my first Gibson, a used SG DeLuxe for £175 from JSG in Bingley, the best guitar shop around at that time - sadly it no longer exists. So now we were away, all of us up and ready. We rehearsed as and when we could get lifts to the local church hall we used and got a few gigs. The most adventurous song we played was the Wishbone Ash number 'Blowin' Free' - quite adventurous for a bunch of young kids, but we made a passable version of it. Other numbers included 'Back in the Night' by Doctor Feelgood and 'In My Chair' by Status Quo. Our early gigs were three quarter of an hour slots at dances etc. Today I still play in a band with Shaun, who is now bald... But then again, I am overweight... we still practice in that very same church hall we played our first gigs. Sadly, Louis gave up on the drums, he would have been excellent, he had great timing and was very solid, I wish he had carried on as he is a great friend to this day and I would love to be in a band with him. The SG Deluxe went a long time ago and was eventually replaced for a short period by a Tokai Telecaster, which I traded for an SG Standard.