Bury Mine With Me

WHEN something is perfect, just savour it and leave be.
God Bless Martin Guitars.
My wife says she won’t allow it, so I want YOU to ensure it goes in the box with me.

[Martin boss Chris Martin]

A Noted Player’s Story
“This is Hank William’s guitar [he points to the guitar]. I try to do the right thing with the guitar. You don’t want to stink with Hank’s guitar. I lent it to Bob Dylan for a while. He didn’t have a tour bus so I lent him mine and I left the guitar on the bed with a note saying Hank’s guitar is back there. He used it for a couple of months.” [Neil Young]

A LESS well-known player’s story
I’ve played a Gibson acoustic guitar and Taylors. They were lovely and looked great. For some styles and for simple strumming, they’d be just fine.
But a Martin guitar has a whole feel that other acoustic guitars just don’t provide. Martin D-28s look pretty plain, and I’ve seen people assume it’s just a common-or-garden instrument. It doesn’t feel too easy to play to Martin-ignorant folk, either.
To a believer, it grows into you and you grow into it, like a beat-up old couch, like your chair at work, your favourite coffee mug. Nobody else knows how to touch it, get the best out of it, cajole the soul from it. Even another Martin D-28 owner won’t feel quite at home with YOUR Martin D-28.
I regularly kiss mine and talk to it. Watch Neil Young with his, or John Martyn doing May You Never on an old Old Grey Whistle Test. It’s like an extension of their bodies. I don’t think you get that with other acoustic guitars.
God only knows what the D-45 sounds and feels like – they say it’s even better.
[Me]

Some Q&A
What type of polish does Martin recommend using on a satin finish guitar?
Martin does not recommend using guitar polish on a satin finish instrument, however, it will not harm the guitar. You may notice after time the finish will begin to shine unevenly. To clean the guitar, Martin suggests using a warm, damp cotton cloth to wipe it down and then a dry cotton cloth to finish drying it off. This will remove harmful chemicals.

Can I use lemon oil on the fingerboard of my Martin guitar?
Martin does not recommend using lemon oil on their fingerboards. The acids in lemon oil break down the finish of Martin guitars. It may also aid the corrosion of the frets and lessen the life of the strings.

An Anonymous Love Story
“I went back and took the guitar down from its location and sat down in that pick and glide chair to check it out more closely. It was love at first sight.The price tag was $1500 and I knew this guitar somehow had to become mine.
“My 50th birthday had been the previous week and my wife had a special party for me. Family and friends had come to help celebrate my birthday and some had given me money as a gift. I also had a part time job where I was paid on a monthly basis and with these two resources, I had the money to buy the guitar but didn’t want to make the purchase without first discussing it with my wife. The guitar was on consignment in the store and I hoped it wouldn’t be sold before I had a chance to talk it over and call to confirm my purchase.
“When we got home I told my wife about the Martin and she was excited that I had found the instrument and gave me the ok to go ahead and buy it. She and my son went the following Monday and purchased the guitar and it has been my pride and joy for the last twelve years. About a year after I bought the guitar it needed some fret work which was a simple job but when I took the guitar to have the frets dressed, the shop luthier replaced several frets alternately down the neck. When he did this he changed the voice and character of my guitar completely, it no longer sounder bright and discorded. My heart sank thinking my guitar was now ruined. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
“My son’s mandolin needed some work and we found a luthier Near Mars Hill, NC who could do this and when I made the appointment I told him about my guitar. He told me to bring it and he would have a look at it and see if there was any thing that might be done to correct the problems I was now experiencing with the instrument. When we arrived at his place of business he instantly knew the problem. It seems the repair person who had done the work on my Martin had installed the wrong fret wire and my guitar neck was totally out of balance. I ask it he could fix the problem and I was happy when he told me that he could. Dan Lashbrook is a Martin specialist and well known for his work and was once a flat picking champion guitar picker from the state of Alaska.
“I left my guitar and he installed the larger fret wire all down the neck, put fossilized ivory on the bridge and nut. He also added Waverly short post tuning machines. I could not believe the difference this made when I picked my guitar up two weeks later. It still sounds better than most guitars owned by folks with whom I jam and like all Martins continues to provide the voice and tones I love hearing. Martin guitars accrue in value and my original $1500 investment far exceeds that value now.”

Synthesisers

THEY look wonderful and even an idiot can get interesting noises out of them.
Take it from me.

Other Keyboards

WHEN you put your fingers in the right place, they can as expressive as guitars, or maybe even more. In the right hands. Not mine.

Guitars

THEIR beauty never fades.

Screen Giants

OH, Manchester, so much to answer for.
I am so old, I remember this being on telly. The Smiths were the last great guitar band.

Whirling Chairs and Young Neils

Whirling Chairs at the Carbeth Inn.
Craigwords: Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitar; Stephen “Banda” Hope: Bass Guitar, Vocals; Ian Todd: Lead Guitar; Stuart Henderson: Drums.
We did stuff like Teenage Kicks, Rebel Rebel, Get It On, Rockin’ In The Free World, Back In The USSR, The Jean Genie, Powderfinger, I Am The Walrus.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would go on to become multi-millionaires.
Which is just as well.

Extraordinary

BEEN listening to these here folks an awful lot, for an awful long time.

They never wear out, just get better with age.

Ian Curtis

DECADES
Joy Division

Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders,
Here are the young men, well, where have they been?
We knocked on the doors of Hell’s darker chamber,
Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in,
Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying,
We saw ourselves now as we never had seen.
Portraying the trauma and degeneration,
The sorrows we suffered and never were free.

Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?

Weary inside, now our heart’s lost forever,
Can’t replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase,
Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings,
Open then shut, then slammed in our face.

Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?

SHADOWPLAY
Joy Division

To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you,
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you,
I was moving through the silence without motion, waiting for you,
In a room with a window in the corner I found truth.

In the shadowplay, acting out your own death, knowing no more,
As the assassins all grouped in four lines, dancing on the floor,
And with cold steel, odour on their bodies made a move to connect,
But I could only stare in disbelief as the crowds all left.

I did everything, everything I wanted to,
I let them use you for their own ends,
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you,
To the centre of the city in the night, waiting for you.

Pere Ubu

CURRENTLY WORKING ON
IN the middle of a professional crisis, it can be tough to focus on my Home Recordings of an evening.
These evenings are grim and tortuous, so perhaps that’s why I decided to cover a grim, tortuous song.
30 Seconds Over Tokyo by Pere Ubu is the track I am working on.
Perhaps because of my personal situation during recording, I am very pleased with how it is coming along.
I look forward to its completion, and I am enjoying putting it all together.
I await my vocal delivery with interest, although I can’t get round to that yet.
As I write, I have recorded the first guitar parts, some of the drums and the bass guitar.
Oh, and an electric piano through a wah-wah.
I never properly looked at the lyrics for this till I began working on it.
I like them a lot.

30 Seconds Over Tokyo
We flew off early in the haze of dawn
in a metal dragon lost in time,
skimming waves of an underground sea
in some kind of a dream world fantasy

Sun a hot circle on a canopy,
’25 a racing blot on a bright green sea
Ahead the dim blur of an alien land,
time to give ourselves to strange gods’ hands

A dark flak spider’s bursting in the sky,
reaching twisted claws on every side
No place to run,
no place to hide,
no turning back on a suicide ride

Toy city streets crawling through my sights,
sprouting clumps of mushrooms like a world surreal
This dream won’t ever ever end,
and time seems like it’ll never begin
30 seconds,
and a one way ride
30 seconds,
and no place to hide
30 seconds,
and a one way ride
30 seconds,
and no place to hide
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo
30 seconds over Tokyo

God On His Creation

“It’s interesting how this all started.
“At the time I did Ziggy Stardust, all I had was a small cult audience in England from Hunky Dory.
“I think it was out of curiosity that I began wondering what it would be like to be a rock & roll star.
“So basically, I wrote a script and played it out as Ziggy Stardust onstage and on record. I mean it when I say I didn’t like all those albums — Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, David Live.
“It wasn’t a matter of liking them, it was ‘Did they work or not?’ Yes, they worked. They kept the trip going. Now, I’m all through with rock & roll. Finished. I’ve rocked my roll. It was great fun while it lasted but I won’t do it again.”

Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Woody Woodmansey