The gold medalist is wrangle, for his touching coming-of-age tale about the day he learned there’s a reason musicians say “One two three four” before they start playing. Tied for second: Mark Spangler’s harrowing near-death experience as Jeff Beck’s hand-picked opening act, and Roel Torres’s terrifying tale of being hoisted skyward by stage machinery. (Think twice before wearing a hoodie onstage, kids!) Both are worthy of reenactment on one of my fave guilty-pleasure TV shows, I Shouldn’t Be Alive.
Winners, send me your snail mail addresses, and I’ll send you something noisy.
Thanks to everyone who submitted a story, voted in the poll, or just read the stories and spewed coffee on their computers. Thanks for holding court while I was traveling, and for giving me plenty of good laughs on the road. In the meantime, I’ve pretty much gotten over jetlag, flu, and a mountain of postponed paying work, and I’ve got some cool and intriguing posts planned for the coming days!
You can read all the entires here. Or just the finalists here. Or just the winners after the jump.
I was just in Europe, but I’m heading right back — this time on vacation. We’re going to spend a few days knocking around some fave cities, then embark on a tour of Paleolithic cave painting sites in France and Spain.
Our Cro-Magnon ancestors had to contend with such hardships as poor stage lighting, inadequate sound reinforcement, and excessively reflective surfaces.
I know it’s hard to tell when I’m being sarcastic, but this time I’m not. I wanted to be an archaeologist as a kid, until my mom said, “Why? All you’ll do is sit in a closet polishing worthless scraps with a toothbrush.” (Fortunately, she was more supportive of my musical dreams. She never said, “Why do you want to be a studio musician? All you’ll do is sit in a closet polishing worthless scraps with Pro Tools.”)
Since I won’t be able to post and reply as often as usual until I return at the end of the month, I figured you guys could help me keep things interesting. Which brings me to the latest tonefiend contest: the Cro-Mag Comedy Competition!
The rules are simple, just like the musicians we’ll be poking fun at. All you must do to enter is post a funny musical anecdote to the comments section below. It doesn’t have to be about musical stupidity, though experience suggests that those are the funniest stories. Nor does it have to be about guitar, though there are few things stupider than stupid guitarist stories. (Drummer, bassist, and vocalist stories are the obvious exceptions.) The tales should be true, or at least sufficiently true-sounding to dupe the rest of us. If they involve real people, please change their names enough to avoid legal action.
I’ll winnow down the entires to a manageable number via some as-yet-undertermined means (dartboard, or maybe animal entrails), and you, dear readers, will get to select the final three winners, each of whom will receive one of my unique handmade stompboxes, created in a closet at my cutting-edge workbench out of worthless scraps premium mojo parts.
Enter as many times as you like — but please, only one anecdote per comment. Also, please post your anecdotes here on the site, rather than in Facebook comments. Stories can be as long as you like, but remember: Your judges will be musicians, so they may have difficulty grappling with complex sentences.
The contest runs till I get back, or till jet lag subsides — whichever comes last.
Here’s a sample story to get the ball rolling. Naturally, I’m ineligible for the competition because I already have enough crappy little pedals it’s the ethical thing to do.
I heard this one from one of my favorite guitar techs. He’s such a pro that he refused to reveal the identity of the musicians in question, though I managed to pry from him the fact that it’s a leading UK or Irish band you’ve probably heard of.
Anyway, the band’s bass player insisted on using a large, loud, miked amp onstage, even though the front of house guy used only the direct signal in the PA. “Please don’t use an amp,” the crew and band pleaded. “It leaks into the other mics. It screws up everyone’s onstage mix. It makes everyone’s life more difficult. You can have as much bass in your wedges as you like. Or wear-in-ear monitors. Or anything! But please, no amp!”
“Sorry,” said the bassist. “It’s my sound. What’s more, I refuse to step foot onstage tonight unless I see my amp up there with a mic on it!”
That night the amp was right where the bassist expected it, with the usual mic in the usual place. But unbeknownst to the bassist, the mic cable wasn’t connected to the sound system. The cable ran offstage, where it was plugged into … a cabbage, pilfered from catering.
If you like reading about internet memes that have just passed their sell-by date, tonefiend is the place to be!
Witness this brief video on triggering goat sound via guitar, created in a fit of desperation when a planned DIY post was delayed divine inspiration.
It’s based, of course, on the unbelievably popular video of unbelievably weird goats making unbelievably human-like sounds. It’s inspired countless spinoffs, including mine. I made these in my hotel room in Frankfurt during Musikmesse, feeling grateful the entire time that I live in an era when you can do crap like this in a German hotel room at midnight. Because trust me, there weren’t a lot of alternatives.
Tech details: homemade Strat, Fishman TriplePlay, Apple MainStage software hosting NI’s Kontakt sampler, goats.
I am not any of these people —but I pretended to be them.
Can we all agree that it’s a good thing when guitarists and bassists cultivate their own style? Even a jaded old cuss experienced music journalist like me still gets a thrill upon discovering a new player with a startlingly original voice.
I am not any of these people —but I pretended to be them.
But there are times when it’s worth pursuing the opposite approach. (And not just for pragmatic reasons, such as the likelihood that you’ll get canned from your cover band gig if you mix it up too much, or the fact that the jingle client can’t afford to license that Black Keys song, but will happily pay you to record something “similar.”) Sometimes disconnecting your ego and completely immersing yourself in another player’s point of view can make you a better, and paradoxically, more original player. (I’m reminded of a Marc Ribot interview I once edited where the brilliant guitarist talked about learning Chuck Berry songs, clams and all — the “bad” notes, he suggested, were as much a part of Berry style as the “good” ones.)
I had a chance to take this idea to an extreme a few years go when writer/composer Elise Malmberg and I collaborated on a massive internet hoax: a bogus website alleging to be the 50-year history of a “legendary” indie record label. Clubbo Records is easily the most obsessive-compulsive project I’ve undertaken. The site features hundreds of pages of music, bios, photos, and memorabilia memorializing dozens of fictitious artists. Even many external links are fake — we just made a lot of little mini-hoax websites.
(Example: We licensed a photo of a beautiful ’60s blonde in a leopard-skin coat, which inspired a story about Ava & the Avalanches, the best known group of the Swiss Invasion. We wrote a story about how wearing the coat for the photo shoot horrified her, and launched her on a life path of animal activism. Where would she be now, we wondered? Running a big cat rescue charity, of course! Which inspired more than a few queries from journalists, including one from the BBC, asking to put us in touch with the non-existent Ava. And Ava’s signature “hit,” “Ski Baby Ski” has been licensed over and over, most recently for the silly Jonah Hill comedy The Babysitter.)
Oh, man — this is the most fun I’ve ever had on this blog (provided you define “fun” as “laughing hard enough to snort coffee through your nose”).
It sucked trying to pick a contest winner! I received over 150 guitar images, and I loved every single one of them (provided you define “love” as “the way you feel about pictures that make coffee come out of your nose”).
I made a little movie featuring several dozen of my favorites. If you’re drinking coffee, cover your nose.
It’s about four minutes long. You can fast-forward to 3:30 if you only want to see my top three picks. I think you’ll agree with me that they are remarkable in their ability to inspire strong emotional reaction, even after viewing so many truly memorable guitar designs. But frankly, I don’t recommend skipping ahead.
I pity the fool who misses out on any of the treasures herein.
Apologies to all whose guitars weren’t included. They were all amazing! And thanks to everyone who made this such a memorable event! Let’s do it again soon.
Hey, has anyone checked out the super-cool “Body Builder” section over at Warmoth Custom Guitar Parts? It’s an incredibly fun interface that lets you select a guitar body and add all the appointments. Your dreams become reality before you very eyes.
Which is all well and good — unless you have really bad dreams!
How come nobody makes ’em like THIS?
Which brings us to the latest Tonefiend contest. Mind you, it’s not much of a contest, but that’s cool — it’s not not much of a prize either.
