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from: Boo N. Hiss
c-24-22-34-71.hsd1.or.comcast.net
05-04-05
07:40:34
Fuck, mein Kurt. I didn't really anticipate you posting the damn thing. It's like whispering a secret to a madman with a megaphone. <P>I look like Uncle Fester's bastard son, for one thing. But I can't say I mind that much. I'm pretty fucking proud to be there. That "other guy" on the left in the photo isn't just a guitarist. <p>That's Nokie Edwards, guitarist for the Ventures. He's a sound. Really. Play "Hawaii Five-0" in your head real quick. Okay, that's him. <p> Play "Pipeline," or "Telstar." Yeah, I know these are old fart tunes, but I'll bet if you qualify as an old fart (and we all know how well you do), you've probably got an "earbug" by now. <p>Remember learning "Walk Don't Run" on the two bass strings of a guitar? (As a bassist I tend to think of the guitar as only having two bass strings, rather than three, which fully supports my theory that guitarists can suck my dick.) <p>Here's the other thing about Nokie Edwards; we didn't play a single one of those tunes. He's moved so far past them it'd be like asking a racecar driver to ride a tricycle. He's continued to grow for all these decades, and he fucking smokes. He plays fingerstyle, for one thing. (Betcha didn't know all those old Ventures tunes were fingerpicked.) So it's a lot closer to Chet Atkins-style smoothness and clarity built effortlessly around Steely Dan-ish truly hairy chord clusters. Try playing "Hey Nineteen" onstage unexpectedly- as I was once forced to - and you'll get a clearer idea of pants-filling fear. It's like that. Thank god I play upright (that's a Yamaha "silent" upright in the pic), you can halfway press down a string with your left hand and use the meat of your righthand index finger to produce something that sounds a lot like a note but actually isn't. It's kind of a "thud," and as long as you're within a foot of where your finger needs to be (remember, no frets), it'll work til you get to a turnaround somewhere. You just sorta pretend to be a bass drum for a moment until you get your bearings. Anyhow, Nokie got nominated for a Grammy, and so did Mason Williams, who was also the other guy I played with that night. He wrote "Classical Gas," which is the most successful instrumental of all time, and the first true music video as well, for the fortunate few who ever saw it. (The music was actually written for the video, which was entirely composed of three frames each of every imaginable facet of our "culture" - I use that in the bacterial sense - and considering there were no other videos before it, the result to a 1968 audience was like having a dildo jammed into your forehead and turned up to "wife-tamer" speed.) Like I said, the first time he played it for me (on the same guitar he recorded it on) I said; "catchy tune! What's it called? You oughta record that!" Oh well, that's enough of the morning spent futily trying to justify something or other. I gave up formatting back there somewhere, Kurt. Fix it for me, please. And next time I send you a pic, ask me before you post it. Now I'm not going to send you my secret sex tape somebody "stole" from my mailbox, where I was hiding it for safekeeping.
