Walking in Toronto Part 2: More guitar iconography.

Part of the window display for a condo.

College Street lamppost

Queen Video, College Street. Nice Rickenbacker 4001 bass.

Amp-themed coffee cup. Gift shop, College Street

Magazine store, College Street

Lamppost, College Street

There's a guitar in there, I swear! Soundscapes display window.

Another poster in the window of Soundscapes.

Soundscapes window.

Soundscapes ukelele-themed window display, advertising the documentary film The Mighty Uke.

Deconstructing Luther Perkins

Learning some Luther Perkins licks today for a gig. Luther was Johnny Cash's guitarist from 1955 to Luther's death in 1968. He's a good example of a musician who noticeably develops and advances over the course of his career. One Johnny Counterfit writes on one of his webpages about Luther:

In conversations with Luther’s widow, Margie, I discover Luther had a never-ending desire to improve his guitar talents, including adding more intricate dimensions within his own creation.


His lead licks on early Cash sides like "Cry Cry Cry" (1956) were rudimentary but effective. By the time of the recording of At Folsom Prison in 1968, Luther was a fluid country player. He died tragically that year in a house fire at the age of 40.

Of particular interest for me at the moment are the lead guitar parts for "Cry Cry Cry" and "Get Rhythm". They're mostly boogie patterns, with occasional counter-intuitive moments. There's something stoic about Luther's early licks on these songs. That quality meshes well with Cash's doomy voice and stentorian songs.

Walking in Toronto: Guitar Iconography

Yesterday I resolved to take a picture of every image of a guitar that I saw on my walk through downtown Toronto. I guess you could say that I was engaging in some casual fieldwork on guitar culture. The interesting thing for me is the variety of ways that images of guitars are used to represent different ideas.

From the Metro free paper - a Royal Bank ad for student loans - the guitar is a luxury item, as opposed to the more necessary schoolbooks

The window display at Remenyi Music, a store catering to Royal Conservatory of Music and University of Toronto music students. The electric bass is nestled among more traditionally 'legit' instruments.

From the same window, an ad for the upscale Lowden acoustic guitars.

Shredding for change at Bloor and Yonge.

Pointy guitars have become a retro rock and roll symbol, suitable for belt buckles.

Window display at the weird, dusty music store on Yonge.

Away for a month and still hunting for a small amp.

It's been about a month since my last post and it's not really laziness that prompted this extended break from the bloggin'. In the time since I last posted, I played a whack of gigs, exchanged my new Marshall Class 5 (not enough volume to be useful in a lot of gigging situations) for a Traynor YCM-20 (which I'm about to return as well - the reverb feeds back on the lead channel and the amp is generally uninspiring), seen Mike Stern and Bill Frisell live in clubs and have generally had my hands full with a variety of time-consuming musical projects.
Mike Stern was especially inspiring.  I had never seen him play before, but I have been aware of him since the 80s, when he played in one of Miles Davis' late bands. My impression is that he just plays what he wants and doesn't worry too much about putting a label on what he does, or fitting in to current fashions.  He's really a classic fusion player, with a constant outpouring of ideas, beautiful phrasing, and a quite nice tone from a Yamaha Pacifica, a stereo solid-state amp setup including a Pearce amp (no longer available but I coveted one at the Guitar Clinic in Hamilton back in the day) and an old Yamaha amp that I can't identify, along with the 'doubling' effect on the old Yamaha SPX-90 digital effects unit (which comes out sounding a lot like chorus).
That Mike Stern was able to coax such lovely sounds out of solid-state gear has got me re-evaluating my fealty to tube amps. I just don't seem to be able to find a usable small tube amp in the price range that I'm working in. I'm looking at the ZT Club 12, which is a digital amp that weighs 22 pounds and puts out 200 watts. My good friend and musical partner Alec Fraser just switched to digital for his bass amp, and I have to say that he is achieving a convincing SVT tone with the tiniest of high-powered amp heads. I'll probably do the exchange tomorrow and report back.
Oh, and I still have my Strat. Long story involving Eric Clapton. Another time.