Gordon finished his Jaguar project. It’s a very special guitar, based on Fender’s favorite surf guitar – the Jaguar.
Everybody wants to hear it, and I am no exception! He chose Charlie Christian style pick-ups and a reverse headstock, that crazy french-man.
Here’s his blog.
Through Surfmusic101 this article by Drew Kampion came to my attention:
A few days ago, a friend told me she’d got the news that Dick Dale (King of the Surf Guitar) was in a serious fight with colon cancer, which had attacked him back in the 1960s and changed his life (he became a vegetarian, an environmental activist, and a man who lives in the moment). Dick retired from performing for a time, but got back into it during the 1980s. When Quentin Tarantino prominently featured DD’s famous “Misirlou” instrumental in his 1994 film, Pulp Fiction, Dick Dale was once again elevated into public consciousness.
…article at Surfer’s Path
DickDale.com
The Cowabunga Surf Music Webring (which my Homepage www.kawentzmann.de was a proud member of) is going to be closed down.
I have chosen not to renew web hosting and the domain registration for
Zptduda.Com, which will be effective at the end of January. This will mean that
the Cowabunga links pages will be going away. If you have not already, I highly
recommend that you join SurfGuitar101.com and add your site to their links pages.I will also be closing down the Cowabunga webring. If your site is currently a
member of the Cowabunga ring, please feel free to remove the banner graphic and
web ring controls from your pages.Thanks and best regards,
When I first started on the web I only had a tiny space at Luxuriamusic’s community. I attempted to join the Ring with that, but no reaction from Dave – it was around late 2000. The old web was still going strong. I don’t remember exactly when I attempted to join again, maybe it was only 2006. He accepted my new homepage – but checking the membersites was desillusionating, showing every forth band or so had gone/broken-up without even acknowldeging the webring. Clicking through the links you got the impression of strolling through a ghost town at times. While Surfmusic101 is alive and well, it’s a site with a lively forum. And MySpace also get’s a good share of surfmusic action. So the internet habits have changed so much that it doesn’t seem worth the effort on Dave’s part? I don’t know, maybe he just has not enough time to do the maintenance.
I will remove the Cowabunga links now.
Surfguitar 101 made me aware of an article in Vintage Guitar Magazine. I don’t have it but it’s said to be really good, with big full color photos of his gear. Now, you don’t know who Dave Wronski is? He has this band called Slacktone. He’s working for Fender and plays with John Blair in Jon & The Nightriders, who were the most influential second wave surf band in the 80s, from an international view that is all I can say. Slacktone is Dave Wronski’s take on the modern Surf with strong historical references. They are one of the best, possible the best modern Surf band. He has great knowledge to get the tone he wants – and it’s amazing. He’s mainly a Jaguar player, even though he got famous with a Mosrite on the cover of Jon & The Nightriders Live At The Whiskey A Go-Go, a record any live performing surf band is hereby strongly advised to call their own.
Thanks to Ivan on Surfguitar 101 here‘s a link to Jet Harris performing one of his big hits in 1962, The Man With The Golden Arm. Fender Bass VI involved. It starts right after Hawaiian War Twist.
YouTube link
Thanks to Tiki Tena on the Surf Guitar 101 forum. Another great version of Miserlou, by the one and only Korla Pandit!
Read more on the keyboard virtuoso at www.korlapandit.com.
You might also check neatocoolvile.
Of course Wikipedia as well.
Thanks to Lou Smith on The Exotica Mailing List
NPR – Weekend Edition Sunday, July 29, 2007
Lyle Ritz has logged over 5,000 sessions on the bass as a studio musician. But for his latest project, he wanted to figure out a way to make music on a computer. So Ritz bought an Apple laptop and a software program called GarageBand, designed for making home recordings. Six months later, he completed work on a new solo album.
‘Hardly anybody knew how to operate GarageBand, how to deal with it,’ Ritz says. ‘So I had to fool with it a couple of months.’
On No Frills, however, Ritz entered the bass line into the computer using a synthesizer. That’s because the album features Lyle Ritz’s other musical passion: the jazz ukulele.
Ritz is known as the ‘father of jazz ukulele’ for merging the genre with the four-stringed instrument, and his credits on bass include multiple pop hit singles. However, it was in college, while he was working at a Los Angeles music store, when Ritz first picked up either instrument.
‘This was in the 50s, when Arthur Godfrey, the entertainer, who liked to play the [ukulele], popularized the instrument, and so many people just had to have ukes,’ Ritz says. ‘And one day I picked it up, somebody wanted to see this beautiful, nice, big tenor uke, and I picked it up and played a few chords on it, and I was gone.’
After a stint with a U.S. Army Band during the Korean War—in which Ritz played tuba—he dropped by the music store and played a few tunes on the ukulele for his former boss. Ritz didn’t know that jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, the West Coast representative for Verve Records, was present.
‘I just about fell through the floor,’ Ritz says. ‘I couldn’t believe that I had actually played before this man.’
Kessel offered Ritz a record deal, and in 1957—50 years ago—Ritz recorded an LP called How About Uke?, the first album for jazz ukulele.
How About Uke and its follow-up 50th State Jazz generated little interest, however, and Ritz soon abandoned the ukulele for the bass. It was at that point when Ritz joined the ‘Wrecking Crew,’ the legendary group of studio musicians who played on many of the pop hits which came out of the Los Angeles area from the mid 1960s to the early 80s. Later, Ritz also played on film scores.
While Lyle Ritz’s bass was heard by millions, his jazz records for Verve were being studied by a generation of musicians in Hawaii, home of the ukulele.
Roy Sakuma is Hawaii’s foremost teacher of the instrument. ‘All of a sudden here comes Lyle with all these fantastic chord harmonies that just took music to a whole new level on the ukulele,’ Sakuma says. Sakuma tracked Ritz down in 1984, inviting him to headline his annual ukulele festival in Hawaii. Ritz ended up moving to the islands for some time.
Ritz currently lives in Portland, Ore., where he continues to experiment with music and new recording technology. He says he’s always fooling with his ukulele—after all, he did teach himself to play the instrument.
‘I’m a firm believer and exponent of the art of noodling,’ Ritz says. ‘You don’t necessarily have to have a goal in mind, you don’t have to have a specific phrase or song that you’re working on, but you just fool with it and things happen. And I call the result the fruit of the noodle.’
Lyle Ritz on iTunes
Ingfried Hoffmann – Plays Jazz for Secret Agents
Fantastic organ led spy-jazz cd. Mostly Bond titles from the early movies, but some great originals too. A nifty guitar player is involved here as well!!!
Tiki Talk made me aware of this rare bird from Gretsch a while ago. The guitar is based on the very rare Gretsch White Penguin, which is like a small bodied White Falcon. You can see one like this in the Beat Club appearance by the Small Faces, or here.
Update by baxter from the Gretschpages:
Couple of notes on the Easton White Tiki:
Vintage White Penguins are excruciatingly rare. A real Holy Grail guitar. Few people have ever even seen one. However, they have been reissued, and modern ones aren’t particularly difficult to come by.
The White Tiki itself doesn’t share much with the penguin beyond the white paint, although it was undeniably inspired by it. It’s actually much closer to standard signature model (6128EE, in Gretsch model numbers) only with the white finish and tiki trappings that Elliot’s a big fan of.
Response to the guitar was overwhelmingly positive, (
) but for whatever reason Elliot and Gretsch parted ways and that was the end of that. As far as I know, only the one prototype was made.If I hunt, I maybe able to find the revised headstock treatment I created for it.
For a very long time I was contend with my Boss DD3 echo pedal. Of course it’s generic and cold sounding compared to old tube-tape or disc delays like the Dynacord I once owned. But trying to get spare parts for those was impossible in pre-internet days, at least for my amptech back then. And the old echos require collectors money – when I just wanted a tool, not a museum piece. The earlier delay modelers like the Line6 tried to do too much I don’t want and too less of what I want, the variations of multihead delay patterns. I always found them a little too expensive! Now the Magicstomp recreates tape and multihead delays very well. And timebased effects like echo and reverb escape the detached feeling latency encountered with other digitally generated effects, like amp-modeling and distortion. I got mine used and it’s of the first variety, later versions include a headphone jack.
What really convinced me beside the current low prices for them, was finding this page, where a dutch guy programmed a large number of sixties tape echo patches for the Magicstomp, mostly Meazzi and Vox. There’s also a Roland, and the patch really resembles the sonic signature. You can download patches from Yamaha’s site or dedicated www-groups (2 on Yahoo!) and install them with your pc or mac with OS9 and built in usb. Just connect an usb cable and start the Magicstomp editor. You can deep edit a lot of effect parameters and store them to 99 user presets.
Integrating the effectbox into a live-set-up brings some problems. Read this message from one of the Yahoo! Magicstomp boards:
I’ve finally got round to attaching my magicstomp to my board only to
find a considerable drop in volume when patches are engaged. Tried
reducing the input level but no change.
Is this yet another defect (along with the half second pause between
patches) that has lead to this product being discontinued?
Here’s another point. I’ve decided to use my stomp to replace certain
effects that I only use occasionaly – phaser,flanger, uni-vibe and for
delays etc…problem is that I thought I could navigate up and down
and then just use the on/off footswitch to activate the chosen effect.
Turns out that even though the display reads “reverb” for example, I
still have a bloody harmoniser. Have to go back to the patch that the
sound corresponds to and then move up or down. Useless. I never
noticed this before when I used it as a stand alone effect. Anyone had
similar problems ar know something I don’t?????
Cheers.