Thinking of when Jimi took up his Flying V at the Isle of Wight. This track essentially pits the Jaguar guitar against three Flying Vs! There is little doubt to me that the flying V guitar, of whatever name, is a wand, and so channels spirit upward.
And the Jaguar swats the flies away and the V goes home.
Something like that! They were both there to the end, although it was the Epi V with Floyd Rose that finished up.
If Les had loosened up for a minute, I can almost see him playing some of this. There's a certain flow that's reminding me of his graceful years.
! - that's the Dean V again - there's a residual jazz influence, I suppose, but it isn't quite jazz! That V is such a joy to play, though, it makes me play better than usual.
Trying to be a trumpet somehow.
: It's the Dean V - there is probably a slight Miles influence there
The Jaguar is a thing that screams in its own way, but it's a creature that ducks and weaves. The V just punches.
Well noted - I had the Jag through the Fuzz Face on this, with the volume on the guitar backed off so it 'cleans up;, as they say - but when I wanted it to scream, as here, the volume is pushed up to get more fuzz on its gills. The Fuzz face is such a delightful tool, although it has to be first in the chain.
fingernail chalkboard gladness
: This is when pain becomes a beautiful thing; these sounds beat and smite you, but you emerge punch drunk, loving every blow and demand more - more shards, more whammy, more chordal stabs, more feedback .... more noise!
Yes!
V is also for Victory. Perhaps winged victory. And for Vortex, galaxian.
The V put an end to the old female waisted guitar; those feminine curves; the guitar as a pet. It became a rocket, an arrow [Marc always called his V a 'flying arrow']. But you are right, the Nike - the great Victory - is a winged thing - and as a Wand, the V is sused to stir the cosmic cauldron of voodoo soup ... yeah, Flying V for Voodoo
Now I read what you wrote about the Tele and the bolted neck. But one thing I think you will concede, the Tele has no feminine curves. It makes a good foil for a girly-man like me. It's a gnarly trunk.
I know where you're coming from, and the Tele is a macho slab ... *but* it does have a waist! I think it was Segovia who mentioned it was the waist of the guitar which made it like a woman. So even the Tele has a waist ... but you're right - it's hard to think of the Tele as a woman - the Strat, yes - but the Tele? If it is a woman, it's a butch one. Yeah, the Tele is a kind of Russian female shot putter of a girl .... where can we take this - a reappraisal of all guitars on a gender basis. But then BB King had his Lucille - quite common for players to give their guitars female names ... also awkward still to see a woman with a guitar [this is getting sexist!] .... So it was the V which broke with the waisted body - even the Explorer had a waist .... we have something here, but it might be X rated
I cannot deny that the Tele has a waist. And it is a rough comfort to me.
Ha ha - this is getting hilarious! Real men don't have waists, right? And real women have hour glass figures - just had an image of a Les Paul wearing a corset, it wasn't nice. There has always been some gender fluidity in rock n roll. But really, gender aside, the waist became superfluous with electrification, but it dies hard. I just compared a V with a Strat and the V has the best resonance and sound acoustically and electrically - no waist! When you compare acoustically you notice the V's sound all there in the central pick up area flowing across the wings. The Strat escapes and dissipates at the neck join ... but that dissipation sounds good in a way too!
That's Mistress Les to you, you had best address his corsetness appropriately :
Vortex, you say?
*That's* what I'm talkin' 'bout.
Where's Mary Ford?
: Isn't she harmonizing to the whammy dives in a triple-decked sound on sound extravaganza?
it opens now
The Epiphone V with the Floyd Rose comes in - listen to the low end as it dive bombs - it has Iron Gear Metal Machine pick ups - utter monster sound
loving those chordal stabs
Here they're done on the Jaguar using the metal plectrum of course - plenty of rusty resonance
good trip
. As long as we are tripping we are going somewhere, somewhere good, I hope.
A glorious cacophony of sound! I have yet to try a Flying V, or a Jaguar for that matter - you make them sound like mythical creatures.
Yes, there is a mythic, Orphic, aspect to all instruments to me. As soon as I played a V - the Dean Schenker in the track pic [which I got very cheap because of some damage on the headstock] I knew there was something special about them. It was an instant obsession for me. I then got another cheap one [but nowhere near the standard of the Dean] for slide [the slide on here in the background is that second V]. Then I started to hanker after a V with a trem. What imagined was a Strat type set up on a set neck V. Couldn't find anything, and then saw an absolutely awesome Epiphone V of 1989 [only year they made this model] with a Floyd Rose. That did all the mad whammy stuff on here [as opposed to the more moderate whammy on the Jaguar]
So they are the 3 Vs of the poem. What is it about the V? It fascinated me that Jimi obviously loved Vs - he had three Vs. The psychedelic one, a sunburst and then the custom made black one he used at Wight. That latter was the only custom guitar he had made for himself. At Wight he seems to turn to it because his workhorse Strat is picking up radio signals - the radio announcements are messing everything. So he switches to the black V and the humbuckers do their job. But his sound is darker, throatier, more detailed and he goes into some experimental areas. At that moment the V became *the* guitar for far out rock blues
I think had Jimi lived longer he would have settled on Vs - because of their wand-like quality. This is where the Schenker model comes in. Schenker starts to plays Vs exclusively and after using Gibson, starts to explore the V with custom models made exclusively for him by Dean. He goes into the whole mythic aspects with the designs and things. The one I now have, the Flames, is decorated exactly like a druid's wand! But the balance, playability, sound and evrything of this guitar is amazing. I don't want to touch my Strats or Les Pauls now ... hence the need to get a V with a trem, as the trem is essential for expression - The Epiphone V with the trem is not as great a guitar as the Dean, but it actually gets close. Of course, the trem means making a hole in the middle of the body. The brilliance of the V is that wide symetrical expanse of body and set neck creating a very wide table of resonance. The aerodynamic shape seems to stream the sound waves behind giving propulsion. Whereas a Les Paul, with its very dense body takes everything to the centre and to earth. The Strat bolt on neck means that energy is divided to neck and body. For me, the V is very close to the lapsteel guitar which is the purest electric guitar. The Telecaster was developed from the lap steel [which is great] but a bolt on neck is introduced. With the V, Gibson stole a march on Fender and got back to the ethos of the lapsteel in some ways.
So the Epiphone V with the Floyd is a compromise because the hole in the middle for the trem disrupts some resonance. But it is worth it because the Floyd is such a powerful device. The Vibrola units on Gibson's Vs don't seem that good. Jimi had one on his Vs. I notice watching some early footage of Wishbone Ash that Andy Powell had a '67 Gibson V with a vibrola. It obviously caused a loss of sustain. So while he got a nice tone, it lacked the killer sustain that Schenker got with the plain Vs at the time.
The third V is a Vintage one with Wilkinson pick ups. It has a much more vintage sound, and I knew it would work well with slide - again, all the sounds flow across the top of the guitar and you hear all the strings resonation at once like a lap steel. As to the Jaguar, this is a guitar that hasn't been superseded by the V [in the way that the Paul and Strat have]. The Jaguar is the last word in the development of the single coil bolt on neck trem guitar [mind you, I am starting to envisage a V Jag, but then a V isn't a V with a bolt on, and the Jag needs to be a bolt on]. I suppose the Jag is close to a harp, a hurdy gurdy, a harpsichord, that kind of thing.
My view of cacophany is that if you listen hard enough to it, you can still pick out the individual strands that go to make up the whole. Like the way that initially looking at a map may overwhelm you until you start to focus. Therefor there is a certain didactic benefit in cacophany; one has to open one's ears at a deeper level of concentration. There's a track I mentioned before that Larry Coryell did with the JCO where he feedbacks over a jazz orchestra crescendo. It might seem like noise at first blush, but in deeper and there is detail. There is some noise stuff which doesn't allow that, but it may have a different agenda
a beautiful hymn in the atmosphere
Thank you - even when my blood, sweat and tears were spilling out all over the floor, I tried to keep it ... pretty
- blood sweat and most of all tears. that*s what tunes are being made of right.
lyrics
Flying Wand
At Wight did you flux the wanded arrow black.
And waves of torrented tormented tides flowed
From wings garlanded with medalled generals.
This wand is now three and jousts with jaguar spears,
If I may be so bold.
credits
from The Dark, Secluded Path,
released November 23, 2017
Bill Boethius: guitars, bass and drum machine
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