I don't even know what I'm talking about now. In recent posts I have been blogging like I have Alzheimers. Every two paragraphs I have to mentally climb out of my head, put on some big clompy boots, then kick myself in the back of my skull - thus re-BOOT-ing my brain (oh, ha-ha) and getting myself back on track. And in this case, the track is the hardcore chord track that I be layin' down with my new electric guitar.
Whoops, I skipped ahead a bit there. Basically - yes - I have wanted an electric guitar for a while. It's just something that appeals to me, like being able to bodypop or growing a moustache. Well, after certain events in my Lower 6th (fucking Asians with their powdered glass and their mocking laughter), the bodypopping is out of the question. For now. And if you have met me you will be well aware that I am simply incapable of growing proper facial hair. I have like two long black hairs on my chin and a load of blonde hairs that are invisible to the naked eye. Blonde hairs do not an impressive moustache make and so I have pretty much had to cross those two dreams off of the list of things to achieve. Luckily, though, getting an electric guitar does not require any particular level of dance skill or testosterone, and so that was definitely ON the list.
So I decided to myself 'I am definitely getting a guitar, and hell to all who oppose me'. This basically consisted of two people. The first was Rose, my little Jimmeny Cricket, who's dad MAKES guitars and who was basically 'Do you know anything thing about guitars, why you want one, or even the first thing of how to play it?'
My answer was a resounding snort of derision. Do I know anything about guitars? Do *I* know anything about guitars? Me, Thomas Phipps, with my two years of recorder training and all the practise I've had on my baby cousin's brightly coloured plastic guitar that has all the buttons that you press and it makes farmyard noises? The way she asked me implied that she thought my knowledge of chord progressions, seventh barre scales, chops, licks, hammering, harmonics, tuning, strings, tremolo bars, artificial dead string or arpeggios was somewhat lacking. To answer her question, I simply laughed heartily and clapped her on the back. Metaphorically.
"Oh Rose, you do make me laugh! And as far as I can tell, it's all pretty simple... you just plug it into the amplification bellows, put your 50p into the slot, then you press one of the sound-strings and to the best of my knowledge that makes it play the solo of Sweet Child of Mine. Or a sheep."
That shut HER up.
The other person who was offended at my attempts to enter the musical spectrum was my good friend Steve. Don't let the name fool you - Steve is not a boy. She's a girl. I think. Well, biologically she is, but you wouldn't know by looking at her. I swear she has more facial hair than me. And the boobs are about comprable. Anyway, Steve is quite the new romantic arteest. I would describe everything about her as either post-ironic or quasi. She goes to the beach and watches the sunset and writes bad poetry about it. She likes to go raving and take ecstasy and then cry on the train home just because life is so... damn... beautiful. She then goes on the Stanley Kubrick group on Facebook and types clever messages like "The man was an innovative genius". Her interests include "pursuing the absolute heart of the poem of life". She once read a poem by Ginsberg. I think that she thinks that anybody who cannot flawlessly quote reams of poetry is a philistine. She also plays the guitar so I made the mistake of asking her for advice - "Which type of guitar is better, red or black?"
She was actually offended that I'd decided to get a guitar. I think her exact words were "YOU ARE JUST LIKE ANOTHER NU-COOL WANNABE WHO ONLY WANTS A GUITAR TO PULL THE BRAINLESS BIMBOS THAT YOU GET INTO YOUR BEDROOM!"
That kind of offended me. Firstly, because... nu-cool wannabe? From somebody who lists "psy-rock" and "psy-trance" amongst their favourite music genres? Secondly... if there's any brainless bimbos in my bedroom, I won't be needin' no guitar to be pullin' them. They don't call me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' for nothing.
NB: The 'fifteen second' is the time between me meeting the girl and me getting off with her. It does not refer to anything else.
NB: Nobody has ever called me that.
NB: It's not a nickname that really sums me up, to be honest.
NB: Hey guys, everyone's calling me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' from now on! Pass it on.
Thirdly, I feel that somebody who is meant to be such a free spirit should not be trying to cut down my talent in the prime of its life. Imagine if someone had told the young Leonardo Da Vinci "That's rubbish, that"; do you think he ever would have achieved greatness? NO. THAT IS THE ANSWER. So, in mocking my burgeoning talent, Steve is essentially breaking the young Leonardo Da Vinci's paintbrushes and stealing Richard Ashford's lunch money that he was saving up to buy a guitar and not letting Lassie go to rescue-dog school. But did that thought deter Steve? No it did not. She then proceeded to confirm that I know nothing about music. She asked me if I knew who Bob Dylan was. I said 'Who?' She said, had I heard of Jimmy Hendrix or Bob Marley. I thought that they were the same person. I actually did. Well, to be honest how many Jamaican singers do we NEED? Seems like we're doubling up on a lot of them. I bet they were pretty samey. She then confidently told me that I'd get bored of it in a week. Yeah well. I GOT BORED OF HER FACE IN A WEEK.
Anyway so I then thought of what guitar I was going to buy. There were so many options, there were Les Pauls and Fenders and Stratocastsers, basses and electrics and classicals and multiple pickups and nylon and steel and second hand and autographed and jazz and blues. After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided on the model I wanted: Cheap. I'd already figured that the height of my guitar career was likely to be me sitting on a mattress on the floor twanging it to the beat of a hippy playing one drum. I certainly wasn't blowing 300 of my hard-woogas on some twanger. I figured fuck it and bought a cheapo one off eBay. This was pretty exciting as it was my first eBay purchase ever. It became even more exciting when I realised that I had bid on a guitar with only twenty minutes left on the clock, and I hadn't bothered to set up PayPal or even find my credit card yet, so there was a mad panic when I thought that I'd be jailed for bidding on an eBay guitar with no financial backup. Fortunately my total lack of knowledge didn't appear to matter, as what did my feedback for the sale say? "Quick response and fast payment. Perfect! THANKS!!" Check it out, "pemburytrading" digs me. I got TWO count em TWO exclamation marks. WHOOP. I especially like the way that the feedbacker yelled the word THANKS. Like it was only at that point that he had realised just what a GREAT ebayer I was and just had to shout about it to the entire world.
After a long and nail-biting wait, my guitar arrived. It came in a box packaged with an amp. The box had a picture of some flames and a guy playing the guitar and shooting waves of pure concentrated cool onto an audience. I was like woah so I excitedly got it out of the box.
There were lots of things attached, including wires and springs. I plugged it in, then searched vainly for the slot in which to insert the money, or - indeed - the cranking lever at the back to wind up the bellows. There was nothing. There wasn't even an activation switch. I was somewhat annoyed as this meant that either my understanding of how a guitar worked was severely flawed, or they had simply not come included. Fortunately I looked it up on the internet and it turns out that this particular make of guitar was neither steam nor kinetic powered, so that was a relief.
After about a day of casually twanging wires at random, singing a song that I'd made up called 'Look At Me I'm Playing the Guitar and Twanging the Strings Oh Yeah (acoustic mix)', I decided to learn how actually to play it. I allocated an hour, after which I was going to put my name in NME and book myself into a tour of Europe with my new band, 'Just Thomas'. It's like Just Jack, except in this case, the name is more literal. There was some stuff about tuning it at the beginning. I couldn't find a 'tune' button on the bodywork so I just figured - hey, it's making a sound, I'm musically deaf, who cares if its tuned or not - then turned to page one of the internet site. "Playing Scales". Scales? Scales are for girls who play the clarinet, not wicked hard awesome legends like me. I laugh at your scales! So I thought fuck this then skipped at random to about lesson seven. This is the sight that greeted my eyes:
I was like wtf. Guitar sucks.
After some more excitement, I read another lesson. After a bit of practise, I have now learnt some chords. For those not possessing the same musical talent as me, chords are like small groups of notes that when played together buzz and go mute. The chords I know are G Major, C Major and D Major. Interestingly, every time I play them they sound different. I also am unable to switch from one chord to another without stopping, looking up the chord in the book, slowly changing fingers one by one, then twanging again. This makes me playing "Leaving on a Jetplane" a long and tbh arduous affair. It basically sounds like I am anally raping John Denver's mushy corpse. After about a week of this I figured that the noises I get basically sounds a bit like a guitar, so I can get away with just playing G major over and over again and singing tunefully over the top. So for about five minutes the other day I sang Wonderwall in G Major, just strumming in time. What's good is the fact that my fingers aren't exactly adept at staying in place so every time I strum it sounds a bit different. It didn't sound GREAT tbh. But then I reckon that Leonardo's first stick figures were a bit shit.
However, I persevered and every day I learn a new and exciting skill on the guitar. For example, today I figured out how to attach the strap. Then, as my mother had gone out, I wandered around the house in just my underwear and my Hampton Boat Club hat chasing my dog and madly playing C Major over and over again. The dog got so stressed that she ran into a door.
My mother was out buying my little brother - who is 16 - his birthday present. It was a skateboard. I am so totally gonna steal it so then I can continue my mission of annexing, lameifying and belittling every single teenage sub-culture that I have missed out on during my formative years. I have already ruined rave music, spray-painting, hoodies and the guitar for my siblings. I'm working on clubbing: "IT'S JOLLY LOUD IN HERE, AND WHY ARE THESE GIRLS RUBBING THEMSELVES AGAINST ME? THIS SUCKS." I reckon that pretty soon I'll move onto piercings, drugs, and 'rap music'.
ROCK AND RAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWL *Does rock and roll fingers*
I reckon that there are probably really good guitarists out there who are reading this post and getting actually angry about the fact that I own a guitar. Me owning any sort of musical instrument is giving a hungry korean guy a new puppy. They're most likely thinking 'There's probably a nice Mexican boy out there who would really LOVE a new electric guitar and who would really put some effort into learning it and getting good, while here you are just not even bothering and frankly taking the piss.' NOT TRUE. If I was taking the piss, would I have thrown a stapler at my little brother when he tried to pick it up and made a little dent below one of the pickups? I'm not taking the piss. I'm just uncaring.
No comments:
Post a Comment