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Music of the week: Parlement/Funkadelic live in Houston in 1976, and 200 Motels of Frank Zappa - on video then CD... Isn't it amazing how Zappa's rigorous approach to his music would result in such humorous freedom? Sometimes I wish I could just let go and make this kind of music, but though I love humour and comedy, when it comes to my music I'm so very stern!

Also lately while listening to 1970s jazz-rock, I was wondering why many of my jazz friends seem to be kind of stuck in naively brainy and cold compositions and cannot reach the vigorous sensuality and liberty of the previous generation who they claim are their inspiration... 

a video by Dirty Primitives featuring the Plankaster!

This is the first video clip of French band Dirty Primitives, in which you can see the plankaster I built for David B. in action. Quite a catchy song, isn't it? 

Album is due in a few weeks!

Another hand painted pedal enclosure

Another samurai-themed hand painted pedal enclosure - like for the previous one, I still need a Japanese friend to write the name of the samurai on it before adding the final layer of varnish. Also I prepared an Etsy e-shop that I'll launch once I have a few more items to sell - I'm waiting for new hammond alu cases to make a new batch after these tries out...

Feedback is welcome - and please spread the word to any DYI pedal maker you might know!

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Music of the week: live concerts on Youtube of David Gilmour and Roger Waters - I try to convince myself that it's not so bad to get old... And on CD, Bach's Golberg variations by Andrei Gravilov. But the main music of the week is me starting again to practice guitar and singing every day - recalling and upgrading songs I've stopped playing for too long after moving from Berlin, also upgrading my pedal rig for a new stage project that I hope will be performed this winter...

hand painted pedal enclosure

So here is something I had in mind for a while now, as I was trying to combine my appetencies with my competencies in a concrete project, that is to try to earn a little bit of money with my hand work - to fund my next projects. I want to propose hand painted pedal enclosures for sale, either with my own designs, or on order... 

Since I love 19th century Japanese prints, I started with a fighting samurai as a first try - I have other ones, also Kabuki actors, dragons, erotic scenes..., but people can ask me what they want; I never mentioned it but I happen to be an illustrator for some magazines (you can see some of my press drawings here).   

Is it a good idea? Is anybody interested? Feedback is welcome!

 

 

 

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Music of the week: I've just spent a few days in Berlin, and I couldn't help but listen to Lou Reed's Berlin album - and I've been roaming Berlin's autumnal streets humming Sad Song... 

I took the opportunity to go rehearsing a couple of times in the excellent Noisy Rooms studios I already mentioned here before. Everything's good there - good rooms, good material, good people... They are so pro that they even have spacious toilets so a guitarist can take a leak without having to leave his instruments outside unattended!

About sketches A & D, I keep on exploring an idea I had and posted last week (I'm quite happy with it actually). A comment pointed out that it would be better headless - I usually don't really like headless guitars but it was worth trying! Lately I figured out that it would be easier to have guitarists accept radical ergonomic designs by keeping everything else very traditional, mostly with naturally finished wood and good old chrome gear - including an old fashion Bigsby-like trem (Bigsby is more about good looks than good trem, isn't it?)

an article in new luthiery magazine Sustain

This month I have the honor to have a few pages about my humble work in the first issue of Sustain, a new magazine published by the Fellowship of European Luthiers! You may remember that about one year ago, I posted about meeting Leo Lospennato, a Berlin-based luthier whose very interesting book had caught my attention.

Well, it happened that though I couldn't join his workshop as I had planned, Leo kept an eye on my blog and followed the making of my plank guitars with a sympathetic eye. When he co-created Sustain, he asked me to answer a few questions about this project, for what I thought would be an quarter page about crazy alternative lutherie. Maybe it's because I've been enthusiastic when answering and sent 8 A4 pages, but it ended up in a real article (I tell much more than I ever did in this blog actually), that I hope people will enjoy - and that might attract potential collaborators for concrete guitar making!

The printed version of Sustain is about to be released but you can download an electronic version here for free. The other articles are very interesting, with technical information as much as cultural ones, that's the kind of magazine that was missing, now it's there!

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Music of the week: YouTubed concert of Adam Ant's new band in The Hague last summer. Adam is now in great shape after many years in mental disease limbos, and he's never as good as when he's playing his earliest songs - that are also the best ones! 

You might be surprised that I appreciate Adam Ant so much, but I can assure you that he and the different versions of the Ants have released some of the finest guitar-based music of the 1980s, something that might have been overlooked when they achieved mainstream fame. But in France Adam Ant was  completely unknown - media probably thought he was too British for continental audience! So back in the day when I started to listen to his music, it was still part of the post-punk underground, and it remained like this! 

He seems eager to tour intensively, I hope that I can see him on stage in my corner of Europe - that would be unexpected after all these years!