beatworm.co.uk

While I was stationed up in Crewe over the summer, there was a fire on the local business park that was serious enough to make the national news .

It was only few hundred yards away from the office in which I was working, close enough in fact, for us to be asked to vacate the premises in the second wave of safety evacuations that occurred. I grabbed some camera phone snaps on the way. For which I was told off by a passing policewoman, tin foil hat fans.

The whole town was fairly closed down for the rest of the afternoon. Despite the swarms of emergency services vehicles, the fire was not extinguished and carried on into the evening. Afterwards, it emerged that this was due to the fire services concentrating their efforts on a gas depot nearby, keeping it’s stored reserve of oxygen and combustible gas cooled, and isolated.

It was all successfully contained, and life was back to normal the next morning. Nobody was hurt, at which point the media lost interest. I was impressed with how effectively the various supporting services mobilised, co-ordinated and went to work, keeping everybody safe, routing around the disturbance, and guiding everything gently back to normality.

Last night, in Pizza Express, the first words spoken to me, after we were seated.

“Do you like Spacemen 3 ?”

It took me around twenty seconds of careful thought to remember that I was wearing a glow-in-the dark Spiritualized® T-shirt. I was initially concerned that I’d walked into a Derren Brown skit.

I did manage to fix up slightly better net connectivity from my hideaway in Crewe, as I wrote months earlier .

I never managed to publish that particular note, as I managed to induce a rather persistent state of collapse within the fragile collection of ramshackle perl and shell scripts I use as a publishing system for this site. I’m not sure, but I think it all stemmed from hastily upgrading perl in place, optimistically ignoring umpteen other components that were reliant upon it. The server I use to host this authoring system is rather long of tooth.

It all threatened to take rather more time to patch up than I had to spare, but now I’m back home I’ve had the opportunity to carefully piece things back together. Careful observers may have been able to spot me hanging out in a few of the usual spots, and participating in the latest craze that’s been driving the kids wild. However, it’s more comfortable here, so I think I’ll be moving back in.

I think some spring-cleaning and a spot of re-decoration might be in order.

I’ve always enjoyed the sound of the banjo. I’d noticed that lately it’s been cropping up more prominently in music recordings I’ve purchased, what with my penchant for ‘americana’, and burgeoning Sufjan obsession. For a while I’ve been kicking around an idea, based around a jokey list of a recipe for the ultimate band; chick on bass, handclaps, xylophone, accordion, etc. and the banjo seemed to also have promoted itself to this exclusive set. Imagine my joy on Christmas day when I unwrapped a five string banjo. Perhaps I should say disrobed, rather than unwrapped, as my inventive wife had actually dressed the cased instrument in a full Santa costume, to better disguise the too-obvious-for-wrapping silhouette.

Some initial thoughts about the banjo, from an amateur explorer’s perspective.

• They are rather tricky to tune
• It’s tuned to a G chord, so it’s a bit like slide guitar
• The hard stuff is the right hand. I’ve always been a bit slack at my right hand guitar techniques, so this part is perhaps even more work.
• It’s very loud, everyone nearby gets to share your ineptitude

It’s very pretty to look at, and tuned up sounds superb. I’ve learnt four chords, and a basic right hand pattern, from a tution book I coincidentally recieved for Christmas, which bears a reassurance accross its cover, in large point type; ‘NO KNOWLEDGE OF MUSIC REQUIRED’. It is quite possibly the best Christmas present I’ve ever received.

I’ve not really been playing much for the last couple of years. Some of this has been due to my stupid job soaking up all the spare hours in the day, some of it down to struggling on and off with tedious back pain. One day I realised that the real problem might perhaps be that I just didn’t have a guitar lying around handy.

When it comes to guitars you see, I’m a tinkerer. In the absence of any regular gigging or rehearsing schedule, my preferred form of instrument practice regime is to wander past a handy guitar, grab it and noodle away. This noodling may even take the semblance of co-ordinated practicing; I’m no stranger to scales, chord construction, finger callisthenics. Equally I’m sometimes happy to dial up the amp and just play squeally false harmonics and make faces at myself in any nearby reflective surfaces. The key to it all is the serendipity. If this ad-hoc hobby approach is to keep any sort of momentum, I decided, it’s essential to have a readily playable guitar sitting close to hand, the better to trap my magpie spirit whenever I pass.

For the past umpteen years, my main guitar has been a nice example of an Ibanez RG550. Faintly spiky, none more black, light and springy, with a tuning system that owes much to I.K. Brunel. As a workhorse guitar it’s an inspired creation; it can be coerced into approximations of all the guitar sounds you’d normally expect, the wide skinny neck aids the clumsiest of slippery sausage fingers, and you can gig all night on it without it deviating from it’s fixed tuning. The price you pay for this is in fragility ( it’s on it’s second replacement neck ), and in complexity ( floating double locking vibrato bridge unit makes for a lengthy restringing job ), meaning that it’s often sporting too-old strings, and packed away in it’s case, safe from accidental knocks and bumps . Out of sight, out of mind, and unplayed.

The idea occurred that maybe I needed to get a second ‘toy’ guitar. Something robust and straightforward that I could leave out on a stand for day to day plunking around. Something with some mass to it and a fixed bridge. Maybe a telecaster. I’m not at the front of the queue of tele fanciers, although I’ve always admired the 70’s thinline models . Getting something far away from a strat would also give me some variety as a second guitar.

Sitting on a bus passing a local guitar shop one evening I spotted one of the old Hohner Steinberger licensed ‘cricket bats’ in the window. This made an intriguing new option. Small cheap, portable. Easy to re-string, albeit using more costly double-ball-end strings. Not only robust, but small enough to tuck away on a shelf entirely out of harm’s way. Filled with enthusiasm, I mounted a shopping trip. Unfortunately the stick in question was not only pricier than anticipated ( £350-ish ), but it turned out to to be a left-hander, surprisingly enough.

Undeterred, I carried on a minor tour of the local music shops. No thinlines to be seen. Sound Control had some Peavey not-quite telecasters that almost appealed, but they all had rather obnoxious paint effects. None of the Fenders on offer really grabbed me either, at least not the comfortably priced Mexican built models. I nearly talked myself into trying some very nice looking hard tailed Schecters, but backed away, as they were really stretching the upper price limit of what could comfortably be termed a cheap second instrument. And then, right as we were about to pack up for the day, I found it.

It’s a ‘Cruiser’ which seems to be the cheap Chinese label for ‘Crafter’ , who themselves make an inexpensive but interesting range of far eastern electrics. The finish and shape of it were what immediately caught my eye. It’s some kind of double-cutaway Les Paul Special / Junior kind of thing, a flat top, bolt-on neck, with a tune-o-matic style tail, and imitation P90s. The colour is a very rich take on the yellow colour that the 50s specials used to come in, and just looks superb. When I enquired about price, I was just amazed to hear it was going for £99. For that kind of money it was heading towards being a foregone conclusion, but I thought I’d ask to plug it in and try it out. It sounded and played well enough, and so I happily bought it on the spot.

It sounded even better when I got it home and had a chance to properly dig around with a good amplifier. Lots of ring with plenty of sustain. Enough mid signal to shape tones, perhaps a little harsh on the top end, but easily tweaked away with EQ. Frankly I’m astonished by the quality of modern cheap music kit. This is immensely better than the standard I’d have expected from the sub-£150 beginner’s guitars on offer back when I was learning to play. It holds tune remarkably well, and has been given a good shop setup by the people at Rikaxxe. I had my concerns about Gibson scale length, as I’m more used to Fender, and some of the chords are a bit of a squeeze, but the neck and action are really playable. The pickups, often a disappointment on low end instruments, do a reasonable job and seem well shielded - hum free in a room full of lights and computers. I’ve had it for a week or so now, and I’m still playing it daily. Mission accomplished, for about two hundred quid less than I was planning to spend

I’ve just handed in my resignation. Five or so years in, a natural pause occurred, and it suddenly seemed like a great idea for me to move on to something else. So as of about four weeks time, I’ll be unemployed, newly-married with a mortgage and dog to support. Sounds like just the sort of thing I would expect me to do. Should be fun. Or immensely tragic.

The weekend before last, I spent in London as part of a somewhat premature, but justifiable stag party. I discovered I’m great at growing stupid facial hair, and inventing stupid drinking games. Unfortunately I also discovered I’m terrible at playing them.

Featured participants: Tom, Matt, Susan, Methusalah, Spanky, Matt, Colin, Matt, Rob, Erwin, Alex, Sandy and Trigger.

Special Guest Starring: Tim.

Weekend sponsored by Arkell’s - Wiltshire’s finest beer only sold on trains.

It has been eight years and several months since my last haircut. A change is as good as arrest.

See also webcam

NeXT Stop: interesting facial hair!