BigWheeledWagon

. . . and not to be a forum ettiquette Nazi, but this was all discussed previously here:

Friday Night Lights

Perhaps the powers that be can merge this in with the original thread. Regardless, I'm glad to see that some people are watching this excellent show.

This tends to be the problem with most modern poetry and narrative, in general. I've enjoyed reading your thoughts BWW. Do you have any particular training in literature or are you just a good reader?

 

...

I don't know if I'd call it training, but I was an English major in college (though with an emphasis on creative writing). At the time ('95-'99), there was a great deal of discussion about metafiction (the literary prominence of metafiction from earlier decades seemed to have really taken root in popular culture, and at the same time, serious literature seemed to be embracing pop culture on some level). David Foster Wallace was my literary hero (okay, still is), and a lot of the young profs were really pushing the question of whether irony was dead (or should be) in American literature. Good times. Of course, this was also during the time when I discovered the band that we all spend so much time discussing here (it seems like my roommate and I kept "Being There" on repeat in the CD changer for at least three semesters).

Anyway, I'm no longer academically involved with literature -- just a voracious reader. I'm just glad that someone thought that I didn't sound like a rambling idiot in my post -- thanks.

I've thought about this some more, and here are those thoughts. I would compare "Being There" to any book in which the author writes about a protagonist who is also a writer -- like say "The Shining" (or pretty much any Stephen King novel). This doesn't necessarily make the book self-reflexive or metaficitonal if the character just happens to be a writer and the book deals with his attempt to write, technique, etc. . . . but if he is, say, a writer with the same name as the actual author, as in "Lunar Park," where Bret Easton Ellis has a character named Bret Easton Ellis who shares the author's biographical information, then it generally shifts towards the metafictional (and "Lunar Park" is in many ways a sort of metaficitonal version of "The Shining" -- it's aware of itself as a work of fiction, it's aware of the role of the author . . . hell, it seems aware of "The Shining" as well). I would say "Being There" is more "Shining" than "Lunar Park" (not as to artistic merit, but metafictionally speaking).

I think the problem with using this analysis with popular music is that we as listeners almost always assume the protaganist of any song sung in the first person is the actual singer of the song and is directly about him or her (which would explain a lot of the discomfort some feel about some of the lyrics on "Summerteeth). Given this assumption, though, almost any song that deals with music or songwriting becomes "meta." If we start from the assumption that the "narrator" of the song is a character, though, then this really narrows the metafictional field. Perhaps this tendency to assume the singer is always his own protagonist is the reason popular music hasn't examined the territory of metafiction all that often. The assumed directness of the music may make it unsuitable for this technique as a type of ironic distance or sidestep the need to use it to reach for an extra level of direct connection with the reader/listener.

. . . and they concluded the show by playing "Sky Blue Sky."

Was this on a car commercial?

Not sure if that was meant as a dig at Wilco's "selling out" (please, let's not start that conversation back up again), but in case it was an honest question -- no, it was played as part of the show.

While "Being There" certainly examines themes about the importance of music in Jeff's life and the role of rock in culture in general, I'm not sure the album is self-reflexive in nature in the way the books you mentioned are. While it does incorporate references to other music in a very post-modern way, it doesn't really comment on itself or call attention to itself as a work of "fiction" in the way that certain works of literature such as say, Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" or some of David Foster Wallace's work. I guess what I'm saying is that while it's about rock music and even the rock business generally, it's not about itself as a piece of music. I know you suggested that the album comments on itself, but it strikes me that it comments on other music or the concept of music -- not itself as a construction of the artist. It doesn't address its own workings (for instance, in the way "Scream" called attention to the genre conventions it chose to follow or subvert), although it does seem to consciously attempt to place itself within a certain tradition \0(Note: "Someone Else's Song," with the lyrics about sounding like what's-his-name and the title lyrics, though, unlike much of the rest of the album, does appear to comment on itself in this way, but again, to some extent, it seems to be less about that particular song or album but more about songwriting generally). That's not to say it's not to say it's not "meta" in some ways. I still think it has real potential for use in your assignment. The most "meta" part of "Being There," I think, is the way that it does examine the relationship between the artist and the listener and at times inverts this dynamic ("The Lonely One"). In interviews, Jeff has often discussed how he feels that the listener creates his own meaning to the songs and is an active participant in his art -- this might be an interesting angle to take.

While I can think of a lot music that uses a sort of "pastiche" technique of incorporating other musical references, I can't really think of a lot of music that identifies the artificial nature of its narrative and comments upon itself. I mean, James Brown would command his band to "take it to the brige" (or the aforemention "guitar solo" in "Halloween Head), but it was really just more instructional. He didn't yell out, "This is a bridge, and it will create tension between the verse and the next time we play the chorus again, and don't you find this to be kind of a cliche -- YOW! HUH! Good God now! By the way, I like to yell exclamations to illustrate how much the music moves me." I guess "The Stage Names" is the closest I can think of to doing this. Also, some of Beck's work -- like "Midnight Vultures." Oh, and some of the Beatles work comments on other Beatles songs and on their image, like "Glass Onion" (I told you about the Walrus and me, man . . . Here's another clue for you all, the Walrus was Paul) or "The Ballad of John and Yoko" or even "Come Together" (got to be good looking because he's so hard to see).

"Either Way" played on Friday Night Lights a minute ago. Earlier this season they featured "Muzzle of Bees" (there was a previous discussion about it).

EDIT: I see someone also posted this in the "wilco out and about thread" a few minutes before I started this topic -- someone feel free to delete this thread if it seems redundant or otherwise unneeded.

Congrats -- it's a good-looking axe. I think you made the right choice.

Okay, so I've narrowed it down to two options for the meantime:

1) going with a power boost like the MXR Micro Amo; or

2) getting a little Fender Champ for recording purposes (I'm leaning toward this option)

I've got a nice little coupon for Musician's Friend due to a little warehouse mix-up that took place over the summer that I can use before the end of February, so it would make either option relatively inexpensive. So, does anyone have any experience with the Champ? At the low price, I may even be willing to try modding it eventually (for example, Torres sells a tube rectifier kit). Or should I spend the extra money for a Pro, Jr.? Truthfully, the 5W output of the Champ appeals to me as a recording amp that can be overdriven at low volumes. Anyway, let the discussion continue.

Instead of buying a Swart Atomic Space Tone you could just buy a Fender champ. Same circuit but a lot cheaper!

The Champ uses solid-state rectification -- the Atomic Space Tone has tube rectification.

EDIT: I didn't mean that to sound dismissive or smart-assed -- it does seem they have a lot in common, but of course the Swart justifies its expense by dispensing with any solid state parts, not being mass-produced, and having tube tremolo, and reverb. The Champ appears to be a pretty good recording amp -- I'm considering one as a stop-gap measure until I can afford a nicer amp. Plus, there are tube rectifier kits out there, so for just a little extra cash, one could mod the Champ to be much more like the Swart, just without the extras.

Just came across this picture over at Wilcoworld:

 

 

Any idea what song this is that Jeff's playing bass on?

 

Here's the setlist if it helps:

 

1. Misunderstood

2. Forget The Flowers

3. You Are My Face

4. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

5. Handshake Drugs

6. Side With The Seeds

7. A Shot In The Arm

8. She's A Jar

9. Impossible Germany

10. It's Just That Simple

11. Too Far Apart

12. Jesus, Etc.

13. Walken

14. I'm The Man Who Loves You

 

Encore 1:

15. California Stars

16. Hate It Here

17. Box Full Of Letters

18. Heavy Metal Drummer

19. Spiders (Kidsmoke)

 

Encore 2:

20. Via Chicago

21. Red-Eyed And Blue

22. I Got You (At The End Of The Century)

23. Outtasite (Outta Mind)

My guess would be "It's Just That Simple" -- his bass playing would allow John to play guitar and sing.

EDIT: ah, the previous poster beat me to it while I was posting -- sorry for being redundent.

Since when does JT wear a tie? I've never been so disappointed.

What's wrong with wearing a tie? With the advent of casual Friday and its expansion into pretty much every day of the week, it now seems that wearing a tie is (in a truly unexpected turnaround from the old image of being a cog in the corporate machine, etc.) the nonconformist thing to do. Instead of wearing the standard rock n' roll outfit of jeans and a rumpled t-shirt, Jeff's rocking out with a tie -- I applaud him. He's dressing up by choice -- it's not like he's heading into the office where he works in ad sales or something.

On a side note, I find that as fewer and fewer folks where I work wear a tie, I am now more likely to wear one. It's not exactly rebelious, but in a workplace that's pretty much requires a dress shirt and pants or suit, I find that the tie is the one chance to stand out from the rest. One might argue that dressing up is the new dressing down . . . or maybe I'm just trying to pretend that I'm not incredibly lame now that I actually have to act and dress like an adult.

Anyway, cool picture.

I think Mr. Miller (above) has pretty much covered all the alternatives in addressing the problem with regards to your Bassman. I was pretty much in the same boat a few years back when I opted to ditch a Twin I was using and go w/ smaller lower output amps.

 

Here's something I think you should consider: If your not playing out, and I don't either really, do you really want a big amp around the house? Having small amps has been very convenient for me in that, A.) They take up very little floor space B.) look nice in my home C.) Break up at reasonably low volume levels with an undoubtedly sweeter grind than I'd ever hoped to achieve before and are just sonically very flexible.

 

I don't mean to keep plugging these things here but the reason I chose that Macht 12 I use is that it's only 12W with a built in attenuator that cut's it back to 6W with the flip of a single toggle switch. Perfect feature for me since I'm a habitually lazy bastard when it comes to dialing in the sound for the room. It's shockingly loud@12W when you dime it out w/loads of headroom and @6W you can nail anything you want with a modest bit of distortion to something more extreme.

Only drawback, no reverb tank and I really miss that.

 

BTW, if anyone knows of a great external/pedal Reverb lemmie know.

The Electro Harmonix stuff makes nice enough sounds but they are just unbearably noisy.

I use the Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail, and I haven't found it to be "unbearably" noisy (well, not normally -- sometimes it acts up a little), but it's certainly not as nice as having reverb built into the amp.

Regarding your Macht 12: what type of speaker does yours have? Color? (just curious). Anyway, it sounds like a great amp, but given its fairly steep price, I may just keep saving a little longer and go after a Swart Atomic Space Tone. Even though the 6W cut is a nice feature on the Macht, I think I could probably still get the 15W Swart to break up at volumes my home studio could handle. Oh well, these are just pipe dreams for the time being. If using some kind of signal boost doesn't get the desired results, I may have to get a Blues, Jr. or something for the meantime. I should probably search the previous posts for discussions about good, low-priced 12-15W tube amps.

Just like the volume knob on your guitar, but with the foot.

Exactly -- the only real difference is that you can place it further along in your effects chain so that the effects are getting the full signal of your guitar but the amp is getting a softer signal from the effects (or any various other combinations of guitar volume/pedal volume /chain placement). It's also nice for volume swells, pseudo-reverse playing, etc. that might be a little harder to pull off using your volume knob (if you're playing slide, you can emulate some pedal steel-type effects). You can also use it for a short dose of tremolo-type effect (though it would be pretty tiring to use it in place of a full-fledged tremolo pedal set on a moderate setting and impossible for a faster setting). It can be nice to have at the end of your effects chain so that you can kill all signal going to your amp with one quick foot motion. Also, a lot of volume pedals have an separate output out to a tuner so that you can cut the volume to the amp but still send a signal to your tuner so that an audience doesn't have to hear you tune up between songs.

I have a 4X10 Bassman combo and recording at home is a bit of a challenge. But, I don't want to trade down just yet. My solution is to use a clean boost to drive the tubes to breakup. A MXR Micro Amp (or something similar) won't add any distortion via circuit ... it will make your tubes burn hotter. I can get great breakup at about a 2.5 or 3.

 

Of course, if you want a small boutique amp go for it ... but don't trade off your larger amp and then wish you had it when it's time for a gig.

While getting a new amp is an option (though not an immediate option -- I just spent a pretty good bit on my custom replacement strat body), I have no intention of getting rid of the old Bassman (like you, I have the 4x10 and really love it in spite of the challenge it presents in recording) even though I no longer play out. Plus, silverface Bassmans (Bassmen?) don't exactly command amazing sums of money when sold (one of the reasons I came into possession of my amp in the first place -- not many older Fender tube amps can be had for $300). I was leaning toward an attenuator until I can really invest in a nice smaller amp (perhaps even one of those pricey boutique amps we've been discussing recently), but perhaps I will try the Micro Amp solution for now -- getting the Bassman to break up between 2.5 and 3 would be perfect.. I'm just tired of having to settle for overdrive/distortion coming from a pedal or for getting great amp sounds at louder levels but settling for lots of extra noise from the room, etc. when recording. Does anyone else have any experience with the MXR Micro Amp or another pedal of its ilk?

Anyway, I appreciate all the feedback on my dilemma -- I'm always impressed with how many well-informed and helpful musicians frequent this board (though the good musical taste goes without saying). As much as I love Wilco, I've found myself checking "Solid State Technology" much more often than "Just a Fan." No longer being part of an actual real-world musical community (with very few exceptions -- pretty sad, considering that I live in Nashville, where it seems every third person is a pretty good musician), this board has been a nice substitute. Thanks again for all the good advice.

So, with all the amp talk going on here lately, I've decided to seek advice from those around here about an amp issue I have. I've got an old Fender Bassman 10 that I've been pretty happy with for years. Back in the days when I actually played in bands, it was a great amp that gave me plenty of power. Now, however, I mostly use it for home recording, and, well, it's too loud. Playing it a volumes loud enough to get it to break up is inconvenient at best. I don't have the most soundproofed home studio, and cranking the thing seems to generate lots of rattles, etc. from around the room.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with attenuators or other such methods of getting the amp to break up at lower volumes (and I'm not talking about overdrive pedals). Would I just be better off getting a smaller amp for recording(something I will probably do in a few years anyway)?

Here is that Swart Amp. Damn.

Great, one more thing to start saving to buy and thinking of ways to justify the expense to my wife. Once I finish up my guitar project, this may be the next must-have item for me.

Musician's Friend sends out cheesy little emails every so often with a little recap of "important" events in rock history that happened on this date in years past -- I place "important" in quotation marks because they include such things as Britney Spears marrying that guy in Vegas a few years ago. Mentioned in today's email, however, was Wilco sending Lounge Axe out in style back in 2000. Wish I could have been there.

Oh wait I see ... maybe that is one of the Legend L-00's? Those have a street price of about $5K I think.

 

IMO, that's crazy when you can buy the actual vintage model for much less.

Yeah, I've noticed that Gibson is selling a lot of new guitars now for more than the cost of their vintage counterparts. I don't get it. It's like if Fender were to sell their '52 Telecaster reissue for more than the value of an actual '52 telecaster.

An SJ-300 is a acoustic guitar.

It may or may not have some type of on board pickup (transducer etc. I'm to lazy to look it up), however it can't be qualified as an electric as it's primary design, like the L-00 mentioned earlier is directed towards producing sound sans amplification.

 

It's an acoustic with a pick-up. Maybe.

 

 

This has been true at various times over the years.

 

 

A guitar is a very personal thing for the guitarist.

Make damn sure it's and instrument your sibling will want before you drop thousands of $$s on one.

 

EDIT: But it's an awfully generous thing your considering IMO. Good luck.

 

Go together, let him choose/play it....

Thanks for the support there. The super-jumbo comes in numerous configurations, but it's the purely acoustic one I'd love to have -- Gibson's changed the name of the guitar so many times throughout its history that I lose track. It began life in the 1930's as simply, the Super Jumbo, then became the Super Jumbo 200, then the J-200, then the SJ-200, and now Gibson produces models with the titles j-200, sj-200, and the sj-300 -- all with slightly different features. I believe the SJ-300 currently produced does have active electronics, so Lemsky's right that it's not purely acoustic. So, I guess I actually meant the sj-200 (or maybe the j-200). I've never bothered to really look into because they are all out of my price range right now (or at least it would be hard to justify the expense to my wife, who would insist that $4K-$6K could be better spent on home improvements, college funds for the kids we don't have yet, etc.), especially considering that I already have a '67 Gibson Dove (given to me by my dad who bought it new) We're just splitting hairs, anyway. Either way, it's a big, beautiful guitar.

Regardless, I agree with the general consensus that it's always a good idea for the owner-to-be of a new guitar to play it first. Any mass-production guitar (even the most high-end) will vary some from guitar to guitar. I've played cheap guitars from less than reputable companies that somehow ended up sounding great, and I've played expensive guitars that sound terrible. Believe it or not, my Japanese-made Strat (before I started rebuilding and customizing it) sounded better than a lot of American-made Strats that were much more expensive. That's why I can never take the risk of buying a guitar online (with the exception of my Epiphone ES-335 that my wife bought for me online that, after a little work, ended up sounding pretty great for the price). Also, a guitar that I think sounds great or plays great may sound or feel wrong to your brother. It may ruin the surprise, but I think the best option is to let him pick it out after playing it.

Thanks for the suggestions. Is the Broadway area kind of touristy and cheezy, whereas the West End area is a bit more hip, etc.? Are they close enough to walk to each other and to the Ryman? We'd like to avoid the main tourist part of town, but still be kind of in the thick of the city? Thanks again.

No, you couldn't walk between Broadway/2nd Ave. area and West end comfortably. Broadway is pretty touristy (as a Nashvillian, I rarely spend much time there other than to go to the Ryman or sports events), but it's worth checking out as a first-time visitor and there are several places in that area that aren't just tourist traps. A while back, a friend of mine lived downtown, and we spent time downtown without dealing with the tourists too much. Now we mostly hang out around West End or Green Hills (mostly because I live nearby there). West End is indeed a little hipper, but it's pretty standard college campus-type stuff. Thanks to Vandy, it can get a little frat-tastic, but there are some great restaurants, bars, etc. Anyway, have fun on your visit to Nashville -- it's a great town, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. If the Ryman show is even half as great as the last one, you (and me too since I will be at the show as well) will be in for a great night.

do you think its the best acousic guitar ?

Ever? That would be a tough call. It's really a matter of personal taste. It's not my favorite of all time, but it is a great guitar. If I had better financial resources, I would prefer something bigger, like an SJ-300. Still, the l-00 is an amazing guitar, and a gift of said guitar would make you the best sibling ever. If he doesn't like it, feel free to send it my way.

Yeah, it definately looks like an Ovation.

If my brother gave me a 1937 Gibson L-00 it'd be one of the happiest and most surprising days of my life.

I have to agree on this one.

Gruhn Guitars is indeed a fine, fine guitar shop. Check it out if you get a chance.