It recently occurred to me that I have never owned an electric guitar. In fact, I don’t think I have ever much played an electric guitar (partly due to not owning one). I have my beloved Ovation, and my dad’s Ovation, and I once had a mysterious unknown guitar that I bought in a pawn shop in Scotland. At the time, I was playing guitar nearly every day, but figured that living overseas without my guitar would be fine. Reader, it was not fine. I was in a pawn shop almost immediately, spending my precious fifty quid on an instrument that was a bear to play, the most unforgiving fret board I have ever touched, but worth it because it sounded like rather like Leonard Cohen’s voice. I still miss that guitar, which I couldn’t afford to ship back to America, and which I gave to a friend instead.
Now, it might occur to you that my husband is a musician, and he has something like twelve electric guitars, and maybe I could just play one of his. Reader, you would clearly be wrong. Although it was playing his latest guitar, a blue 12-string electric (I think his fourth blue guitar—it’s a whole thing), that made me realize how much I’d missed playing guitar. And so, I began Googling guitars. Then I went out to play some guitars and see what I liked. And I discovered not only the best music shop that I’ve ever been in, but yes, I bought a dark green Gretsch Streamliner that plays like butter and sounds like church bells.
Now, I want to discuss Atlanta Discount Music before I talk about my guitar because if you’ve ever been to a guitar shop or a music store, then you know it can be a fraught experience. There is something I like to call Musician Machismo that has an unfortunate tendency to manifest in guitar shops, especially big box shops like Guitar Center. And the phenomenon is this: men shredding badly, noodling loudly, and generally being obnoxious and unwelcoming while trying to outperform each other, both in “musicianship” and in masculine cool musical capital. Reader, I cannot tell you the countless times I’ve gone into a guitar shop to buy strings, walked smack into the middle of a Musician Machismo cacophony, and then had to wait and shout and be ignored and wait some more because the male shop clerk was busy commenting on the the noodling ego party and it didn’t possibly occur to anyone that I was there in order to actually buy something.
The reason I want to comment on this is because the shop where I bought my guitar has NONE of this. Reader, I nearly wept. In a shop full of yes, mostly men, including men trying out guitars and amps, no one competitively noodled or aggressively shredded badly. Everyone played and chatted among themselves, and when I walked by looking at something, they would SAY HELLO and strike up CONVERSATION like normal people. The owner, possibly the most passionate person about guitars I’ve ever met, is also the absolute nicest guy. They have an in-house luthier, ALSO the nicest guy. In fact, I never spoke to a single condescending man in the entire shop, and that is the first time that has ever happened, Reader. I shit you not.
The icing, Reader, on this delicious and welcoming cake, is that this shop has the best guitar selection I have ever seen. It’s a tiny little shop, and it is crammed full of guitars and amps in every available space. You must walk carefully through the rooms, and gingerly take a guitar down to try it. New, used, consignment, major and boutique brands, it’s a gem of a shop (Travis nearly died with joy, which should tell you something). Which is why, Reader, after I bought my Gretsch, we went back, and I also bought a tiny Orange cabinet and an Orange Micro-Terror amp head. AND, impulsively, a Sunn O))) Life Pedal, used, at a truly fantastic price (and I really wanted to work “my Sunn is black” somewhere into the title of this post, but it was too long. But Reader, my Sunn is indeed black.)
If you don’t know what any of those words mean, Reader, I bought a speaker and amp head that together are about the size of a cat, and which produce more noise than I have ever made in my entire life.
And it’s glorious. It’s sheer sonic catharsis. My finger meat is completely destroyed as I work on getting my calluses back. My Sunn O))) pedal makes distortion as thick and black and sweet as molasses, with a boost that is very, very loud.
And that’s what I want to do right now. Make noise. Play loud. Pile on distortion thick and heavy and dense, like reading Heidegger.
God, it’s nice to be heard.
It sounds like perhaps a certain band (Predatory Urine) needs to write their next album (first album) and call it Sheer Sonic Catharsis with hits such as “Musician Machismo Cacophony” and “Finger Meat” and “Noodling Ego Party.”