I told you
That we could fly
‘Cause we all have wings
But some of us don’t know why

It’s so sad (to me) what music has become now. We used to only hear one single song, and be so excited to go to the shop to buy the tape, or later, CD.

Was such a special thing to catch a bus into the city, buy some CD’s and be itching to get home to listen to the new music you bought.

I’d get home and blast it, and at the same time go through the CD sleeve which sometimes had lyrics, or photographs and art to gawk at.

Was such a beautiful ritual.

Now you just go to Spotify and have instant access to a list of their “best ofs” or you can just add their singles to your playlist without any respect for the artists entire album. Musicians spend days or more trying to figure out which songs make it to an album, then they labor over what order to put the songs in. All gone pretty much these days.

/rant.

Hey Hawko! What a lad.

Philter Xtra Pale Ale.

Cheezus sandwich.

Utopia Records. What a blast from the past!

YES! They still sell patches!

100% prefer big art on records over CD’s.

Mantissa! I saw these guys live, they were fucking amazing.

Voivod! I had this on cassette tape!

We dropped in to Hobbyco, then Kinokuniya (sadly no photos allowed in there).

I bought these slippers at Muji. $9.95! SO happy with the purchase!

Matcha and Black Sesame 50/50.

Straight outta Japan! Coin-op toy machines at Regent Place.

Daiso!

I’ve been gaming with Hawk for 5 years now, and today we finally met IRL for the 1st time. I picked him up from the airport earlier this morning. WTF have they done with the airport?! It’s a mess (went around the block 3 times to figure out how to pull over to pick him up (and I was charged for it too!). Hawk and I then met Gina at Maroubra for breakfast at Grumpy Baker. Hawk then helped me to load up the Jazz with as much leftover stuff as possible (my bicycles mainly) and we then had a fun big day out in the CBD (not hung out in there in ages, loved it!).

Hawk’s staying with me over the weekend. Will post more updates tomorrow!

Some of my faves!

Signed Faith No More CD’s.

CD Tower.

I was thinking about setting up my old iMac in the art studio, but I’ve decided I want to keep the studio analog. For music (essential when making art), Spotify has been OK, but it just FEELS wrong. I end up listening to the same playlist over and over again, and I don’t feel good about listening to the music Spotify tries to suggest to me. I want to take back control.

I threw out a LOT of stuff in the move, but I couldn’t throw out my CD’s. Some of these CD’s mark massive moments in my life. They’re like memory boxes. It’s been a while, but I think I’m ready to open some of them up.

Who the hell buys a CD player these days? Well I did! I bought this little wall mounted CD player so I can see the CD art up on the wall. As expected, the built in speakers (despite the adverts and YouTubers suggesting it sounds awesome) are TOTALLY TRASH. It has an AUX line-out though and I’ve got it plugged into my Bose speaker which sounds MUCH better!

Viv LOVES musicals, but musicals aren’t my thing. I’ve always found them trippy AF. One second you’re watching a normal movie, next second they break out into song!

Viv was determined to get me to see one with her though, so a little while back we watched Hairspray the movie, then yesterday we watched Hairspray the musical live. Still not really my kinda thing, but it was fun, the crowd (mostly older ladies) were super into it, the stage stuff was smart, performances were great and overall I appreciated that it was all live.

Suggesting that I might prefer something a bit darker, later that night she made me watch Phantom of the Opera (the movie). 2 musicals in one day?! WTF is going on lol!

I’m writing a piece in response to the question, “What do you sound like when you speak?”. The piece will be published in a book to be released by Christmas this year!

Real words, one take.

Had a blast hanging out with Hoolio yesterday and recording this track. Family, drugs, homelessness. He’s a young man who’s overcoming problems no one this age should be going through.

Hard Work Pays – Lullabies Remix ft. HOOLIO.

Have a listen to the track on Soundcloud and please let us know what you think: https://soundcloud.com/zengarage/hoolio

A photo I found of one for sale 5 years ago via google images.

This owner changed out the volume and tone knobs but that Steinberger tremolo is the same as pictured in my old photo above.

Ever since getting back into playing the guitar this year I’ve been trying to remember what my first guitar was. I remember the experience of my Mum taking me to a local guitar shop to buy it. I remember the best guitarist in my high school telling me it was a POS. I remember jamming and recording songs on it with my high school band. I remember graffitiing all over it, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what brand and model it was… until last night!

I was just getting to bed and Hohner just popped into my head! I did a quick google search and found that Hohner is a German brand known mostly for harmonicas and that they had stopped making guitars for some time. I searched a little harder and found the exact model I had in the exact same colour and specs.

The guitar was a 1980s-1990s Hohner Professional ST Scorpion. It looks like the left and right handed versions came with different pickups and tremolos but the 2 lefty guitars I found via search have the exact same pickups and locking tremolo as my one did. The Steinberger locking tremolo bridge unit has a unique lever at the bottom (you can see it in my old photo too) which completely locks the tremolo turning it essentially into a hardtail (very cool!), it had EMG licensed stacked humbuckers, so they can be coil tapped via a push-pull pot. The guitar also had 3 individual on-off switches allowing you to have the bridge and neck pickups on at the same time, or all three and as humbuckers or single coils. Wild!

I wish I still owned it. It turns out it wasn’t such a bad guitar at all!

Lockdown Jam #01. Original riffs, just using Garageband drums, the Artist LP60 plugged directly into my old Marshall Valvestate amp and a couple of glasses of red wine! Stay safe all!

Don’t hate the player.

Can’t say Ive ever been a fan of the Telecaster headstock design.

MIM.

Minimalist AF.

RRP and QC.

The one guitar that can do it all, the only guitar you need, every collection needs a Telecaster, less is more… it goes on and on but it seems like I’ve been avoiding Telecasters for the longest time. I actually made a Telecaster for my Year 12 High School Industrial Tech major, it played like crap though (sadly I don’t have it anymore otherwise I’d love to try and fix it), and earlier this year I did buy an Artist TC59 Telecaster style guitar, but let’s face it, the TC59 is not a Telecaster.

I spotted a brown sunburst MIM (Made in Mexico) Tele on Facebook Marketplace a couple of months ago, came really close to buying it but honestly wasn’t a big fan of the old school sunburst finish, but then I spotted a MIM Tele in Polar White with a white pickguard and a maple fretboard on an official Fender YouTube video and yeah, clean, minimalist, modern, love at first sight!

Turns out Fender also sell the Polar White Tele in a lefty but sadly the lefty has pau ferro fingerboard instead of a maple fingerboard (which I much prefer), but hey, lefties can’t be choosers.

The RRP on these is $1300 but I spotted one on sale at $950 and have been meaning to drop past that store to at least try it out, but earlier this week a photo of someone buying a lefty at Sunburst Music popped up on my Facebook feed. I commented under the post “you guys stock lefties?!” and the day after I got a message from Douglas, the shop owner, asking what kind of lefty I had in mind. I replied and said I’m keen on a Telecaster, either a MIM Tele in Polar White, or maybe even a much cheaper Squier Affinity. Turns out he had a lefty Tele in Polar White so I organised to drop in on the weekend to check it out, and that I did!

So yesterday morning was pretty hectic. It was pissing down rain and I’d just gone out to Caringbah to pick up the $50 Fender acoustic and then I headed straight for Sunburst Music in Coogee. They’ve expanded the shop and have split it in 2, half electrics, half acoustics. They’ve got so many beautiful guitars in there it’s ridiculous, but as a lefty it’s really hard for me to appreciate right handed guitars so I just honed in on the MIM Tele and telling Douglas the story of Mum taking me here 30 years ago to buy my first guitar, and that he had 2 lefties, a metal style guitar and a Japanese Tokai Strat which he thought was the better guitar, and really tried to sell it to me but I went for the metal thing instead… big regrets!

Douglas confessed that he’s a Telecaster guy and that whilst so many Strat guys have tonnes of Strats in their collection, and Les Paul guys have tonnes of Les Pauls in their collection, you only need one Telecaster if you’re a Telecaster guy! He sat me down, plugged me in and cranked the volume up and let me doodle away. What the fuck do you play in a guitar store? I kinda froze up to be honest, and the guitar kept going out of tune (I suppose no lefties have played it and the strings still need stretching), but the neck felt familiar to me, it’s got a really similar satin smooth finish like the neck on my AM PRO II Strat.

Douglas offered to throw in the same amazing Fender hardcase that I got with the AM PRO II, but hey I’m not gigging, and really don’t need another case, and whilst I was quite hesitant and felt really bad about asking if he would match the other shop’s $950 price I asked and holy shit, he was happy to do it, so I walked out with it!

Player Telecaster
Body: Alder
Neck Material: Maple
Neck Finish: Satin Urethane Finish on Back of Neck with Gloss Urethane Headstock Face
Neck Shape: Modern “C”
Fingerboard: Pau Ferro
Fingerboard Radius: 9.5″
Number of Frets: 22
Frets Size: Medium Jumbo
String Nut: Synthetic Bone
Bridge Pickup: Player Series Alnico 5 Tele Single-Coil
Neck Pickup: Player Series Alnico 5 Tele Single-Coil

Grunge.

Made in China.

Ding!

Looks like the 3 strings were cut. Maybe the previous owner was in the process of changing the strings out?

Now this is new to me! I’ve never had an acoustic guitar that can be plugged in!

There was still protective plastic over the tuners, but it looks like the previous owner liked to wear belt buckles.

What’s going on with people throwing out their left-handed acoustic guitars?!

Yesterday morning I spotted this Fender CD-100CE dreadnought cutaway electro acoustic guitar on Facebook Marketplace for $50. I quite literally jumped on it and she’s now mine.

I’ve only just restrung the freebie Epiphone acoustic, and this guitar looks to be pretty similar except it’s pretty beat up. It’s got a Fishman preamp built in though! Tuner, volume, bass, mid and treble controls. I’ve not even checked to see if it works.

According to one online shop I found the RRP on these was $899.00 but there’s a few of them on Reverb at around the $300 price range which seems about right considering the guitar is made in China.

I’ll put in a bit of TLC, restring her and see what comes out. 4 acoustic guitars is 3 too many though so I’ll figure out which guitar I like most and hopefully find good homes for the others.

When I was 16 my Mum took me to this guitar shop in Coogee to buy my first guitar. Fast forward 30 years and not only is the guitar shop is still there, the guy who sold me my first guitar is still there too!

Rock on Douglas!

I walked out with this beautiful lefty Fender Player Telecaster. Time to get my twang on!

Visit: https://www.sunburstmusic.com.au

PS: Uploaded this photo to reddit and it’s getting a lot of upvotes: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/o3uj2l/gear_30_years_ago_i_bought_my_first_guitar_from_a/