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Location: Germany | Hi,
Im sure this is the right board to help me with this question:
I went to a blues concert and there I met one of these O haters. Well, after the gig we went into a discussion about what are good guitars for what kind of music... and for what reason using modern, innovative guitars for traditional music... and stuff like that.
This guy argued that he had never heard about a famous blues guitar player playing an O. Well, I know of many great musicians playing Ovations but, honestly, I was rather ill-prepered to answer this statement.
:(
So now you guys help me out. Do you know if someone of the big shots in blues guitar had frequently used an Ovation? Would be nice if you can give me a hint for some mojo hands doing blues on Elite or Adamas.
Thanks |
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| I'd tell him Blues music sucks anyway, so who cares!
You know I'm kiddin right? Man that would get em going though !
I wish I could help there are a lot of great guitarists who use Ovations but I am not that well versed with this topic. I sure hope someone here can help. These are great guitars and rival any of the famous traditional gutars.
If the comment about the blues music does not work try this;
Blues players are more traditional and it gives a much more sad and authentic bluesy impression to use a plain and/or even "beat-up" guitar when stompin out a blues tune with that one good eye, two good teeth, and a pair of ripped up jeans! It also helps if you walk to your gig's and if you have no case for the guitar!
Be ready for a stompin though Blues players take their music pretty seriously! |
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Location: Omaha | Mukke,
Tell that guy he's an idiot, because he doesn't even know Ovation history. (BTW, most idiots are absolutely convinced of their opinions...) One of the first endorsers of Ovations, who even had his own signature model, was Josh White, a black folk blues player - he loved the roundbacks! His model was (I believe) an 1114 (no pickup) or 1614 (with pickup) Folklore model. You can look it up on Ovation's website, and read about Josh White in the Ovation book.
I have a compilation CD of Josh's music; he's the real deal. I'm sure others will offer you some more examples as the week/weekend wears on; but Josh White is the blatantly obvious one.
Hope I didn't come on too strong, there!
:cool: |
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Location: Zion, Illinois | I try to avoid those "Ovations aren't really guitars" arguements. They are pointless and kind of silly. Ovations are guitars. Like ANY guitar, they have an unique voice. My Adamas sounds different than my Haida Gwaii rosewood. My Haida Gwaii rosewood sounds totally different than my Paragon Maple. They are the exact same size, body style, etc; made by the same luthier! Just different, but still guitars.
When tempted to argue with an idiot like that, think about the sign in my boss's office:
NEVER TRY TO TEACH A PIG TO SING. YOU'LL JUST FUSTRATE YOURSELF AND ANNOY THE PIG! |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Blooze, my favorite!
There is the whole National side of it. Ovations can't go there.
Then the regular side. I'd plug in my 84 C-Series and put it against any of the others. Overdrive it and you get one set of sounds, back it down and fingerpick, a whole nuther set.
I play Collings alot and they are great but if you have to listen to somebody play lead how many minutes does it take you to get sick of listening to that same thin tone? Tell the truth, anybody make it to double digits?
As with all these things, sitting around your living room is one thing, on stage trying to put on a show for the audience is a whole lot different. I'll take the Ovation everytime. |
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Location: NJ | I've played blues on an ovation many times but I am a nobody |
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Location: Scotland | Bill, you nailed it. Resonator guitars aside, I know Blues players who will use anything that fits the image, whether it does the job or not. If they played with their ears instead of their eyes there'd be more of them playing Ovations. |
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| I tried to teach a Pig to sing once........ Then I decided he'd be better in a sausage! |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | I am sure many blues players like us, maybe not famous but lovers of blues music, have played Ovations. Another similar roots music is Rastafarian, and some of the best and famous played Ovations.
If you are observant, you can see Ovations being played by almost every music star at some time or another. |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | No doubt there are other guitars that really look the blues part. Fine, use that for the album/cd cover art. When you record, get the one that works. |
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Location: Freeport, IL | CWK said: Quote: "When you record, get the one that works."
Yeah, and when you perform as well. Who cares what it looks like? Vibe is great, but ultimately, it's about sound.
Jon Van Gilder |
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Location: NC | I play blues and jazz but who am I? Oh yeah, a Ovation fan.....tell that guy to kiss your #$%! |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | as a side project I find it interesting to try different types of music on models not thought of as being "right" Play some big jazz chords and rhythms on a brass bodied tricone. Works great! Try bluegrass flatpickin on a styleO. Now picture your self in the mountains 39 years ago and this was all you had so make it the best you can. It's a good test. One that should drive home the notion that the majority of the music is in you, not the instrument. |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | CWK2
Sometimes I think you might have hung around those early Ovation bluegrass players and got infected with the mountain mystery. Wandering around those Appalachin winding roads makes Dobros and banjos sound good ringing accross the holler and echoing off the ridge on the 'tother side as only they can. I now wonder if you are a hillbilly "gigantzer", they have one leg shorter than 'tother from walking around the mountain sides all their life.
Bailey |
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Location: Germany | Thanks for the answers. I also count myself into the blues playing nobodies. So, good to know that we are at least three people doing blues on Os :) . But, well, it looks like even idiots can be right some times. It seems that O is not the most wanted guitar for players who dedicate themselves to Blues.
Well, it's not the only true accolade for a guitar, if it is used in Blues! The old blues men had taken what ever guitar was reachable for them. No matter if it was build of a shoe carton with rubber bands. Well, I don’t favour O because my favourite guitar hero is playing an O! When I went on stage at a school anniversary years ago, singing the Beatles “Rocky Raccon” to 700 audiences, it was not possible to amplify my Martin for that event. So, my music teacher gave me his guitar – which was a Legend - and that was love of the first strum.
Anyhow, I found elsewhere that Mr. Clapton was an endorsee for ovation in the 70ties. But has anyone ever seen him playing an O? However, we have Josh White on our side and he really counts.
“leftovertion” thank you for that hint, I had overseen this guy for years.
Hm, this leads me to the question why we find less Os in Blues music? Maybe because of - looking on Blues history O as a brand is simply to young. When the old country blues men had their great time O was not around. And the last Blues revival with JWinter, MWaters, JHendrix, … was on electric guitars. Ever since there was no new development in Blues – particularly not in the acoustic style. What we find today is mainly a coverage of the old heroes. Hence, going into Blues you never come across Os.
So, lets wait for the next revival. ;) |
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Location: Scotland | Just remembered! Kevin Brown, probably the only Brit slide player apart from myself to use Ovations
http://www.kevinbrownmusic.com/
check the guitars link |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Paul, Do you like glass or metal slides? |
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Location: NJ | Last I recall, Master Templeman was a fellow devotee of those great hand-blown glass slides b/w/o Matt Smith . . .
GREAT slides!!
They're also incredibly handy when you've got multiple guitarists, only one bottle of tequila, and no glasses . . . . . ;) |
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Location: Omaha | Mukke wrote:
Hm, this leads me to the question why we find less Os in Blues music? Maybe because of - looking on Blues history O as a brand is simply to young. When the old country blues men had their great time O was not around. And the last Blues revival with JWinter, MWaters, JHendrix, … was on electric guitars. Ever since there was no new development in Blues – particularly not in the acoustic style. What we find today is mainly a coverage of the old heroes. Hence, going into Blues you never come across Os.
I think part of it for the "new blues players" is that the only way some of them can "look the part" is to use the "right" instrument...after all, they haven't had the hard life or come from Mississippi, etc., so all they have left is cosmetics. Lots of that going on in all styles of music today, though, not just blues. But everytime I see another wanna be new blues player with a strat, I think, "You know, if they wanted to be original, they'd use a Peavey T-60 or a Washburn 335 copy semi-hollowbody (but Clarence Gatemouth Brown plays one, so maybe that's derivative, too...)"
Just keep playin' the music and don't think about it too much... |
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Location: Scotland | Bill, my favourite slide is one I've hade for over 20 years & was custom made by an engineer friend. It's nickel-plated brass with an internal taper, weighs a ton, fits my pinky like a condom and sounds great. This was the only slide I needed until I aquired one of Matt's, which I use for the acoustic guitars & clean electric. I think Matt's are absolutely the best glass slides available. On lap steel I use a Shubb-Pearse SP1. I sell handmade slides by a UK company and I've been using their solid glass tonebars on my Weissenborn rip-off, they're very cool bars and sound great on square-neck dobros & tricones. I also have the Tequila shot-glass that Cliff gave me, which is a neat slide, and a couple of wine-bottle necks. I think they're from Mateus Rose, but personally I prefer something a lot drier. |
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Location: SoCal | Fits your pinky like a condom???
Does that mean that it keeps you out of trouble, or that it causes you to go places you shouldn't go, thinking you're protected? |
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Location: Scotland | musically speaking, the latter, for sure. |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Mukke
I just have to remark on your Townes Van Zandt quote. He lived and wrote the Texas blues a significant offshoot of the black blues. Part of Texas is next door to Louisiana and has a blues heritage as good as Mississippi. Townes was a pioneer followed by people like Steve Earle who made a new Texas sound that made Austin an artistic world center. |
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Location: Germany | I find it a lillte knotty to play slide on my ovation. The distance betwen strings and fretboard is to small for me. And the strings are also slightly courved (looking from the low to high e) that makes it difficuld for me.
What I like for fingerpicking don't work with me in slide playing. Maybe because I dont have a pinky that fits in a condom. For slide guitar I take an old guitar with a bowed fretboard (looking down the strings). And I definitely prefere metal slides.
Bailey
Was something wrong on my Towns quote? Hey, I just love his songs. I have been on a concert on his last tour to Germany just a few month before he died. And what I felt there I can't express in english.
leftovertion "Just keep playin' the music and don't think about it too much... "
Hey, how do you fill the gaps beween playing your guitar? :) |
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Location: Scotland | It's almost impossible to play slide on a guitar with a standard set-up. I have 2 Ovation acoustics & 3 electrics set up for slide with heavy strings and the action raised (slightly) at the nut & saddle |
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Location: Germany | Paul
I've seen this set up lot of times but I had never come so far that I build up a new guitar only for slide. With only 6 guitars including 3 on steel strings I have maybe the smallest collection out here :) .
You are useing a set of 13. strings, right? I know of small metal parts to support the nut but for raising the saddle you need more experience, I guess. Tell me about your set up. Is it something you can change quickly if you want(lets say in an hour or so). |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Paul, I too have sevferal of those Matt Smith slides. They are made by a husband/wife couple named Nunwell in Lakeville CT and they're great.
As far as a guitar to use them on I prefer the flat necks of the old Nationals. I didn't set one up for slide, it's just that the action on the style 1 crept up a bit and I never got it fixed. That stays in D tuning now. I use the regular guage 12-52. The same with my style O, the one with the better action gets played regular and the other in D for slide. I do need to look into heavier strings I think, sometimes the high string sounds whiney and weak, of course maybe that's my special technique. |
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Location: Scotland | Bill, I use a 13-56 set but up the 1st string to a .015 or .016. John Pearse does some reso sets in nickel & phosphor bronze gauged 16-59 which I intend to try.
Mukke, My slide set up is pretty straigtforward. I increase the nut height by about 1-1.5mm, and shim the saddle to give an extra 2-3mm at the 12th fret. I also adjust the truss rod so the neck has no relief. I make new nuts for my slide guitars rather than shimming. If I needed to change it back for regular playing I guess it would take about 20 minutes. |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Paul, the baritone National came with Pearse strings, 16-64 phosphor. It's tuned down to C. |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Mukke
Your Townes Van Zandt quote is absolutely correct, one of my favorite videotapes is a tribute to him featuring some of the best musicians in the world and that quote was stated by, I believe, Guy Clark's wife. You have it right.
Bailey |
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Location: Germany | Bailey
We are on the same train then :) . By the way had Towns ever put his hands on an O? |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | I don't think so, all the videos I've seen he was playing a Martin. But, you never know, he was contemporary with the best Ovations. |
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Location: Scotland | I promoted some UK shows with TVZ in the mid-80's and he used a Martin D28. I remember it had an undersaddle pickup but no preamp and it was a nightmare trying to get a decent sound. On a later tour he used a Takamine. While I admire him as a songwriter he's a terrible live performer. He'd soundcheck then go to the dressing room and get shit-faced. Some of the shows were embarassing. There's a great Townes quote when he's asked by Susannah Clarke why he drinks so much and Townes replied "because there are people in India who are sober" |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Anybody who wrote
White Freightliner
Pancho and Lefty
I'm Building a Houseboat in Heaven
For the Sake of the Song
For the rest of us to sing has to be forgiven his failings.
When you live in another world, life may be lonely as you try to communicate accross the space and time differences. Like us trying to have a conversation with our faithful dogs, they will never understand why we leave good food in our cupboards and refrigerators and don't eat it all when we get it. We will never understand why they don't see the beauty of a kitten.
TVZ was a unique and battered soul, and if he was a drunken bum, he was the best ever. Except maybe Dylan Thomas (I may have that name wrong, but it was Dylan, a great poet)
Bailey |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Bailey, I think you got that one right. And I agree with you, many of the more creative/soulful/insiteful/whatever have different music playing in their heads than the rest of us. |
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Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | There have been studies of the relationship between the creative mind and mental illness - in particular, bipolar disorder or, as it was known in the pre-politically correct days, manic-depression.
The numerous creative minds suspected of suffering from it are thought to have their bursts of creativity during their "manic" phases. The reluctance on the part of some with this disorder to take their meds was because the meds "flattened out" their personalities, taking away those creative "highs." The overindulgence in booze and other drugs is thought to be an attempt to self-medicate against the depressive phases. |
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Location: Germany | Interesting question, do I like the personality of the musicians, songwriters, poets … I love? Well, they all have some negative aspects in their lifes. Most of them had serious drug problems. Looking on Keith Richards we maybe think, "that’s cool, this guy survived everything", but if you had ever been near a person who abuses drugs – you know what this means for the people around. Should I defeat them just because they missed the right lane?
There is no deeper blue
in the ocean that lies
as deep as the blue
of your laughing eyes
no sweeter sound
than your gentle sigh
no heart was ever so pure
This are just the words of a father to his daughter, When I sing this to my daughter, what do I care about what that guy has done the rest of the day. |
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Location: Scotland | Don't get me wrong, I think Townes Van Zandt was a true genius. I just think that performers owe it to their audiences to stay clean & sober enough to put on a credible live performance. What they do the rest of the time is up to themselves.
When I was promoting gigs regularly in the 80's I was involved in some serious trainwrecks. Steve Young so totally wasted on whiskey & heroin that he could hardly speak, never mind play and sing. Bert Jansch so pissed-up that he walked onstage, sat on his stool, looked at the audience, mumbled "aaah fuggit" fell off his stool and crawled offstage without playing a note. Then there's Roy Harper who was a total space cadet, on & off stage. I have a great Harper/drugs/Adamas story that's way too involved to get into here.
Just a couple of years ago I saw Glen Campbell do a killer set playing great guitar, then he returned for the second set totally blitzed and totally embarrasing. In the early 90's I saw a Steve Earle show where he was so f&*ked-up that we asked for our money back and we had to get unpleasant with the promoter to get it. Good job we were mob-handed, the security guys were huge.
You know, if any of us here turned up for work drunk & stoned we'd get fired. Just because you're a songwriter or performer it doesn't give you license to sell your fans short. |
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Location: Waurika OK | well said Paul T. As a pro. you have more credib ility than those of us who tinker with music.
thanks, noel |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | Originally posted by cwk2:
Paul, Do you like glass or metal slides?
i like a chrome dome if the action is set for slide. too heavy for low action in which case it is a toss up between an 11/16 deepwell thin wall craftsman socket, and a piece of 1" ss sailboat stantion with a glued in leather liner (or a piece of vinyl garden hose) to make it fit the finger better.
i'm a famous blues player from happy hour until last call. |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | Originally posted by cwk2:
Bailey, I think you got that one right. And I agree with you, many of the more creative/soulful/insiteful/whatever have different music playing in their heads than the rest of us.
if you can do something creative that you let someone else capitalize on it begins to eat away at the creativity until it takes an altered state to get yourself to the place that was natural before. sometimes that altered state, pushed further, becomes a refuge instead of a tool and begins to be the choice over creativity. if you screw up people see less oportunity and look elsewhere. for the artist, a subconscious triumph over pressure.
on the otherhand, i play with several part time musicians/songwriters that are truely aweful unless they get "loose" first. none know when to stop and generally get to the other end of the aweful curve. if we all knew how much of anything was enough and when to say no, our lives would probably be much less frustrating. and though i understand all of this i can't seem to practice it.
"hi my name is russ. i have been a yesaholic for over 50 years" |
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Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Russ - "Yesaholic"? As in Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and Bill Bruford?
There's definitely a line that can get crossed from "relaxed" to "out of control." Jazz guitar giant Joe Pass used to have a glass of wine before going on stage, but that's where he drew the line. (At one time he was into the hard stuff - heroin.) That (the glass of wine) was all he needed to loosen up a bit.
I play better after a beer, maybe two. Any more than that, don't turn on the tape recorder... |
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Location: Scotland | Russ, do you mean the Harris Chrome Dome, now made by Latch Lake? They're nice slides, a little too light for me, but great for double-stops & single-string stuff |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | Originally posted by Duncan J:
Russ - "Yesaholic"? As in Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and Bill Bruford?
There's definitely a line that can get crossed from "relaxed" to "out of control." Jazz guitar giant Joe Pass used to have a glass of wine before going on stage, but that's where he drew the line. (At one time he was into the hard stuff - heroin.) That (the glass of wine) was all he needed to loosen up a bit.
I play better after a beer, maybe two. Any more than that, don't turn on the tape recorder...
i'm a yesaholic as in russ swider. i can't speak for the other guys. i have a hard time saying no to another gig i don't need, a new band that needs someone who regularly plays to help get them going, another practice because someone won't practice their part on their own, 3 levels of guitar class i teach, two or three guitar projects for friends while mine are on hold, several charity functions and non profit groups, etc etc and yes when someone yells tequila por la banda, i accept my shot.
i saw tvz at armadillo headquarters early in early 70's. since then he had a few people say "sign here kid, i'm gonna make you a star". had he been happy as a local hero, and said "no, la vida is good enough for me", maybe he would be in a different head space now. many of us would be better off learning to say no. especially when a guy wearing a suit worth more than your car says he is going to make you rich. the tiny percentage of success stories in music probably don't help the ballance of small guys make wise financial decisions. i play with lots of professional musicians and none of them became wealthy from music.
i guess if joe pass was a smack hype he had already "crossed the line" an has since found a place where it "works" with a glass of wine. lots of musicians (artists) cycle several times until they find peace or relief or escape somewhere on the curve.
i couldn't begin to compare one person's mental make up with another's. the individual mind makes a fingerprint look like polished glass by comparison. what worked for joe pass and eric clapton didn't for jimmy hendrix and janice joplin. in your quest for what it is all about, what works for you is a personal choice, right or wrong. same for me. |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | Originally posted by Paul Templeman:
Russ, do you mean the Harris Chrome Dome, now made by Latch Lake? They're nice slides, a little too light for me, but great for double-stops & single-string stuff
yes paul, that's the one. i have an older one and it is a bit heavy for low action. really great for the curve of a fretboard since they aren't flat like most tube style slides. i haven't tried a ceramic slide yet. what is your opinion? |
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Location: Germany | This becomes a really interesting thread ...
My last post was about what the lyrics of a song mean to me - and that is quite independent from the life of the songwriter, I guess. I just feel the same in that tiny aspect of live and he has been the one who had put that into words and music. Words that I wouldn't have never been able to find, honestly.
On the other hand, Paul you’re right, if you pay for a gig – the performer should be willing to give you show worth the money. Here you can find a lot of snobs, even in the more expensive category. We once went to a Cure concert in Berlin. We hitchhiked 5h, passed the former GDR border, paid 60DM for the ticked, which was an arm and a leg for us, just to have 45 min of Cure on stage after a horrible opening band and no extras, (encores, additions … how do you call it?). That was annoying. But, on the other hand, if Shane MacGowan not have been fallen boozed from the stage one evening, that would have been only half the show of the Poques :) .
Telling sorries, heres another one: Once my friend and I we both were hired as stage hands for a Jethro Tull concert. That afternoon my friend was standing at the stage waiting for some orders what to do with the monitors, - no break since we started hours ago - when Ian Anderson with the band arrived. First my friend was pleased, thinking: “wow, that big guy cares for the sound check himself!”. Well, Mr Anderson just went over to him to tell him to “move his ass” from the stage. Then he turned over to another technician and asked something like: “What was that gangling sluggard doing over there?”
Do I still have JT records? Yes I do, great music. :) But what was this a**h*** thinking who he is? |
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Location: Scotland | Originally posted by musicamex:
i haven't tried a ceramic slide yet. what is your opinion?
I buy porcelain & ceramic slides for sale in the UK from Luther at Bigheart. Glazed & Polished ceramic is fine, unglazed is a waste of time. Wall thickness has a big influence on the tone. Frankly I'd get hold of one of Matt's glass dome-end slides and be done with it |
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Location: Scotland | Originally posted by Mukke:
Do I still have JT records? Yes I do, great music. :) But what was this a**h*** thinking who he is?
Then there's the time, when I was young & had less decorum than now, that I punched John Stewart's lights out.........fame and talent doesn't diminish the asshole factor. Just a few months ago a promoter friend of mine, who is usually the nicest guy you'd ever meet, decked Ryan Adams because he was acting the superstar prick. Maybe it's just a Geordie thing.
As for McGowan, I think he's written at least one of the finest contemporary folk songs ever ("A Pair of Brown Eyes") But as an individual who has to function in the real world he's a very sad case. Like Townes I respect him for his art but despair for him as a human being. His audiences over here are mostly yobs & animals. A Shane McGowan gig is not a healthy place to be and frankly a performer too drunk to perform is a joke without a punchline. Songwiting aside The Pogues as a live act had very little to offer apart from the pantomime of McGowan falling around pissed and inciting the audience to violence, The Popes even less. |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | I agree that in order to make it work you need to be able to give the audience what they came for.
I can't help but laugh however when I think about the great true saying from my friend Debanjo Rheinhardt "I only drink when I work". |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | I can agree with all sides here, I had a brother, now deceased, who was a full fledged alchoholic who drifted in and out of my life, usually hitchhiking in broke, setting up a TV repair job with my help, and then slipping into worse and worse situations, until he would one day disappear and show up in Nashville with his daughter after he had totally wore out his welcome here in New Mexico. He played bass with us and did good until he got drunk, danced with the ladies while we were playing and complained about the band because it needed a bass player. I had a janitorial business and stored equipment at his apartment for which I paid some of his rent. He hocked my Honda propane powered floor polishers 3 propane tanks and left me a note telling where they were as he left town.
The discomfort of dealing with this type behavior made me wish for him to stay away even though he was my brother. There was no way to change him after he became alchoholic, even though he had been very successful and hard working when younger, and fell apart along with his bad marriage.
No matter how talented or smart, dealing with them is next to impossible and I have sympathy for anyone who has to. I detected a little of this feeling among those who knew TVZ well on that tribute show.
Bailey |
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November 2004
Posts: 34
Location: Germany | Reading your post Bailey, I rememberd this storry. I had a school mate, a girl which had a great talent for language. She often bunked off English nevertheless she’d passed all exams with excellent grades. When I ask her one day to write some English lyrics to a melody I made, it just took her an hour. We were close buddies during the time when drugs become interesting for young people. Well, until today I ask myself why she became far more involved in drugs than I. When I met her the last time (10 years ago) she hardly even recognized me because of being stoned, and she had turned from a pretty girl into a wreck. I have never found a way to stop her.
What is it, that such talented persons live so near to the border of dangerous excessive life? Duncan J tried to explain it with curing the depressive phases, earlier in this thread. Don’t know. Sometimes I think those people just speed up everything they do. They learn faster have more brilliant creative ideas in the a short time. But they also consume the double amount of beer in the same time, are quickly bored rush for the next thrill (substance, friends, whatever) and finally they look with 30 as I will look with 60. |
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July 2004
Posts: 338
Location: Omaha | Well, at the risk of sounding simplistic, there are usually two reasons why folks end up at such an end: genetics, and environment. You've been discussing the genetics, whether it's creativity or mental disorders (both of which run in my family: my grandmother spent most of her adult life being severly depressed; scares me to death). Mix that genetic makeup with an unhealthy family (okay, let's just say it - parents!), and you've got a recipe for what you've all been discussing for several pages. Whether the parents were also alcoholics or drug abusers, or they divorced, or abused/neglected their children - any or a mixture of these spell an unstable environment which leaves the strongest of persons looking for safety, love and meaning in life - imagine what this environment does to a person who already has a predisposition to depression, etc.!
Anyway, some things to think about. And I realize that some people also grow up in stable loving homes and have no genetic reason(s) for their insane behavior; those I chalk up to the Biblical/theological observation of human behavior that runs through the scriptural narrative from end to end: your/my/our human sinfulness/selfishness.
Okay, I'll get down off my pulpit now until tomorrow morning...
;) :( :rolleyes: |
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May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Just a simplistic observation
Life is HARD and seldom rewards even the best.
To eat, escape the elements, and poop in private takes a lot of effort.
Driven people are astounded that they are the only ones that see their accomplishments, not realizing that even the village idiot thinks it has achieved greatness and seldom does anyone else see beyond their own small victory of eating, staying out of the rain, and pooping in the socially and TV like sterile poop room, much less admire the Driven soul.
Great accomplishments take great preoccupation, usually leading to long periods of unemployment as they don't pay $15 an hour for lapses into a meditative state that leads to that killer song or lick, this sometimes leads to pooping in filthy public restrooms and eating baloney in an old car.
Finally, your masterly crafted songs become hits and all of the sudden Jack Daniels is as cheap as bubble gum and you are still pooping in public or motel toilets, but the embarrassment is mitigated by the Jack Daniels. OR, it all fails and you sit in a cheap flophouse drinking out of a 4 liter wine jug and blaming society after you have pawned all your possessions and outlived your welcome.
The outcome is the same!! |
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February 2004
Posts: 2487
| Hey Did someone say YES!!!!!!!! Have I!!!!!!!! Would I!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Did I tell YA I Like "THE YES" !
Did someone say Drugs! Have I !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would I !!!!!!!!!! Did I ???????????????????
Some people get lucky enough to outgrow it and get past it. That's the "Drugs" Not "THE YES" !!!!!!!!!!!
Still say if you have "One good eye" "Two good Teeth" a "Hole in your guitar" and are wearing a set of Goodwill cloths you can Play the blues better than the next guy!
But if you go by the purists you have to have lived it to be able to play it. So I stay away from it I made it through OK so far. Got nothin to be Blue about so I'll never know I guess?
So whats the verdict? What are the Blues players who used Ovations?????? This guy had an interesting question. I know I don't know the answer.
Randy |
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May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Randy
The answer is YES, some great blues players, in the 70's (Ovations were invented in the 60's) played Ovations. They, like most of the OFC members, spent all their time playing blues and neglected to make any well known CD's or albums. Most of them eventually pawned their Ovations (as I did one time when I was broke) and continued their excellent blues playing on borrowed guitars. Their names were, Sonny, Brownie, Sonny Brownie, and Terry, and Terry Sonny Brownie. As I recall, there was a Brownie Sonny, but he died from an overdose of Vioxx. There were also some white imitations with names like Al, Miles, PMoodypi, Paultee, and HonkyCliff who played a watered down form of blues devoid of any blues shouts or, God forbid, any salacious references to SEX (giggle, giggle) that might compromise their web site which was dedicated to making sure the words Ovation and SEX didn't appear in the same sentence on the world wide web.
Yes, Randy, there was a Santa bluesy Ovation Claus.
Bailey |
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December 2001
Posts: 10583
Location: NJ | all my blues have references to santaria |
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November 2004
Posts: 100
Location: Asheville, North Carolina | I have a rock blues song I recorded at home on my Elite LX... it has a few tracks, one of which is slide. The playing is sloppy but the guitar works well. I did have a problem with the guitars pickup, but Ovation is sending me a new updated housing for the low output problem pickup. If anyone wants to hear the recording I think I can email it to you. |
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Blues on Ovation?