What are you listening to? The world really needs to know. #7
- Thread starter mjp
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mjp
Founding member
Ha - yeah, sorry, that was a little esoteric. Kustom was an amp maker famous for their tuck and roll vinyl coverings.
On a good day Kustom amps sounded like a big box full of hammers rattling around in the back of a pickup truck. On a bad day, like a big box full of broken hammers rattling around in the back of a pickup truck. Just a really lifeless and awful amp.
I don't know how he played through them.
On a good day Kustom amps sounded like a big box full of hammers rattling around in the back of a pickup truck. On a bad day, like a big box full of broken hammers rattling around in the back of a pickup truck. Just a really lifeless and awful amp.
I don't know how he played through them.
Perhaps the guitar amps, but I subbed in last minute on a gig about 15-20 years ago and only had my bass. I plugged into a dirty and beat-up house Kustom bass rig (or maybe one of the other band's bass rig) and while it didn't make me want to get one for myself, it wasn't a train wreck. I remember musing about pushing it over on its side to see if it would bounce back to upright. Like a Michelin Man with several pounds of magnets and paper cones for organs.
mjp
Founding member
I don't know about their bass amps. It seemed, in the 70s anyway, that the only reason anyone ever bought one was for the novelty of the car seat finish. I remember playing through one for a few minutes once at a guitar shop and my friend and I just looked at each other and laughed. But then we were Marshall fans, so we were biased. And we were idiotic teenage pricks too, I should add. But I never heard anything from one of them that made me think, "Well there's a viable thing..."
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I have seen Lillian Allen in Vancouver years ago. She impressed me so much that I was flying for months after that show.
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They loved her at the Van Folk Fest where I worked security throughout the eighties. Right after she played in Montreal where my friends caught her show.
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Johannes
Founding member
I recently read something about this band somewhere, remembered the name and looked them up on Youtube. Obviously they were a popular club band in the Hollywood scene of the 80's?
Seem to be almost forgotten today regarding their clicks on Youtube.
Does anyone of you know them?
Seem to be almost forgotten today regarding their clicks on Youtube.
Does anyone of you know them?
mjp
Founding member
Well, without listening to that, I can tell you that there were a thousand "popular" club bands in Hollywood in the 80s, and the majority of them were all exactly the same, like I imagine this one is. You know, just by the freeze frame here, which I'd wager is more than enough to judge them on. The 80s on the strip were dark days indeed. Though I know a lot of people remember them fondly as the greatest time in their lives.
Johannes
Founding member
That's true. To my untrained eye they always look like 1000 versions of Mötley Crüe.
I think with many people the fondness also (or even mostly) comes from the partying in this time and place?
Life must have been pretty wild in those days, from what I've read.
PS: Won't you listen to it at all? :D
I think with many people the fondness also (or even mostly) comes from the partying in this time and place?
Life must have been pretty wild in those days, from what I've read.
PS: Won't you listen to it at all? :D
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mjp
Founding member
I could, but I already know what I'll hear.
Okay, I'll listen to (some of) it.
. . .
What a surprise, a human poodle in a tank top twiddling on a superstrat through a Phase 90, a flanger ("just like Eddie, bro!") and idiotically scooped mids, a coked-up shrieking twat shrieking and twatting, a bass player going DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM on a single note and a general air of unoriginality, painfully dull cock posing, horror and misery.
So yeah, just what I knew it would be by looking at them. I mean, that's the point of looking a certain way for most people. So everyone who sees you will know who you are without a lot of uncomfortable explanation. In that way they were successful.
And I should probably mention, so you don't think I'm just a hater, that when Van Halen came through St. Paul for the first time in 1978 (opening for Montrose and Journey), I was right there in the front row. Because I'd never heard anything like that record, and I wanted to see if they really sounded like that with my own ears and eyes. I even went to the trouble of getting backstage before the show to look at Eddie's setup, which was three 100 watt Marshall amps turned all the way up and the aforementioned phase 90 and flanger, duct taped to a little piece of plywood.
To come up with the sound they came up with was inventive and exciting. Everyone else who came after, copying the sound as exactly as they could, were just sad clowns. Including Van Halen themselves, who never did anything new after that first record.
mjp
Founding member
Guns 'N Roses were cool for a minute, but they could have just as easily come from 1974 as 1984. The problem, as I saw it (and I was admittedly an outsider), was there was no rock and roll underground here in Los Angeles in the 80s. I left Minneapolis that was nothing but underground (Husker Du, Replacements, and a hundred other bands), and I got here and felt like I was dropped into a game show where everyone was desperate to win the showcase showdown.
The underground that did exist in town was like dirgey, mopey, undertaker doom crap. The real underground was in the beach cities and to a lesser extent, Orange County. Punk bands were playing in people's yards and abandoned skate parks. Not my scene (I was too old at 24, and spent my time mainly in the reggae clubs), but you could feel that they were alive and making a go of it.
The underground that did exist in town was like dirgey, mopey, undertaker doom crap. The real underground was in the beach cities and to a lesser extent, Orange County. Punk bands were playing in people's yards and abandoned skate parks. Not my scene (I was too old at 24, and spent my time mainly in the reggae clubs), but you could feel that they were alive and making a go of it.
number6horse
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Just heard this version.