Re: King crimson stuff

[nick douglas <nickd@mindspring.com>]

I was lucky enough to see Mr. Adrian Belew play 5 or 6 nights in a row 
when he was still with Sweetheart, a cover band that played R&R dance 
clubs on the Florida-to-upper-midwest circuit (same gigs where Zappa first 
saw him, actually).  They did 4 sets a night (with only few repeats and 
originals in the last set each night) and covered songs that weren't the 
typical choices of cover bands.  They were by far the best cover-band I've 
ever seen.

Anyway, using stomp-boxes and astonishing feedback control he would switch 
from sounding just like Jimi Hendrix to sounding just like Jeff Beck, to 
Townshend to Clapton to Harrison to Lennon to Page to Zappa to....  I 
talked to him at the bar a few times between sets that week. IIRC he said 
that among his stomp boxes and pedals were several different fuzzes 
(fuzz-face, Big Muff, some kinda Rat IIRC) and also octave up/down box(es) 
but that he often did the octave-up thing using just feedback and EQ.  Of 
course, I might be mistaken because this was a long time ago and the gear 
talk wasn't as memorable as some other details of those nights.

As Catilyne said, he was using that beat-up dayglo yellow strat with 
duct-tape around the top horn of the body where he would grab it to bend 
the neck.  That's the same guitar he later used with Zappa, Bowie, Talking 
Heads / Tom-Tom Club, etc.  I think he already had the lime green one 
then, too.  I know he had both the yellow and green dayglo guitars a few 
months later when I saw his (first?) gig with Zappa.

I don't think he ever put a sustainer on those old guitars, but in later 
years he's had a Fernandes (and other guitars?) with them built-in, but I 
don't know how much he uses them.  I recall seeing him touch the speaker 
cabinet with the guitar's neck or headstock during one of the KC 
double-trio gigs so that guitar probably didn't have a built-in sustainer.

In case you don't know, Twang Bar King and Lone Rhino have *finally* been 
released on CD as Japanese imports and are available directly from the 
artist at http://www.adrianbelew.net .  Sadly, Young Lions seems to now be 
out of print but is worth checking out for "Pretty Pink Rose", "Men in 
Helicopters", and especially "I Am What I Am", if you like his 
fuzz/sustain/tone/technique.

Sorry to take so much bandwidth.
Back to looping,
Nick