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Re: Bill Frisell a master at work.. some great use of loop
ok, somehow i missed this story in the BF loop talk....what a great story (2nd paragraph). the image of seeing BF at a guitar center just seems so bizarre to me....i guess it's b/c i think i go to my local one (which is 40 min north of me in another town!)
about 2x a yr if i'm lucky! funny story. i guess the one thing about BF is that he just plays such a variety of guitars, never really sticks w/ one specific brand, and always sounds like him....watching the vids, i may have to check out the EH freeze a bit closer....
s---
re:
Title: Re: Bill Frisell a master at work.. some great use
of loop
I first discovered Bill Frisell on an Eberhard Weber record
called "Fluid Rustle" in the late 1970s. Back then
what he was doing was pretty revolutionary.. he played in a
deceptively simple style and use the most minimal chord voicings
I'd ever heard. Most of all, his tone was not the
"accepted" tone of any "Jass" or "Fuzak"
guitarist, but rather more like a pedal steel: clean, sometimes
spikey.. When I finally saw him perform live (with
Eberhard Weber and Lyle Mays, after Weber's "Later That Evening"
record") I could see that the sinewy tone he had developed was
bourne out of necessity, he was playing an early 1960 Les Paul Jr (the
"SG" looking models) and flexing the instrument to deal with
that particular instrument's intonation and tuning issues. This
gave him his characteristic "pitch swarble" that so many of
his followers imitate by using their whammy bars, the the single P-90
pickup added to the steel guitar impression, too.
Over the years I've gotten to know Bill and have had some great
discussions, his daughter is a gifted photographer, BTW.
Most recently I ran into Bill (literally) as we were both bee-lining
it for a 1963 "SG' Lespaul Jr hanging on the wall at the Guitar
Center on 14th street in Manhattan. We were each so
focused on the instrument that we collided, paused for a second,
stunned and I heard "Chuck!!" coming from above (Bill is a
rather large man, and well over 6 feet tall, and I'm probably a foot
shorter and 200lbs lighter), I looked up: "Bill!" I
smiled, "Were you going for that SG Jr?" "Yes..!"
he answered... I mentioned that the first time I saw him play
that's the guitar he was using, he mentioned that he had loved that
instrument. I mentioned the Weber gig and he pondered "What
amp was I using then?".. we both answered at the same time and
had the same look of disbelief at the memory: "A Lab
Series... wow...". Anyone who's played
through one of those amps will understand the disbelief... ;-)
-Chuck Zwicky
