Testing - One, Two, Three….

Many apologies for my absence. How about a rant about the most abused guitar effects pedal of 1979-85 to re-open communications?

Hello? Hello? Anybody home?

I apologize for not posting since…WHOA! APRIL BLESSED 28TH?!! Good Lord! Some of you must have thought I was dead!! (And I know at least one or two of you who are essentially grudge subscribers probably wish I was dead! Sorry to disappoint you once again!)

No, I have simply been heads-down in the most intense phase of writing The Book. Which I still am enjoined from talking about yet, and believe me – I wanna talk all your ears off over it, so you’ll be lined up at your local independent book retailer (or local chainstore book retailer) (or your Amazon app) (or your Kindle, though you may want to purchase a hard copy) with fully whetted lips, ready to throw down your credit card to pick up this magnum opus of punk rock literature. 

So, yeah. Hopefully, I will soon be able to do The Big Unveil. Meanwhile, just be assured it’s been all hands on deck since I began writing the damned thing April 10th, and it just got even more intense as I filed that Willie Nelson birthday post nearly a month ago. Basic writing ended May 20th at 1:00 AM. The last week of writing, I returned to Other Tim’s place in Kyle to house sit/cat sit, because there would be NO distractions. I even cut off all my hair and reduced my wardrobe to plain black t-shirts or black Dickies button down work shirts and black straight leg Levis, so I could just roll out of bed and be ready for action. (Or at least be ready to brew the first pot of coffee for the day.)

And now I wish I hadn’t cut off all my damned hair….

So, why don’t we restart the festivities with a matter of axis-upsetting import, which has been bugging the shit outta me: Did every guitarist on the planet buy a chorus pedal in 1979, then justify the expense by putting it on their records for at least the next four years? 

The chorus is the effects box that takes an electronic instrumental signal, doubles it, then slightly detunes the doubled signal, so that the electric guitar sounds like an electric 12-string played under water. It can sound anywhere from lush to glassy. My understanding is that it was invented sometime in the mid-’70s, intended primarily for keyboardists. Sometime in there, guitar players discovered choruses sometime in ‘79 and went nuts with ‘em for a few years. This is especially true of punk, even more so of new wave guitarists, and even more so of post-punk guitarists.

The poor dumb bastards had no idea it would date their records worse than wah-wah pedals.

It’s a story as old as outboard effects boxes themselves. A good example is the first Stooges album from 1969. It honestly sounds like Ron Asheton went to 48th Street, perhaps to Manny’s or Sam Ash, and came back with a Cry Baby wah: “Hey, guys! Listen to this new toy I got – INSTANT HENDRIX!” Whereupon he decorated both sides of The Stooges with wah abuse so excessive, it’s actually part of the record’s charm: “WAAAAAAAAAAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!”

But nothing screams “THIS RECORD WAS MADE IN 1968 OR ‘69” worse  than a wah-wah pedal. Just as a chorus lets you know something was recorded between 1979 and maybe 1985, tops. Believe me, I know of whence I speak. A project has had me listening to a lot of records from 1979.

Every last post-punk record is drenched in chorus. Metal Box, Unknown Pleasures, Join Hands – you name it, that band’s guitarist was down on Denmark Street before the engineer turned on the red light, and he’s chorusing away (except for Andy Gill in Gang Of Four, which is probably why Entertainment! doesn’t suck out loud). Andy Summers’ refusal to turn off his chorus is a main reason I now find The Police unlistenable. He literally had it on every fucking note he played! 

Same goes for Mick Jones, just in case you started believing this disease only affected guitarists named “Andy.” He bought a whole buncha MXR pedals in 1979, but really liked the chorus. So he turned it on and didn’t turn it off until he was fired from The Clash five years later. I’m convinced it’s one of the reasons he was fired. I know one night on the Combat Rock tour, Joe Strummer got so sick of Mick tripping on all ten of his pedals every time he applied plectrum to string, he actually put his hands on the neck of his Les Paul, urging his songwriting partner, “Stop! Just stop!”

Some guys knew how to use a chorus. James Honeyman-Scott in The Pretenders was one. So was Bob Mould, with his distorted chorusing in Hüsker Dü, what he called the “bag of dimes sound.” (To be fair, however, Bob used an Eventide harmonizer to slightly detune his signal to create that sound. So maybe we give him a pass?) Problem is, a lotta other midwestern punk guitarists heard Bob, and thought they could do it too. They couldn’t. They just sounded like bad versions of Bob Mould. 

But think about this: When Rush (still my least favorite band ever) wanted to sound “modern” (i.e. – sound like The Police) Geddy Lee bought a synthesizer…and Alex Lifeson bought a fucking chorus. And never turned it off. I rest my case.

You don’t hear the chorus much anymore. In my admittedly eroding memory, the last song of consequence prominently featuring a chorus was Nirvana’s “Come As You Are.” Which was a pretty good song, and a pretty good usage of that gawdfersaken box. Which almost makes me think the time is ripe for a chorus revival. Except guitar shops should be legally required to provide with purchase mandatory classes in how not to use a chorus. Which could get pricey. So we’d best just leave it alone and let it gather dust with flangers and phase shifters in that dusty corner of the display case.

P.S. – How hilarious is it that the Willie Nelson 90th birthday post has received 420 total views to date?

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