So a thought occurred whilst watching Kylesa the other night ( for Photos, go here). I totally dig the sounds, but I have some reservations about how they're made. Custom guitars, Amps, and loads of effect pedals- enough to create a barrier.
Let's take Philip Cope's set up for most of the songs- A Legator eight string guitar (custom, but the closest would be the 1200 dollar model) going through 17 effect pedals ( ranging in price from 100 to 300 each. average it out to 180, per and you have 3060 dollars in pedals) into a Hovercraft custom amp- 1400 for the head, 800 for the cabinet. That's a total of somewhere around Six thousand to six and a half thousand dollars- and we haven't even gotten into his other guitars, theramin, keyboard, or other gadgets. I'm not trying to call him out, mind you. Those are pretty "average" prices for "pro gear". But, that's pretty daunting for a 16 year old kid. There were a couple of teenage boys at the front, clearly impressed, and judging from their air guitaring, itching to play, themselves. So, is music to be just a hobby for the idle rich? I think about Phillip himself. He started out playing sludge punk as a skater teen, himself. He clearly doesn't come from money. I know that most of his gear comes to him from the manufacturers, as a kind of product placement. These days, it's kind of the paycheck for being a professional musician- you get a few records out, you get an endorsement deal. I know it's a survival tactic for the bands- they certainly aren't making bank from club dates and CD sales.
But, that still brings me back to punk rock. How so much creativity came from the fact that the punks had no cash, but a fervent belief that they could do it, too. Take people like Pete Shelley, playing a broken guitar into the cheapest loud amp he could find. Custom? In a way, in that nobody else had that rig, but that was because nobody else wanted it. Take Andy Gill of the Gang of Four who created a whole new style of playing guitar based around the fact that he wanted to be Nile Rogers, but couldn't afford a tube amp with reverb, so he used a lousy, dry solid state amp. It's not the only way to get creative, but it is a certain way.
It's not even unique to Punk- Eddie Van Halen pieced his guitar together from scrap pieces at the Kramer factory, and despite false rumors of attenuators, just used a marshall head, and a MXR flange and phasor. Even with today's prices, that's about a thousand dollar rig.
So, I think about the gauntlet this lays down for a kid. Guitars aren't popular, any more. So, you have to employ tricks to make a guitar sound less like a guitar. That can get pricey. But, I think the solution is in abandoning the boutique, and going with the Chinese and Korean made "knock offs". So, that's why this essay ended up on this blog- I think that the tight budget will, as it always has, lead us to new, and more creative art.
