We are having a Music Swap Meet

June 12th – 13th.

9am – 3pm

This will take place at the old Gottschalks, Totem Lake Mall, Kirkland Washington.

120th Avenue Northeast & Totem Lake Way, Kirkland, WA 98034

Right across from Guitar Center.

Map

Video here;

Music Swap Meet Totem Lake Mall June 12 -13, 2010

All musical related items are welcome.

• Guitars
• Amps
• Drums
• Instruments
• Recording Gear
• DJ Systems
• Books
• Memorabilia
• Vinyl
• CDs
• Videos
• Pro Audio, Stage & Lighting
• Speakers
• Strings
• Cables
• Audio & Video connectors
• Music Gear Accessories
• Promotional Products
FREE PARKING
General Public Admission: $1.00
Sellers Space: $25

If it has to do with music, bring it and sell it.

Lots of Free Parking

Contact Mick or Kelly at

info@guitararcheology.com

for details or to reserve a space

In the middle between Bob Moog and Les Paul. What sounded like a great idea in the conference room in New York didn’t make much sense on stage. Les Paul was from a different school. Bing Crosby did not require him to play that loud. That was my favorite Les Paul story, how he got the job playing for Bing. He waited in front of an elevator he knew Bing was on, and when the door opened Les let him have it with a flaming guitar solo. He got the job. There were others. Les Paul was history on the hoof. How the first tape recorders came to this country from Germany after the war, and how Bing Crosby got the patent. Every meal or meeting was a history lesson. I’m not sure how many times Les Paul and Bob Moog hung out, but in the half-dozen times I saw them they were hitting it out of the park on a variety of subjects. But the Lab Series guitar amplifier wasn’t destined to be one of their big winners. I don’t know how much actual input they had on the Lab Series but the end product met with little interest. The world had moved on to the big amplifiers like Marshall and this was a little amp, the kind a Jazz guy like Bruce Bolen, the Gibson clinician, would use. The high point for Lab Series visibility came in the highly promoted movie “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” starring Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees doing Beatles material. What a great idea that sounded like. When rendered, it was quite possibly the worst musical on film, and you could tell that reading the script beforehand. I had wormed my way in through Peter Frampton who had just broken all album sales records with Frampton Comes Alive, pictured on the album cover with his Gibson Les Paul. Naturally, in the movie his character would want to play a Les Paul. He got several. George Burns was also a picker in the movie so we got him a Les Paul too. I became prop master Barry Bedig’s right hand man. Provided every musical instrument called for in the script. Before the introduction of “Product Placement.” All the cheesy Gibson S-1s and Mauraders, a Polymoog and rows and rows of Lab Series amplifiers and it didn’t cost Norlin a dime. In the months it took to shoot and edit the film I was able to mail still photographs of the set back to the Norlin brass. They thought I was on fire. Then the movie came out.

I had to admit, Norlin had a great idea. Get Bob Moog and Les Paul together and come up with a musical instrument amplifier for the new age. Sounded good. The first corporate consideration was a name. “Gibson Amplifier” already had a funky reputation among the players. Gibson had never made an acceptable Rock unit. It had to be all new. I flew to Texas with some prototypes to show Billy Gibbons. Our friendship began in ’69 when Jimi Hendrix gave Billy his old Sunn amplifiers. I could testify to Jimi’s endorsement of the young Gibbons. I tracked Billy down early on the Gibson job because he owned one of the most famous Les Paul’s in the business. “Miz Pearly,” as in Pearly Gates or the sound you hear in heaven. It was the guitar he held in every picture. Billy was the most loyal of Gibson players, and a natural to help launch an amplifier line. ZZ had just released their fifth album on Warner Brothers and were already known as a relentless touring act, building a reputation and record sales around the world. Billy thinks big. I flew into San Antonio with engineer Roger Cox, an old friend from the Sunn days when he was with Ampeg, now Norlin’s amp wizard. We were met by two Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, or ZZ Top’s version thereof, who insisted on carrying our bags to the curb and the cherry red, w/white top 1956 Cadillac convertible with Mister Gibbons behind the wheel. He handed us cowboy hats and explained different parts of the country had different “rolls” and cowboys could tell where a dude was from by his roll. We were in Texas now. We then took a four hour drive to South Padre Island where Billy’s vacation house “Big Pink” was located right on the beach. Another brace of cheerleaders met us at the house, unloaded the car, turned on the lights and the stereo, excused themselves and disappeared. Mister Gibbons knows how to entertain. For the next three days we fished and drove to a small Mexican restaurant across the border that had live music, where the second night Mister Gibbons announced he and I would be sitting in, and we did, and for those three burnin’ songs I contemplated a comeback as a musician.

In the 70’s the Gibson guitars artist relations office was operated out of Buck Munger’s home basement recording studio in northeast Portland, Oregon. When the first half-inch video cameras hit the market Buck grabbed one and started shooting low key back stage interviews with Gibson artists directed at the plant workers and field reps to boost morale and increase sales. This is an intro to the first Artist Relations field tape. Buck introduces a trashed Les Paul given to him backstage by Pete Townshend. The guitar was destroyed by Pete because he discovered it had a faulty neck. When he became convinced that something was wrong he bashed it against the wall and indeed the center core of the neck was rotted. So he told Alan Rogan the roadie to save it for that guy from Gibson. In this video Buck also touts the Bo Diddley “Mark Series” model acoustic. In truth, at the time, the Mark Series acoustics were the first costly boondoggle by Gibson’s new owners the Norlin Corporation, having spent thousands to develop a whole new bridge concept outside the Gibson design team. Unfortunately, also outside the design team they added a plastic ring around the guitar’s sound hole, which instantly turned off the players and killed sales. Munger picked up the little square guitar in the office of Gibson’s Kalamazoo plant while visiting the factory with John Entwistle of the Who. After walking through the factory collecting instruments Entwistle were invited into Carl’s office. A row of unfinished prototype instruments lined the wall. One instrument stood out. A little square guitar with the new Mark Series bridge. What in the heck is this. “Oh that, says Carl. The New York Norlin guys discovered Ovation guitars (with a plastic back) and they instructed us to build them a prototype so they could evaluate the acoustical properties of plastic.” “I could see Carl was not comfortable telling this story, says Buck, these were his corporate bosses he was talking about and I was the corporate Artist Relations guy.” “Carl said he looked all over for something plastic like the back of a guitar and all he could come up with was this refrigerator vegetable drawer.” So the Gibson craftsmen, who had established the baseline for excellence in the guitar building business were forced to build a guitar on a refrigerator drawer. “I asked for it, and after all the Entwistle freebies I guess Carl was glad to get rid of it.”

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

Buck Munger w/ Pete Townshend\’s Guitar 1975

I was back in The Game. Norm and Con Sundholm had asked me if I could use my “extensive contacts” in the music business to get their Sunn clinician a record deal. Buddy Fite was a Portland jazz guitarist that had been demonstrating Sunn amplifiers for a while and created a sensation at the ’67 NAMM Show in Chicago when h…e strung his guitar with two bass strings and four guitar strings and played both parts at once. Les Paul came over from the Gibson booth with his entourage and sat-in for an hour, and then spent the next two days steering people to the Sunn booth. Jazz wasn’t really my bag, but with my new friend Howard Roberts, who co-incidentally, was a big hero of Buddy’s, I thought I would broaden my game. Buddy arrived in Hollywood with neatly trimmed hair, wing-tips and a business suit. You’d never guess he had been an active member of the Hell’s Angels. He had some great stories and became an instant favorite in the office. After signing my Sinatra-lawyer management contracts, we went into the studio to cut a demo. We also recorded Buddy’s two bass, four guitar-string solo. Back in the office, the stunt solo got most of the attention. Our next-door neighbor on the fourth floor was Robert Mersey, an old school producer at Columbia and one of the first to go independent. He now produced Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis and was setting up his own label. Our two offices shared a wall and we listened in on each other’s playback. I knew he was looking for a guitar player for Johnny Mathis, so I sent him Buddy’s tape and his reaction was positive, but he was skeptical about one person playing both parts simultaneously, so I invited him down the hall to see Buddy play it live. We had a deal before he left the office.

Here are 4 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst Guitars at “Danny’s Guitars” in Everett, Washington.  Thank You, Danny Mangold for the Great Picture !

Here are a couple pics of Led Zeppelin at the Seattle Center Coliseum taken March 17, 1975 by Richard Green.

I got these pics from Brian Brock back in the day, just after he acquired this beautiful 1959 Les Paul.  He told me he traded a Cadillac for it !

Duane Allman\’s Goldtop Les Paul For Sale

This is the 1957 goldtop Les Paul that Duane Allman purchased in early 1969,
and is the guitar on which he learned and perfected his slide style.
This was his primary instrument on the first two Allman Brothers albums,
countless concerts, and perhaps most significantly,

Duane Allman's 1957 Goldtop Les Paul

Duane’s guitar of choice for almost the entire Derek & the Dominoes “Layla” album.

Offered for sale at last, now you can own this unique piece of music history!

http://www.duaneallmansgoldtop.com/index.htm

Here is a promo picture from my old band Child (from Seattle)

Wish we had those guitars now….

Child Promo Picture