I’ve just been messing around with my iMac’s built-in camera and microphone and come up with this little gem of a video which I’ve bunged up on YouTube.

What’s great about this clip is how my pot-belly stands out most wonderfully from under my cheap Uniqlo shirt, not to mention the horrendous gaffe I make during the latter part of my little ‘improv‘.

Hey, at least I should get bonus points for playing music of my own devising rather than churning out AC/DC covers, which is what most YouTube folks with Gibson SG Standards are doing.

I await the torrent of abuse and dumbarsed comments from the hordes of 14 year-olds who inhabit cyberspace…

OK, OK, I admit it. My present penchant for purchasing pricey musical paraphernalia is not because each instrument ’sounds different’ and is thus necessary for the arsenal, so to speak. No, it’s just another manifestation of what doctors of the mind call “middle-aged loser git anal collecting syndrome“.

Now you might think that buying shitloads of guitars is somewhat cooler than trainspotting in that the instruments of rock are intrinsically far less anorak, but consider this: trainspotting is at least a cheap option. Aforementioned rainproof clothing item, notebook, biro, horrible hairstyle and you’re ready to go. Alright, those thick glasses might set you back a bit, but it’s still going to be cheaper than the $8,000 plus I’ve forked out over the last year for musical bits ‘n’ pieces.

Here’s the latest addition to the ardle collection, grabbed today from the Yamaha store:

Yep, it’s the Fender Jazz I’ve had my eye on for a while. Varnished maple fretboard and gorgeous amber transparent finish to the body - what a stunner!

Now all this acquisition of gear with ‘jazz‘ in the title by no means corresponds to a shift on behalf of your narrator into the beardy world of free improvisation and beats you can’t dance to, oh no. It’s just that Fender totally misnamed their instruments. The Jazzmaster guitar I bought last week in Osaka eneded up being the axe of choice for grungers and alt.rock stars the world over, and likewise, the Jazz bass is actually a brighter and punchier beast that its ostensibly rockier counterpart the Precision.

So no, I won’t be sucking on cheroots in dark basements, I will be ploughing the post-punk furrow as earnestly as I ever did.

And yes, this little purchase does mark the end of the line as far as acquiring new instruments goes.

Until I see something else that is ‘vital’ to my sound, that is…

OK, instead of a stock photo, this time the real thing - your humble narrator, happily decapitated, wielding his glorious old candy red Fender Jazzmaster….oh yeah!

And the worst of it is - a local Hiroshima store has a sexy Fender Jazz bass going for a song…..can I resist?????

Just back from the Big Kansai in what is becoming an annual excusion to avoid the hell that is Hiroshima’s ghastly ‘Flower Festival‘.

Amazingly, although I’ve been to Kyoto dozens of times and even lived there for a while, I still found numerous new bits to explore, and the photographic proofs will be up on ardle.net just as soon as I can be arsed.

And again I find that I rather like Osaka, most probably because (a) nobody knows me there, (b) I know a secret ‘Starbucks‘ where you can always sink into a nice deep brown sofa, and (c) it has shitloads of well-stocked guitar shops.

‘Twas in the latter that I had another little wallet-emptying incident. Well, I was in the market for one of the following: a Rickenbacker 330 or 620, a semi-acoustic or something with a tremolo. No Rickenbackers showed up, which was kind of a relief in a way, since the loss of ¥220,000 tends to offend.

Next, I clapped my peepers on a browny Epiphone Casino semi-acoustic with a rare add-on Bigsby tremolo. Aha! Kill two birds with one plectrum, eh? I didn’t like the shitty colour much, but I plucked the little fellow off the stand and plugged it into a huge amp. Hmm. None too impressive tone-wise, crappy action, and the Bigsby was a big ungainly monster which quite frankly, blew.

I then noticed a red Fender Jazzmaster. Now I’m no stranger to these puppies - I’d actually used one in a real recording studio in Berlin circa 1991. It has a tremolo. It has that cool twangy Fender sound, and yet is not a cliched crappy-looking Stratocaster. It has underground music kudos, being the axe of choice of folks like J.Mascis out of Dinosaur Jnr. Only one problem - I hate those dark-wood Fender fingerboards. Now your Strat and your Tele have light varnished maple alternatives, but not your Jazzmeister.

Casting my misgivings aside, I plugged in and ran through a few licks, and blow me if I wasn’t blown away, not only by the cool grungy sounds, but by the slick and speedy neck and fingerboard! Of course I bought the darn thing immediately, dragged it to my secret Starbucks, and sat there nonchalantly sipping a Coffee Jelly Frapuccino while a whole succession of birds eyed my red instrument appreciatively.