Читать книгу The Jesus Lizard Book - The Jesus Lizard - Страница 10

The first musical instrument I ever bought was a Fender Squier electric guitar. I got it at Strait Music on Lamar Boulevard in Austin, a few doors down from the original Whole Foods. I learned a few chords and tried to figure out songs from a Clash songbook I picked up somewhere. I started out planning to be a guitarist. In 1981, while I was in high school, my friends Nathan and Clay started a punk band. Clay was already playing guitar and they didn’t want a second guitarist, but they said I could join them if I played bass. I desperately wanted to be in a band, any band, so I went to Guitar Resurrection. Not knowing anything about basses, and being poor, my plan was to buy the best-looking one I could find for $250 or less. The Memphis had a nice, classic look to it and was exactly $250, including the case. I bought it and rehearsed with Nathan and Clay exactly one time before they kicked me out and got another bass player.

The Memphis was a Japanese copy of a Fender Jazz Bass. Memphis was a subsidiary of Yamaha that made very nice copies of American guitars. In fact, their copies of Gibson electric guitars were so faithful that Gibson sued them, which eventually prompted Yamaha to shut the company down. It’s hard to find the Memphis Jazz copies. The bass player in Harvey Milk has one. I know of a guy in Iowa that has three. It’s still my main bass, over thirty years later.

In 1982, David Yow and I were living in a house at 51st Street and Avenue H. My favorite Austin band at the time was Jerryskids (not to be confused with the more famous Boston hardcore band, Jerry’s Kids), who had recently broken up. The drummer and one of the guitar players called David Yow and asked if he wanted to play bass in a new band they were forming. David agreed and they set a date to come over to the house to rehearse. When they showed up and went into the rehearsal space, I followed them with my guitar and acted like Brett and Rey had invited me to join as well. Nobody asked me to leave, so I was finally in my first band, Scratch Acid. In the original lineup, I was one of two guitar players, along with Brett Bradford. David Yow played bass and Rey Washam played drums. When the singer, Steve Anderson, left the band before our first show, we made David Yow move to vocals. Brett was a better guitar player than me, and I already owned a bass, so I begrudgingly switched instruments and have been a bass player ever since.

I’ve played the Memphis at every Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard show. It’s not a particularly nice instrument. You probably couldn’t get $100 for it at a pawnshop. It’s a tool, and I use it to make a living. I’ve replaced the bridge, the tuning keys, and one of the pickups, so it’s not a collector’s item. I like high action, playing with a pick, and single-coil pickups. I still record and play live with it on my solo project, unFact. It’s not as nice-looking as it once was, but it still works like hell.

On June 14, 1985, Scratch Acid was in New York City and played in Queens at the Subway Club. I had been having problems with my amplifier, and was on the lookout for something to replace it with. A band called Chop Shop opened for us—I don’t remember much about them, except that the bass player’s amp was loud and sounded really, really great. It was heavy and aggressive, but still clean. He was using a Gallien-Krueger 400RB. The 400RB and 800RB amps had only been introduced in 1983, so they weren’t as ubiquitous as they would later become. I had never heard of them. At the end of that tour, I bought the Gallien-Krueger 800RB, and that has been my main bass amp ever since. I actually like the sound of some of the Ampeg SVT amps a little better, and have done a few tours with the SVT-CL, but the Gallien-Krueger is a dream for a working touring musician. It’s rugged and loud. The components are built into a metal case which also serves as the heat sink, so it’s remarkably small for something that moves so much air. Even packed in a flight case, it’s easy to carry in one hand. In the Jesus Lizard, I play a Gallien-Krueger 800RB amplifier through three Dietz fifteen-inch speaker cabinets, which are designed to be part of a PA, but you see a lot of bass players from Austin using them. My friend Jay Tiller once said, “I have to love a guy that has a $2,000 bass rig and is driving it with a $50 bass.”

The only pedal I use in the Jesus Lizard is a distortion pedal made by Pro Co called the Rat. It’s built into a durable metal enclosure and has a heavy-duty switch, so it’s nice for touring. I only use it on a few songs, though. To be truthful, I was just too lazy to bother with a bunch of pedals and all the AC adapters and cables that go with them. Most of the time, my sound has just been the Memphis straight into the Gallien-Krueger.

DAVID WM. SIMS