Step Right Up, There's One Born Every Minute...

Crazy people out there, ladies and gentlemen, there's one born every minute, watch this hand and I'll sell you three for five. I heard it's sweeter than honey and finer than gold, you can't even look upon it with the naked eye...

Today I'm gonna talk about white blues and Les Paul guitars... so bail if you want, no harm, no foul...

Now everybody ever born knows that the blues is not the white man's, it's too awesome for any pale skinned man or woman to have come up with. It belongs, whether by birth, invention, or sheer perfection of the art, to a few people, some of those being, Robert Johnson,

Muddy Waters, and BB King. There are many many more, Big Bill Broonzy being a big one...

Now my favorite originator of the old school - Sister Rosetta Tharpe - take one short moment and peep this.

Now, from all these came my personal hero, Mr. Eric Clapton... circa 1962-1973 era, except that whole Cream bit... I don't go for that at all, I'm talking John Mayall's Bluesbreakers Beano Album and Derek and the Dominoes masterpiece, Layla and Other Love Songs Album... this is where it started for the white man who found peace in the blues. Eric was the first guy to take the blues to the world. I don't care what you've read, it's a lie, this is true... Eric also did something else... while every one's beloved Jimmy Page was goofing around with a telecaster,

big Easy E-Rock Clapton was smoking all those English kids on a Les Paul. Now at this time,

the Les Paul was not a guitar people cared about at all... especially not a sunburst model.

But this English kid of barely 21 years of age, picks this thing up, plugs into a tiny little Marshall combo and CHANGES THE FACE OF MUSIC FOREVER! All these dudes heard Eric play on that first John Mayall record that he did and all of a sudden, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Billy Gibbons, etc, etc... go out and buy these Gibson Les Pauls and start making some pretty well known history.

now, comes my point... these original Les Pauls of the 1958-1960 breed can sell for upwards of $300,000! I don't know about you, but to me that is an absolutely inconceivable amount of money. I will most likely never see that amount in one place ever, and most of you won't either.

Fortunately, the people at Gibson are hip to this fact and make a pretty amazing Reissue that to my ears, serves me just fine. I'm reading this book by Tony Bacon called "Million Dollar Les Paul" I'm obsessed, I know, be glad you're not my wife... anyhow it goes into great detail about how these guys buy one of these old guitars, and then they want another, and another, and another, because the flame of the wood, or the sunbursts are a bit different on each one...

WHAT!? There are people starving to death down the street from me, and people are blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a guitar!?! Get serious about your whole life right now.

I love guitars maybe more than anyone you know. Maybe, Johnny Two Bags might love them more, but unless you know him, I'm all you've got... but my point is this... at what point to you get so hungry in your soul for something that you are willing to spend what some people make in four years as a salary on a piece of wood with strings... and the worst part about all of this, is the people who own these masterpiece guitars.... THEY AREN'T IN BANDS!!!!!! you'll never hear them on the radio, you'll never see them at the Knitting Factory, or the Stone Pony... never. Because all they do is buy these things, strum them every two weeks, and then put them back in their little vaults of gluttony. I can't understand how people will just spend and spend on things they'll never take with them. That's my rant. Live with it. There's a fine line between collecting, appreciation, and just crazy.

"Hell and Destruction are never full, and so the eyes of a man are never satisfied"

Song - "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" - Derek & the Dominoes