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Gavin B. · 11-09-2009, 10:10 PM

Song of the Day
DAY TWO: All Instrumental Week!

Pell Mell founder and uber producer Steve Fisk

Nothing Lies Still Long- Pell Mell Pell Mell was an all instrumental rock group founded by Steve Fisk who is more notable for being the producer of bands like Nirvana, the Screaming Trees and Beat Happening. Nothing Lies Still Long is from the 1995 album Interstate. I really like the surf guitar work by Robert Beerman at the beginning of the song and some of Fisk's retro-new wave playing on the Farfisa organ but the last 60 seconds of the song are about 60 seconds too long.

Nothing Lies Still Long would have been a brilliant 3 minute song but it's a little to long at 4 minutes. During the final minute of the song the band appears to be in search of an appropriate coda for the song and they lose their focus. A slow fade out at about the 2:45 mark that ended with a cut at 3:00 would have made Nothing Lies Still Long a much better song. Sometimes less is better.

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Bonus Song!

Hank Marvin of the Shadows... my own guitar hero.

Apache- The Shadows Hank Marvin of the British group the Shadows was the guy I always wanted to play guitar like. When all of my friends were trying to sound like Jimmy Page playing their Les Paul Black Beauties through monster Marshall Amps, I was digging on the Fender surf picking of Hank Marvin. I played a 1957 Fender Telecaster through a Vox equipped with an Italian Meazzi Echomatic echo unit, like my hero Hank Marvin. No distortion, no feedback, no fuzz box, no wah-wah pedal, and no humbucking pick-ups for me...just good clean Fender picking with a bit of reverb and echomatic.

Surf guitar was relegated to lowest stratum of the rock and roll guitar totem pole in that era. Nobody wanted to hear surf guitar in the Seventies. Surf guitar was so square that it was campy like old Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Beach Party movies.

To make matter worse I couldn't (or wouldn't) play Whipping Post, Crossroads Stairway to Heaven or Free Bird which were the benchmark songs for every respectable guitar player in that era. I stubbornly stuck to my surf guitar. I didn't get many gigs and my style of playing made me an easy target for jokes but I didn't care. I was following my muse even though surf guitar was almost two decades out of date.

I played surf guitar until I met Furry Lewis and became fascinated the way he played country blues with a bottleneck, so in the early Seventies I traded in my Telecaster and Vox Amp for a shiny used 1938 model American steel body guitar and began playing delta blues in the old fashioned drop tuned style of Son House, Furry Lewis and Booker T. White. Switching from surf guitar to delta blues guitar got me a few more steady gigs because bar owners thought I was some kind of novelty act who played a bunch of quaint blues songs from the Twenties and the Thirties.

For me it all started with the Shadows version of Apache. I still think Hank Marvin is the greatest guitarist ever.

11-09-2009, 10:10 PM	#140 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Song of the Day DAY TWO: All Instrumental Week! Pell Mell founder and uber producer Steve Fisk Nothing Lies Still Long- Pell Mell Pell Mell was an all instrumental rock group founded by Steve Fisk who is more notable for being the producer of bands like Nirvana, the Screaming Trees and Beat Happening. Nothing Lies Still Long is from the 1995 album Interstate. I really like the surf guitar work by Robert Beerman at the beginning of the song and some of Fisk's retro-new wave playing on the Farfisa organ but the last 60 seconds of the song are about 60 seconds too long. Nothing Lies Still Long would have been a brilliant 3 minute song but it's a little to long at 4 minutes. During the final minute of the song the band appears to be in search of an appropriate coda for the song and they lose their focus. A slow fade out at about the 2:45 mark that ended with a cut at 3:00 would have made Nothing Lies Still Long a much better song. Sometimes less is better. ================================================== === Bonus Song! Hank Marvin of the Shadows... my own guitar hero. Apache- The Shadows Hank Marvin of the British group the Shadows was the guy I always wanted to play guitar like. When all of my friends were trying to sound like Jimmy Page playing their Les Paul Black Beauties through monster Marshall Amps, I was digging on the Fender surf picking of Hank Marvin. I played a 1957 Fender Telecaster through a Vox equipped with an Italian Meazzi Echomatic echo unit, like my hero Hank Marvin. No distortion, no feedback, no fuzz box, no wah-wah pedal, and no humbucking pick-ups for me...just good clean Fender picking with a bit of reverb and echomatic. Surf guitar was relegated to lowest stratum of the rock and roll guitar totem pole in that era. Nobody wanted to hear surf guitar in the Seventies. Surf guitar was so square that it was campy like old Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello Beach Party movies. To make matter worse I couldn't (or wouldn't) play Whipping Post, Crossroads Stairway to Heaven or Free Bird which were the benchmark songs for every respectable guitar player in that era. I stubbornly stuck to my surf guitar. I didn't get many gigs and my style of playing made me an easy target for jokes but I didn't care. I was following my muse even though surf guitar was almost two decades out of date. I played surf guitar until I met Furry Lewis and became fascinated the way he played country blues with a bottleneck, so in the early Seventies I traded in my Telecaster and Vox Amp for a shiny used 1938 model American steel body guitar and began playing delta blues in the old fashioned drop tuned style of Son House, Furry Lewis and Booker T. White. Switching from surf guitar to delta blues guitar got me a few more steady gigs because bar owners thought I was some kind of novelty act who played a bunch of quaint blues songs from the Twenties and the Thirties. For me it all started with the Shadows version of Apache. I still think Hank Marvin is the greatest guitarist ever.