What Do I Get? (Day 37 - 06/02/13)

 There was a photo at the top of this one. It's vanished from the original blog.

It was, as will become quite obvious, a photo of some very nice guitars (one of which I've since sold - it wasn't needed as, eight months after this piece, J bought me the 12 string Ric I'd always wanted. Which plays far far better than the model I played and commented on below)

HMV at it's best was always about loyalty and reward; a lot was expected of you but you could get as much in return. For those of us that gave a long time there was a hell of a long service bonus policy; a gift worth £1,000 once you hit twenty years, £1500 when you achieved twenty five.

Just to confuse the issue, I want to talk about the second gift first (there is a reason and it will become clear quite quickly);

Twenty five years gave me quite a bit;

3 trips to Wembley last season- Carling Cup Final, a fantastic day out for an FA cup semi final against Everton and a less enjoyable one for the final against Chelsea

Springsteen at the Etihad - three and a quarter hours of pure genius

The Stone Roses at Heaton Park (the Saturday night)The performance of 'Fool's Gold' may well be the best live moment ever.

Four magnificently blissful days in Rome with my beautiful wife.

and two of the four guitars in the picture 

The blue Ibanez Artcore. Back in my gigging days I had my eyes on a sunburst Ibanez semi acoustic in the style that Weller was playing in The Style Council at the time. I missed out on it. I bought an acoustic instead, one that I never really grew to love.

Which is what brought me to purchase the Smith & Patrick acoustic, nice tobacco Sunburst finish plays like a dream. I had £200 of my £1500 left, the guitar was £350, I could get it for £300.
It was outside my self set budget, I was getting a different guitar that was in my budget.

Then I played this. It wasn't even a question. I will play this for the rest of my life.

But the important gift was the first. All I have ever wanted in life is a 12 string Rickenbacker; the guitar of the Byrds, George Harrison on A Hard Days Night, the classic 60s jangle.
My grand was going to be spent on a 'Ric'. And there was one in Dawson's in Liverpool.
Maple body. Gorgeous.
This. This was the guitar. This was the conversation I'd had with myself, then with J. This was a one off, this gift represented the life in music that I hadn't had, a life in bands replaced with a life in work. This is what I did before HMV. This is what HMV was giving me now; twenty years of work summed up in a guitar from my dreams.

 The assistant lifted it from the wall for me, put it in my hands, I sat and tentatively strummed my first chord on the guitar that I'd wanted throughout my entire adult life. It played like a dog. No Jangle, no sweet shining note; a nasty, dirty, clumsy 'Thrummmm'. Heartbroken. So I bought a guitar that I had never wanted. A Sunburst Fender Stratocaster. I had no desire for a Strat, I'd always been a Telecaster fan but (again) the assistant persuaded me and (again) I picked it up and played it. And I knew. This was the guitar that I had really been waiting for. And this was the guitar that changed things again.

This was the guitar that got me playing again, this was the guitar that started a conversation between J & I at a Pete Wylie gig. This was the guitar that brought J to say 'Well if you want to be in a band again, why don't you ring Mally and see if he's doing anything?'

So I did and suddenly I was in a band again for a couple of years.
And that's why the first gift was the most important, why the twenty year mark gave me more than the twenty five. What that gift gave me was playing The Zanzibar, home of The Coral and The Zutons. What it gave me was, in my late forties, living my early twenties again.

What it gave me was playing The Cavern. For one night only, I played The Cavern.

It's always been about the music.

(Ps. The other one, the one on the right at the end? 12string Fender acoustic. Well I had to buy a 12 string in some way)