10. What the fuck do Texans want with vintage guitars?
after working in live music and the clubs for a good amount
of my life at that moment, and still living in my home town,
not really adventuring out of it, a close friend of mine since
childhood got stationed in El Paso, Texas and was going to
be there for the rest of his gig in the army. he was bummed
about some of the decisions that he made, and was really
homesick, so i decieded to load of some of the boys that
i lived with and move all of us to Texas.
rent was dirt cheap, it was right on the border of mexico,
and i was ready for a change. leave the faster paced life
that i was living and slow down a bit. i was in the middle
of a really big swing in a different direction. i had been
on the wagon for about a year, totally dry from drinking,
i had stopped eating meat, and i was taking a hand full
of political science classes mostly emphasizing in
feminism and socialism. it was a strange chance to try
coop living in a different place.
very early nineties now, we had just got done trying to
put together some outdoor dance parties on the west
coast, nothing anyone had been doing really (raves) and
i thought that texas might be a fun place to try something
like that also. we loaded up a huge white can that we
bought, took almost nothing but clothes and a few chairs
since there were only two in the van, and after driving for
thirty hours, ended up in the middle of the desert in a town
that i really was not ready for.
after sleeping off the drive, we ate a little food across from
the hotel that we were staying at and i met a girl there that
night that told me about the ?hip? club in town and said
the next night was the night to go. about two months after
that night i started dating that same girl and went out with
her for almost three years.
we went off to the club and it was a shock. we had been
on the edge of the dance thing in cali, and texas was easily
nine months behind everything that we had been doing.
started talking to the dj there about music and such, he was
all excited about the fact that someone there knew some of
the bands that he was into, and asked me what i was going
to do for a job in town. i told him that i had no idea and
no plans, that i had not even been there a week yet. he
gave me his card and told me to visit him at work the next
day.
turns out that he owned a vintage guitar shop and had been
dealing guitars for years on end. he offered me and job and
i told him that i knew nothing about old guitars, i just knew
about music. he offered to teach me anything that i needed
to know and told me that i would pick it up as we went along.
that started something that i did for almost three years. it
was a blast.
we would go around the entire southwest to old pawn shops
and estate sales. finding something hocked, or an old fender
that someone played in his high school band. if the year was
right, the finish was good, and the parts still original, we would
buy a $500 guitar that we would flip the next week for $7500.
he had a list of old rock and rollers that would collect, there
would be places like the Hard Rock Cafe or high end music
shops that would just buy guitars from us unseen just because
of our reputation at the time.
we made cash every week. traveled all the time. got to meet
great guys that used to play in bands that would listen to on
the radio, and we got to hang out with whatever big rock band
at the time was in town playing and most of the time sell them
something on top of it. the best out of that was when we got
to spend time with U2 on the zoo tv tour. the sugar cubes and
public enemy were on the bill also. it was nice to be able to
meet the guys in U2, but i had always had a thing for bjork and
got to spend a few nights with her.
eventually i got burned on living in the desert. no trees, everything
was brown, the summers were too hot, i missed northern califonia.
but i did get to take few great stories with me and i did get to
deal a few awesome pieces of music history. john lennon?s first
vox ac30, one of elvis?s acoustic guitars, a few gretches that i
wished that i had not sold, and more than one of the guitars from
the rolling stones. there are still times that i look at the wall when
i walk by a pawn shop just to see what they have, or stop and drive
by a yard sale because i knew that was a neck from a 67? tele.
