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Steve Jones and a Hamer?


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Found this on Wikipedia. Anyone seen him with a Hamer? Pics? 

He's a great player. And one hell of a funny dude. Hi's Instagram account is priceless. 

Love the part with stolen amps. He was known to steal whatever he could lay his hands on. 

"While Jones typically since the 1980s plays through Marshall JCM 800 Stacks, he used a silverface Fender Twin Reverb (reportedly stolen from Bob Marley at the Hammersmith Apollo) with Gauss speakers to record Never Mind The Bollocks.[24][25] He also used Musicman Amps and a Fender Super Reverb during the 1978 US Tour.

Currently, Jones also plays Hamer Sunburst double-cut guitars, and prefers the White Les Paul Custom as his primary guitar."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jones_(musician)

 

 

 

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Nice to see Steve Jones get a mention, I know punk is maybe passe for many these days but his guitar playing on 'Never Mind The Bollocks' is the real energy of the band, his guitar playing and John Lydon's manic vocals are the Pistol's sound. If I remember rightly they had to bring in a session player to stand in for for Sid Vicious on bass as he was too messed up from all the smack he was doing and he was only kept around by the band's manager, Malcolm McClaren because he looked good.  I still listen to that album from time to time and while Jones is no Steve Vai or Joe Satriani he stills plays some really solid heavy-sounding riffs and plays them well too.  The two main things from that era that really stick in my mind are 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and Jean-Jacques Burnel's bass sound on The Strangler's albums 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes'.  I can still remember sitting in my bedroom on weekday evenings in late '77 and into '78, pretending to do homework that never got done with those albums playing constantly on my cheap & nasty ceramic stylus record player until my tastes matured slightly and Motorhead, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd took their place, along with the discovery of a 'new & interesting brand of cigarette'. Ooh wow I just had a 'mental kodak moment'.  I don't ever remember seeing Jones with a Sunburst, only the trademark 'white' Les Paul.

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I'm glad you said about the White Les Paul being half-inched, I was thinking it, wasn't sure whether to write it.  Yes there's obvious extra guitar tracks on NMTB, something Happy Mondays and Oasis turned into an artform later on, but it's not unusual to beef up a recording that way, I don't dislike it myself if it's not done to the point of gratuitous over-embellishment.

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10 hours ago, 0054 said:

NMTB, was the greatest concept album ever.

Hmmmm.  

I am TRULY loath to disagree with anyone (let alone someone in the next state over) who publicly admires The Only Ones, the Reducers, and many other bands I am particularly fond of, (and who has a purple Shiskov) but I am not ready to agree with the quoted statement.  

The greatest ever?  Makes me think  of many discussions I've had in the past about this.  

So, let's have at it.  What is the best/greatest/universally fantastic/most awesome/goodest concept album ever?  

The Who's "Tommy"?  Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or  "Dark Side of the Moon"?  (Well, OK, those were pretty good.) Beatles "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band?"

Were there many others?  Even if there were not, I'll offer my nominations:  The Kinks: "Arthur".  In close second place:  The Kinks, "Village Green Preservation Society."  

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  You can find better (or more technically challenging) guitar playing, better distorted tones, longer solos, and so on.   But as an overall theme, and as coherent, insightful, and original expressions of what was going on at the time, (and which provided insights into the future) they were awfully good.  

They still resonate, and always have to me.  (Guess I'm a true fan, then.)    

Disagree?  What was better, and why was it better, as a concept album?  

Let's leave aside discussing why so many were British.     

 

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Hmmm Rush have been known to write the odd concept album here and there too.  Some of those albums could be called iconic. I still listen to Rush  every week, I can't say the same for NMTB or anything punk.  In all their time their only weak or maybe unpopular album Rush created was 'Caress Of Steel' from 1975 and they recovered within less than a year with '2112', which is definitely a hugely iconic concept album.  'Never Mind The Bollocks' was iconic too but I definitely don't want to hear that every week, it doesn't have as much going on in it, the songs are a collection of roughly 3-minute outbursts of anger directed against the British establishment of the time, social norms, morality and the general Status Quo.  It is/was a huge album in a lot of ways but to I think to call it the greatest concept album ever is over-reaching somewhat.  I think speaking in absolutes like that is kind of short sighted, or limiting because nobody can ever know what is yet to come.  It's a similar thing when it comes to making generalisms about  people/race/bands/politics/religion/anything, it's just spurious to do it because it's wrong.  I remember seeing various music shows and reading the comments of music journalists from the 'NME' and 'Sounds' since the demise of punk and they're all basically saying that the '70s music scene had gone stale and the Sex Pistols and punk in general were the necessary cultural laxative that came at the right time to cause an upheaval in the established order in a large part of the popular music industry and all the new bands and indie record labels that came to life would never have happened without the pistols.  I think this is only partly correct as artists like Rush, Frank Zappa, and Tangerine Dream were producing new and innovative music back then, it's just that they weren't mainstream. They had pretty much zero media exposure, but were still selling records.   Also the pistols and punk in general were just about anger or anger is certainly intrinsic to it but anger burns out eventually and in the mainstream punk did too.  I'll wheel out NMTB from time to time for the sake of nostalgia, I know it started an avalache of a sort and I recognise it's importance in the history of modern music but I can't agree that it was the most important concept album ever because I don't believe such a thing exists or can exist, ever.

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20 hours ago, Hardrockracer said:

There is a Steve Jones solo album "Fire and Gasoline" from the late 80s where he goes Rock 'n Roll.

It is a bloody great album. His first solo album is also very good, maybe even slightly better. 

He wrote a lot of the material for Iggy Pops Instinct album. And he was in the Neurotic outsiders with Duff McKagan. Good album. And The Professionalls with Paul Cook. 

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On 10/5/2019 at 7:59 PM, Mr. Dave said:

Nice to see Steve Jones get a mention, I know punk is maybe passe for many these days but his guitar playing on 'Never Mind The Bollocks' is the real energy of the band, his guitar playing and John Lydon's manic vocals are the Pistol's sound. If I remember rightly they had to bring in a session player to stand in for for Sid Vicious on bass as he was too messed up from all the smack he was doing and he was only kept around by the band's manager, Malcolm McClaren because he looked good.  I still listen to that album from time to time and while Jones is no Steve Vai or Joe Satriani he stills plays some really solid heavy-sounding riffs and plays them well too.  The two main things from that era that really stick in my mind are 'Never Mind The Bollocks' and Jean-Jacques Burnel's bass sound on The Strangler's albums 'Rattus Norvegicus' and 'No More Heroes'.  I can still remember sitting in my bedroom on weekday evenings in late '77 and into '78, pretending to do homework that never got done with those albums playing constantly on my cheap & nasty ceramic stylus record player until my tastes matured slightly and Motorhead, Hawkwind and Pink Floyd took their place, along with the discovery of a 'new & interesting brand of cigarette'. Ooh wow I just had a 'mental kodak moment'.  I don't ever remember seeing Jones with a Sunburst, only the trademark 'white' Les Paul.

Re: Sid Viscious not on bass.  I somewhere recall Steve saying he did bass on at least a couple songs, where the bass just doubles the guitar line (the whole song?).

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There's not a whole lot of live video, but Sid doesn't seem to be as horrible as he was described by so many people. Yes, you can hear several fuckups, but many of them were due to being pelted by garbage. Imagine how good they could have been if the Boss TU-2 was around back then.

 

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On 10/8/2019 at 2:04 AM, seeker said:

Re: Sid Viscious not on bass.  I somewhere recall Steve saying he did bass on at least a couple songs, where the bass just doubles the guitar line (the whole song?).

Thats what I was saying. I'd read somewhere that they'd used a session player to play bass, or it could well have been Steve that took his place on 'Bollocks' because Sid was too off his head on H to get it together.  John Lydon had said as much too.  Malcolm McClaren's main reason for recruiting Sid was because 'he looked good'...apparently.

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On 10/7/2019 at 9:04 PM, seeker said:

Re: Sid Viscious not on bass.  I somewhere recall Steve saying he did bass on at least a couple songs, where the bass just doubles the guitar line (the whole song?).

yep, steve did ALL the bass except for "bodies", which is sid.

sid was still learning to play at the time.

just read steves book, which was hilarious. also his "jonesys jukebox" interviews on youtube are great.

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9 hours ago, Brooks said:

yep, steve did ALL the bass except for "bodies", which is sid.

sid was still learning to play at the time.

just read steves book, which was hilarious. also his "jonesys jukebox" interviews on youtube are great.

I need to read that book! 

Are you following him in Instagram. The short videos he does are totally funny.  https://www.instagram.com/jonesysjukebox/?hl=sv

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