Friday 8/9/2008 ~ A Mystery Solved!

Have you ever run across something that you were very curious about, but it was kinda mysterious, so you put it aside, and then 34 years later, you unexpectedly figured it out? Me, too!!
It all started this Wednesday when I was reading my favorite non-guitar magazine, "Wired." (I know it sounds like a boring computer magazine, but it's not. I heartily recommend it.) Among the many interesting stories in this month's issue was an article about how long things last.

Comparing animal life-spans, for example: Killer whales can live for sixty-five years; while the average life of a lion is fifteen years. With regard to the life-span of data recording, the Wired article compared the inscriptions on an ancient stone tablet found in Bulgaria (seven thousand years old), to info stored on microfilm (estimated readable life-span of one hundred years), to data recorded on home-burned CD-Rs (which some experts now say may only last for five years).

With regard to data-storage, they also mentioned floppy discs. While they don't rapidly degrade, the technology to read them is now so out-of-date that the info is inaccessible. (I have years worth of Pittsburgh Guitars files on large floppy discs... the ones that actually ARE floppy... and I don't have a machine or a program that can read them.)

When I started to think about methods of recording data, record albums naturally came to mind. No matter how far technology progresses, no specific "program" or "data-decoding" is necessary to play a record. I suspect that they will out-live CDs, at least as far as playability is concerned.

And when I started to think about albums, I thought about album covers... and how many times I bought a record just because the cover was cool. They were extra cool if there were guitars on the cover. Like "Having A Rave-Up" by The Yardbirds... or "Everything is A-OK" by The Astronauts.

Then I started to think about LPs that made me laugh... not in a ha!-ha! sense... but in a what's-up-with-that? sense. The first one that came to mind was the the final album by a band called The Outsiders. It's a fake "live" album, with audience applause added to studio recordings. If that's not what's-up-with-that? enough, by the time the album was released there had been so many personnel changes, that no one was sure who was in the band. So, the front cover features two guys with their heads turned so you can't see who they were. AND they're BOTH playing bass! Here's "Happening 'Live!'" by The Outsiders.

When I thought about The Outsiders LP, I remembered a record I bought 34 years ago, just for the cover. It's called "Hep Stars On Stage" and it features a very odd photo of a band, with guys standing on top of amps, striking strange poses. When I bought it I couldn't quite decide if it was a joke. The songs are all cover tunes, so I thought it might be a studio band, with fake musicians posed for the cover shot. The liner notes didn't help... they're in Swedish. Here is the album cover.

But now that it's 2008, and all information known to man is at our finger tips, I figured I'd go to YouTube, to see if the Hep Stars On Stage really existed.

Not only did a band called the Hep Stars exist, they had a wild and crazy stage show. And they actually did stand on top of their amps! And do weird things like the amp poses! And the YouTube video was from the same 1965 show as the album! Here are the Hep Stars doing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" on YouTube.

With a little more internet searching I found that they were actually a very successful band. Their "International Official Website" calls them the "Biggest and most popular pop group during the years 1964-69 in Sweden!" Reading a little further, I discovered that after leaving the band the keyboard player had just a bit more success in the music biz... He's Benny Andersson, and after the Hep Stars he formed ABBA! And now, he's a gazillion-billionaire.

So, it turns out that an LP that I thought might be a fake-band-joke, actually features the guy who wrote "Mama Mia!" Another one of life's mysteries solved!!

Here's what John would look like if he was Swedish. He's even playing a new Hagstrom "Swede" guitar. We ordered a couple of dozen Hagstroms in January to try them out, and sold them all... so we ordered more. They're starting to arrive now.

See you soon,
Carl

PS: Last night I figured I should dig out my copy of "Hep Stars On Stage" to photograph it for this email. I have my hundreds of LP filed alphabetically, but I couldn't find it under "H." I sat and thought for a minute...trying to figure out how my mind was working when I filed it. I thought to myself, "Someday you're going to want this record... and you'll remember the strange cover... but you might not remember the name of the band... So, no sense in filing it under their name... But what will you remember?... I bet you'll remember that they were Swedish!!... SO file it with a Swedish band you WILL remember: Locomotiv GT!" Sure enough, in the "L" box, right next to Locomotiv GT was the Hep Stars! And THAT'S how I file stuff!

PPS: I just looked up Locomotiv GT, and apparently they were Hungarian! Good thing I didn't know that when I was doing my filing! I bought one of their albums in the late 1970s (the cover looked interesting)... and I really enjoyed it. I subsequently bought four more, although two are the same album, one in English and the other their native language, which I'm now guessing is Hungarian! Locomotiv GT LPs.

PPPS: Here's the Hep Stars International Official Website.

PPPPS: We have two spots left for our First Ever Pittsburgh Guitars Golf outing on Sunday August 17th. If you're interested, please email John , and we'll sign you up!!

PPPPPS: Customer of the Week: Steel Battalion