The Psychøtic Reactiøn

UCCA/KIAD Bar, Canterbury, 23rd May 2007:

KIAD- always a tricky place to play, somewhat remote, strangely hard to promote (I should write a song…). Back from ATP, I was raring to go and, as so often happens at relaxed and sparsely attended gigs, we played really well, but that’s not why I am writing this blog. Last night, I experienced a watershed….

I took an ancient black Encore Coaster strat-copy for noise making, a battered, cheapo guitar that had been smashed up and stuck back together at three gigs already (one of them at KIAD, as immortalised in the Moment of Clarity video!). I used it for the last two songs and a strange, beastial urge overtook me… I clobbered the mike stand, threw it on the air, breaking the head stock on landing, hit it against the drums and the ’stage’ (ie ‘floor’!) until the rest of the neck came off, then hammered the body into the floor until it splintered in three.

Now, I’d done this several times before, the first time being with the Mushrooms when I was 16, but there was something about the extent of last night’s carnage that disturbed me. Faced with the scattered splinters and flakes of plywood, the shards of scratch plate and the broken, twisted electronics, I felt vaguely queasy. I suppose I started it originally for show, for its out-there sonic possibilities, to prove that we mean it, maaan, to see the audience reaction (everything from blood-lust euphoria to appalled horror) and sometimes as a means of release. I never tried to rationalise it as being in the tradition of ‘auto-destructive art’ a la the axe-mangling originator, Mr. Townshend, although it was undeniably expressive in the extreme; I simply kept it as an extra secret weapon in my arsenal. Over the 14 years of doing it, I must have smashed about 10 guitars in total, invariably beaten-up second hand no-hopers (Encores, Kays, an Egmond…). If I remember correctly, four with the Mushrooms, one with Invisible Dog, two or three with the Reaction, plus two or three in bedrooms, back gardens and garages; the result of general frustration! I’m talking actual guitars here, as I frequently stuck guitars back together to smash again. Everything got recycled in some way and aided by the miracle of epoxy-resin I learnt a lot about woodwork in the process!

The arguments against trashing guitars are usually as follows: it’s a cliché- true in some ways, but it aint what you do, it’s the way that you do it; that it’s a waste- also true, but as said everything (and I mean everything!) got recycled somehow, frequently to fix other guitars, or turned into compost!- and finally, it’s a fairly unpleasant snub to those that can’t afford an instrument, which is also true, although as said I only ever broke crap and/or damaged instruments- the worst of which was a Satellite Les Paul copy that was de-laminating so severely, it was barely usable and had to be capo’d at the second fret and de-tuned accordingly. It only had one pick-up and volume knob, too (its fragments are immortalised as wallpaper on the Reaction homepage).

Anyway, last night, within minutes of the deed, I resolved that I’d smashed my last guitar. There are various reasons, I suppose- the futile hassle of fixing them and making them playable again only to break them again, of finding room to take an extra guitar to gigs just for wrecking; the waste (of wood, glue, solder, time, resources!), the moral aspect (it’s another form of wasteful, rampant consumerism- we’re all guilty!!) and, I get a strange feeling that it’s bad karma, though I’m not turning into a hippy!

I don’t think I’ll ever abandon ritual guitar abuse and noise terrorism; all of these can be achieved without actually breaking a guitar. The solid body guitar is normally a more or less indestructible invention, and can survive going through windows, falling down stairs, being lobbed into amps or drum kits and falling off roof racks, often without even going out of tune! I’m going to re-use some of the Encore, even try and fix the neck, though I’m not sure what can be done with the splintered, mashed-up fragments of the body- maybe I can make a sculpture? Whatever- it’s time to put away childish things and concentrate on what is most important, i.e the music…and as long as I don’t get one of my on-stage spasms, I solemnly declare that all guitars will be safe around me from now on, even Encores…