Les Paul: A Great White Swims On

A Letter From the Editor





TRI would like to take time today to remember a true Great White shark: Les Paul. He invented the solid-body electric guitar, or as we call it now, "the guitar." He invented multi-track recording, or as we call it now, "recording."
I will now recount, in the self-indulgent fashion of our times, my personal journey with this man, from the day I first got one of his guitars to the night I spent in his sharky presence in a jazz club in New York.
I first went crazy for the Les Paul guitar in high school. I didn’t play then, but I was a devout member of the Church of Social Distortion, and our pastor, Mike Ness, always played a beautiful gold-top Les Paul. I would have ran through fire for Mike Ness in those days, but I’ll never forget the one thing I was willing to criticize him over – the RF sticker he had plastered on that guitar. I remember thinking, How could he slap that thing on that beautiful golden guitar? I vowed that if I ever got one of my own, it would be completely unadorned.
When I started playing myself, I would go over to my dad’s place and fuck around with the many guitars in his quiver. He had Les Pauls, but long ago devoted himself to the Fender Stratocaster (hey, if it’s good enough for Jimi Hendrix, I guess).
But I always preferred the Paul. Not so much because of the sound, since I didn’t know shit from shinola sound-wise in those days, but the look. It just looked beefier, stronger and more substantial. I looked at it and imagined clubbing someone over the head with it, killing them instantly.
Anyway! When I picked my first guitar out of the Musician’s Friend catalog, I went with the Epiphone Les Paul Special II. It was the very cheapest entry-level Paul in existence and when it stopped working, as $150 guitars tend to do, I took it to my dad to fix.
He called me over to his house one day and said, "Your guitar is fixed." He handed me my case, and I immediately felt it was heavier than when I left it. I opened it up and my Epiphone Paul was nowhere to be seen – in its place was my dad’s authentic Gibson "The Paul" 1979 solid walnut Les Paul. He was giving it to me. He said something like, "You’re ready for a real guitar," and it was one of the best days of my life.
When I started looking into the man himself, the first thing that struck me was the story about how he broke his left arm at some point, and the doctor said he was going to have to set it in a fixed position. Paul chose to have it fixed at a 90-degree angle, so he could still play guitar. I tried finding a picture of it, but I swear, there’s pictures where he’s standing there with his left arm sticking out. It looks hilarious – unless he’s playing, in which case it looks totally natural.
Anyway, several years ago I was surprised to find the man was still alive…he was approaching 90. Then I was AMAZED to find that he was still playing shows, every Monday night at the Iridium Jazz Club in New York City.
I became fixated on the idea of going there to see him. Well…partly I was fixated on that, and partly fixated on a woman I loved who had bailed on me and moved to New York, and partly fixated on going to New York and watching the b-ballers at Rucker Park, but anyway! This came to represent what was so fucking cool about New York to me. LES PAUL PLAYS THERE EVERY FUCKING MONDAY NIGHT!
So years later, I got that woman back, and we went to New York together and went to the show. Again, one of the best nights of my life. It was so damned fun….I really don’t have the words for it. Some editor, huh?
First of all, his band SHREDDED. Bluesy-jazzy-rock, just straight up, good-time, have-five-or-six-martinis, good ol American music.
And Les Paul the man, just shy of 94 years old, was one of the most engaging, charismatic frontmen I had ever seen. Just full of jokes and good vibes…I remember at one point he was talking about some encounter he had just had with a beautiful woman, and he said, "I felt like a condemned building with a new flagpole." HAHA! This was a 93-year-old man making boner jokes! The crowd loved it.
His Iridium Jazz Club residency was famous for HUGE guest appearances: Jimmy Page, Springsteen and other huge names had popped in for unannounced appearances before.
On our night, Les announced that he was going to welcome to the stage, "One of the first men around the world."
I was sitting there thinking, who the fuck’s he bringing up, Magellan? But it turns out what Les meant to say was, "One of the first men to orbit the planet Earth." It was astronaut Scott Carpenter.
I was a little disappointed at first, but Carpenter turned out to be an awesome guest. He took the mic and talked a little bit about space, boasted like a real old bastard about beating the Russians in the space race, then left us with a really foreboding warning, as only a true old bastard could: "China…LURKS…" he said, then left the stage.
The crowd didn’t know whether to applaud or cry. Me, I almost spit up my martini before busting up laughing.
On the way out of the club that night I walked right by Carpenter. As I mentioned, I had had a few martinis. I said to him, "Before this week, I had never even been to New York. And you’ve been to space!"
Carpenter smiled and shook my hand and said, "Well, they’re both great places!"
I laughed my fucking ass off. It was a magical night, and I’d like to thank Les Paul for it. Oh, and for inventing the greatest musical instrument in human history.
Sincerely,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher

U.S. Soccer Team Shits the Bed in Mexico

By Travis Lee Hunter
TRI Editor and Publisher
And
Colombo Crue
TRI Sports Correspondent
　
Reporting from La Cita in downtown Los Angeles: A giant Mexican flag greeted us at the entrance so it was no surprise to find a big pro-Mexico crowd inside. Most of these men were intensely focused on the game and their $2 Budweisers and had very little to say, other than the occasional "la madre" or "a la chingada" when things looked risky for their beloved Tricolor. Once in a while someone would crank some disco through the system for five or ten seconds to pump up the crowd and everyone would cheer.
Of the four USA supporters in the bar besides your faithful TRI correspondents, two were loud-mouthed suit-wearing assholes who were hoping the game would go to a shootout (which was impossible since World Cup qualifiers can end in ties, and in fact a tie might have been what the U.S. was aiming for, strategically speaking). Another guy was so pessimistic about the U.S. team’s chances he was actually rooting against them harder than any of the dozens of Mex fans in the house. Another guy didn’t say anything the whole game other than a sarcastic "there you go Ching!" everytime U.S. forward Brian Ching blew it. And we thought we were the only ones who hated Ching! We actually had a gay little bonding thing with the guy, like, You hate Ching too?! Wow, cool man, us too! Smile. Wink.
The service at the bar was excellent. The bartendress spoke little English but certainly understood "Budweiser." When we asked her if they served food, she said no. Then a couple minutes later she asked, "You want shrimp tostada?" We had no idea where the fuck she was getting a shrimp tostada from all of a sudden but we were sure it was going to take some sort of unusual effort, given that they didn’t have a menu or even so much as chips and salsa. We didn’t want to impose.
The room was very dark, with three flatties over the bar and a big sheet with the game projected nice and clear over the dancefloor.
On to the game.
The U.S. team had trouble a) getting the ball, and, on the rare occasion when they did achieve a), b) keeping the ball.
These are both important facets of the game of soccer.
The Mexicans just like to kick the biscuit around, passing for the sake of passing. The entire crowd shouts "Ole!" for every pass and they have fun with it, just biscuiting it around. The U.S. team…well, we don’t know biscuiting from bed-shitting, apparently.
What we had here was a pretty comprehensive bed-shitting, excepting Goalkeeper Tim Howard, who stopped all the shots that were stoppable. But once you move up from there, to the defenders, is where the grass starts getting poopy.
DeMerit, as usual, filled the role of tattoo-haver for the team, and played pretty well. Onyewu was his big bad self, but neither he nor DeMerit seem to be aware that they have options once they have the ball at their feet other than "blast it the fuck upfield." Granted, they were probably feeling a little ragged because of the constant pressure they were under the entire game thanks to the midfield, which might as well have brought toilets onto the field and sat on them and watched from there. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
At least Onyewu and DeMerit actually stopped people, which is more than you can say for Cherundolo and Bocanegra, whose defensive mindset appeared for a while to go something like, "Do not get too close to the offensive player. Keep your distance and funnel him into the penalty area." They had me waiting all day for the classic Meh-Hee-Can flop in the area for the penalty kick. The long-range "golazo" (magnificent goal) that tied the game for Mexico wouldn’t have happened if Bocanegra had rushed the shooter instead of covering his balls and flinching away from the shot like…well, like we would have done if we were out there.
As for the midfielders….ay ay ay. We wouldn’t go near Ricardo Clark or Michael Bradley’s positions for about 35 or 45 minutes. Let them air out. Clint Dempsey, supposedly one of our cornerstone ballers, must have gone and dug a hole to shit in, because we didn’t even see him.
Landon Donovan’s pass on Davies’ goal was one of the best and biggest plays he has ever made in his soccer career. It was perfect: the power, the placement, the vision. Unfortunately, he should have spent the other 80 minutes of the game in the bathroom. Have we mentioned that?
On to the forwards, and Davies. He got a look at the goal with just the ‘keeper to beat and he punched it, bent it and buried it. He made it look easy. He made it look easier than it was. It reminded us of when the U.S. had…um…wait, we’ve never had anyone who just made it look easy like that. Wynalda was as spazz who battled and scrapped for every goal he got. McBride was a spazz who battled and spazzed for every goal he got. Donovan is…fuck it, you get the picture.
Then there’s Ching, as we mentioned, sucks so bad we got a new boyfriend out of it. We wanted to see the Connor "Shiny Marshmallow" Casey or that young bad brotha Jozy Altidore on the field, but U.S. Coach Bob Bradley chose to go with slightly more experienced players.
Unfortunately, their main experience is in the field of bed-shitting.
So the U.S. was denied, unable to get either its first win or second tie in more than 25 qualifiers in Mexico. We deserved zero points and we got them. Our World Cup qualification hopes are still on solid ground (next game Sept. 5 vs. El Salvador in Utah) but we still have the look of a team that would be lucky to get out of the first round if we did make it to South Africa. Fortunately we are a young team with the potential to improve greatly between now and the tournament.
So wipe your butts, boys, and think about what you’ve done.