Dreaming || 1984 Designer Series Gibson Flying V || Old Guitars

In september of 1984 I was a 12 year old kid taking a huge bite out of the guitar licks bellowing from the Scorpions newly released album, "Love at First Sting".  The dueling solos between Mattias Jabs and Rudolph Schenker filled my young head with dreams of someday being on stage wielding an axe nearly as cool as these guys.  I loved Matthias' explorer, but oh that flying V was the real dream.  Ever since I saw it sketched on Dave Fedorenko's book cover in math class the love affair began.

However years, responsibility, boredom, etc. got in the way and it took me until 2006 to finally think about getting a band together.  The Booty Chesterfield Trio played the circuit for several years.  My main axe at the beginning was a 1982 Smith Stratocaster by Fender.  It is still a sweet guitar, but not much of an attention grabber.  Around the end of 2009 I saw The Gillbillies play for the first time.  The first thing that struck me about these cats was how bad ass Jimbo was for rocking a Flying V.  The flame of my old (and almost forgotten) love was reignited.  I wanted to be like Jimbo.  I wanted to rock a Flying V.  But not just any V would do.  If there is one thing that I learned from The Gillbillies is that you have to have a different, unique approach.  So I wasn't just going to find an "off the shelf" V; I wanted something with style.

Months went by.  Then in February of 2010 I saw this beauty rear its ugly head on good old Craigslist.  A 1984 Designer Series Gibson Flying V.  I had to have it.  Plus, I thought it was a heck of a deal.  My main reason for acquiring it was kind of as a joke, i.e. to live out a childhood fantasy of rocking a Flying V on stage.  Then I got my hands on it....

I got it off some kid in N. San Jose's Japantown.  It was in decent shape.  At one time it had stickers all over it that had been removed still the clear coat has aged at different times.  The pickups had been switched out a long while back to Seymour Duncans.  There were no breaks or major chips and the neck felt good.  There were two missing volume knobs and a cracked tone knob.  After a quick test run I quickly paid the chap his cash and headed home for a true test drive.

The first thing I noticed was how good the pickups sounded.  I had a Classic Les Paul before with 500t & 496r pickups in it and it sounded like golden ringing compared to my LP (which I soon traded away).  The neck also was super fast and played awesome.  I replaced the volume and tone knobs with some old jaguar ones and we were off to the races.  I played this guitar as my main stage axe for all of 2009 and pretty much all of the rest of the Booty Chesterfield Trio shows.  I don't ever plan on selling this bad boy.  Too cool for school, plus it has a little bit of my childhood metal roots embedded within those licks it puts out.  Enjoy the pictures.

And here are a couple of videos of the V in action:

Live shots are courtesy of Ian Healy & Murray Bowles

Victor || The Film Dude in San Jose || circa 2007

Inspiration is the reason we breath.  So when one writes a song they can only look as far as the air that they are breathing.  The small, subtle music scene in downtown San Jose back 2007 was part of my muse.  There was one character that always stood out; a guy named Victor.  You could spot him pretty clearly, a man of short stature with no hair on top, glasses and mustache.  He did not try to fit in because he couldn't.  I love Victor for that.  Most important, there was a freshness toward music that he took in.  It was very inspiring.


I met Victor at the Caravan one night back in 2007 and I got as much of his story that he would divulge to a complete stranger on some random night.  He was videotaping some band (usually with a women in it) and I started talking to him.  He told me that he just does it for kicks.  Bands don't pay him.  He doesn't really promote it.  Had barely even heard of Youtube back then and just loved to tape the performances of bands he liked.  I asked him if he'd seen our band and he replied yeah, "I saw you guys at Johnny V's back in January.  There was supposed to be some surf band from Spain you were opening up for but they didn't show.  I thought you guys really rocked.  I was bummed my battery ran out on the first band."  I told him when we were playing next and he showed and caught on tape some classic original "The Booty Cheterfield Trio" footage with Pickle on bass and Blue on drums.  One of our best performances at the time with full comedic routine and one, Joe Izzo, out in the crowd giving away T-Shirts.  Here are some highlights I decide to put up on Youtube:

This one is some recently uploaded old footage that Film Dude recorded for us back in 2008.  Recollecting back, it was a really fun night with a pretty full bar.


This is a portion of the song we wrote for Film Dude Victor.  We wanted to right a straightforward punk rock song that typified his attitude toward live rock and roll.  You can find a version of it on our first album, Sellin' Cookies.


And this last one is my favorite.  At about 10 seconds into the clip, the video pans around and you can see Film Dude Victor sporting a Booty Chesterfield T-shirt and dancing like nobodies business to the tunes.  What else can I say?  Like is about having fun....and FDV is doing just that!