Not eBay of the day: Peter Tosh's M-16 Guitar

YardFlex reports on the strange story of Peter Tosh's M-16 shaped guitar (which I wrote about here and here). The guitar was due to be sold (for charity) on eBay on Dec 3rd. News of the auction stirred up some legal claims in Jamaica (Peter had 10 children and his mother is still alive), and the auction has been cancelled. In this wonderful post, Peter's former manager Copeland Forbes tells the full story of the M-16 guitar, how it was made by a young fan, how buying a case for it was a pain, how it was lost in Germany, then found after an appeal in Der Spiegel, and how it was played a the biggest concert ever in Swaziland.
Anyway, if you're a disappointed potential bidder, there's always item 120062795791, which is still 99p (plus £35 shipping) with only a day to go.

Is my gear hot or not?

The splendid noise website NoiseFX is running an excellent Kewl Gear Contest, which is simply 'Hot or Not' for pictures of pedal chains. It's hypnotic! (Thanks Cementimental)

Gordon Brown says 'Mashups are the future'

In his big annual speech today, Gordon Brown, the UK chancellor, said that he wants to spend lots of money catching music and film pirates (who, in the UK, can't be penalised if they sell DVDs with hand-written labels. Only people who photocopy the covers can get in trouble). However, he also said that he wants to make it easier to produce 'transformative works' - i.e. bootlegs and mashups, like the Gray Album, The Avalanches original Gimix, A Night at the Hip-Hopera, and my personal highbrow favourite Glassbreaks. The Times says: "The report suggests that exemptions to copyright law should be allowed for “transformative works”. This would permit the use of copyright material in new and creative ways, so long as it did not detract from the value of that material or offend artistic integrity. It calls on the EU to amend the law to allow for that exception. It would allow “rappers” and other creators to rework old material." (These ideas come from the Gower Report Gowers Review, which Gordon seems to be endorsing)

The greatest eBay category in the world, ever!

Of all the categories in all the eBays across the world, surely there's no finer category than 'Analoge Instrumente' on German eBay. It's a treasure trove of goodness, like item #160059220196 - this beautiful Mini Pops preset drum machine, made in 1969 by Keio Electronic Lab, which became Korg. Used by Jean Michelle Jarre (not this actual one) and yours for €99.
Elsewhere in 'Analoge Instrumente' right now, item 300055121568 is a great looking bit of weirdo vintage lab/music gear. It looks to me like a delay/reverb, but the seller says it works best as a fuzz box on his Moog. And item 250057054580 is a breathtakingly awesome-looking CRB Computer Band - which seems to be an old drum machine covered in buttons and switches, with two octave keyboard. Sort of like a MonoMachine. There's boards to build a 303 clone, leaflets about Theremins from 1930s Berlin, a super-rare MC-8 Microcomposer... Why can't every eBay category be like this?

Creepy guitar made from the body of a teenage girl

The Teenar was a 1986 art project by Lou Reimuller (yes, that's him in the middle picture). It's made from a vintage shop window dummy. Previous creepy, slightly NSFW guitars here and here. .. (Thanks to Boing Boing, and whoever sent this to me yesterday - I deleted your post because I saw 'Teenar' in the subject line and thought it was spam...)

36 playable demos of vintage drum machines

Here's an old but wonderful link. Luke writes: "Hello! Look at this! It's cool! I just found this awesome web page full of virtual drum machines, thought you'd like to check it out." Alongside all the funky preset drum machines, Joseph Rivers' fantastic Keyboard Museum site is full of wonderful things. On that same page is a virtual Bee Gees Rhythm Machine, and here is a fantastic Flash explanation of how a vocoder works, complete with demos of different vocoders. Joseph, we salute you! (Thanks also to Viv and Ian and all the other people who've sent this in over the years...)

Nels Cline has a fuzzbox, and he's going to use it

John writes: "Have you ever featured
this page? Nels is now the guitar player in Wilco. Nice shot of his pedals, and
a full description of what they do." Nels' commentary is great: "The 80s were a dark time for a young person looking to get that nasal fuzz sound... Everything was all creamy, soaring... Dare I say it, MIDI-controlled, pre-fab hell." Scroll down for the splendid 'Amp Du Jour' tour/tech diary.