Burns Brian May Signature Guitar graces NAMM 2002
While wandering the usual miles of temptingly overwhelming aisles at this year's *HUGE* 2002 annual NAMM convention Friday, Steve & Catherine turned just the right corner and, by surprise, bumped into the Burns booth featuring a whole display of various models just begging to be picked up for a test run. ("NAMM" stands for "National Association of Music Merchants," by the way.)
Returning Saturday morning, as we'd been informed via 01/18/02 Burns Press Release Friday that Mr. May would visit the booth "sometime" that morning to possibly demonstrate Burns new wares in proper fashion, we were additionally surprised to run into a a bunch of purely delightful fellow May/Queen enthusiasts who'd started trickling by in the afternoon AND who proceeded to "hijack" the booth and make an wonderful impromptu musical "party" of it! (special thanks to the kindly Burns vendors looking on in seeming puzzlement over the sort of social phenomenon we'll tell you is NOT uncommon wherever Queen fans gather! ;-)
Before long someone had also hijacked a piano next booth over, so that Steve also found himself playing along to the additional Queen selections coming from that direction (we'd STILL like to know who that was tickling the ivories over there. couldn't see you through the crowd)
Still chained to the rack after several Burns announcements of delay, THE Gentleman of Rock (busy working magic up at Capitol Studios, we were told) never did make it - but after what turned out to be one of the best surprise highlights of this year's convention for us just courtesy of a warm gathering of new friends that felt like old ones (okay, okay - the guitars were cool, too! :-), can't at all say we exited NAMM 2002 in disappointment! (BIG warm hello to Mari, Kevin and all you other great folks!)
Below are some video stills from Saturday's Burns gathering, so you can join us in drooling over over some of the various Brian May Signature axes yourself
(not pictured, unfortunately, is the lovely Emerald finish model the "photographer" set the camcorder aside to noodle on.):
A chance first meeting between San Diego guitarist, KEVIN DONAKER-RING (QUEENLY the band formerly known as Queendle, The Shambles, Manual Scan, Guns 'n' Creedle, Ziggy Shuffledust and the Creedle from Mars, etc.) and Los Angeles guitarist, STEVE ZUKOWSKY (SHEER HEART ATTACK, Buzzhound, Allied Nation, The Stand, The Rhythm Assassins, Story, Steel Breeze, Vince Neil & The Bar One All-Stars, Fireball, Which One's Pink?, Led Zepagain w/Swan, Visions, Billion Dollar Babies; & sub Sticky Fingers, Space Oddity, Peace Frog, Caress of Steel/Moving Pictures, etc.) leads to a Burns Brian May Signature Guitar jam on "Father to Son" as the cardboard MR. MAY reserves comment. ;-)
Special thanks to the friendly Burns vendors (upper right) who were wonderful hosts both days we visited
Steve fondles the "Red Special"
Kevin strokes a light sunburst model
Steve gives the dark sunburst a hand
(I personally found this warm finish
most attractive of all --Catherine Z)
dark sunburst head
(any guitar-speak translators out there? ;-)
The Brian May Official Signature Series Guitar
is the first in a series of instruments that
Burns is introducing in North America.
Click on guitar image above to:
Enter Brian May Signature Guitar Sweepstakes!
Listen to Brian May test out the Burns!
Learn more about the guitar!
Order your own!
In the category of "I heard Queen at K-Mart!" (but I'm gonna bore you silly with this anyway, darnit!): Only adding to the overall "Queen vibe" of the week for us personally, were the numerous live snippets of an all-too-familiar epic Queen tune that my aural radar kept picking up in the background courtesy of OTHER misc. vendors demonstrating their NON-Queen-related wares.
First was heard JUST after we entered the Convention Center Friday and, of course, sent us peeping around corners for the source. Last came JUST as we rushed for the exit Saturday afternoon after having JUST been treated to a VERY special last-minute demonstration of same -- and with all the others occurances teasing the eardrums between entry and exit (as had sure never occurred at any previous NAMM convention we've attended) I HAD to start wondering if this was a royal conspiracy, or something! ;-)
No, it was NOT We Will Rock You or We Are The Champions or even I Go Crazy (okay, just seeing if you're still paying attention ;-), but Bohemian Rhapsody EVERY darned time! (almost as if in honor of the glorious new mix to make its debut at same event)
Okay, you had to be there ;-), but always nice to be reminded of how much Queen's work is respected by those who know music...
While on the way to check back with Burns at 2:30 Saturday (just before meeting the lovely Queen fans who'd started gathering there, with Brian's appearance now announced as delayed until 3:00PM), Catherine's aural radar AGAIN picked up an all-too-familiar combination of notes in the background noise, prompting us to take another quick detour to the source, where THIS time we caught The California Guitar Trio in a live performance of Bohemian Rhapsody on 3 acoustic guitars!
The performance ended to a delighted round of applause from all passers-by who had been standing transfixed in the aisles throughout. (no surprise, there!)
The Calfornia Guitar Trio performs
Bohemian Rhapsody in its entirety
EXCELLENT!!!
After a little initial wandering Friday, we happened into the Ernie Ball booth where Steve Morse (of the Dixie Dreggs, Deep Purple and, uh, the Steve Morse Band, yeah, that's it ;-) was hard at work fulfilling his endorsement duties in the midst of US presidents such as Abe Lincoln & George Washington, the latter of which - later in the event - proceeded to chop down a cherry tree with the aid of Mr. Morse (I did mention this was the NAMM *show*, right? ;-)
As I stood resting peds for a moment while Steve checked out Steve, I get a tap on the shoulder and see this hand coming around to point in the vicinity of my chest. Thought it was NAMM staff checking to see if I had my event badge, and so I fumble for that and start saying "no, its right here" - but no, it turns out to be this delightfully friendly Ernie Ball representative pointing to my Brian May '93 US tour shirt instead, and further announcing with an infectiously warm smile that he played with Brian May.
Ok, *THAT* caught me totally off guard for moment there (was supposed to be one of YOU telling me what a great time you had courtesy of some gig on Brian's Back to The Light tour, you know!), but a quick glance at the face and the name badge sent me back near 20 years to that happy moment when I "accidentally" discovered this EP with a robot on it in the vinyl record racks at a little record shop on Wilshire... and then right back to 2002 for an extremely pleasant conversation with the ever-gracious and amazingly youthful, Phil Chen, bassist on the Brian May & Friends Star Fleet Project back in 1983 (for those who don't have this album, Brian's other "friends" on this were Eddie Van Halen, Fred Mandel and Alan Gratzer. Phil also played on the track "Foreign Sand" on Roger Taylor's 1994 'Happiness?' album...)
We all talked about the Starfleet record and such, and Phil was extremely warm and generous of heart, bringing that release to life for us all over again as he shared what fun that session really was for the musicians involved (further stressing how nice Brian is - gee, that seems to be the concensus all around the planet, doesn't it? :-)... something very special in the way of "musician comradeship" happened during those sessions for him that that you could see written all over his face, and darned if that didn't make me wanna go back to 1983 and be a fly on the wall as that little "garage jam" took place!
(I think you can all guess just what piece of old vinyl I pulled out for an overdue listen as soon as I got home that night!)
During our return visit to NAMM Saturday, dropped by the Ernie Ball booth to chat with Phil again (where it appeared as if poor ol' Steve Morse had spent the night, or something :), this time with Catherine's well-worn Star Fleet EP in hand to go along with the good memories.
In the giving credit where credit is long due department: Turns out that Phil was also the photographer responsible for all those pictures on the inner sleeve of the Star Fleet album - he took that cool one of the guitars himself --- something I never realized before because, though they do name him, the album credits are a little vaque on the specific art credits.
Chatted a little more on the Star Fleet sessions and learned that, as one would expect, there was a "wee" bit more to that jam session than what we were lucky in the first place to have been able to "sit in on" via the Star Fleet EP...
- for example, Phil shared that, during the recording session, they'd also jammed on Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher" - which, of course, is an ultra-speedy Van Halen tune so that I couldn't help but picture in my mind all these musicians happily cracking up as WE would have had in an impromtu jam on that, anyway! ["hmmm... uh, I think I'll just sit in on RHYTHM guitar on THIS one" ;-) ] Of course, this was just another one of those moments that further warmed up the old vinyl.
Really nice to have some "photographs and memories" in mind now to go along with the aural part of it. Thanks SO MUCH Phil! (may peace forever be your guide and inspiration, as well...)
I'm afraid the multi-talented Mr. Chen was the only photographer snapping pictures during these lovely visits, not us (too busy enjoying the good company even think of it! ;-), BUT, since some of you mentioned YOUR Star Fleet vinyl came WITHOUT the inner picture sleeve (heaven forbid!), AND because many others only have "Star Fleet" on the Japananese CD import Resurrection single (which doesn't include the artwork from the original vinyl EP) --- I'll just honor Chen and the memories he shared by posting for you the original vinyl EP cover & that inner sleeve with Chen's photographic contributions:
1983 Star Fleet Project front cover
(sitting on Back to the Light tour shirt)
1983 Star Fleet Project inner sleeve
photography credit: Phil Chen
(L-R: guitars of Brian, Eddie, Phil)
Brian May & Friends
R-L: Alan Gratzer (drums), Brian May (vocals & guitar), Phil Chen (bass & photography), Fred Mandel (keyboards), Edward Van Halen (guitar)
"Tell the people back at Earth Control
Send Star Fleet legions to save our souls
Always daring and courageous
only you, only you can save us..."
Steve Morse works overtime at Ernie Ball
Love Of My Life on Taylor 12 string
Greensleeves on Taylor 6 string
As Steve & Catherine were leaving the Burns guitar booth just before 4:00PM Saturday (Brian now announced as delayed until 5:30PM or later - couldn't stay any longer - HAD to rush back up to LA for Steve's gig!), the kindly Burns vendor shared that Mr. May was actually first to be stopping at another booth before making his appearance at Burns - at the booth of of the people responsible for bringing Brian down to NAMM - and he gave us just a booth number (not the name of the company, or anything - so we really had no idea what it was)
We were truly out of time now, but decided to make a quick detour before exiting to look for the booth number anyway, and it turned out to be this one we had completey overlooked as we checked everything out during our two days there - the booth for Swissonic - the company whose convertors were used in the making of the new DVD Surround version of Night at the Opera!!!
In the corner of the Swissonic booth was another lonely Burns Brian May guitar also fruitlessly awaiting the arrival of "Rock Royalty," and the booth was manned by a REALLY nice Austrian gentleman named Geri who VERY enthusiastically offered us a VERY enthusiastic demonstration of what turned out to be the new video of Bohemian Rhapsody in 5.1 DVD Surround Sound from the new "Night at The Opera" disc!
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Amazing!!!
Words do not describe!
It was like going back and hearing the song for the very first time all over again!
Parts of the song were coming out of all directions, including behind us, as we stood frozen in our tracks before the LCD video screen, stunned by the sheer CLARITY of that, too! (HOW did they do that?!)
Geri stood behind us offering enthusiastic narrative from time to time (as if a HUGE Queen fan himself, or something ;-) adding stuff like "you gotta hear THIS!" as we were about to be smacked in the face (and everywhere else from all directions) by the post-operatic-section grande finale...
and as the last notes and "any way the wind blows" tapered off to the end, Geri very movingly drew the curtain on the experience with "and the rest is history..."
--- this was just PERFECT - a PERFECT surprise ending to a NAMM adventure that had already been filled with totally unexpected surprises!
Geri the Great Swissonic vendor
wins Air Guitar award as another
Burns guitar awaits royal arrival
Geri starts up the DVD surround
Bohemian Rhapsody demonstration!
selecting Bohemian Rhapsody video
holding breath...
The rest from this booth are just frames from a camera left on (or bumped back on?) during the experience, as we were far too busy getting blown away by it to be thinking about that or ANYTHING else. With the exception of the accidents below (and please note that there's just NO WAY to capture the clarity of this video, anyway!), what we took home was a mess of blurry stuff from a totally unattended camera swinging around on the shoulder of one who oooh'd and aaaah'd and sighed and ROCKED!!! but since we still want to take you with us the rest of the way through this WONDERFUL experience... just remember what it felt like to hear Bo Rhap for the very first time in your life, and you're almost there...
speechless!
(oooo... the REAL guitar!)
speechless!
(Elliot is quite apparently a wizard!)
speechless!
(what we've been happily dreaming of
going into lifelong debt over ever since...)
speechless!
(no one but you...)
oooooh, what pretty 8 channel 24 bit A/D conversion!
(translation: the Swissonic AD 8)
(the Swissonic AD 96 convertor, etc. was used to help create the Bohemian Rhapsody DTS 5.1 surround mix we were listening to as this random frame was captured)
"...as Night [at] the Opera was one of the earliest 24-track recordings, Elliot needed to look at a new system which could handle 24 track recording as there is no timecode on the original multi- tracks. He had settled on Nuendo... Swissonic supplied an extra two pairs of AD/DA96 to add the extra 6 tracks."for the rest of this fascinating article on the mixing of Bohemian Rhapsody and the rest of the A Night at The Opera album soon to be released in glorious 5.1 DVD Surround, visit the following link found via the Swissonic website:
"QUEEN GOES NUENDO"
(the "rebirth" of A Night at The Opera)
More from Swissonic Website on A Night At The Opera (& pix of Brian May w/ Elliot Scheiner, the Abbey Road transfer session team):
SWISSONIC NEWS PAGE
SWISSONIC PRESS PAGE
(Bohemian Rhapsody 5.1 Surround premiere at AES Convention Dec 2001,
NAAM Show January 17-20 2002)
Thank you, Geri... we'll never forget the sheer aural ecstacy of this experience, or your kindness and enthusiasm in sharing it. Great job on Bo Rhap - everyone involved should be extremely proud!
Anyone out there got the proper DVD
Surround system? (just want to figure
out in advance whose pad we're gonna be
camping out at when this thing is released! :-)
a brief pause to remember...
hasty exit from NAMM...
reason for hasty exit (phew...what a day!)
photo courtesy of Dave Horn (thanx!)
