My old band – Viper Jungle – had a gig at The Boardwalk. I would estimate the year to be 2006.
Back then, I was a big effects-pedal nut. You might not know what an effects pedal is. Well, you’ve seen somebody play electric guitar, constantly looking at their feet, stamping aggressively on something every now and then…? They’re stamping on effects pedals – little metal boxes that do weird and wonderful things to the sound of your guitar.
Me, I had my heart set on an Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi, which was a fuzz pedal – I wanted that creamy, squishy, Santana-on-steroids sound for my guitar solos. A few weeks before our gig, I won one on eBay, and oh, how I looked forward to the moment when I would plug it in and turn it up to eleven (and then quickly back down again before my dad could remind me that we lived in a semi-detached house.)
Day after day I came in from school and asked my mum if I’d had any parcels. The gig was getting nearer. I was getting more and more antsy with each passing day.
Then finally, it came – on the day of the gig, no less! And I used it in our set and I it was everything I dreamed of and more. I had died and gone to guitar-tone heaven. Then somebody nicked it from out of my rucksack whilst I wasn’t looking and that was that.
Oh, well.
Tis better to have loved and lost
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Than never to have loved at all.