Anyone been watching James May’s Reassembler programmes the last couple of nights on BBC4? If you have, you’ll probably be aware of this, but if not, then tonight, at 9, he’s putting an electric guitar back together again. Looks like a Strat.
The last two episodes have been great – a Suffolk Colt on Monday (which I’m sure my Dad had – sometime in the late 80s) and a Bakelite telephone last night. It comes under that slightly annoyingly named category of “slow TV” – but it’s fascinating stuff.
I enjoyed the lawnmower one a lot. I wish it was a bit slower if anything, they cut out a lot of detail. I like watching someone struggling to tighten a bolt or even figure out how it fits together, it makes me feel less dumb when faced with practical stuff.
In other news it looks to me like he’s got a new girlfriend, or a stylist at least – there was much new grooming in evidence. Miaow, I know.
I thought he looked really old. About 10 years older than what he actually is.
Strange programme, too little for a show, but also too much. Not a complete success despite his amiability.
It occurred to me that he was starting to look like Jack Hargreaves.
I thought he looked like Jimmy Page did 10 years ago
Ha ha! I was thinking Trevor Eve in Waking the Dead – kept wondering if he’d shout “Spence!” really loudly when he needed a screwdriver.
Disappointingly the guitar wasn’t a real Fender Stratocaster, but a Tokoi Japanese copy. And I suspect that much of May’s patter about Japanese “lawsuit guitars” was lifted straight from Wikipedia.
Loving the series so far though, even if the guitar episode was pitched at a wider civilian audience with its many clumsy references to “noisy rock and roll” and “that Carlos Santana moment”.
Even though May is forever tarnished by his Clarkson association (and lest we forget, he was chuckling along with and contributing to the “imagine waking up and remembering you’re Mexican” Top Gear debacle), I do like his solo projects and find him entertaining and funny in a grumpy kind of way.
Tokai, I should say.
I really enjoyed that. And being a huge fan of 80s Japanese guitars, it was a real treat.
Mostly it reminded me what a total fucking sad act I am, though, because not only did I know literally everything about everything in the programme, I felt like I could’ve done with more depth.
Plus: it’s called a switch tip, not a switch cap. And someone had pre-fitted the tuner ferrules, so the guitar wasn’t truly disassembled at the start. Maybe they should’ve made him wind the pickups too. That would’ve been awesome television: a man sitting at a table winding thousands of loops of copper wire around a bar magnet by hand. Forever.
I know. I know.
The guitar consultant on the programme was one Malcolm Hine (he was the bloke standing behind James at the end actually playing the guitar) with whom I was briefly part of a flat-share some 40 years ago. Back then he was making acoustics and it was nice to discover that his craftmanship has continued through the years. Apparently he occasionally plays live with his brother, Graham Hine, who back then was in (one for the fellow oldies here) Brett Marvin & The Thunderbolts and is still a very fine Delta Blues slide guitarist.