Ben Collins - Guitar (2003-2004)

In the spirit of my recent digging-up-of-old-recordings-I-don't-really-remember-making, here is a collection of track evocatively titled "Guitar". Honestly it was in my iTunes labeled as such and I don't know why I ever called it that but I don't see any reason to change it now.

Anyhow, the record is comprised of four longish tracks of, you guessed it: Guitar. Played by me. I cannot remember recording three of the four, but I can tell that they were all recorded on my tascam four track in my old house in Savannah GA, probably between 2003 and 2004. So there's that at least. They are pretty primitive for sure, for all I know the first track might very well be my first experiment with the e-bow, which I had just bought that year. The two acoustic tracks take up most of the runtime and they are, at least to my ears, sort of delightfully naive. Clearly my ambition and desire to be a player like John Fahey was out-striping my ability as a player or even my understanding of the instrument. And the Prepared track (the only one I can recall) had me playing with silverware and a totally detuned guitar, lying across my lap. I'm sure that seemed Very Experimental to me at the time, but now it sounds just sort of like cool atonal blues or something and I dig that.

So I don't know, if you enjoy the sounds of youthful energy, the sounds of a 19, 20 year old kid trying to get his mind around how to make his instrument interesting then maybe you will enjoy this.

download album HERE