Sometimes I get these insane urges for things that I know I really don't need, if I just give it a bit of thought. Lately, and not surprisingly, I've fallen in love with these "semi-acoustic" hollow-bodied electric guitars, and I have a certain Mr. Gore to blame, all though I've always liked these kind of guitars. Not really sure why. I sort of own an Ibanez acoustic guitar, which has a really nice sound to it when it's tuned properly, but the strings are probably older than me, and I have incredibly and annoyingly short fingers, making acoustics sort of annoying to play. It'd probably be easy if I just had the patience, but I seldom do. Electric guitars have narrow necks, making them easier to play, but some of them just look small and plucky. The hollow body ones just look brilliant, all big and retro-looking, and they have really nice sounds, I love them, and would gladly have one on my wall just to look at it. Which would probably be a shame.I come from a musical family, my dad can play piano/keyboards, guitars and accordians, even thought he doesn't read notes at all, my mum played the paino, my sister has played both a piano and a guitar, and so do I, to a certain exstent. I actually played classical piano for 7 years at a music school, but after playing the theme from Schindlers List in my mum's burial I just couldn't go near one for years. At school we learned your basic 5 guitar chords, and I got a mate to teach me to read tabulatures, and for a while I plinked and plonked away at the Ibanez for hours, a hobby I've sort of given up on the last few years, sadly. But I'm really good with Green Day's "Time of your life".
Being able to play music is a thing I miss, and from time to time I bench down in front of the piano and play some of the few classical songs I still remember (it's fantastic how some songs can still be in your fingers after you haven't touched an instrument for years), like Für Elise. Or like now, when I'm totally hung up on a band, I search up chords and tabs, find those I can actually manage to play, or the ones I'm hell bent on learning, and I play until my fingers are sore or bleeding. For a while I played so much I actually developed calluses. I miss those calluses, they're really helpful.
Anyway, my point was: I want a guitar. Specifically, a hollow-body, and even more specifially, a Gretsch, because they just look wicked. The one on the picture is the Anniversary which sort of costs a lot, for me anyway, but I'd settle for a Electromatic anyday. Which still costs about 1100 euros. And that's before I've even bought an amp. Seems like a Gretsch is something that'll be on my wish list for a while, under the "utterly useless to me, but I still want one"-category. Why? Well, so I can plonk away on it when the urge arises. The rest of the time I'll use it as an art piece on my wall.