HOW TO PLAY GUITAR: THE COLLECTED ZINES BOOK
Coming soon. Pre-sale link below.
When I was a little kid I knew that someday I would write a book. Little did I know that I would begin doing this gradually by taking notes on my thought process as I walked around the stricken Tenderloin and 6th Street neighborhoods of San Francisco, looking after my very troubled social work patients. I figured I might as well write down everything I knew about the practical realites of being a creative person who had spent much of the last 30 years playing guitar. I was constantly interacting with these thoughts anyway, so why not get them down on paper and see what shape they took. At the time, I didn’t know that what would emerge from me would become a kind of philosophy of the self-taught and self-created individual; one that involved a specifically adventurous attitude towards randomness and the unknown.
Legendary punk publisher, V Vale was the one who told me to put out a zine. At the time, I lived a few blocks away from him in North Beach and one afternoon he invited me over for tea. We spent a few hours chatting about music and books and he asked me extensive questions about my own music. He pointed out to me that my mostly instrumental music was underpinned by interesting ideas and values but that this was not obvious by simply listening to any one of my albums. At one point he said bluntly:
You need to share your ideas. You should write a zine. It’s how you’re going to make hardcore fans.
This ended up being some of the best advice I have ever gotten. Sitting at my desk in the evenings, I began to assemble my reflections on guitar and creativity into zine form (all you need to do this is a printer, a pair of scissors, and a long stapler) and when I put out the first volume, it immediately struck a chord in readers. I sold lots of them, gave many away for free, and they began to circulate out into the world, eventually making their way to people who I never dreamed of meeting. They really got around. All kinds of creative people have told me various things they love about How To Play Guitar. Some people like the dry humor. Others resonate with the spiritual sensibility. Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that the zines document my attempt to cut a path through the overwhelming cynicism of this chapter in human history.
Eventually, I was contacted by polymath artist, Ben Schechter who told me that he was starting a publishing company called, Tarantula Imprint and that he wanted to put out a book version of How To Play Guitar. So we started hanging out, playing guitar together and talking about ideas. The best relationships involve talking about ideas. This led to a great friendship and collaboration as we worked together to adapt the various volumes into one edition. I even wrote a final zine (Volume 8) that will only be available in the book edition.
At this point the 173-page book is almost ready - the above photos are of a galley copy or what musicians would call a test press. I must say that our designer, Sarah Shoemake did an excellent job; the book is beautiful and feels wonderful in the hand.
We have a tentative release date of May 28th. We are now taking pre-orders, each of which come with a cassette/zine package of a brand new album that I made with the brilliant Nico Georis titled, New Universal Solar Calendar.
Pre-order your copy of How To Play Guitar: The Collected Zines HERE.
(Note: Copies of New Universal Solar Calendar will be shipped along with the books when they are ready.)
V Vale, publisher of Search & Destroy and RE/Search. Eternal respect.