Another Brain Bender

Hi DB, whilst reading through some recent threads saw one where you mentioned hassles with playing outdoors in Canberra Civic area and as I grew up in ACT dug out some old photos of me and some mates playing at a major landmark and wondered if you could guess where this might be in the nations capital? Picture was taken approximately Aug 1980 and yes that is a Ramones T-shirt that I bought when they played at Philip Workers Club that same year. Unfortunately no prizes other than bragging rights.
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Hmmmm... 1980 was a bit before my time in the ACT but I will take a guess..
foreshore of Burley Griffin?

Thereabouts but may need to be more specific. You could almost see the old 'Wedding Cake' from here.

Is that an explorer you were playing Waz? Bit hard to see the pic on my phone

What happened to the explorer? Fair chunk missing.

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Originally Posted by pablopepper

What happened to the explorer? Fair chunk missing.

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Bit of a back story on that Explorer.....you see I was after an Ibanez Law Suit Era Les Paul and the guy at the guitar shop who did some work on my Strat had an Explorer that was used as a trashing weapon when someone broke into his house and went nuts smashing everything in sight, hence the broken bottom wing. Eventually after moving to Brisbane not long after this photo was taken I searched every timber merchant in Brisvegas and could not come up with anything similar so grabbed best I could and re-shaped the broken bit. Hate to admit it but I was a Kiss fan at the time and using the Paul Stanley broken mirror Iceman as inspiration had the Explorer sprayed black by Kinman Guitar Craft when he was located at South Brisbane. Got Chrome pickup surrounds, chrome switch knob, chrome everything and had a glass supplier cut me a genuine glass mirror scratch plate that was about 4mm - 5mm thick. The dumbest thing I did was replace the Gibson PAF in the neck position as the rear was a DiMarzio Super II and thought I needed to have a matching set. It sounded as good as it looked when finished and was great fun catching the lights on stage and reflecting that out into the crowd. Once I switched to playing Bass more permanently sold it to fund those. Again, this is another one I wish I still had today however my PBG EX-1 kit just arrived today and hope I can make a better one.

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Originally Posted by wokkaboy

Is that an explorer you were playing Waz? Bit hard to see the pic on my phone

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Yeah Woks. It was actually an Ibanez Law Suit Korina Explorer as per my Avatar which they later had to call a Destroyer for legal reasons before being forced to slightly alter the shape to get around copyright issues at the time.

Down by the Carillion? Must admit it's a bit tricky - you cant throw a stick without hitting a pine in Canberra :).

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Originally Posted by Brendan

Down by the Carillion? Must admit it's a bit tricky - you cant throw a stick without hitting a pine in Canberra :).

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Hi Brendan, there used to be plenty of pine around Canberra until a bush fire wiped most of that out about 10-12 years ago. Drove through there on the way to Snowy mountains on a skiing holiday in 2006 and hardly recognised the parts that were affected.

The photo was taken in Commonwealth Gardens near the northern foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin - middle basin for folks in the know.

We were barely out of high school, had very little money to afford a rehearsal room and discovered by accident that there were power outlets all around the park and went down there on weekends and some week nights too and inflicted the locals with our poor playing skills. Just behind this photo was a little amphitheatre area we mainly used but as this was a hotter day (hard to believe in Canberra) we chose a shadier position. Below hyperlink should show the spot however I suspect much has changed in the past 35 years. Need to zoom in to see where a diagonal road came off Constitution Ave that led to a walkway tunnel under the main road into the Gardens. This made it almost impossible for the Cops to find us and move us on due to noise complaints.
http://www.whereis.com/act/canberra-2601
Punk was in it's hey day and sound quality and musicianship was not such a big deal at the time. Still reckon we were better than the Ramones as they were rubbish, only band that I saw who were worse at that time was Mental as Anything whose drummer couldn't keep time to save himself.