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Gibson J-200 Standard

As regular readers of this blog know, I love – and many other people love – my Seagull S6. But the Seagull has become very war-weary and battered in my round-the-world travels, and the latest incident – smashed on a flight to Singapore – made me decide finally to splurge my life’s non-savings on a new guitar that will remain with me in Paris, while the Seagull goes off to battle around the world, but carrying less weight as my main axe. So yesterday, after more than a year of zeroing in on Gibsons, I finally bought a J-200 Standard.

The thing that really, finally clinched it for me was that earlier in the week I had gone to the store in Paris and tried three or four of the J-200s and others, and I had found one that I kept saying I liked the best. Yesterday, I returned to the Pigalle area and visited all the music stores that sold the J-200s and I tried them all out. I even tried some 1965 Gibsons, although mine is a new one. I then returned to the same shop where I found the one I liked, and where I had noted down the serial number two days before. Playing the guitars, I almost immediately found the one that I was sure was the same one: I checked my noted serial number for the guitar in my iPhone, and yes, it was the same one. So I bought it.

It was not THAT easy. This is a natural wood – as opposed to Sunburst – Gibson J-200, and it cost a fortune. But it matched my playing and my needs and was sufficiently different to the sound of my Seagull, that I had to have it. But the other thing that decided me on buying this particular one at this moment was that I felt very much at ease in the store where I bought it, as opposed to several of the other places. It is a shop called “Acoustic Guitar,” at 18 rue de Douai, and the service is fabulous. They recently refurbished the store, and all the people I have dealt with there are very agreeable, honest, and provide all the explanations and information that you’re looking for. I had been showing up occasionally for more than a year and there would be plenty of reason for them to think I was not going to buy a guitar, but they let me play for an hour or more early in the week, and then again a few days later. A young woman named Aurélie also dropped by and wanted to play a Gibson and they let her, and she asked if she could sing while playing – since that was the best way to know if she liked the guitar – and they allowed that too. I filmed her. (I had also sung the previous day.)

Another example of the great work they do is two different salesmen said to me that every Gibson J-200 sounded different and you really had to play them and compare and find one you liked. At another shop on the same street, the salesperson told me they all sounded alike, so there was no point in her going to get the natural colored one if I liked the Sunburst…. Sure. Okay.

Having bought the guitar – and having fallen in love with it – I immediately rushed home to play it, but then saw on Facebook that there was an open mic last night on Rue St. Maur, near the Metro Colonel Fabien in a bar called O’kubi Caffé, at 219 rue St Maur, that does not usually host an open mic. So I ate quickly and decided I had to baptize the J-200 immediately. I went to the open mic, was immediately welcomed by some musicians and the woman who ran it – Ajahlove – and then played, and played and played and let others play my new Gibson too, as there was no other real acoustic guitar set up. I was a little nervous about that, since I have decided this will not be a guitar for everyone and anyone the way the Seagull was – and is – but it was a pleasure to see it played. And most of all, it was a pleasure to play it. The open mic turned out to be more of a jam session, but with the J-200 I dived right into it and had the time of my life.

I bought this guitar for the deep bass and beautiful high strings as well. They describe the sound as being in something of a form of a V, with great bass, great highs, and in between, space for the singing voice. It is also a great guitar for strumming, which is what I do most of. Needless to say, I have been watching videos of great moments on the J-200, like Elvis Presley during his comeback in the late 60s (he used it before that too), like Pete Townsend of The Who, like the Everly Brothers, like Neil Young on “Hey, Hey, My My,” like so many of the Oasis songs, and like others too numerous to mention. I am not let down. And while I have grown so used to my grunge look and feel with the Seagull, I got so much into the playing of the J-200 last night behind the mic in public, that I felt totally at one with the guitar and didn’t care how it looked – which was probably pretty cool, when you think of it.

I have always kept the same image in my mind of me walking down a snowy Toronto street, at Bathurst and Queen Streets, to be precise, and looking down at the slush and ice on the sidewalk, and up at the lights above the street, and thinking about the death of John Lennon. It was 8 December 1980, and I had had my own birthday the day before and I think I was basking in some strange sense of how I could be feeling good about my birthday – this is no longer the case – while Lennon would never reach another year, and the world – and I – was swamped by the tragedy of his death. How could such an icon die? Worse, be murdered?

In any case, who knows why we sometimes have certain banal images attached in our minds with big events (I mean, why Bathurst and Queen Streets? Right next to the Wheatsheaf Tavern, I think it was….) Of course, it’s the “where were you when John Lennon (or JFK or Martin Luther King etc) died?” question and phenomenon….

So last night, in Paris it was the 30th anniversary of Lennon’s murder, and not only did I have the memory of the snow Toronto evening in my mind as I walked to the Highlander to play in the open mic but I actually also had the same image of the Paris streets and sidewalk and streetlights: Paris was, as Toronto was 30 years before, under a blanket of snow and slush and ice. Where such a thing is banal in Toronto, however, here in Paris it means the city nearly stops functioning.

To Thomas Brun‘s great credit, however, the open mic went on. And it was quite a success, considering that most people had a hard time getting there – no buses, all taxis occupied, streets unwalkable, and metros full. While the Highlander went on, I learned later that the vocal jam at the Cavern was called off because some of the musicians could not get into town.

So it was that the theme at the Highlander was John Lennon. Just before he opened the evening Thomas told me I would go up after him – if I wanted – and began the evening singing three Lennon songs. I was rubbing my hands with delight at the thought that I would play second because I know only one John Lennon song, and that is, “Jealous Guy.” So I thought that I had a very, very good chance to be able to play it. If I went up in the middle of the evening, I was sure someone would play it before me. Oh dear, the third song Thomas did was… “Jealous Guy.”

But I did have a joker, and that was a song that Lennon did, and his rendition of it – rather than the original – is what really got me to thinking I should learn it. So I told the crowd that I would do “Stand By Me” as my Lennon tribute.

This was a night to remember as well, as it turned out, for Paris was SOOOO closed down that by the time I decided to go home the metro had stopped, all of the few remaining taxis were occupied – and every street corner had someone trying to flag down a cab – and all the hotels were booked. I finally managed to find a hotel room for a few hundred euros after a last minute cancellation by someone, and because I got to the counter before the many people sleeping on the floor and couches of the lobby…. Airplanes had been cancelled too, and people could not return to their homes so the hotels were crowded. Only in Paris!!!!!

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Busy Saturday: Buying and Playing My Gibson J-200

An 8th of December in Paris, and long ago in Toronto and New York