Big Hair and Plastic Grass

RIP, Knucksie

One of my favorite things about spending summers with my grandparents in Alabama during the mid-to-late 1970s was watching the Atlanta Braves on WTCG/WTBS - the Braves were terrible back then, but it was still a treat to be able to see televised baseball broadcasts every night at a time when MLB's TV presence was limited in most markets to Game of the Week and Monday Night Baseball.

And the thing I loved most about watching the Braves were the games where Phil Niekro took the mound and baffled opposing hitters with his knuckleball. And honestly, I loved the games where he got lit up, too; I still smile looking at his 1979 stats, which include NL-leading totals in wins (21), losses (20), games started (44), complete games (23), innings pitched (342), hits (311), home runs (41), walks (113) and hit batters (11), along with very respectable ERA and strikeout numbers (3.39 and 208, respectively). And don't forget the number 40, which was how old he was that season.

Arguably the greatest knuckleballer of all time, "Knucksie" epitomized so much of what I loved about baseball in the 1970s - specifically the unpredictability of the game, and the unusual characters who played it. Here was a silver-haired guy who looked like he should have been working at some used car dealership in the Midwest, yet was calmly putting up some of the best numbers of his career at an age when most MLB hurlers would have long been put out to pasture.

I only got to see him pitch in person once, on my birthday in 1981 at Wrigley Field. It was a poor outing for him - he gave up 5 runs to the Cubs and was gone by the fifth inning - but it was still a thrill for me to watch him do his thing. I never met him, but by all accounts he was a friendly and charming chap who loved to shoot the bull with fans.

Rest in Peace, Knucksie; we will not see your likes again, but those of us who saw how your pitches danced will never forget it.

Give The Gift Of Stompbox!

Yeah, it's been a rough year for most of us, with good news often in short supply. Happily, one of the big projects I've been working on came to fruition in 2020: Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World's Greatest Guitarists, has now been officially released. Co-edited by James Rotondi and myself, and featuring the stunning photographs of Eilon Paz and written contributions from an impressive variety of musicians, music journalists and pedal aficionados, Stompbox is a deep dive into the culture and history of guitar effects pedals, exploring the many reasons and ways that guitarists (and other musicians) use them. 

Stompbox features effects used by some of my personal favorite guitarists of all time, including Jimi Hendrix, Ernie Isley, Davie Allan, Marc Bolan and Mick Ronson — but it covers a wide stylistic spectrum which includes everyone from Tom Morello and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien (who wrote the book's foreword!) to Jack White and Dimebag Darrell. If you love guitar pedals and/or are fascinated by how gear plays into the creative process, this is a book you can get lost in for hours. But hey, don't just trust me on this — check out the sweet write-up the book recently received from WNET's ALL ARTS!

But wait, there's more! In the process of putting Stompbox together, Eilon and I began to come in contact with pedal aficionados whose collections contained some mind-glowingly rare and cool effects; though not specifically used by legendary guitarists, they definitely deserved to be showcased in a book of their own. Thus was born Vintage & Rarities: 333 Cool, Crazy and Hard to Find Guitar Pedals, which is available in a limited first edition run by itself, but can also be purchased in tandem with Stompbox as part of the slipcovered "Stompbox Brick" (so called because it's truly heavy on a variety of levels). If you have a guitar player on your Christmas list — or you're a guitar player who wants to give yourself a nice present (c'mon, you deserve it) — you really can't go wrong with either (or both) of these books!

And while you're at it, scroll down to the bottom of the Stompbox Shop page to enter The Stompbox Motherlode Giveaway, which includes pedals from JHS Pedals, Keeley Electronics, Death By Audio, Earthquaker Devices, Electro-Harmonix, AnalogMan, Walrus Audio, Strymon, Fairfield Circuitry, Wampler, Thorpy FX, Chase Bliss Audio, MXR, and Dunlop, as well as a yearly All-Access guitar lesson subscription from Trufire. The winner will be drawn on December 30, so be sure to enter before then. (And follow the Stompbox Instagram account for more opportunities to enter, as well as to see cool excerpts and outtakes from the books.)

Hope you're all staying safe and taking care of yourselves during these dark times. Hopefully we can all rock together again once summer rolls around!