Thread: Shadows covers.

About 10 years ago the wife and I took a trip to Bali to buy a couple of 'I've been to Bali too' T shirts, whilst there there we took some time out to attend the wife's youngest son's wedding.

Exploring the back streets one day I came across a guitar shop, so went inside for a look. They had a beautiful red Stratocaster, bargain basement type, a Squier Californian, cheapest in the Squier line up. Squire is the cheap arm of Fender BTW. I've been a Shadows fan since I first heard Apache back in the very early 60s. So I thought I'd teach myself to play, just like Hank.

When We got home I bought a 15 amp Viper amp and a Zoom sound effects box with echo plugged it in and started to make some pretty awful noises. I couldn't read music, so downloaded a couple of Shadows tunes, played them back in slow motion, picking out the individual notes, then practiced slides and bends and using the whammy bar plus a few other things, then drove the wife nuts playing the same songs over and over until I got them right.

Eventually I could play about 18 shadows songs, so searched the net for backing tracks, then drove the wife even madder by playing the songs over and over again against the backing tracks trying to get the timing right. Now with these old, tree stump size fingers, fast, dextrous fingering was way beyond me, so I stuck to slowish numbers.

When I was ready, I recorded them all and started uploading them to YouTube, even got a few positive comments. I was really enjoying myself, learning more and more songs, not all Shadows songs either, some instrumental versions of Roy Orbison songs I put together. Before I put my guitar away I was teaching myself to play The Antlantic's Bombora. The holy grail as far I was concerned. But PSA struck, so I never know if I could have played it.

Then it all fell apart: One morning I awoke with excrutiating pains in my forearms so saw a Doc. After a while I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I tried all the Dmards, and all the biologics to no avail, none of them worked. After a while the rheumatologist changed his diagnosis to psoriatic arthritis. This is virtually the same as RA only much more disfiguring apparently. And so I then went on biologics for Psoriatic arthritis, again to no avail, none worked. The rheumatolist told me that this was the most aggressive case of the disease he had seen in 25 years of practice, saying there was very little options open to me aside from surgery.

Not long after being diagnosed my fingers were so bad I couldn't bend or use them, so the guitar amp and Zoom box were packed up and put away, hoping one day this nightmare would be over and I could once again play the guitar. Not to be, the PsA spread rapidly and I started down the surgery road having joints replaced: Hip, toe and finger joints replaced or fused, so that was the end of my musical hobby and I eventually sold me gear.

Occasionally I go to my youtube channel and listen to the noise I uploaded. It may not be very good, certainly not professional quality but I enjoyed myself immensely.

Here's a couple I uploaded.

Wonderful land WMV V9 - YouTube

Midnight - YouTube

California Blue. - YouTube