Maton Guitars

[GoldenVulture]

I got an early birthday present from my sister in the mail yesterday.
It's a book called "The Music that Maton made " .
It's all about Maton, it's founder Bill May and his wife Vera and the evolution of the company. It has an extensive listing amongst the story of Maton of artists that use Maton and their particular guitars and in some cases their history of the guitar and the artist/s. There is plenty of pics of people and their guitars and in the factories [past and present].

I was initially glancing through it when I saw a pic of what looked like a band photo. I looked at one guy and thought Who TF is that ? I read the caption for the pic. It was a picture of a band that David Briggs, who later joined Little River Band; was in, in the late 60's.
Dave lived in the next street and his bass player Gary lived down the street from me. That was the guy who I looked at and went to myself WTF ?
I hardly recognized them in the pic, they look so young. They were around 17. The pic was included in the book because it had Dave and Gary holding their respective Matons.I was massively amused.

Gary plays bass on some of my Jams from the 70's. He was a fantastic bass player but some where along the road he " found god " and stopped playing bass " because god told him to " and pursued becoming an Ambulance driver. I've no idea if he ever did. He seemed to disappear and has not re emerged ever since. Gary Played bass in a Band called LION in the seventies. Lion had Jerry Spicer on drums , Greg Sneddon on Keyboards, and Phil Butson on guitar. This is around where Gary left for god. Greg and Jerry became part of the 1st incarnation of Men At Work. Greg left and was replaced by Greg Ham. Ron Strykert originally was playing bass but Jerry demanded a " real Bass Player " so Ron moved to Lead guitar and John Reese was hired. Phil Butson was an original part founder and part owner of Sing Sing Studios in Melb. They started off in a shop in a strip shopping centre in Noble Park. He more recently sold his share.[ a couple of years ago ] Sing Sing is one of our major studios these days.

[Funkfingers]

Somebody I know is a Tommy Emmanuel wannabe - to the extent that he bought a TE1 signature model and had Tommy sign it after a gig.

[Oinkus]

Some good guitar work on those albums with LRB.

[GoldenVulture]

I was at the same school as Dave. He used to spend all his breaks and lunch time in the locker room practicing his guitar playing " because he wanted to be really good. " He played in a cover band for a long time before Joining little river band. They were a respected cover band around town. I think Dave honed a lot of his guitar skills while playing in that band. It gave him a really gooding grounding for joining Little river. :old:

[GoldenVulture]

Somebody I know is a Tommy Emmanuel wannabe - to the extent that he bought a TE1 signature model and had Tommy sign it after a gig.

If you'd grown up down under that would probably impress you even less. We got sick of seeing Tommy on the TV and other places. Too much tommy tends to fatigue. :wwe:

[GoldenVulture]

Gary is on this track.
- https://soundcloud.com/mr-ds-bigband/dgwremi -
DGW stands for Dave[ different Dave on drums ]Gary and Wazza [Me] It was recorded in 74. In 84 I did a remix and added some keyboard. The original recording was done with a couple of SM57's and something else. [ 3 mics ] The tapes have suffered dropouts and stuff over the years but they're still reasonably listenable.

Other tracks on that Sound Cloud site have Jerry, Phil and Greg Sneddon in them.
War is me singing and playing acoustic geetar. Phil on gregs electric piano and Jerry on drums.
There is a bass in it but it's almost unhearable. It was played by a guy called Bruce Smith.
Socks is Phil Guitar Jerry drums and Greg on his electric piano. I " engineered " it and played leaf.
These tracks were recorded around Christmas 1970 on Gregs stereo Beocord reel to reel. It had built in echo.
Boredom is me Singing playing guitar and piano and gary playing bass.

The other tracks Build 2 and Gas are from the 80's, done on a four track reel to reel. The keyboard is my Polysix.