Album Notes

pick•up ‘pik-ֽәp n : A $350 device to install on a $5000 guitar that makes it sound like a $350 guitar, only louder.

OK. Call me old-fashioned. Say I over-generalize. Accuse me of arrogance. All true. But I just like the sound of a guitar with wood and strings the way you hear it through the air without the intervention of electronics. Yes I’ve heard some pretty expensive pickups run through some pretty exotic signal processors that sound pretty close to the way an acoustic guitar sounds. But why jump through all those fancy hoops when you have the real thing in your hands to start with once you rip off all that extraneous equipment?

As long as I’m spouting aphorisms, here are a few more:
• “There are two kinds of fool in this world: One says ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And the other says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.’” (Although that one works either way. I’ve played a couple of carbon fiber guitars that annoy the hell out of me because they are such good instruments.)
• Agranoff’s Approximate Rule of Thumb: “If it takes more than one trip from the car to bring in the equipment, it ain’t folk.”
Now that I’ve established my credentials as an atavistic curmudgeon, let me equivocate and say I’ve heard a lot of electronic signal-processed, amplified avant garde music that knocks me out. I just don’t happen to play it. This recording is of some of the music I do play. And there ain’t a plug in the whole album.
Mike Agranoff
August, 2007