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Molten track notes

     
     
John Walker Track 3 Something
     
I have always loved this song. I think it is one of the best songs the Beatles ever did and it would make a great instrumental tune for The Ventures. I pretty much just played the melody as written, going to double stops on the chorus and played the last verse an octave higher. The lead was as close as I could get to the original.

I played a Carvin DC 127T through a POD effects unit. Everything besides lead guitar was done with MIDI. A Roland SC880 and an Alesis D4 were used for sound modules. Recording was done to hard drive. You can see a picture of my studio on my music page.
     

The Planets Track 4 Blue Tango
  Track 5 Lonesome Town
     
The Planets started playing in 1962, and made a record under the name The Blue Junkmen . A single 45 rpm record was cut and they established "HEARTBREAK RECORDS" in August of 1962. The members were Keio high school boys and songs were mainly copies of The Ventures music such as WDR and so on. Two members (Mr. Tsutsumi and Mr. Arima) went to the Ventures '62 concert in Tokyo.

Later in 1964 they changed the name to The Planets and played not only The Ventures and The Shadows, but their original arrangements of classic and jazz oriented music.

In Nov. '65 they won 5th prize at a contest over a thousand Electric Guitar Bands entered from all over Japan. As the Ventures music had caused a boom, every band played Pipeline, Wipe-out, etc. The glissando sound expression, "teke-teke" was born then and has since been a living Japanese word.

In '67, as they graduated from Keio University, the band quit playing.

In Nov. '92 some of the members met and started to play again. For a 50 year memorial, they decided to make an anniversary CD. The purpose of making the CD was to distribute it to their friends as a memorial gift. They called for friends to join the recording and Mahiro, who was not a member of Planets but a watcher, joined The Planets and has been a member since then. (Mahiro has been a friend of planets for 40 years long.)

Recording Data

Blue Tango, Lonesome Town
Oct. 12th 1996 at Studio Theory, Tokyo.

Recording Staff :Teruo Tsutsumi (Executive Producer )

Tomoo Arima (Lead Guitar and Producer)
Jun Yokogawa (Rhythm Guitar)
Michio Iwasaki (Bass)
Kimihiro Ohkuma (Drums)
Mahiro Tada (2nd Guitar and Sound Effects)

Other Tracks

Teruo Tsutsumi on Lead Guitar Masamichi Wada on Drums,
Keiichi Sekiguchi on Drums,
Taketoshi Tsuchihasi also joined on 2nd Guitar.

Equipment & Instruments:

SURE-SM57 and SONY ECM Microphone. SONY DAT-Recorder DTC-ZA5ES
Fender Jazzmaster ,Fender Twin Reverb '64 (Jensen Spkrs)
Greco Telecaster, Fender Vibrolux '65 (Jensen Spkrs)
Fender Precision Bass ,Fender Bassman '65 (Jensen Spkrs)
Yamaha S-302 '65, Fender Deluxe Reverb'65(Jensen Spkrs)
Pearl Drums,
     

Byron Tietjen Track 17 Theme from Titanic
The AdVentures Track 18 Kon Tiki
     
The inspiration for the Titanic Theme came to us from attending a Los Straitjackets gig here in Syracuse last year. They played a lot of Ventures' tunes, some of their own originals, plus the Titanic Theme. We
didn't realize what the song was right away, but it sounded great. Once we realized it was the Titanic Theme we thought that it would be a great song for our group to play. We wouldn't have considered it normally because I guess we didn't think it could be done justice with a small combo group like ours. But Los Straitjackets proved that to be wrong. It sounded great when they played it, and it's one of the most popular songs we play now. I remember one of the Los Straitjackets telling me that it would be a great tune for The Ventures to cover, but that they (the Ventures) just haven't thought of it yet.

I added some electronic strings for the UFPTV Vol IV contribution to give it a fuller sound, and played the lead on a G&L guitar through a signal processor into a Fender Twin Reverb reissue amplifier.

For Kon Tiki, we just love the Shadows version of this song, and include that as one of our groups standard songs. For Kon TIki, I also used my G&L guitar played through a signal processor and Fender Twin Reverb amplifier.

The theme for our contributions this time was "Songs the Ventures never covered, but wish they would". Of the 50 or so songs our group plays, these two songs are the only ones that haven't been covered by The Ventures, so it seemed logical to include them for the Vol IV UFer CD.

I've also included a photo of our group (The AdVentures) performing at a local festival in Syracuse last year. We've since gotten a new drummer, and I've switched to a Ventures' Mosrite for most of my playing. In the photo, I'm using the Ventures' Model Fender guitar (I'm on the far left).
 
     
Stepen Coker Track 21 Venus
  Track 22 Walk Don't Run / Diamond Head
Some of the equipment used here: Jazzmaster Guitar, Jazz Bass, Yamaha Keyboard for XG midi backing.

I liked The Ventures' "Venus" but wanted to do a more upbeat version & add some strings. I accidentally turned on a bluegrass rhythm on my keyboard while trying a new version of Diamond Head. So I made a medley of "WDR" & "Diamond Head" with me playing lead on the left & doing a Pedal Steel guitar on the right (I used the keyboard for the sound & manually controlled the pitch wheel to achieve the steel "slide" effects). I mentioned it on UF & a few members dared me to submit a
bluegrass track. So here it is.