We recently attended street artist Skullphone’s gallery opening in on Sunset in Echo Park at Shepard Fairey’s “Subliminal Projects” Gallery. Skullphone is known internationally as part of the first wave of 21st Century Wheatpaste Artists, but he seems to have transcended this notorious status into the high-brow international gallery scene sometime after he appeared electronically on Clear Channel Billboards in Los Angeles. Did he hack or buy his way in though? Who cares man, before the bloggers could even sort it, he’d moved on to the next thing.
Skullphone Billboard Hovers Above The 90 Freeway In Los Angeles
Anyway, we didn’t have $5000 for one of his works this night, but PLENTY of people did, including the redounded host (and subject of the the “Exit Through The Gift Shop” documentary) Shepard Fairy who is reported to have purchased a piece himself.
Team Couch at The Skullphone Exhibit @ Subliminal Projects
Which reminds us. How is it possible you can get a limited edition, artist sanctioned Skullphone Guitar Strap, worn by Nicki of Silversun Pickups and Tommy of Blondie, for about 40 bucks from Couch when he’s selling paintings for $1000’s? The collectors have been snapping these up lately dude, you really should get one while you can.
By the way, after hosting the who’s who LA art event of the week, Skullphone hosted a brilliant all ages rock later that night an unmarked warehouse in downtown LA, headlined by Touch and Go Record’s Crystal Antlers. Thanks Skullphone for all the free Pabst Blue Ribbons.
Angus and Julia Stone’s self produced sophomore release “Down The Way” saw a simultaneous worldwide release in March 2010.
Angus and Julia Stone
The album debuted at number 1 in their native country, reaching Platinum status and becoming the highest-selling album by an Australian artist in 2010 in just 2 months.
Julia Stone With Couch Racer X Guitar Strap on Her Acoustic
The album also hit number 4 on iTunes France after performing on TV show Taratata. They have completed their first worldwide tour with all dates selling out and for the remainder of 2010, the siblings will be travelling around the world for festivals and their second worldwide tour.
Pictured here is Julia Stone with a Dark Red and White Racer X Guitar Strap on her acoustic guitar while performing live at Fingerprints Records in Long Beach.
We had fun making these “Scurvy” guitar straps for Paul Frank Industries. Sorry they’re not for sale, they were given away at The X Games 2010 as prizes in the Air Guitar and Pancake Throwing Contest. Paul Frank Is Our Friend!
Blondie guitarist Tommy Kessler sent us some pics of the band at the giant Isle Of Wight Festival in England. We are definitely digging that Tommy has a Dark Red Skullphone Guitar Strap on his guitar!
Tommy Kessler of Blondie With Couch Skullphone Guitar Strap At Ilse of Wight
When the band finally made it to California a few weeks later we were stoked to see that Tommy was still wearing the Skullphone Strap, pictured here between Rock and Roll Hall of FamersDebbie Harrie and Chris Stein as well as Leigh Foxx. By the way, we’ve been told that Chris Stein is now wearing a None More White Guitar Strap. Nice. Oh and Tommy, thanks for inviting us back stage, the show was a blast!!
We’ve gotten a good number of emails from people who can’t seem to get their guitar strap ends through the larger Schaller Strap Locks shaft. Actually if you look around a few guitar forums you’ll find a lot of people seem to be having this issue. Our buddy João Pinheiro in Lisbon Portugal was having this problem and he discovered a handy little guide on the Basschat Forum on how to “re-engineer” your strap to fit these strap locks.
Now we’re not here to criticize Schaller, but someone aptly posted on the forum “Good instructions, but sorry, I’m not going to go through all this hassle to re engineer something that Schaller should have bothered to design and manufacture properly in the first place. -5 out of 10 for Schaller!” He does seem to make a point!
We don’t use strap locks on our guitars so we can’t tell you if all strap locks are like Schaller, but our guess is you might have better luck with Dunlop Strap Locks, Mighty Might Strap Locks, ProLine or Fender Strap Locks for sure, but if you’ve got Schallers and you insist it’s actually not that hard to do the fix, João took some great shots that show how it can be pretty cheap and easy to do.
Basically you buy a 10mm leather hole punch ( Google it or try Tandy Leather, these things are pretty inexpensive).
Use this tool to blast a bigger hole in the strap to fit over your strap lock. That simple.
João has a hammer here, but a rubber mallet works best. Make sure to use cardboard or a soft surface beneath your end tab and then line it up and carefully give it a good wack.
This should make the hole big enough to fit over your strap lock. Done!
Now you can get back to rocking.
Thanks João for the photos.
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Okay about a week after we originally posted this another Couch customer, Christopher Masters of Redford Michigan posted that “[He has] Schallers on all of my Couch straps, and I have not had to do anything like this.
I prefer the tight fit, as it gives me an added sense of security when I’m doing things that I probably shouldn’t be doing with my bass. They fit without modification – trust me.” (That’s Chris with Schaller Strap Locks on his bass)
Okay cool so now you at least have some options and ideas if you have these kind of strap locks- May 11 at 1:37pm Couch Facebook Page
Hope this helps- Couch
NAMM 2010 was a blast! Any time you put about 100,000 random music gear manufactures, musicians, and music fans under one roof over a few days, there’s gonna be some good times. We got to meet tons of cool people like long time David Bowie guitar player Reeves Gabrels who was there performing with his Reverend Guitars Reeves Gabrels Signature Model and a Couch Black And White Racer X Guitar Strap, as well as Scott Crouse of Earth Crisis. Scott Crouse of Earth Crisis recently on tour in Japan with Black and White Racer X Strap
The guys from Wired Magazine and Wired.com later announced Couch on their site for their NAMM 2010 Best New Gear List which is pretty cool considering there are over 1,500 exhibitors from around the world at each NAMM show. This was almost as cool as last year when the show itself, “NAMM University”, announced us one of only 16 “Best In Shows”. Heck yeah!
In case you didn’t know, the best living surf band in the world is Man or Astroman? They’d been a favorite of ours at Couch Guitar Straps for years, so when guitar player Star Crunch contacted us recently about making a special limited edition strap for them to wear and sell on their current tour starting at Austin’s South By Southwest 2010 we were stoked.
We did less than fifty straps, half in Industrial Orange, half in Industrial Silver, both with silver end tabs. Collaborating on the project also is artist Chris Bilheimer who has done work for Green Day, REM, Weezer, and Neutral Milk Hotel album cover for the amazing “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” record. For this project, Chris designed special individually numbered identification badges, a unique one of each strap, that also might do well to get you on the next commuter trip to saturn. We were also very honored to work with Chris on this project.
The straps are all with the band and amazing collector’s items that will be selling out soon we’re sure. We’re sorry to say but they’ve got ‘em all so if you want one catch ‘em out on tour. This shot below is the band recently at the Whirlyball in Atlanta with the “Security Level Orange” version of the guitar strap.
If you’re not familiar with Man or Astroman?, the band is primarily instrumental and blend the surf rock style of the early 1960s with the new wave and punk rock sounds of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Man or Astro-Man? are known for their anachronistic dedication to science fiction themes, audio samples, obscure electronic devices (such as theremins, tesla coils and vintage printers), and high-energy live performances. They have tons of releases and limited edition colored vinyls released on labels such as Touch and Go Records, Estrus Records, and Epitaph Europe and done countless bits of film and soundtrack work including a slew of work for Nickelodeon and The Cartoon Network, notably including music for Space Ghost Coast to Coast and The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.
We are stoked that Couch Guitar Straps’ Dark Red 80’s Mercedes Strap was just in the March issue of Alternative Press Magazine as one of the best vegan products. On top of that PETA’s youth oriented site PETA2 has nominated the guitar strap for 2010’s PETA2 Libby Awards! The vinyl used to make these guitar straps is upcycled from an old upholstery material pattern that was often found in late 1970’s and early 80’s Mercedes Benz cars. It has a great vintage 60’s look to, and looks great with red guitars.
Coming soon, a Dark Red 80’s Mercedes Wallet. Look for them soon in the new wallet section of our site. We already made about 70 Brown 80’s Mercedes cruelty free vegan sweatshop free wallets that sold out in less than a week, but there are some other great wallets up there right now.
If Zoolander were talking about multi-media artist Brock Davis, we’re sure he’d say “he’s so hot right now”. Brock won “Newcomer Of The Year” on the hip indie t-shirt design site threadless.com we users vote for their favorite artist’s work to be made into t-shirts and the artists get up to a couple grand for the honor. Brock has had something like 14 designs turned into shirts and many of them are in multiple printings and sold out. He also just does cool work:
Our favorite is his “Wildlife: antlers” design featuring a deer and the words “Wildlife” in spelled in the horns. We guess we’re not the only ones who liked it, it’s been on various musicians including: Isles and Glaciers, Ra Ra Riot! , The Duke Spirit, and Jay Reatard
in fact Jay wears it in his video here:
http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2057-jay-reatard/1
Our friend Dave just emailed us yesterday this Youtube screencap of Sublime bass player Eric Wilson wearing a Brown and Orange Racer X Couch Guitar Strap in front 30,000 plus people at Cypress Hill’s Smokeout Festival on October 24 in San Bernardino, California.
Nice!
We had heard a number of years ago Eric had purchased one for his bass at World of Strings here in Long Beach, probably around the time he was playing with the Long Beach Dub All Stars, but we didn’t know he was still wearing it, or, for that matter wearing it the other week with a reformed Sublime at The Smokeout Festival on October 24 in San Bernardino, California. The festival also featured performances from Kottonmouth Kings, Slipknot, Deftones, Bad Brains and Pennywise.
Below is the actual video of them performing their mega-hit “What I Got” here that’s pretty awesome. We grew up in Long Beach so we saw the original band back in the day at so many small clubs and house parties and they really were great for their time. What’s crazy about this video is this kid “Rome” who is filling in for the departed Brad Nowell really is amazing and even weirder, he REALLY reminds us of a young Brad in is mannerisms, build and just how he looks in general.
Another interesting thing about this song “What I Got” is that the acoustic guitar solo made Rolling Stone Magazines‘ “100 Best Guitar Solos of All Time” list and was credited to Brad Nowell, but it was actually performed by part time member and full time manager and Skunk Records founder Miguel Happoldt. Miguel actually has a studio here behind us at Couch is and is a cool guy. He rocks a “i am 8 Bit” Couch Strap on his Telecaster.
In any event, it’s a shame to see that there seems to be some wrangling over the use of the name “Sublime” with a new singer. A quick watch of this video and it just seems like everyone enjoying hearing the music so much, band and audience. Let the guys keep the name please- or at least just use another version of it, but keep playing!
