Sunday, January 21, 2007

A Brief History Leading To A Large Yard Sale

guess what I've been doing this past December into January 07?
becoming a photographer!
that's right,
with the tripod the umbrella light, all that stuff.
I've been taking pictures day and night.
teaching myself how to photograph by taking shots of my gear.
guitars, boxes stomp boxes cases amps chords & more boxes.
they have taken over my studio.
the place looks like a shipping dock.

Ken is gone and I'm a little lost,
finding it hard to get started on anything new just yet.
without Ken I find myself wandering around StudioBelew
like a child moved into a new house.
there's so much stuff sitting around, most of which I never use,
it's like an attic and
I've decided it's time to clean house.
start fresh.
I'm finding things I haven't seen for years mingling with things I cherish
underneath things I didn't know I had.
housecleaning when you have a 10-year accumulation can be a taunting flask.

so it was in early January I gave up my position as
one of the world's guitarists
to take up my rightful place as an ebay salesman.
Adrian Belew, Auctioneer.
now I'm selling items on ebay day and night.
packing tape scissors and more boxes.
the extended computer facetime spent staring at a screen makes my left eye ache,
but the enjoyable part of my new job is making my own hours
and never having to say much.
after all, the selling is online
and photography is a one man show.
I'm snapping all the time. lighting things.
frame by frame.
(I suppose here I should insert a picture of me taking a picture).

on ebay you can tell my photos by the yellow wall backdrop against the maple floor.
it's the trademark of my ebay ads.
(always in the musical instrument listings).
to this point I have only sold little bits: guitar effect pedals mostly, amps, a few,
but now I am poised for auction excellence.
the next things I have in store (so to speak):
Fabulous Guitars from the Adrian Belew Collection.

our first item on the block is an historic art piece.
not much of a guitar perhaps (they forgot to put frets on it!)
but a true art piece.
hand painted by a true artist,
Laurie Anderson.
I played this guitar in Laurie Anderson's movie Home Of The Brave.
while wearing a sombrero!
a brown guitar.
Brownie.
it is brown but when you turn it around and upside down it makes a face.
like the ones in Laurie's movie.
yes, it's a fretless guitar, in fact a fretless guitar synthesizer,
if you have the old school connectors that came with Roland guitar synthes of the 80's.
or you can just plug it in per normal and play fretless guitar.
it features locking tuning keys, 3 single-coil pickups, a black kahler tremelo,
it has a painted-on telephone, lightning bolt, and a revolving chair.
a historic piece of 1980's state-of -the-art guitar technology.

to me it is more art piece than guitar and belongs on display
as it has been in my studio for nearly two decades.
Laurie Anderson hand painted it!
I said that, didn't I.

so...collectors with healthy PayPal accounts take note:
the hand painted, fretless Laurie Anderson Adrian Belew guitar art piece will go on auction
on ebay beginning Tuesday, January 23.
you will have 10 days to bid past its lofty reserve
and hang this beauty on your wall.

good luck and happy bidding.

2 comments:

  1. I have been selling junk on ebay for 7 years when I need extra scratch and it can be pretty frustrating when somebody leaves you an undeserved bad feedback.

    Grrrrrr!

    I imagine some people will want the things you have used in shows and what-not as AB collectibles... Good luck as a merchant Ade!

    Cha-ching!

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  2. Nice photos Adrian! Too bad ebay resolution doesn't allow us to see the real quality of your work. I can tell you lit and composed these images with some thought. You should post some decent resolution files of your favorite images somewhere on your site as you go so people can see the real beauty of this stuff.

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