I wrote earlier that Kristin Hersh was going to put a 1966 Strat up for sale on Ebay. Well it’s on today.

This is an original 1966 Fender Stratocaster with a bound rosewood fretboard. Kristin purchased the guitar in 1993, and it was used as a backup guitar for Throwing Muses’ world tours for University and Limbo. The rosewood fretboard is extremely rare as this was only offered as a build option between 1966 and 1968. There’s also a cool vintage 1950’s cowgirl sticker on the body. All electronics, pickguard and metal pickguard backplates are the original fittings. Kristin et. al. are still looking for the vibrato arm, spring and cover / backplate

Current bid is $5,100. Reserve not met.

Kristin Hersh recently decided to clear out some stuff from her storage unit. Included in this clear out was a custom made Collings SJ acoustic guitar which was made in 1999. It was one of her back-up guitars which she used mainly for writing, although she toured with it in 2001 whilst her main C-10 Collings guitar was in for repair. This specific guitar has a cut-away for high fret access. It also has a built-in Fishman Natural 1 piezo pickup and features Kristin’s “KH” logo — I love that logo — custom inlaid in mother-of-pearl on the headstock. There was also a custom Calton Roadcase engraved with Kristin’s name and an additional padded roadcase cover and carrying bag made by Blue Dog.

In the interests of posterity, and the fact that Ebay don’t keep all their auctions on-line forever, I’ve included one of the pictures here.

Went on auction overnight with a reserve of $5K. Sold to some lucky person (a Throwing Muses fan, but not me) in the UK for $6K.

There’ll be a 1966 Strat going sometime too.

One of my objectives in life is to gently guide people away from listening to junk. By this I mean 95% of the music heard on the radio or television. For those who already listen to the stuff I like, another objective is to guide them further leftfield into territories that they daren’t normally enter. Whilst I’ve never managed to convince people to listen to Lydia Lunch, especially her early ‘work’, I did coerce three out of four people into listening to Throwing Muses back in the late 1980s (although that was extremely hard work). The return rate on My Bloody Valentine was only 25% though.

I bought the Balligomingo album yesterday, so in the interests of exploration, I thought I’d summarise related artists that are musically connected to that style of music. Firstly, ignore the Enigma references in the reviews. Done that? Good.

Here we go:

• The album does have lots of upbeat housey pianos, in a late 80s style. I’ve been racking my brains all day to recall what this reminds me of. It is Love Corporation. I only have their first album Love, but it’s similarly upbeat and a bit more bouncy.
• What about the smooth, gliding nature of the tracks? For this, we have Moodswings. I first heard Moodswings on Radio 1 eons ago — must be 13-14 years I guess — when their track Spiritual High was played. I was totally hooked on it, and I bought the single. It’s a collector’s item now apparently. I found out much later that it is a reworking of the Vangelis track State of Independence. Again, I only have one album of theirs. It’s called Moodfood and it’s very classy. This album peaks with the first three tracks. Essentially a Spiritual High triptych lasting 16 minutes – it’s a magnificant masterpiece, I adore it.
• Then we need the ambient dubby electronica. For this, I refer to William Orbit’s Strange Cargo moniker. Strange Cargo III is probably the closest. This too is a really great album.

Some iTMS links:

• Moodswings: Moodfood
• Strange Cargo: Strange Cargo III

UK Prices: 79p per track. Albums from £7.99 Gosh! That’s very reasonable. Although there is a fairly tortuous way of getting the UK version of the store rather than the US version.

So, Apple finally launched its European music store today, covering the UK, Germany and France. I’m not as impressed as I thought I’d be because of one big omission. The UK independent music industry makes up about 25% of music sales in the, um, UK. According to reports, Apple is requiring such independent labels to sign up with terms that would bring commercial suicide were they to be applied to the off-line world. Thus, talks broke down, and there ain’t no indie on iTunes in the UK. Indeed there are some US independents that are with iTunes in the US, but have refused to sign up to the UK version because of these terms.

This link from The Guardian outlines the situation. Furthermore MacWorld reports that “Many companies were only approached to participate over the last few days and independent label communities across Europe including France’s UPFI, Germany’s VUT and Sweden’s SOM have had little correspondence with Apple.”

However, Steve Jobs says that there are “dozens of indies” on the store. Indeed, he went on to say that there are 700,000 tracks in the store (the same as in the US).

In light of this, let’s take a look at the last 21 albums I bought (through Amazon, but I’m no shareholder), and see which we can buy through the iTunes Music Store, in the US and the UK.

This appears to conclude that there are licensing issues which persist beyond the ‘indie’ issue. The most amusing problem with this is the Celebrity Playlists, which omit the tracks you cannot buy. So Patti Smith’s playlist has nothing in it. Likewise, the front page has links to things that aren’t available or ‘are being modified’. Check out the Black Music Month, for 30 albums for 30 days. Or rather 5 albums for 30 days. All a bit of a balls up.

BTW, Airport Express debuts in Europe next month at 149 euros.