Passing of the Carlos...

Sad to report my oldest guitar since the old Squier Bullet has disappeared.

I can't believe I don't have a single picture of my Carlos I bought brand-new right around December 1987 (guitar was date-stamped made in November 1987, so really new). It is the same as the guitar pictured above, although I eventually replaced the tuners with upgraded golden ones probably around 2000. I had the Carlos in the family 30 years, almost as long as Pete's had his Aria Pro II.

The story of the Carlos begins before our original "Lander's Gang" days. While by 1984 we had had some goofball jams (think accomplished sax player Boy with the Bark jamming with very stoned and cranked Deangul, Sick Rick and I on "The Batman Theme," "Peter Gunn"...) and some starts and stops, but never really formed an official "band." Sick Rick at some point lent me his Carlos acoustic for a lengthy amount of time when I regularly ingested meth on my landscape maintenance tour of 1984 and I loved & played it a ton. Mostly on my front porch. Mostly at like 2:00am.

We (Sick Rick, Peterock, Deangul and I) had all worked for Lander's during the summer-fall of '85 and started Lander's Gang band maybe that fall, then by Winter/Spring '86 I was booted from the 'Gang for drunken bass rhythms (or, say, lack thereof).

I started taking lessons and playing classical guitar at Chabot, but unfortunately my classical guitar met it's destructive demise somewhere around late winter 1987. Throughout that year (the classical was replaced, thanks mom!) I learned probably just barely enough to be dangerous and decided by the end of '87 to pick up a steel-string acoustic.

Sick Rick I think had turned me on to a music store over off Alcosta Boulevard in Dublin (Alcosta Music?), and I ended up talking the saleman down from $195 to $175 for the Carlos plus a soft-shell case and bought the guitar on layaway in 30 days (my genius idea of haggling like I had cash then putting money down to hold the instrument).

The Carlos 249 is a dreadnought-style, mahogany finish 6-string which I later learned was actually a low-end Kaman product. When I first brought it home I remember Sick Rick said "You better take care of this one..." (What? Did I have a reputation or something???)

Ha, after marriage and parenthood in 1989 I was not very attentive around the little ones though. When we lived upstairs at the apartments and Panda was maybe a year old (1991), he went out on the back balcony and poured a glass of apple juice inside the Carlos! (Well, acoustic guitars kind of look like receptacles...) I dumped a bunch a baking powder, corn starch, and baby powder inside to absorb the juice and that is why the Carlos from that time always had a poofy white interior.

As time went on I rarely picked up the Carlos because my band stuff was all bass until the 1995 demise of Ripon that John and I jammed in. Although in perhaps late 1993 to early 1994 I jammed a couple-three times on the Carlos with Peterock at his space behind Romley's (attracting his life-long partner). And in April 1994 J.A.S. treated Sick Rick and I to Pink Floyd's Divisional Bell concert and the tour sticker I acquired ended up adorning the Carlos's soundboard for about the next 15 years.

Somewhere during 1995-96-97 Reverend Bill and I formed the little two-piece, SUBNOVA, where for maybe as long as a year Reverend Bill played 5-string Yamaha electric bass and I played the Carlos through all kinds of metal and distortion effects using a Seymour Duncan slip-in pickup placed in the Carlos's sound-hole. Fun but weird. I don't know that Reverend Bill and I ever performed actual songs - mostly just some kind of rhythms we grooved along to.

Ok, then 1998 to 2004 - THE DARK TIMES. I mean really dark, alcoholic drinking black-out dark. The 4-5 music memories I have from this period ("wasted jam" at Sick Rick's place in Santa Rose/buying acoustic bass day of my dad's funeral/trying to record Ripon tunes at The Outlaw's/my last drunken jam at the house with Sick Rick, J.A.S., and a lent drum set), only one involved the Carlos. In 1998 my cousin Dave from Cleveland came out and he jammed on the drums and I jammed plugged-in electrically on the Carlos. Had a good take on Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" I remember.

Fast forward to 2010 and my daughter is heading off to college in San Francisco. You can't go to college in San Francisco without a guitar, right?

Well, the Carlos by this point nearly 25 years old needed some work. I had already added new tuners, but the soundboard was rising up in a bulge below the bridge which screwed up the intonation. Sarky, a guitar tech at Ingram & Brauns here in Pleasanton, put a shim under the nut and somehow got the action and intonation set. Abs carries around the Carlos as she moves from place to place around the City and it becomes, as guitars are wont to do, a little instrument for random visiting folks to play during parties and other get-togethers. (Abs, like her dad, ended up preferring bass guitar and has a nice Peavey bass.)

Now, it's December 2017 and Abs' car radiator fan bearing goes out and I schlep up to South Lake Tahoe to fix it. Abs is at work so she leaves the keys to her place for me under a bowl on her patio table. Inside, and all by myself, I spy the Carlos case! Have a nice little 10-minute jam which was my first on the Carlos for probably 7 years... but also my last.

Abs' roommates over the next couple weeks move out over altercations with her landlord and on January 2nd Abby returns from Pleasanton to Lake Tahoe only to learn that she is living alone with some weird dude from Idaho. On January 4th Abs returns home from work and Idaho dude tells her he "had" to take $9 from her bedroom because he needed gas money to get to work. Abs informs me and her mom about this on the 5th and we are like "You need to move out of there."

I head up Last Saturday (1/6) and we move all the big stuff. Dude had reimbursed $10, but Abs is still bothered this dude went in her room when she wasn't there (seriously, the dude's bedroom is downstairs and there is nothing upstairs except Abs' bedroom and an empty bedroom - absolutely no reason to even be up there).

By the time I get there Abs has moved the Carlos case and ... it seems a little too light. Sure enough, guitar is gone. Abs checks the whole house and the Carlos is nowhere to be found. Last seen maybe shortly before Christmas when Abs had friends over and someone was jamming.

Weird, ha, unlike Sick Rick and J.A.S. who barter their guitars all the time I have never sold any of my personal guitars. The ones gone have been given away (my first guitar no-name Bullet bass copy; Ibanez RG570 "Yes" guitar; Cort B4 bass; the Carlos 249), lost (Squier Bullet bass), destroyed (a classical guitar), or stolen (Yamaha BB1000s neck-thru bass). Har, now I only have one guitar that predates sobriety - and not by much - the acoustic bass I bought in 2002 after my dad passed away. Weird.

Anyhow, hug yer instruments a little closer (sounds kinky I know) because all this material stuff will eventually pass like, uh, tears in the rain, eh.