Long Story Short...

If you know me, you know I have a boy named Seth. If you haven't known me for very long, you probably don't know about his namesake. I met the first Seth halfway through my senior year in high school, he sat behind me in my first period class, kind of a weird art-jock guy. I wrote him off at first, but he kept talking art and music with me during class, soon we were best buds and our high school careers were screeching to an end. Seth and I continued our unique and intense friendship after High School, we were truly soul brothers, I have never met anyone else who I could share this symbiotic type of bond with - crazy, hysterical, and meaningful experiences were common place when we spent time together. In the following few years Seth was away alot at school, NorCal stints, then UCLA, and I was touring North America with my band Big Drill Car for much of the time. At the end of Summer 1991, I was leaving for a 5 month tour of the US, Canada, and Europe. Seth was leaving for Hungary to study abroad for a year. Unfortunately only one of us would return from our trips, Seth took his own life on a cold February day in Budapest.

Needless to say the aftermath and destructive wake of this act was enormous for myself, his family, and anyone else close to his dark burning brilliance, but that's a whole other blog, and this entry is called "Long Story Short".

A couple years after his death, Seth's mother Cathy gave me some of his belongings, including a couple of Lambretta scooters. "cool" you say? Not so much. These Lambrettas were completely disassembled, rusted, and gutted. I vowed to Cathy that I would restore at least one of these Li 150's...Someday (insert echo of someday here). Long story short, someday never came.

Over the years my collection of deteriorating Lambretta parts was moved and stored, and moved and stored. Finally I came to the realization that I will never restore the Lambretta(s), not because I didn't want to, but simply because it would take a shitload of cash, a shitload of cash that I did not, and have never had to spare.

I sold the lot.

Now I needed to figure out what to do with this $800. I wanted to turn it into something I could use and keep forever, a treasure with some kind of connection to Seth. I thought of buying a new wave crappy plastic asian scooter, but I am not all that into even having a scooter, not to mention Seth would dis-own me if he were alive to see me ride one of the piles of junk. I could buy a bass....hey - I LOVE basses, I use basses, I can keep and use them forever, sure, but there's no connection, it's just a "thing".

Then it hit me like a ton of rusty Lambretta parts - take a bass I "want", a Rickenbacker in this case, and build one myself from scratch, using $800 as my budget. It will be an über project for me, and will be the finest bass I have built thus far. It will kick ass, it will be beautiful, it will be a treasure because I will build it with love and the memory of Seth in my heart. It will be "Sethenbacker"