Ever buy/steal instruments off Pop stars???

Stealing instruments or equipment off pop stars = SO not cool I can't even begin to think about it.

Especially as a guitarist, your guitar and your gear becomes like another part of you. It's like your baby, your lover, your best friend. The idea that someone could fucking STEAL it as a souvenier is just so SICK and SCARY and BEYOND STALKER that it really makes me angry...

I wonder what ever happened to all that gear that was stolen from Sonic Youth. You'd think some of it would have surfaced by now.

I have a drumstick which appeared in my flat after a Dudley Corpo gig. I was convinced that my friend had taken it (after he had stolen a fully functioning pedal as well or something oh dear) but apparently it was me! J said and I quote "it was you!" "you were shouting"! I however am excused because I was exceedingly tipsy on vodkaredbull at the time and probably had a very good reason for needing a drumstick *bang bang bang*.

no, but I sold my Mini to Tom from Th'Faith Healers / Quickspace

I wonder what ever happened to all that gear that was stolen from Sonic Youth.

I think they actually may have gotten some of it back. The summer their gear was stolen I saw a US Maple show, and Sonic Youth opened for them as the surprise guests. After their set I saw one guy talking to Lee Ranaldo and giving him a guitar. From what he was saying, I gathered his friend had come across it somewhere and asked this guy to give it back to them.

Anyway, stealing gear from musicians is pretty slimy. As a story, it sounds cool that the Sex Pistols stole their gear from Bowie, but when you actually think about what this means, that's pretty lame.

I'd be bummed even if someone stole my shittiest pedal that was only half working... Stealing someone's gear is on par with stealing from a record collection (though things are more costly to replace...).

Stealing anything is pretty slimy, indeed - but "liberating" a reverb pedal from a hack like Lenny Kravitz and putting it to good use is maybe less offensive than taking Ed Hammel's only guitar.

if we accept that all artists/slebs are vampires and/or cannibals, then it is business as usual

("influence" = "siring" as seen in buffy heh)

I hasten to add I bought John Lings bass and offered to return Pulps wah-wah pedal.

I'm not talking about wholesale theft - I remember when Disco Inferno (mates of Bark Psychosis) lost all their equipment and what could have been one of the great 90's albums with it. Surely though there is no harm in liberating a guitar pedal or two, especially from a major label act, and you are audacious enough to simply get up on stage and walk off with it?

most major label acts still don't make any money, and besides, STEALING PEOPLE'S STUFF IS FUCKED UP.

god that sonic youth gear theft was like three years ago, wasn't it? holy shit it seems like just yesterday. wow ... i'm having a "moment" here ...

they have indeed recovered some of the gear, most of it bought back at pawnshops from l.a. area. i'm not sure whether they ended up getting much back (three guitars maybe). the funny thing is, every single person who owns a fender jazzmaster or jaguar listens to sonic youth so you'd think they'd recover more from concerned fans. if i discovered i was in possession of stolen sy gear i personally would rather have the chance to meet lee/thurston/kim and sell him/her his/her guitar back than hold on to it.

Perhaps whoever stole HATED sy and was trying to prevent them from making music ever again.

Maybe Amy Phillips was the mastermind of this heist!

OK, maybe this is just an East London thing then, though I know of quite a few bands, some successful, others not, that would not have got off the ground without the advantage of gear obtained through dubious sources. The Happy Mondays for one, if what a friend told me was true (and I have no reason to believe it wasn't).

Look at it another way: think of the vast majority of people out there using pirate music software (Acid in particular for your soundclash fans, ReCycle and Cubase etc for the techno and jungle crowds) - they have stolen in order to find their creative outlet, even if they purchase the software at a later date. Isn't this just as bad?

And she would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids...

Look at it another way: think of the vast majority of people out there using pirate music software (Acid in particular for your soundclash fans, ReCycle and Cubase etc for the techno and jungle crowds) - they have stolen in order to find their creative outlet, even if they purchase the software at a later date. Isn't this just as bad?

Worse. Because they're making techno.. har har.

"Look at it another way: think of the vast majority of people out there using pirate music software (Acid in particular for your soundclash fans, ReCycle and Cubase etc for the techno and jungle crowds) - they have stolen in order to find their creative outlet, even if they purchase the software at a later date. Isn't this just as bad?"

Uh, no, because they're not depriving anyone else of using the software, unlike when someone steals a guitar.

Gear theft created indie-rock. VU were prepared to storm into the studio and tear shit up with their third album, making Sister Ray Parts II-V and all their gear was stolen at the airport. "Oh No!" they said "Where have our noise-machines gone?" So they decided to record pretty acoustic-ish things instead. Then they mixed it even more pretty and acoustic as a fuck you.

And she would have got away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids...

"Zoinks, Scoob!" "RET'S ROCK!"

(i think it's funny to think of john ling of bark psychosis in the category of "pop star" ... though if i had my way bark psychosis would be bigger than, well, radiohead)

here's a less interesting anecdote:

i was drunk at a venue one time and it was late ... the bar was closing down and the last band was packing up their gear. on a ledge near the stage was a "blue box" (guitar effects pedal). nobody seemed to be making any moves for it. i thought "maybe they've forgotten it" or something. minutes passed and the bar was clearing out. i started to think it might have belonged to the staff, but incidentally this was the bar's last night before it was to be shut down so i thought "fuck it", grabbed the pedal and walked out.

a couple of months later my (now ex-) keyboard player called me to tell me that "i think i've found us another guitar player" (which we were looking for at the time). we all met up at a coffee shop and he introduced himself as mike. we had a great chat. we got around to gear and he said "i used to have a blue box but some fucker stole it"

...

in any event, mike wasn't mad (because i didn't know him at the time i stole it) but turned out to be a terrible guitar player so we didn't ask him to join. i did return the pedal (about ten months later).

wow ... i've suspected for a long time that i'm a "tread killer" and now i'm pretty sure it's true. really i'm not like this in real life. i walk into a room and people can't wait to hear what i'm going to say next.

It's probably just late in the day, salmon.

I once bid on a baby blue Strat that belonged to Sting at a KROQ auction. The story was that there was some kind of customs problem and he couldn't take it with him when he left the US. It didn't look like it had been played much, however, probably one of a dozen identical guitars he toured with, so I didn't pursue the bidding. I think it went for about $700 (this was in the early 80s).

When I was a teenager, someone told me about a Florida skinhead band who used to go to punk gigs, beat up the band that was playing, and start playing their own stuff on the victim's instruments for the rest of the night (at least, until the cops got there). Anyone else know if this really happened?

Don't worry, FoS, it's just the same thing! We see a posting from you, think "Fields of Salmon Has Walked Into the Room!" and hold our breaths to hear what you're going to say next.

I'm only speaking for others here, btw, myself may disagree. ;-)

On-topic: The singer in Dum Dum Boys (quite big in their native Norway in the 90s) once threw his tambourine far into the crowd during a gig. I was probably a bit drunk, so I didn't really see any danger coming until it hit me straight in the head. Had a bump there for weeks, but someone near me snatched the instrument itself. Um, I never claimed this was going to be on-topic, did I? I did? Sorry.

Im hav lankon parks nord lead at

Can anyone else figure out what he just said?

He claims to have Linkin Park's Nord Lead (synthesiser model)