Quick Shots - 31/May/2026

Not a good week for health

What’s With Fender Suing Everybody?

Musical Instrument manufacturer Fender sued its competitors that make guitars in the shape of Stratocasters this month, causing a bit of an online furore. The basis of the lawsuits seems to be that a German court recognised that Stratocaster designs still belonged to Leo Fender’s old company, and that in turn enabled Fender to go after all these other manufacturers that have been making knock off Stratocasters shapes for decades since the copyright lapsed in the USA.

This has been an unpopular move, with many guitar-related commentators denouncing the Fender brand itself. It’s been quite spectacular, and perhaps a bit overblown. In the week after the initial burst of legal brand suicide, Fender piped up and offered their rationale which also didn’t go down well, and people are still grumbling about Fender’s money grab.

I see this whole thing as a symptom of a deeper problem that fewer kids are taking up guitar as previous eras, and that Fender itself has priced itself out of the beginners’ market, even with the Squier branded models. I don’t get the impression Gen-A kids are interested in guitars in the same way Gen-X kids were, and that’s because the kind of music you make with guitars is in a general retreat - Taylor Swift’s impact on young girls notwithstanding. Only the music nerds are noodling ferociously on TikTok, and it’s not clear that this is leading to a revival of the kind of music that demands a lot of instruments from the Fender corporation. If nobody wants to be rock stars, the future is bleak.

Kids today are growing up with other interests. They like computer games over listening to records because you participate in playing games in a way that you don’t when just listening to music. A path to music doesn’t promise anybody anything any more whereas in generations past, you could point to rock stars and say you want to go do what they’re doing. The fundamental landscape for music participation is changing - and Fender probably finds itself staring down the gun barrel.

Consumer capitalism is sputtering everywhere. Fender is caught up in the same market maelstrom as cinemas and consumer electronics. The things people wanted in the past are not selling as well. Past performances of whole industries are going to be no indication for future performances. One could argue that music itself wasn’t protected enough by the industries that made money out of it - and this is the ultimate outcome.

My Consumer Blues

For some years now, I’ve been meaning to pick up a turntable. I had a Technics SL1400 but they no longer make parts for those so it died on the operating table of the repairman, so to speak. It’s sad when you have to give up something because the manufacturer gave up.

I’ve not really been able to put together a budget to go out and get a replacement. This is because things like car repairs, vet bills, and dental costs keep springing up, and if anything, the thing I should be saving up for is a new computer. Quite separate from the new computer, I have a couple of software expenses come up - thank you Adobe - and these things keep nudging the turntable down the shopping list. Damn it, I even had to replace my trusty mono laser printer this week. You get the picture

Part of me wonders if I would make great use of a turntable, but then I still have my LPs and they would just sit there as a monument to collections past if I didn’t get the turntable. There are some technical features I would want the turntable to have, and that narrows the field and raises costs, and that in turn slows me down. And I do wonder if I really believe in the virtues of the analogue sound any more. Part of me rebels at the idea of dropping good money on what is obsolete technology. If I do drop that money, then I want a decent one that I could use for a good while. And around and around it goes.

It’s just strange that I’ve let this go on for a good number of years. I’m old enough to know buying stuff doesn’t fill the existential hole in your life - it just fills up real estate. As it is, my printer is sitting where my turntable would go. I don’t know where else to put it just now.

The Flu This Year

I am used to getting the annual flu. So much so that I never got the flu shot, and just opted to have the flu itself each year. This was sort of my dumb compromise for most of my adult life but in 2024, I got the flu 5 times. Each time I get the flu, I am in bed for 2-3 days and I spend another week coughing up phlegm. That made it about 50 days of being impacted by the flu that year so, it convinced me belatedly to just get the flu shot.

Last year I got the flu shot and went through the year without any infection. It was awesome. So I went back and got this year’s flu shot amidst warnings that this year’s strains were particularly bad. What do you know? I still got the flu this year, about a month after the shot. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it wasn’t the flu and it was something else. Anyway, I’ve just done my annual 10-day stretch of what I would like to dub “bleugh”.

When you’re sick, you don’t get to do much coherent thinking. Especially when it’s accompanied by a fever. I think I spent 3 days wondering if Grogu really was ever going to grow up, because let’s face it, he’s a metaphor for all Gen-X people who saw Star Wars for the first time as kids.

‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ has hit cinemas this week. I haven’t seen it yet. I hope to do so at the cinemas - I won’t be catching it on Disney+ because I gave up that subscription. I’m hoping the movie experience gives me a head buzz. The good kind that’s not like the one you get from a fever from the flu.

---

What’s Spinning This Week (in no particular order):

1. 13 - Black Sabbath

2. Blondie Live Disc 4 - Blondie

3. Live Over Europe - Genesis

‘13’ is the reunion album where Ozzie comes back into the picture. It is a throwback to their oldest recordings in that it is full of down-and-dirty riffs with doom-and-gloom Heavy Metal arrangements that they patented all those years ago. Like them or not, this is a really important recording. It’s startlingly good because ‘Forbidden’ before it was clearly an artistic failure. It took 18 years from there for this album to materialise - which echoes long hiatuses other bands have had after disastrous records. There’s something very satisfying in hearing Ozzy fronting his old band. Every thing fits, the creative decisions make sense and the whole album hangs together well. They’re essentially doing the same thing as at the beginning of their career, but there’s a wonderful freshness to it all. It is a fitting final album that leaps over problems that beset the Late Period works.

‘Blondie Live Disc 4’ is from 4 November 1978, at the Paradise Theatre in Boston. The recording is better than Disc 2, but it still sounds muffled and mixed badly. The band just winds up and roars through the numbers. This would have been fun to catch on the radio in a car. The performance on ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ is delightful. An audiophile experience, this is not - but it is exciting.

The nostalgia listen of the week is ‘Live Over Europe 2007’ from Genesis. I didn’t own it until this month but boy, I know all these songs, so talk about there being few surprises. They change up a few things doing quirky medleys but mostly they sound like their records, just turned up loud for a live audience. It’s comforting but unsurprising; but mostly, they play so well on their live albums. I’ve just noticed I have holes in my Genesis catalogue. I think is a function of having come out of the LP era into the CD era and I didn’t have the heart to you t there and buy CDs of stuff I had recently bought on LP. I totally skipped getting ‘And Then There Were Three’ on CD and didn’t notice it until this week.