Oh stop.
‘Tude. What is it, and why does it matter? ‘Tude, which is, rather reflexively, a “bad-attitude”-driven abbreviation of the word ‘attitude,’ was a charming blend of equal parts arrogance, vanity, and naivete.
Although ‘tude could be found in abundance in many discourses of American culture in the 1980s, it was especially dominant in male rock and pop music-performance. More to the point: if you were a male growing up musically-inclined in the 1980s, this was the dominant image available for you to aspire to. For some reason, the basic idea of being a musician/ writing music, etc., was linked to this silly pout and shitty attitude. Oh and ridiculous outfits, naturally. Personally, it took me about ten years of reactionary lo-fi-indie mewling to bounce back from the damage caused by this nonsense. But, yes, eventually I did get over it, and I now own and in fact like guitars with humbucking pickups.
I am still not sure what the rebellious stance of these fellows was based on. I mean, did they like their jobs or not? Did they like their fans or not? Perhaps they were angry at the government, or some unseen agent? For fucks sake man, you’re a guitar player! You make music for a living! Where is the joy? Why the hostility? I may not agree with the tenets of ‘Punk,’ dude, but at least it’s an ethos. WTF were these guys aiming that vague bitchiness at? Please use the comments session to discuss. Oh and spare the ‘tude, pls.
Goddamn! Would you look at that thing! Peavey built and sold a small number of these US-made uber-4-tracks in the late 80s. They were referred to alternately as the MCR-4 or the System 1. I have personally never seen one, but I love that tape-machine-overbridge layout… makes me wanna buy a Tascam 234 and a little rack-mount 80s mixer and cart it up like that… I know I poke fun at Peavey quite a bit, but my hat is off to them for this thing. To build something like this in the US in the 1980s must have taken incredible effort. To learn more, check out this thread at Tape Op.
