Iconic Ownership: Fender Jazz Bass Guitar. A Never Forgotten Iconic Memory.

A Fender Jazz Bass Guitar.

I want to re-post this blog as an experiment. Next year, once a month I am going to move a chosen blog into current status. This project is in order to provide collective ideas and choose WordPress pages that keep specific subjects under one ‘roof’. To guide new visitors, and old friends, to specific subject matter. It will be a few days of initial organisational thinking. But it will happen……this cleaner format. First I need to focus for myself and organise my brain into how it develops.

A fair number of past blogs of meandering nature will probably be moved to draft. I have accessed this blog behind the scenes and changed the date to re-publish for today. An experiment in fact. The Iconic subject blogs will therefore be expanded upon and accessed through one page. Fountain pens. Music, the VeeDub Bus, Health and Well Being in Complementary Therapy, Gardening, etc. to have their own sections. The hoped for Podcasts have to be separate. That is vital. It will be a focused new project attempt. I’m useless at organising technical stuff. But a new format is much needed. 200 plus blogs are now , simply put, ‘a mess of confusion’. So something is going to change. To start? A few of my blogs begin with the words:

ICONIC OWNERSHIP…………followed by something I actually still have in my life. Ninth Gate Bag, Carhartt Dungarees, VeeDub Bus, Billingham Camera Bag, Pentax LX SLR film camera, etc. This is an easy one to highlight different items. This below was a blog from January 2022.

Beautiful Iconic items to cherish? The Jazz, as fondly called, has long gone. Having broken up with the band Team 23 I began thinking my future lay as a potter. Or to be posh. A ceramicist. I couldn’t throw a pot to save my soul. Built individual pieces. So….ceramicist is probably more apt. I’d been mucking around with clay for a few months and really enjoying the experience. Made them in the kitchen in our one bedroom Victorian high ceiling flat/apartment. The flat was above the Wholefood/Health shop my wife worked in at that time. So pottery was the ambient synergy of the smell of clay inter-mingled with coffee beans brewing and herbs and spices. That’s how memories are made.

Smells are surer than sounds or sights

To make your heart-strings crack

They start those awful voices o’ nights

That whisper, ’Old man, come back!’

Rudyard Kipling

Got my pieces initially kiln fired by asking a friend if he could find a corner to fire up my individually hand made mythical/mystical Celtic inspired figures in the kiln at Warwick University. He worked and taught there. The pieces had poetry/stories attached to their characterisation. Pieces including story telling travellers, guardians of nature, runic sorcerers with Wyrd knowledge and more.

It wasn’t long before I needed my own kiln. Like a fool, my only piece of ‘Iconic Ownership’ that was enough to sell to get one was ‘The Jazz’. And like a fool I sold her. Thing is. As a Buddhist in spirit (not true devotional practice), I don’t believe that possessions are always meant to be kept. I do ‘give’ freely. If someone truly wants or needs something……I give them it. My ‘Iconic Ownership: The Ninth Gate Bag’ blog explains that philosophy.

Yet, I admit to the reality that there are items in my possession that have so many inherent memories that they become best of friend. I could never say ‘Bye’. The Jazz was actually one of those. A best of friend. And yet I let her leave my life. I hope that best friend went on to find and create more memories with her next found ownership. Strangely, after selling the Jazz, I had a phone call from one of the Specials asking if I wanted to come and play for a new project….the Fun Boy Three. I had no bass guitar, was heavily into my new Ceramics adventure…..so said no. Life doesn’t take you. It’s where you take life.

Ownership provides adventures. And The Jazz provided adventures and unforgettable memories when music was a major part of life.

So! This blog shouldn’t be called ’ICONIC OWNERSHIP: THE FENDER JAZZ BASS GUITAR’.

But the Fender Jazz is Iconic and I once owned one. And that was so very, very special.

Singing and playing at the Rock Garden, Covent Garden. Photograph by John Coles.
Team 23

Tap images below to enlarge.

The XCerts.

9 thoughts on “Iconic Ownership: Fender Jazz Bass Guitar. A Never Forgotten Iconic Memory.”

  1. Interesting post Gray.

    I must admit although I don’t have anywhere near 200 posts yet, I was thinking about reorganising my blog and creating pages for categories or themes too. I plan to use the holidays to work on the admin side of my blog. I’d also like to create templates for the different themes but need to figure out how to do that; my feeling is that it’s not possible with my current theme but i can explore while I have time.

    I wish you luck in reordering your blog; and some happy moments as you reread your posts. I look forward to reading your reshares 😀

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thanks for the insights and support. I have been speaking this morning to Holly, my daughter in law, who worked on and developed this current theme for me. As a technophobe I didn’t, and still don’t, know where to start. My blog site previously was like a toilet roll. You just went on endlessly to read blogs by scrolling down. So Holly’s intervention changed the whole experience for visitors. As said in this update blog, it will be a bit experimental. Themes are essential for our types of blogs due to the eclectic nature. Especially you yourself with your current expansion ideal. I envisage a ‘Page’ with windows of each theme. A link then to a collective. Embedding May well be the answer. I don’t really want to change the theme template. I get worried re: messing up the ambience. Fingers crossed for both of our aims then. All the best.

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      1. You too Gray. I still have my old blog from 2 years ago … its set to private but I’ll use it to experiment first then once I’m happy, I’ll change it here. That’s what I did when I changed the colour scheme

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      2. Great idea. I have an old WordPress photography site I could muck about with. But it would be better, with my naivety, to let Holly get the front page basis sorted and myself learning and adding to from my site here. Look forward to seeing your progression. Cheers.

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      3. I do get email links, but have been happy up to now. So never tried. I suppose a reluctance to learning technical information is now so ingrained since retiring that I would rather keep simplicity as the forward agenda. But you never can really say never.

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    1. I’ll let her know. We spoke yesterday of building a Home Page with simple links to subject matter. The themed look to continue. She went on a course a fair few years back regarding computers and site building. She’s currently looking at building my Wife’s shop site too. As a side note. I have begun to prefer looking at the sites of people I follow through the internet link. Not the app link. So can get far more idea of how the ambience is on others’ blogs. Your site looks a fine example of how to build one too. All the best for the New Year. Here? Typing now? 05.45 New Year’s Day. So we’re into 2023. Yay! New beginnings…..

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