Little Fish

25th July 2011

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Hi, I’m Juju. You might already know who I am but if you don’t then let me introduce myself. I play guitar and sing for Little Fish.

We are a very human band. No matter how hard we try to be untouchable (we gave up on that a long time ago as it was boring) or utterly professional (we have our own style), it has become clear to us all that we will never be perfect for the reason that everything we touch seems to, at some point, fall apart or break, or snap, or crackle, and most of the time, these things happen live on stage. I wonder if people who come to see us presume it to be part of the show now? I even went to the guitar shop the other day to buy myself two new expensive guitar leads as I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t run into any problems playing our acoustic shows in Paris. I wanted to be the professional that I am. Well, obviously I didn’t work. One of the leads I bought was duff. I am ‘equipment-cursed’.

Today, I thought I would post these two pictures. One is of my trusted acoustic guitar, broken of course and the other of Ben’s Farfisa, also broken.

I have had this guitar for about seven years and I loved it very much. The sound it gave me was what I formed the sound of Little Fish on. It was a punky, edgy, feisty and rhythmic guitar. I wrote all of Little Fish’s songs on it. I had to battle with that guitar for it even to give me a sound which is half the reason why Little Fish songs become so loud and emotionally aggressive. I had to write this way so as to get a sound out of the bloody thing. This is why I loved this guitar. I liked the toughness of it. Today however, it is broken. It finally gave way. The hole that I had worn into its side through strumming meant that the structure could no longer take the pressure and tension of the strings, and so it caved in. I am quite sad about this.

Although I am quite sad about this, I also feel revitalised. I have new creative ideas in my head and I feel like I need a new tool to write them with. I need a new sound to work with. I need a new partner for the next part of my journey. Today, I am going to go the same shop that I bought my trusty Yari and see if they have anything that catches my eye the same way that my Yari did all those years ago.

Oh! And secondly - Yes. Yesterday. Truck. Yesterday at Truck festival, our Farfisa broke. Of course it did. I wouldn’t have expected anything less of us to have to go through some sort of technical breakdown ( I mean, even at our first show on the Saturday, I broke my string on the first strum and had to borrow a guitar from a member of the audience). As I say, things always go wrong for us. But I love this because it makes us human. It is our imperfections that makes us who we are after all, right?!

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