ImagesBrighton pictures of the week 1-5-2006

IMAGESBRIGHTON photography by david gray
	G U I T A R S
	P I C T U R E S O F T H E W E E K 1 - 5 - 2 0 0 6

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This week's picture subject is guitars. Probably the defining instrument of modern popular music for the past fifty years, the guitar has in fact a very long history. The word itself is almost certainly Arabic in origin and there are illustrations of guitar-like instruments from Iran over 4000 years ago. Adding electricity was the brainwave of Les Paul in Chicago in the 1930s when he wired up his acoustic guitar to a radio. Almost every adolescent, certainly if male, has a go at being a guitarist. You don't even need to have one in your hands any more if you fancy yourself as an "air guitarist". Every August there is an air guitar championship in the Finnish town of Oulu. Nobody would even think of trying that with the bagpipes.

Guitarists at a motorbike rally in Brighton in September 2004 (image 2549-86)

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