| Artist: Greg Ginn |
Influenced By:
Followers:
Worked With:
Formal Connection With:
| Discography: Greg Ginn |
| Wikipedia: Greg Ginn |
 |
This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. (November 2007) Find sources: (Greg Ginn – news, books, scholar) |
| Greg Ginn | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Gregory Regis Ginn |
| Also known as | Dale Nixon |
| Born | June 8, 1954 |
| Genres | Punk rock, Instrumental rock, Punk jazz, Hardcore Punk, Sludge Metal |
| Occupations | Musician, Songwriter, Producer, Record label owner |
| Instruments | Guitar, Bass |
| Years active | 1976 – present |
| Labels | SST, Cruz |
| Associated acts | Black Flag Gone Confront James EL BAD Mojack |
| Notable instruments | |
| Ampeg Dan Armstrong Lucite | |
Gregory Regis Ginn (born June 8, 1954) is a guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is best known for being the leader of and primary songwriter for the hardcore punk band Black Flag, which he founded and led from 1976 to 1986.
Since breaking up Black Flag, Ginn has recorded a few solo albums, and has performed with the bands HOR, Fastgato, The October Faction, Gone, Confront James, EL BAD, Mojack, The Texas Corrugators, Jambang, and he also played bass with Tom Troccoli's Dog. [1]. He also owns the Texas-based, independent record label, SST, originally begun as an electronics company called Solid State Transmitters when he was a teenager in Long Beach, California. He remains very active in music; in a recent interview he states he still performs "about six nights a week." [2] This is similar to how he was with Black Flag; with them he was very strict about practicing and would practice for up to 7 hours a day, 6 days a week according to Henry Rollins.
Black Flag singer Henry Rollins has compared Ginn's playing style to that of free jazz saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy rather than to other guitarists.[citation needed] Ginn is an avid jazz fan, stating he generally prefers music by saxophone or piano players.[citation needed]
Rollins has also said that Ginn is perhaps the reason for Black Flag's success stating that, "Black Flag had at least one ingredient they only made one of and that's Greg Ginn, that's the big deal with that band."[1]
One review of Black Flag's Slip It In (1984) notes that Ginn's "playing was becoming increasingly avant-garde and exciting. Rather than simply coughing up one clichéd solo after another, he wandered harmolodically up and down the fretboard as a jazz player like Blood Ulmer would, making the material more interesting than what most Black Flag-influenced bands were playing." [3]
Ginn made it to 99th on Rolling Stone's list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"[2].
Greg has two brothers and two sisters. His father, Regis, was a teacher and self-published author and his mother, Õie, was an immigrant from Estonia. The two met while Regis served in World War II as a B-17 navigator for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Ginn's younger brother, Raymond Pettibon, is an award-winning artist whose early works have appeared on album artwork for Black Flag and other SST bands; Pettibon also designed the Black Flag logo. The two had a falling out over the treatment of Raymond's artwork by SST and have not spoken since the mid-1980s.
Ginn's nephew Alex founded the punk band 1208.
Ginn is also active in cat-rescue, possessing approximately 30 cats, having reformed Black Flag in September 2003 for a cat rescue benefit.
Ginn has two daughters; Dori was born in 2004 and Karis in 2007.
In 2007, Greg moved from Long Beach, California to Taylor, Texas.
For the majority of Black Flag's existence, Ginn used an Ampeg Dan Armstrong Lucite electric guitar with an interchangeable pickup nearly exclusively; it can be seen in use here. The guitar had become extremely worn out after intensive use and was stolen on April 16, 1986. Ginn would play it so hard that sweat (as well as blood) would seep inside the guitar and cause it to short circuit. To fix this problem he soldered the tone and volume knobs in place and installed a waterproof switch. Ginn does not use any effects pedals, and thus every sound he utilised was created with just a guitar and an amp.
After his Ampeg was stolen, he switched to using an Ibanez Roadstar II. According to Ginn, he also used an Ibanez Flying V with a Sound City tube amp for a little while. He has said that this Sound City amp was horrible and was the last time he used a tube amp. He has said that he dislikes tube amps because they round off the sound and he wants a sharper tone.
His current guitar and the one used at the Black Flag Reunion shows in 2003 is a custom-made ebony Stratocaster model called "Graffiti." This guitar is unique in that it has a graphite neck and is rather heavy for a Stratocaster copy.
Originally, Ginn used a Peavey Standard Series 260 four channel P.A. Head to create his signature tone. He simply plugged directly into the amplifier and played with the volumes turned up to the point to where the signal being produced was naturally overdriven. This procedure created a rather abrasive sound that he tuned alongside of the vocal stylings of each singer of the band. This is the sound you hear on Black Flag's Nervous Breakdown single, up to the album Damaged. Ginn later used a rack mounted Roland SIP-300 guitar preamp along with a QSC power amp until 1985 when he began using a Yamaha PG-1 guitar preamp with the same power amp until switching to a Crest PL400 power amp during their last tour. All of Ginn's amps and preamps were solid state, as he preferred them over tube amplifiers.
The earliest speaker cabinets that he used were probably marshall 4x12's. He used a Sound City 4x12 also. His earliest hand made speaker cabinets were fitted with two Peavey Black Widow 15" speakers. His later speaker cabinets were hand made, and used Electro-Voice speakers. One contained six 12" speakers, and the other with two 15" speakers. He then had two custom built cabinets with two 12" and one 15" speakers each. The type of speakers, being heavy duty and engineered for P.A. use therefore largely contributed to his notably dense guitar tone.
Currently, he uses a solid state Sansamp Preamp (overdriven) and uses a Macro-Tech Crown Power Amp with "more Wattage than I really need." The power amp drives a custom made 6x12 cabinet, which he likes a lot.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
 | October Faction (Rock Band, '80s) |
| Rig (Rock Band, '90s) |
| In My Head (1985 Album by Black Flag) |
 | If Greg was Greg but Jim was Greg but Steve was Jim who is Jim? Read answer... |
| What team does Ted Ginn Jr Play for? Read answer... |
| How fast did Ted Ginn Jr. run the 40-yard dash? Read answer... |
 | Who is cian mc ginn? |
| What is tedd ginns fan mail address? |
| Tedd ginn jr played for what school? |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Artist. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. Content provided by All Music Guide ®, a trademark of All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Greg Ginn". Read more |
Mentioned in
