Always liked this song

Last edited Wed Oct 2, 2024, 09:25 AM - Edit history (1)

Jamie West-Oram’s guitar here set one of the standards for 80s guitar sound for me. I’ll always sit up when I here the opening.

Did it 80% of gigs for 20+ years.
We covered a lot of their songs over the years.
I saw them at The Vic in Chicago, probably 20 years ago. Went by myself. That's how into them I've always been. (All the way back to Shuttered Rooms)
If I bought merchandise over a certain amount, we could stay & meet the band. Bought my wife a sweatshirt with the Calm Animals album cover on it. It was super cool meeting them
BTW: 2 X's in the name

By the way, Joe Satriani has also expressed admiration for West-Oram's playing, which is quite a compliment coming from such a monster player. West-Oram was on a lot of records other than Fixx albums, mostly because producer Rupert Hine was always using his unique playing and guitar tones for his various projects. You can hear West-Oram on records from Stevie Nicks to Tina Turner to the Thompson Twins.

I'm a big fan of both Joe & Jamie.
My 2 main sounds are a sweet, but pedal to the metal distortion tine (like Satch) & a super clean, shimmering tone (like Jamie.)
One of favorite West-Oram tones is in this song off Reach The Beach.
The chord at 1:35.

...it sounds like it's a pitch transposer up an octave or so. It's a pretty rad sound, that's for sure. The second example (0:11, Satriani) is definitely Fixx-inspired. Those kinds of sounds are fairly easy to get using a DI (guitar through a direct box into the mixing desk, no amp). West-Oram mostly uses active pickups, which also help get that sound. The other tricks used include absolute brickwall compression, EQ, and some kind of modulation effect, most often the Roland Dimension D (especially in the '80s). Another overlooked trick: the Aphex Aural Exciter (yes, they gave it a Spinal Tap name!). That's often where all those high frequencies are coming from.

...my Tele into a Boogie, with a Boss Acoustic Simulator. That pedal does NOT make an electric sound like an acoustic, but allows me to hollow out the mids rather dramatically. Then with bass pretty low on the amp, it's all shimmering high end. I do have the amp gain on 1.
My full roar tone is a Satriani series Ibanez (with a DiMarzio FRED in the bridge) into the Boogie or my Marshall with gain and 10. Then, for leads, I hit the boost, which gives 6dB of loudness & around rdB more gain, so the odd harmonics cut even harder.
Geez, for jam nights I had a Voc Saturator so I could use somebody else's amp set clean, and still get that Satch tone. I never used it in my own band, but always for jam nights.
Those 2 tones are my go-to.

I could probably find one on eBay, though. Hopefully it's not as sought-after as an E-H Polychorus. I should have picked one of those up when they made a reissue model a few years ago. But anyway, I have heard from a few people that the Boss Acoustic Simulator pedal is definitely one way to get that '80s clean tone. You can also hear the really heavy compression on those Fixx records (and anything West-Oram played on, pretty much). I know he was using a studio compressor in his setup, the Valley People Dyna-Mite, which is well-known for that brickwall compression sound. You hear the influence of the Fixx guitar sound on so many '80s records. And recently, I've been hearing some of those sounds on new records as well, so those tones may be having somewhat of a return in popularity.

I've got have 9 or 10 of their albums.
The last band I was in (for nearly 20 years) covered a lot of their tunes over the years.
I'd guess 10 to 12. The only bands we covered more were Talking Heads & INXS.
I was 85-90% keyboards in that band, though there were several songs where I both played keys & guitar.
In our entire time, I probably only played under 20 songs where I played only guitar.
But, I play guitar more at home, than I do piano. Especially acoustic.