Admin Rudolf Wagner
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Thanks for posting the pictures, Angelo! Super interesting everything illustrated like that.
And we hope you enjoyed the rest of your stay in Liverpool! Thanks again for making the big trip, it was lovely meeting you in person 🙂
Rock on!! -
Thanks for making us aware of this, David! We fixed it and everything should play again smoothly 🙂
Happy listening! -
Guess what I’m making for dinner tonight 😉
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Mona looked somehow more like a Mona and Lisa was looking slightly more like a Lisa.
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Hi Ademir,
I think our parents just didn’t want to take the joke too far, so they named us in the “reversed” birth order. They’d also still say “Lisa and Mona” if we’re out in public and they’re calling for both of us.
I’ll ask Dad if he has a different explanation but for all I know, that’s why! 😉
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Hi Angelo! Thanks for the guitar geeky question, I love answering those. So let’s get to it.
1. I believe the exact name of my model is Duo Jet G6128T-DSV. It’s got the Dynasonics pickups which I absolutely adore. It came with a fixed Bigsby that I wasn’t a huge fan of and I also replaced the Bridge with a Custom Compton Bridge. So no, it’s not a vintage instrument but was built in 2010 (Japan). I changed the Bigsby to a Düsenberg tremolo. I loved the look of the Bigsby but I didn’t like the fixed arm and the fact that the whole tremolo wasn’t fixed to the body which, together with the floating Bridge, made an already somewhat temperamental guitar even more of a pain to keep in tune. I tried a Düsenberg at a store and fell in love with its tremolo. So I decided to get rid of the Bigsby and put this one on instead. Best idea ever! I love how the whammy bar feels and how changing strings is super easy now.
To me, it’s now as perfect of a guitar as it can get 😉2. About the amps. When we are giggin on our own we use two AC30 VR – the valve hybrids, just because they are a bit more reliable than something “all valve” and still sound pretty decent.
The models we had at the Cavern were always “all valve” but we used slightly different models throughout the years (whenever one went into maintenance). They had a room in the Cavern that would be filled to the brim with different AC30s. For something like the Beatle Week festival, where they had multiple venues going at once, all those amps would get used whereas throughout the year they provided the two main Cavern stages with whatever gear was in the best condition.3. I’m glad you’d like to come to one of our live shows. As much as we’d love to hit the stage more often we are still on a live playing break. There are so many other projects we’re currently working on that we decided to have live shows take a bit of a back seat for now. But we will be back eventually! The Liverpool show is Mike Massé’s event, he just invited us to join him for a few songs, which we’ll happily do. At the moment it looks like we’ll be doing about 5 songs together.
Hope that answers your questions, thanks for asking them 🙂
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Hi David!
We always love to try songs by artists and bands we’ve not covered yet, and the Seekers are definitely on our radar but it’s a matter of time and priorities over different projects at the moment. I’ve yet to properly check out the Seekers back catalogue to be honest but your question made me pull up their albums on Spotify. That’s my soundtrack of the day sorted 😉 Thanks for your song suggestion! -
Hi Jacki!!
We always start off going “with the creative flow” when writing a song but it’s happened more than once that at the end of the writing process we drop a verse or shorten a solo in order to “tighten up the song”.
We prefer the idea of keeping our original songs “short and sweet” (with a few exceptions where we needed more time to really let the song speak and unfold) rather than dragging them out too much by adding yet another chorus at the end. “Close To You” for example used to have an extra verse and so did “That’s Life”.
If we can get a story or idea across in less words we usually go for that option. 🙂 On average we try to aim for around 2-3 minutes but that’s only a rough guide.
When we record covers it’s usually the original version that determines the song length. We occasionally change the tempo or arrangement a little bit but the song length isn’t a big concern for us most of the time. Whatever happens happens and especially those early Beatles songs are usually so damn short anyway… they leave you wanting more 😉
It’s an interesting question though and fun to analyse our own creative choices when being prompted with a message like yours! Thanks a lot 🙂
Big hugs from all of us!
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Hi Rick!
It would make for a much more exciting reply to your question but there is no “deeper meaning” or master plan behind our hair choices. It all started off quite innocently, when we went to the hairdresser one afternoon after school and were allowed to get a coloured streak in our hair. It might have actually been to celebrate a good report card or something similar. On a whim, I went with blond and lisa chose orange (that photo is from 2005 … click to enhance):
A few years and several hair experiments later and we returned to those colours, adding more and more streaks until we ended up with our current hair colours and cuts. You might say it got a little out of hand 😉
I always found shorter hair to be more convenient, so once I had cut mine off I didn’t want to grow it out any more. Again, all very mundane reasons, haha.
Once we got into the swing of making more and more YouTube videos and people started to recognise us by our hair we decided to keep it relatively consistent. I’ve been growing out my fringe lately and doing lots of braiding but at the end of the day it’s just hair, so when we’re not performing a lot it’s allowed to just do what it wants 😛
PS. By the way, the baby-boy on the photo is our “little” cousin Oliver, who has meanwhile outgrown us.
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Hi Jung,
My good ol’ Mandolele! No, it is definitely a Ukulele. I too, noticed Billy Butler calling it a Mandolin but refrained from correcting him in that moment. Silly Billy 😉 To be honest I’ve never tried playing a Mandolin though I am very much intrigued by it.
The Uke that I play in the video for “God Only Know”, “I Don’t Know Birds That Well”, “I’ll Follow The Sun” and “Wonderful Christmas Time” is a soprano uke by Lanikai and the first one we ever bought.
In the video for “Daydream” or “She’s Leaving Home” I use a slightly bigger “concert” style Uke, also by Lankai, sent to us by Steve from Miami! It’s also the one I took on the Steve Harley tour.
I love them both! When I went through the videos above to check back on which one I used in which video, I realized just how many appearances the uke has made in songs already. If you’d have asked me on the spot I would have guessed a lot less, haha.
But I like how it’s such a versatile instrument that (especially if paired with a guitar) can really transform a song and give it a brighter, happier feel. I wouldn’t really say it’s either more or less difficult than playing guitar. It depends what you want to play on it 🙂
I basically treat it as if it was a shrunken guitar with the lower 2 strings missing. I transpose the normal song key to the tuning of the uke and then play the same chord shapes I’d use on a guitar.
Not the most sophisticated approach but it works! There is so much more to know and learn about the ukulele when it comes to technique. Maybe I’ll dig a little deeper into that one day.
Since you mentioned the Beatles, I don’t think they ever used one on any of their recordings. But George supposedly was a huge Ukulele aficionado! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJEtLjnO7E
That might also be one of the reasons Paul decided to play “Something” on the Uke at the Concert for George: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JeMufeiYIc
Such a powerful little instrument ♥
Thanks for the question! -
Hi Jacki, thank you so much for this beautiful poem. It’s not just because it’s flattering to me but I would also like the words if they were written for somebody else. However, I’m certainly trying to live up to what you have said here every day.
And thanks to everybody else for your lovely Mother’s Day wishes, too.
❤️ -
A big fat HELLO and welcome to the Club, David!
If you came here to get clean, we’ve got bad news for you. We’ve got a whole warehouse full of aged, fine MLT vintage stuff waiting to be ditched into the MLT Club while brewing up even more potent new substances that run the possibility of getting you even more hooked. Sorry, David!
We hope you’ll find lots of like-minded people here, and we thank you for the enthusiasm and support! We’re glad to have you on board.
We felt so flattered by the “Time’s Are A Changing” MLT version. Thank you for that!
Remember, if you’ve got any questions, you can ask us over at “Ask The MonaLisa Twins”. Other than that, we simply hope you enjoy yourself here and say thanks again for joining the Club!
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Bonjour, Ciao, Hallo and Welcome, Angelo!
What a fun mix of cultural backgrounds in just one person, we loved your introduction! We want to say a big welcome and even bigger thank you for entering the virtual walls of this humble abode, the MLT Club.
“Drive My Car” has introduced a lot of new people to our music recently, and we’re so glad you were amongst them and decided to click on the next video and the next … until you ended up here 😉
Our dad and step-mum just read your message too, and we all appreciate what you said about us.
Lots of peace, love and groovy greetings from Liverpool to the beautiful Alps!
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No problem Howard as long as the software just puts it in the bin and doesn’t delete it completely 🙂
Regarding video quality. Just a few minutes before I was wondering about the complete opposite. Why are so many older but important music film recordings only available in horrible quality. O.K. video was bad back then and you can do very little about it now but film? Film has and had actually stellar quality and with a good scanning system it provides up to 4k quality easily. But obviously few people who own this film footage find it worthwhile to invest in scanning and making it publicly available. Lucky you found some!
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Restored 🙂
