All righty, here goes... scans of picks with my historical blatherings:
Mike Amott - I got this from him after the Arch Enemy set.
Smyth & Peterson - I got these after the set. Don't think they were used.
Alex Skolnick - I got this from the man himself. What a show...
Wrathchild/Souls At Zero - In 2003
(a week after my honeymoon - no wonder my wife wants to kill me) I signed the lease on the space that used to be Oz Studios in Baltimore, MD. Seemed to me like it was meant to be since this was sitting on a speaker stand in the control room on my first visit to check out the place.
Kenny Hickey - After the show I asked Kenny's guitar tech for a pick. He kinda snarled at me, then relented. He came over and said if I got him a shot of Jack Daniel's he'd give me a pick. When I gave him his shot, he peeled this tape off of one of Kenny's guitars. You can see his hair that got stuck to it during the show...
Sebastian Marino - Summer of '96 Overkill played a few small shows for a local promoter. They played Cumberland, MD (where I grew up...) and Pittsburg, PA with Obliveon and The Spudmonsters. I was hell-bent to check out Obliveon since I had been blasting their Cybervoid CD all summer... I became good friends with Martin (and the rest of the guys) and stayed with him a few times in Montreal to check out some shows over the years. Anyhow, I swiped this pick out of Sebby's rack drawer while they were setting up.
Jay Abbene - Jay handed me this pick out of his pocket at some dump in Frederick, MD. I was under 21 at the time so I couldn't get in. A few of us moshed it up out on the sidewalk since the stage was right on the other side of the window.
Rick Hunolt - My 2nd Exodus show - the first being the crazy nutfest in Milwaukee earlier that summer. Paul Baloff jumped off the stage at the end of the show and broke his ankle. He still signed my fucking CD with his foot propped up.
Jeff Loomis & Curran Murphy - Same show as the pick from Mike Amott. My first Nevermore show. They played DNB all the way through and then played some old shit, too.
Jeff Loomis - I saw Nevermore twice on their tour with In Flames. The first time - like a week into the tour, Jeff said he only had three picks to last him all the way thru the U.S. and Europe so he couldn't give me one. I saw them again a few weeks later and came prepared... As Nevermore were taking the stage I gave Jeff a nearly full bag of these suckers. I kept one and had him sign it after the show.
Jason Rainey - Sacred Reich headlined my first club show experience. They (as well as SAZ, also on the bill) signed my old shitty Washburn guitar. I still have it - it's since been signed by all of Savatage & Type O Negative as well.
Scott Ian - Remember my Obliveon story? One of my Quebec visits was when Anthrax headlined the Polliwog festival. I watched most of Anthrax's set from behind the side-fill stage left -- except for the part where I did my 300-lb stage dive during Bring the Noise. Scott set this pick on top of his rig after the encore. I snagged it.
D.D. Verni - same tour as the one from Marino. D.D. gave me this one himself.
Geezer - I got lost on the way to the show in Pittsburgh. I got there just in time to see Geezer throw a pick - which I found on the floor later. A few nights later they played Jaxx so we took a drive. This was the last show of the tour so it was definitely not one to be missed. If you weren't there then you missed: Roy Z. playing guitar with a banana, me singing with Clark from Geezer, about a zillion Maiden songs, including "The Prisoner" during which, for reasons still unknown to me, Bruce took my glasses right off of my face and stood up on the monitor making silly faces. To make it fair, he did hand me the mic so I could offer up my rendition of the 2nd chorus... Somehow during all of that I managed to get picks from everyone. The one of the far right was used most of the set. The middle one I snagged off the mic stand.
Some things you just can't miss. Savatage said they were playing two shows before doing a European tour. With our last pennies we rented a car and got ourselves to New Jersey. It was worth it - even when you consider that we had to sit through Murder One.
The TSO picks are from the Meet & Greet after the show.
Note Chris Caffery's green pick is different than his white one. The green pick is shaped exactly like the steel picks that he actually uses live. These are his throwaway picks. It's hard to get one of his steel picks...
Miika Tenkula - Don't get me started on this. First, Sentenced are advertised to play one day and then they get switched to the other day AFTER we got our tickets. A phone call to Jack Koshick supposedly straightened that out. We get to the show and they don't remember the call. It turns out the guy at the window actually is Jack Koshick and he did remember - he just wanted to be a dick, I guess. So we get in, hang out, check out what we can in the giant concrete tomb which has bands playing SIDE BY SIDE with a fucking baseball backstop-style canvas divider between stages. The list says Sentenced his headlining one of the main stages. We get there in plenty of time but there is some unintelligible black metal coming from the stage. For long after Sentenced are scheduled to go on. Finally they get to play. Two songs in, they're just getting going... Nepenthe rocks... then they start another one. And the plug gets pulled. Just like that. All the way from Finland to play a fucking show and they get 2 and a half songs. I asked Miika for a pick and he went to grab one out of his rack. He was on his way back to me when a security guard started shoving me toward the door. Miika hopped the table and slapped the pick into my palm saying, "Thanks for coming."
Fuck Jack Koshick.
Nuno - The first pick is from the Waiting for the Punchline tour. They were playing little clubs and they fucking rocked. They ended with "Play with Me" which had Nuno screaming at Mike Mangini "SLOW DOWN!!!!" as they headed for the solo.
The other two are from the 3 Sides tour. I shoved my way up front and caught Nuno's pick after "Cupid's Dead." Not sure when Pat threw his but I snatched it out of the air, too.
Testament - Imagine my surprise when Chuck hands me a fucking pick... I think I got one from Glen, too, but if I did it was a green Dunlop tortex .88mm and buddy, lemme tell ya... I have a ton of those. The only one I'm POSITIVE about is the one Jeff Walker gave me.
I already told my story about the James Murphy pick in another thread.
Same show Loomis was down to 3 picks, Jon Donais gave me this one.
Dave Larue positively SAILED this pick halfway across the room at the 9:30 club. No such luck with any Petrucci picks. Although I'm certain they just turn into little dust particles...
And finally... the Motley Crue picks. I'll never get close enough to get one of these in person. I refuse to pay their stupid $500 surcharge for front row seats. Doesn't mean they don't still rock, loud as all fucking get out... I think I paid $5 or $10 for these on Ebay.
I've got some more I didn't dig out to scan - mostly stuck into the CD's they're associated with. Satriani, Carcass, Living Colour...
ryan
