The Birthday Party – “Nick the Stripper”
Played By: Rowland S. Howard
It takes real devilish intent to strum the open
strings of an unfretted guitar in standard
tuning and make it sound horrific. Of
course to achieve this, it doesn’t hurt to be
wrapped in ripped leather and have a face
of tortured beauty that billows out endless
clouds of unholy smoke. Enter Rowland S.
Howard—the torturer of the white Jaguar.
His childlike indifference to the punishment
he is administering to both axe and audience
is akin to an experienced interrogator grown
bored of bloodletting. The noise he makes
is both great and terrible, creating an aura
of depravity that is somehow beautiful to
our base beings. In “Nick the Stripper,”
Rowland tickles, scratches and stabs to
the lurching pendulum swing of dark carny
jazz arrangements. A burbling, drunken
orchestral section splutters death throws
under his hellish etchings like a lung-cancerridden brass band of clowns blowing rotten
cotton candy into their horns and gumming
up any good intentions with sickly sticky
evil. For Rowland’s singular sinister tone,
24
TONE TALK //
there is only one pedal that matters: the
Reuss RSH-03 Rowland S. Howard Pedal.
It is essentially two vintage-correct MXR
pedals in one box—a Distortion+ and a Blue
Box. Whack that into a Fender Twin, crank
up the reverb and transport your tone to a
“prison of sound” in which you can do what
you like to your captives.
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