17 December 21 - 27, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents GEAR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW Thieves ring a sour note for Dallas musicians. BY CHRISTIAN MCPHATE W hen she was a child, the first guitar Leigh Lane from Rosegarden Fu- neral Party picked up was an origi- nal Fender Jazzmaster, demonic red in color. A floating bridge with an anchored tailpiece design, the original 1960s version, known as the “Jazz Bomb,” also had a floating vibrato, tremolo locking system and dis- tinctive single-coil pickups that Fender claimed it wired into an entirely new control layout. The Jazzmaster was popular with under- ground bands throughout the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s as they shifted from punk and new wave to alternative, grunge and indie. Portis- head’s Adrian Utley, the Cure’s Robert Smith and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke all played one. Elvis Costello saw one in a store window and thought it was a “Strat that somebody had cut a bit off,” he told Fender in a 2008 video. “I went in and tried it out, and it certainly played better than my guitar, so I traded a brand-new guitar in for … I have no idea of the vintage of the one I have.” Lane thought the one she picked up cer- tainly played better and recalled thinking, “Wow, I could really be a good guitar player.” On Reverb, an original 1967 Fender Jazz- master with a blond-ash body in excellent condition sells for $12,500 while a Lake Placid blue color goes for $20,000. Curvy like a Stratocaster, though longer and heavier because of their offset-waist body, they sell at prices that many aspiring guitar players couldn’t afford. Lane picked up a reissue Jazzmaster in the same color. Fender Japan had reintro- duced the Jazzmaster in 1986 as a vintage- style 1962 reissue model and manufactured it until 1999. The reissue Jazzmaster price ranges from $800 to $1,300 online. “I loved that guitar,” Lane said. “Every gui- tar is unique, especially when you’re dealing with vintage. … I still miss that Jazzmaster.” As part of the post-punk band Rosegar- den Funeral Party, Lane began making waves with her Jazzmaster and a few other guitars in her early 20s. A guitarist, song- writer and vocalist, she was joined onstage by drummer Dylan Stamas, bassist Will Far- rier and keyboardist Michael Ortega. Rosegarden Funeral Party began garner- ing thousands of views on YouTube and plays on Spotify and touring all around the country. The Dallas Observer showcased Lane in March 2018 as one of the “8 Female DFW Artists Who’ve Taken a Sledgeham- mer to the Glass Ceiling” and again a month later as part of the “7 DFW Musicians Who Are Killing the Game but Are Still Too Young To Buy Alcohol.” Fueled by her Jazzmaster and a JC120 Jazz Chorus Amp, Lane used two pedal boards with more than 15 vintage pedals that she said were integral to her sound. It was one that fans praised online. “So many excellent things about this band! Such pure talent!!! Live show was amazing,” wrote @saraphinehurley4794 in late 2022, ending her comment with several hearts. “You guys are blowing everyone away. Fucking amazing work friends, keep go- ing!!!” @ockhamstaser wrote in a 2021 post. In late July 2021, the dream Lane had been building with Rosegarden Funeral Party was interrupted by a thief. “So, I lost it all,” Lane said. “My whole rig.” The Dallas police valued Lane’s stolen gear at $10,000. Lane had spent her lifetime collecting it, getting it in trade to create the band’s signature sound. In 2021, Lane’s experience was shared by 130 other musicians who reported their gear stolen in Dallas, according to police data. Be- tween 2017 and 2021, Dallas police took 826 reports of stolen musical equipment. Last year, 131 stolen gear reports were filed. “Trends we are seeing, specifically in the Central Patrol Division, include an increase in vehicle burglaries mainly happening dur- ing the early morning hours and on week- ends,” said Michael Dennis, a Dallas police public information officer. With the Christmas holiday around the corner, larceny and robbery crimes are poised to see their normal 20% spike in De- cember, the National Crime Victimization Survey reports. “But for me,” Lane said, “to be in my mid- twenties and staring at the barrel of a $10,000 loss and realizing there was no way for me to earn that back and earn my gear back, it was really terrifying.” Lane was familiar with Dallas musi- cians’ ongoing battle with gear thieves. Sto- len gear isn’t a rare occurrence or anything new. Terrifying stories of stolen gear live on sites like Reddit, Facebook and X, from Bob Dylan’s stolen Gibson J-50N in the 1960s to Sonic Youth’s stolen gear the night before a highly anticipated performance in the late ’90s at the “Ain’t No Picnic” festival in Los Angeles. Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page was so distraught over his guitar’s theft in the early ’70s that he bought an ad for the missing guitar, known as “Black Beauty,” and had it run in Rolling Stone magazine for a year. “There were so many points in the journey where it could’ve gone missing — at the original airport, at customs, at the airport in Canada — but all I knew was that it wasn’t there, and in those days, nobody could trace it,” Page told Guitar World in August 2021. “We played the concert in Montreal, and there was still no news on the electric guitar. It had evaporated.” It’s still difficult for police to trace stolen equipment today. It’s not as if a black market exists for musical instruments, Robert K. Wittman, a retired FBI agent and founder of the bureau’s Art Crime Team, told Strings magazine in April 2019. Instead, criminals who steal gear are opportunists. They see value and strike. “They’re not interested in playing the in- strument, that I can assure you,” Wittman pointed out in Strings. “What they’re inter- ested in doing is trying to make a quick flip and make as much money as they can off it.” Over the years, that quick flip occurred at pawn shops. No questions about the why be- hind the sale. A quick inspection by the clerk, followed by an offer, usually far lower than the value of the item. “We usually don’t question people,” an employee at Uncle Dan’s Pawnshop in Dallas told the Observer. “We don’t want to accuse them.” To pawn an instrument still requires a form of identification that investigators could trace if an item is reported stolen. It will be flagged when the serial number is entered into the system, the employee from Uncle Dan’s said. Serial numbers and pictures of gear are good to have when you need to file a police re- port. But here lately, there has been an increase in thieves selling stolen property online in- stead of at a pawn shop, Dallas police reported. Sites like Craigslist and Facebook do have policies that prohibit people from selling stolen property or property with serial num- bers altered or removed. Listing it, however, doesn’t require a serial number. Lane had taken steps to secure her van to prevent her gear from being stolen. She had outfitted it with cages in the back, plywood and a divider between the front and back of the van. She also added security cameras as an extra precaution. The security cameras were an important addition, according to Dallas police. With- out surveillance footage or eyewitnesses, Dallas police said it’s challenging for inves- tigators to find and identify suspects. “I do have ‘Fort Knox’ on the van,” Lane said. It wasn’t enough. Vera “Velma” Hernandez ▼ Music Leah Lane of Rosegarden Funeral Party loved her Fender Jazzmaster guitar. It was stolen in 2021. >> p18
