La Repubblica have a story (Google translation) and pictures about a 30-something guy who flew from Costa Rica to Fiumicino airport in Rome with a guitar (a black Squier Strat, with the label still on the scratchplate) and 10 thermos flasks in his luggage. The customs official noticed white powder leaking out of the guitar which tested positive for cocaine. Cocaine in solution was also found in the thermos flasks - a total of €2.5m worth. (Yes, there's some weird photoshop action in the first photo, not sure what that's about). Seems music-related smuggling is fairly popular: NY Times has half a pound of heroin in a guitar, and this chap 19kg of coke in three guitar amps 'bought while wandering around the shops in Trinidad', and these jokers wanted to stuff a piano with E and coke and bring it over from Holland. (Thanks, Paolo)
Posted by Tom Whitwell.
Comments:
I think we now know the reason behind the Chinese democracy delays..
Most of the members of the quite legendary rock band Phoenix escaped Ceausescu's Romania in 1977 by hiding inside their (disembowelled) Marshall amps...
The photoshopping may simply have been done by the newspaper to save paying for the brand logo on the cup. It's the same as blurring out the Nike swoosh.
As far as the photoshopping being just to blur the cup logo... though that is definitely true in some cases... I dunno. The whole cup looks badly shopped in. As does that incredibly tiny Squire guitar with strange white edges... and possibly even the blue bag and the (guitar?) bag under the tiny little guitar. I don't think that guitar being cut open is a Squire. Having seen, and owned a black Squire strat, I can say that I've never seen a Squire with the pickup spacing fit to single coil pickups. It is more like a larger space cut out, if not just a big rectangle straight up and down, at least big enough to hold a humbucker. That and if you look at the cocaine guitar picture, the screw holes for a strat pick guard arn't there,and why are there six holes drilled for the strings? Strats don't use that kind of bridge.
The story seems to be legit, the cup in the first photo is definitely a hoax though. I don´t think the newspaper did that, the logo on the cup belongs to a Costa Rican soccer team, my bet is followers of the rival team put the cup in the pic.
What about drums full of hashish from India? :) http://www.lenta.ru/news/2007/10/23/drum/ Google translation: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lenta.ru%2Fnews%2F2007%2F10%2F23%2Fdrum%2F&langpair=ru%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8
I once played on a gig in a prison. Out personal bags were completely checked, but out chevy van completely filled with amps, speakers, cable bags, instruments etc were not checked at all. We were flabb'd because we could have brought anything we would have liked into that prison. Amazing. Fortunately, we were honest guys, not planning anything and perhaps they saw that. But a weird feeling.
: 7:26 pm