Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Pink Floyd and EMI have been locked in a legal battle over the digital sales of the Floyd’s catalog on services like iTunes. Pink Floyd has argued their contract, signed before the era of digital downloads, requires the band’s approval to sell individual tracks. At stake is £10M ($15M USD) in unpaid royalties.
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Last night was Oscar night and one of the films up for a bunch of awards was Crazy Heart. It’s a story about Bad Blake, a minor country and western legend with a chain-smoking habit, penchant for heavy drinking and a streak of bad choices. The movie features a song called The Weary Kind that was written by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham and performed by Ryan Bingham.
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Looking to improve your chops, hang out with a famous guitarist and a host of other great musicians all in the beautiful setting of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York? Well Dweezilla just might be the ticket for you. Coming up this summer Dweezil Zappa and friends are hosting a boot camp for musicians at the Full Moon Resort.
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Gibson has decided to get into the mobile app game and released their first effort with the “Gibson Guitar App“. The app features a tuner that can handle chromatic as well as open tunings, a metronome with tap tempo, chord charts and video lessons. After playing around with the app for a little while we’ve found it’s best feature to be it’s price - free.
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
Here’s a couple of videos of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck from the Madison Square Garden show in New York City on Feb 18th, 2010. Jeff Beck took the stage first and performed a set that featured songs off his upcoming April album. Clapton then followed with his own set that started off acoustic and then went electric and featured his classics. At the end of the show both players got on stage together to play. One song featured was Henry Mancini’s “Moon River”. Here’s a video of the band working on Moon River at sound check.
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
We are unabashed fans of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings. The five albums that Johnny Cash recorded with Rick Rubin (and the 5 disc boxed set created in addition to that material) are considered by many to be the best recordings of Cash’s career. While the albums had some original material, it was Cash’s covers of some all time classic recordings that really got our attention. In particular, we love Cash’s versions of Neil Diamond’s Solitary Man and U2’s One. Read on for soundclips.
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Here’s a cool article from MusicRadar about Dave Grohl and Josh Homme on how they approach guitar playing. We thought it was particularly interesting to hear how Grohl thinks about the guitar.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
We noticed recently that guitarist Eric Clapton has announced the date and lineup of this year’s Crossroads Festival. It’s going to be in Chicago on June 26th and it’s unlikely we’ll be able to make the trip out there. Which then had us asking what other guitar related festivals are going down this year? We’ve done a little poking around and here’s a few we’ve found that might be in your neck of the woods. (more…)
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Like a lot of people, we were pretty disappointed last year when Martin Guitar stopped manufacturing the Martin 000-15s as a standard model. The all-mahogany (or sometimes sapele) slothead was a beauty that harkens back to an earlier time. Sure, we weren’t crazy about the tuning pegs or the decal rosette but for an all-mahogany (and sometimes sapele) small-bodied guitar from Martin, what could you expect for $1,249 street price? Yes, you can expect even more. (more…)
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Surf guitar legend Dick Dale has another new signature guitar from Fender called the Malibu SCE. The new acoustic-electric was designed right along with Dick Dale himself and comes in a color described by Fender as “Surfin’ Red”. Dick Dale also has the Fender Dick Dale Signature Stratocaster.
