Paul McCartney 'to retire from long and winding road'
Paul McCartney could be about to hang up his bass guitar and embark on a huge farewell tour, according to reports.
An unnamed source told the Sun that the former Beatle is currently looking at staging big gigs in countries such as China and Brazil over the next year.
The insider suggested that these dates could form part of an extensive world tour which would herald his retirement from full-tilt gigging.
"He realises that the older he gets, the less his body will be able to cope with the demands of extended periods on the road," the source continued.
However, the insider added that Sir Paul is not ruling out the option of playing occasional live shows after the tour ends, as he would be prepared to appear at "the odd benefit gig".
Matthew Fisher wins his battle to be recognised as co-writer on the song
Procol Harum member Matthew Fisher has won a court case to be named the official co-writer of the band's classic 1967 song 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale'.
Fisher claims he wrote the song's organ melody, and Law Lords today (July 30) ruled that he is entitled to his share of future royalties from the song.
In 2006, the High Court ruled that the organist was entitled to 40 per cent of royalties from the song. However, royalties were reverted to Procol Harum frontman Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid in 2008, after the Court Of Appeal ruled that Fisher had waited too long – 38 years – to make his claim.
Speaking of the case, Lord Neuberger said Fisher had repeatedly asked Brooker and Reid if he could have a share in the rights to the record, only to be "rebuffed or ignored".
According to lawyers, the case marks the first time the Law Lords have been asked to rule on a copyright dispute involving a song, reports the BBC.
Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine will undergo surgery on Thursday to mend his injured back and neck.
In a blog posting, the singer reveals he has been suffering excruciating pain and will check into hospital this week for an operation to fix damaged vertebrae in time for the band's upcoming tour, which kicks off in September (09).
Mustaine will then undergo more serious surgery later in the year, when the roadshow is over.
He writes, "I have been working with a very badly damaged neck and the few lower vertebrae, right beneath my neck in between my shoulders, is damaged too. What I have currently injured, and am requiring the start of what could be a very quick and painless procedure. I would work my a** off to heal again, like I did with my arm injury, and should be back in the saddle in no time.
"I will have to get a much more complicated procedure done, between my shoulders, after I get back from this year's touring which will end sometime short of the Christmas holidays.
"I am asking for you to please send some prayers, and good thoughts my way on Thursday morning at 10.30am PST, July 30."
The Oklahoman's Gene Triplett recently talked to Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry about a variety of topics, including the rocker's knee replacement, the effect of video games on the band's popularity and new music.
Perry, who turns 59 on Sept. 10, had to have an artificial knee put in last year in order to keep on playing and touring with Aerosmith. Along with his knee replacement, a series of injuries and illnesses suffered by his bandmates have delayed the recording of their new studio album to fall.
But Perry, who is one of my personal guitar heroes, told Gene that the band is continuing to reach fans, including a whole new generation of music lovers, with "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith."
"Actually, we've sold three times as many games as we did on the last couple of Aerosmith records," he told Gene. "There are a lot of songs on the game that are studio cuts that don't get played on the radio, so it's almost like havin' a new record out there."
Perry also has recorded a solo album with his on-the-side band, The Joe Perry Project; that record is due out in September.
Rob Thomas has cited Australian rockers INXS as a major influence on one of his latest songs.
The Matchbox Twenty frontman, who is currently promoting his second solo album, recently joined the surviving members of the band to add vocals to a version of one of their old tracks.
But the musical link between the two acts apparently extends further, as Thomas has admitted to borrowing the electric guitar riff from INXS's Need You Tonight on his latest record.
"I told them right up front 'I want to say that I hope you guys don't mind I completely tried to rip you off'," he told the Daily Telegraph.
The track in question - Give Me The Meltdown - appears on his new album Cradlesong.
Thomas' collaboration with INXS is not the first time he has worked with other artists, as he famously worked with electric guitar legend Carlos Santana on the hit record Smooth.
has revealed that she finds it hard to name her all-time favourite guitar player, as she admires so many different people.
It's hard to pick my favourite guitarist, says Armatrading
Speaking to the Independent, the veteran musician stated that she is a big fan of many guitarists from a wide variety of genres.
For instance, former Dire Straits electric guitar player Mark Knopfler was singled out as a particular favourite, along with folk-baroque guitarist Bert Jansch.
Armatrading also named Russell Lissack of Bloc Party as another of her first choices, partly because of the way he uses guitar effects pedals.
"A good guitarist uses that technology with taste and restraint, to extend what a guitar can do," she commented.
"It's more than just showing off."
Armatrading is perhaps best known for her hits including Love And Affection, Drop the Pilot and Me Myself And I.
She is currently hosting a five-part BBC Radio 4 programme in which she talks about some of her favourite guitarists.
However, the musician noted that a comprehensive list of those she admires the most would have gone on "for miles".
Gibson Guitar Offers Hotels Guests A Way to Channel Their Inner Rock Stars
Hard Rock Hotel Chicago is giving guests the chance to debut their inner rock star in the privacy of their hotel rooms, without the worry of disturbing fellow hotel guests in the process. On the eve of the ever-popular Lollapalloza Music Festival, Hard Rock Chicago is teaming up with guitar-maker Gibson to launch its exclusive "Check-In, Rock Out" program in the Windy City.
Upon arrival, guests will have the opportunity to check out a variety of top-of-the-line guitars from Gibson. As an added value, guests can take a Gibson guitar back to their room complete with a pod and ear phones, to discretely plug in and rock out.
"The Hard Rock brand is synonymous with rock and roll," says John Price, general manager of Hard Rock Hotel Chicago. "We are very excited to partner with Gibson Guitar to introduce this unique guest program just in time for Lollapalooza. We anticipate many of our guests will enjoy having the opportunity to rock out in their rooms with the very best guitars. This really is a phenomenal pairing of two cool brands for one very cool experience."
The Hard Rock Hotel Chicago is the second hotel in the nation and the first in the Midwest to offer Check-In, Rock Out. Featuring some of its most coveted guitars, including the Gibson Angus Young Signature SG, Gibson Les Paul Standard Goldtop and Gibson ES-335 Cherry, guests staying at Hard Rock Chicago can plug in and play during their stay to channel their inner rock star. To keep the dream alive, Hard Rock and Gibson will offer the opportunity for guests to purchase these guitar models through an approved retailer.
A guitar on display at the Bay Area World Guitar Show at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall in San Rafael glows in a spotlight on Saturday. (Special to the IJ/Alan Dep) Rob Szupak is a semi-retired contractor itching to become a fully retired contractor. For the past three years, the 62-year-old Fairfax resident has been restoring vintage lap steel guitars and tube amplifiers and reselling them, hoping to earn enough of a living to make that his primary source of income.
Szupak's entry into the guitar market just happened to coincide with the biggest economic downturn in decades, a recession that has sent guitar prices plummeting as much as 50 percent in some cases. Szupak is one of the 40 vendors displaying their wares at the Bay Area World Guitar Show, taking place this weekend at the Marin Civic Center Exhibit Hall.
"It's one of those things like sailboats, when the economy goes down, people just Vendor Kennard Machol holds his Gibson Gold Sparkle L2 guitar at the Bay Area World Guitar Show at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall in San Rafael on Saturday. (Special to the IJ/Alan Dep) aren't spending money on guitars and amps like they used to," said Szupak, whose company is called Slide Zone. "I've been watching my favorite instruments in the world becoming less valuable over the years."
Vendors throughout the exhibit hall floor said they'd reduced their prices across their inventory. Show organizer Larry Briggs said that although price cuts have hurt vendors, consumer interest remained high, even if fewer attendees were leaving with a purchased guitar in hand. He said he expected more than 1,500 attendees, on par with the same two-day event in Marin a year ago.
"It's all coincided with people seeing the value of their home drop and their 401Ks going out the window," said Briggs, a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma who Advertisement puts on eight guitars shows a year in the U.S., including two in Marin. "People that were making money were spending it on guitars. Now that their nest egg has been taken away in many cases, they're not. But the opportunities to buy are certainly better now."
"People just aren't spending money these days," said Gary Garcia, a Sacramento builder of handmade guitars, including one he made two years ago for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the request of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who Vendor Eric Schoenberg of Schoenberg Guitars in Tiburon plays his Epiphone Recording guitar from the late 1920s at the Bay Area World Guitar Show at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall in San Rafael on Saturday, July 25, 2009. (Special to the IJ/Alan Dep) gave it to Blair as a reirement present. "They're more likely to hold onto what they already have, so there's a lot more repair business now."
While the bursting of the real estate bubble certainly impacted the guitar market, many vendors said some guitars had a bubble of their own. High-end electric guitars, particularly vintage models from the 1950s and 1960s, exploded in price earlier this decade, and have subsequently taken the biggest hit. Bob Danielson of Schoenberg Guitars in Tiburon said the boom was sparked in part by a front page Wall Street Journal article 10 years ago that highlighted the value of vintage guitars as an investment.
"All of a sudden all of these novices who weren't players or collectors started buying vintage A.D. Osborne of South Lake Tahoe watches as friend Tony Naccarato tries out a guitar at the Bay Area World Guitar Show at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall in San Rafael on Saturday. (Special to the IJ/Alan Dep) guitars--that drove the market to insanity," Danielson said. "You had people calling into dealers saying, 'what's my guitar worth today?' They were treating it like the stock market. That really made it crazy, but it's getting back to normal."
For instance, a 1957 Les Paul Gibson that may have commanded $200,000 a year ago would likely fetch $150,000 today, according to Vintage Guitar magazine's annual price guide.
The other end of the market is vastly improved, Danielson said. Entry-level guitars are cheaper and better quality than ever, and the demand remains high. To respond to that trend, Rich King, whose store, Guitar Maniacs, is based in Tacoma, Washington, took many of his guitars worth $30,000 or greater and sold them, using One of hundreds of guitars on display at the Bay Area World Guitar Show at the Marin County Civic Center Exhibition Hall on Saturday. (Special to the IJ/Alan Dep) that revenue to buy more guitars in the $200 to $2,000 price range. "It's all about how low will people go," he said.
King said the Marin show is typically "softer" than other shows. While he sold 32 guitars at a show in Dallas in April, he hadn't sold one by late afternoon Saturday. Szupak was in equally unfortunate company. He said he remains hopeful that business will pick up. "But I'm hanging onto that optimism with my fingernails right now," he said.
A rare set of lyrics thought to have been written by John Lennon while he was in The Beatles have gone on public display in Liverpool.
The lyrics, which you can read by scrolling down, have baffled Beatles fans, who are unable to fathom when they were written.
They are on show as part of Lennon's first wife Cynthia and son Julian's White Feather: The Spirit of Lennon exhibition, which has been created in conjunction with the Beatles Story attraction.
The lyrics read: "Little girl I've come to stay/And this time I just have to say/ I love you/If she turns you down and you're rejected/Try again the best you can/Call to see her when you're least expected/Tell her now she'll understand."
Beatles Story curator Ann Darby believed that the lyrics could date from around 1966.
"When the lyrics came up for auction over ten years ago, the auctioneers Sotheby's estimated they were written in 1966," he said. "This seems to be based on the fact that some of the lyrics are written on a note sent to George Harrison by some Japanese fans. The Beatles played in Japan that year, but this could of course be a coincidence."
Julian Lennon has also given his view on his father's mysterious lyrics, hinting that he may try to use them in one of his own songs in the future.
"I don't believe the lyrics have been used anywhere," he explained. "If the time was right, if it felt right, then I would consider looking at the lyrics and maybe trying to work with them and write something. But obviously only in honour of Dad. I guess in some respect it would be like coming home."
White Feather: The Spirit of Lennon takes place at Liverpool's Pier Head until December 31
Jack White has said he will open up his band The White Stripes' archives to fans who sign up for his new subscription service The Vault.
The guitarist, who is also a member of The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather, recently launched the service to offer exclusive content including videos and music of bands he is involved in, as well as sending physical releases to those who have signed up.
The service costs $20 (£12) per month for premium membership.
Speaking of the new service, which will also offer ticket presale for the bands' shows, he told BBC Newsbeat: "They [subscribers] will get vaulted footage from the past that no one has seen or ever posted on YouTube before.
"The White Stripes alone have incredible amounts of footage and recordings of shows from the last decade."
White added that he may even pay a visit to some subscribers to drop off vinyl releases – to take a stand against the popularity of digital downloading.
"Some members are getting into shows before anyone else now just by lottery," he said. "Some might get rare records randomly sent to them via mail order (or handed to them by me even!). Some are getting records that they will resell on eBay if they want to."
Meanwhile, The White Stripes are set to release a documentary, 'Under Great White Northern Lights', featuring footage of the band's 2007 tour of Canada, later this year.
Legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen is recovering after undergoing surgery on his injured hand.
The Van Halen star sought out specialists after the pain he first experienced in two of his fingers at the end of the band's last tour, worsened.
The experts initially suspected arthritis, but then diagnosed a bone spur, twisted tendon and a cyst in the joint of his left thumb.
He tells RollingStone.com, "During the last leg of our tour, I started developing pain in my thumb and my pinky. I didn't think much of it at the time. It got progressively worse to the point that about three months ago, I wasn't able to play at all. My pinky and my thumb were totally locked up and felt like there was something broken.
"They said the only way to fix it was surgery, which of course scared the s**t out of me, but I was told it was the only way to fix it."
Speaking after the operation, Van Halen hailed it a "success", adding, "Now I just have to let it heal. I am totally jazzed that they found the problem, fixed it and in about four months my hand will feel like I am 18 again. Thank God."
John Oates, the curly coifed half of the best-selling pop duo Hall & Oates, can remember the exact day and time that he removed his iconic facial hair.
"I did it in Tokyo after we did a John Lennon Tribute concert," he told Billboard.com earlier this week. "I realized that if I was going to go on with my life and evolve in some way as a person, I just had to leave that guy behind. And so the shedding of the mustache is symbolic in a way and very important too."
But as it turns out, Oates' mustache didn't disappear down the drain - it simply went into hibernation. Now the famous follicles have returned as the star of a new cartoon series, "J-stache," that made its public premiere on the comedy website funnyordie.com and on the mustache's blog, jstache.com, on July 21.
As previously reported, independent publisher Primary Wave Music Publishing, which owns a majority stake in most of the biggest hits in the Hall & Oates catalog, is shopping a deal for "J-Stache" that further illustrates the dichotomy. As laid out in the online trailer, Oates is portrayed as a modern-day family man and finds himself enticed back to the rock star life by his mustache, which is voiced by comedian Dave Attell.
"Attell's great because he's really hard and he's real cynical and really nasty," Oates said. "The mustache is definitely the villain in the cartoon."
In the trailer, Oates is in his cartoon house (which he says is actually pretty close to exactly the way his real house looks), having a conversation as though he's talking to his musical partner Daryl, but the gag is that it's really not; it's the mustache. The mustache is an independent character that has a whole other agenda.
Primary Wave is currently in negotiation with several networks who are interested in distribution and broadcast rights for the series. The band's music plays a role in all of the story lines too. In fact, the music was the main reasons the series came to fruition.
"One of the motivations is to find another avenue to expose the catalogue to a younger generation and a whole new group of people who might not necessarily be completely aware of the depth and breadth of Hall and Oates," he said. "It was a way we thought we could really get into the catalogue in a cool, new approach to exposing the catalogue to a whole new audience."
But does the obnoxious, beer-swilling, skirt-chasing mustache of the cartoon really represent the John Oates of yore?
"Let's put it this way," Oates said. "I wasn't the guy I am today and I never want to be the guy that had the mustache. I evolved. I shed my skin."
Playing guitar for your favorite band is usually only possible in video games. But for one fan, Green Day made his dream a reality when they yanked him out of the crowd and thrust a guitar into his hand—and check this, he was actually great!
Derek Hensinger, 22 from Macungie, Pa., probably never thought that his guitar skills in his band Bang Diesel would come into use at the Green Day Concert.
But at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on Wednesday night singer Billie Joe Armstrong grabbed Hensinger and gave him the opportunity of a lifetime, to play with the band, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The extremely entertaining show was made even better by the surprise fan guitarist. The crowd waited in anticipation to see if this young 22-year- old would be able to pull it off.
And he did, with flying colors. "Jesus of Suburbia" was brought to life as the talented, singing guitarist took over the stage. He was so amazing that he might as well have been in the band.
Hensinger posted the video of his debut on Youtube-of course his friends caught his moment on camera.
The mind blown kid explains a couple things upfront, "One, this wasn't scripted, it was all spur-the-moment. Two, I'm actually playing the guitar here," Hensinger explains on Youtube.com.
So one question remains. Is Hensinger getting a gig, Green Day?
wired.com David Kravets of www.wired.com reports that a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of uploading pre-release Guns N' Roses tracks was handed one year probation and two months' home confinement Tuesday after agreeing to cooperate with the Recording Industry Association of America to produce an anti-piracy message.
Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site -- antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released in November and reached No. 3 in the charts.
Cogill faced a maximum of a year in prison. The authorities, however, originally were demanding six months, claiming the amount of infringement equaled $371,000. The higher the number, the longer the potential prison term.
According to court documents, after Cogill agreed to help produce an anti-piracy public service address with the RIAA, the government withdrew the $371,000 figure and agreed not to fine him. Los Angeles federal authorities in March said the figure was a "reasonable estimate" that gave the defendant the "benefit of the doubt." The calculations, the government said, were based on each downloaded Guns N' Roses track being worth 99 cents on iTunes.
As part of the 28-year-old Cogill's guilty plea in December, he informed the authorities that he received the music online and unsolicited -- a confession prosecutors said might pave the way for more "targets" to be prosecuted.
Cogill uploaded nine songs from the 14-track album on June 18, 2008. Court records show he confessed to the FBI. The case was cracked by an investigator with the RIAA.
In March, the RIAA said it believed the infringement amounted to $2.2 million. The record labels said it would accept $30,000, instead of $2.2 million, if Cogill "was willing to participate in a public service announcement designed to educate the public that music piracy is illegal."
Prosecutor Kevin Missakian said in a telephone interview that the public address will either be a radio or television message of "Kevin talking about the importance of protecting copyright holders' rights in their songs and movies."
Missakian added that the government was "satisfied" with the sentence, but "the government had asked for some jail time in hopes of sending a stronger message."
760kfmb.com A broken guitar is proving to be a blessing in disguise for one musician. Dave Carroll posted a video on YouTube after United Airlines broke his Taylor guitar and refused to pay to fix it. Today Carroll visited the Taylor factory in El Cajon.
Dave Carroll is an overnight sensation, and it only took 20 years of hard work and a broken guitar to get there. Carroll watched in horror as his prized possession took a beating from baggage claim handlers in Chicago.
Carroll tried to get United to pay the $2,100 he spent to fix the guitar, but for nine months United sent him in circles before finally rejecting his claim all together.
So Carroll took his frustration to YouTube, promising to write 3 songs about his experience. Today marks two weeks since Carroll posted his first video, which has already been viewed nearly 3.5 million times.
Social media is a great way to communicate with other people and get your message out," Carroll said.
Carroll was in town today touring the Taylor Guitar factory in El Cajon. Taylor has promised to help him replace the broken guitar - which has been fixed - but still doesn't sound right.
Meanwhile Carroll's career is soaring. His new fans are buying CDs of his older stuff and tickets to live shows. Carroll says he's grateful for the support, and isn't letting his new found fame get to his head. The truth is there's not time for that. He still has two more videos to make.
"Well, I promised three, and if nothing, I'm a man of my word," Carroll said.
Ableton 8 Offer: Buy Ableton Live 8 and get Sampler free
Until the 31st August 2009 any purchases of Ableton Live 8 will come with a free activation code for the Sampler software instrument.
Ableton Live 8 is a creative, real-time digital music sequencer designed around the concept of 'elastic audio'.
The release of Ableton 8 saw the software updated with a new groove engine, revamped warping techniques, live looping, five new effects, crossfades in the Arrangement View, group tracks and a re-worked MIDI editor.
Sampler is Ableton's advanced sampling instrument, combining traditional sampling features with advanced sound design functions.
Featured in Computer Music's "Sampling Special," Ableton's Sampler was described as "Inspirational, fun and intuitive".
To claim your free copy of Sampler you must first buy Ableton Live 8 from your music dealer.
Then you'll need to authorize your serial number online - Live will guide you through this process.
When you authorize Live 8, you automatically get a serial number for Sampler, without having to download a new copy of Sampler.
British rockers Oasis were at the centre of a second security blunder after a crazed fan stormed the stage at a Spanish festival.
Last year guitarist Noel Gallagher was hospitalised with three broken ribs after a man ran onstage and shoved him into monitor speakers in the middle of a gig in Toronto, Canada.
During their set at Benicassim on Thursday, a female fan stormed the stage desperate to get close to the band, but this time security managed to step in before any damage was done.
A witness tells Britain's Daily Star Sunday: "She ran on to the stage, punched and kicked security and even crawled under the stage. At first there were just two guys guarding the band but they called for back-up and in the end it took ten burly bouncers to get rid of her."
Fender Electric Guitars Announce Free Valve Amp Offer
gear4music.com All purchases of a Fender USA Standard Strat or Tele qualify for a free Champion 600 Vintage Modified Amp between 18th July and 30th September
By combining a USA series guitar with a real Valve Amp, this Fender promotion offers guitarists an ideal opportunity to get a vintage Fender sound at a considerable saving.
The Champion 600 is a 5-Watt tube amp with a 6" speaker and 1950s "two-tone" look.
With a high gain preamp circuit, the Champion has a natural overdriven tone, complimented by a choice of high or low gain inputs.
With an internal speaker jack, the Champion is ideal for connecting to a larger speaker cabinet.
Music software company Native Instruments, are giving away components from the respected Guitar Rig 3, in a bundle they have named Guitar Rig 3 Go.
Guitar Rig 3 has proved immensely popular with excellent reviews across the board. The software has been released in a variety of formats already, including those coming with Native Instrument's own audio interfaces.
Guitar Rig 3 Kontrol features a foot pedal with onboard soundcard, providing an easy solution for guitarists and bassists seeking reliable tone from a simple recording setup.
Guitar Rig Session on the other hand is a USB-powered audio interface featuring 24-bit/192 kHz converters and phantom power - a unit perfect for recording audio instruments, or vocals. For a limited time, Guitar Rig Session comes fully loaded with the full Guitar Rig 3 software.
This latest free software, Guitar Rig 3 Go, comes with Guitar Rig's highly praised user interface whilst delivering professional sound quality. Furthermore, with features such as a tuner and tape deck modules on board, Guitar Rig 3 Go is an ideal free solution for any guitarist, bassist or songwriter.
wenn.com Nine Inch Nails rocker Trent Reznor is backing down over his plans to retire the group, revealing they still intend to make music together.
Reznor recently announced the group would quit after a final show at the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee last month, so he could spend time on other projects.
He has already admitted the band will play three further concerts - and now admits Nine Inch Nails aren't splitting at all.
Reznor tells Rolling Stone, "What I specifically said or meant to convey is that NIN as a touring live band or live band that's on the road all the time is stopping. I've just reached the point ... where it has invaded every other aspect of my life.
"I have a number of projects that are not music-related which I have put on the back burner for a long time."
The rocker confesses his main motivation for quitting touring, is the fear he'll end up like KISS veteran Gene Simmons, adding, "I'd never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work. In my paranoia, I fear that if I don't stop this, it could become that."
Taylor Guitars Opens New US-Based Factory Service Center
With 35 years of quality guitar-crafting expertise, industry-leading design, and a myriad manufacturing innovations, Taylor Guitars is answering the call for quality repairs and knowledgeable service from players of all makes and models with its new Factory Service Center.
Located on the Taylor Guitars campus in El Cajon, California, the Taylor Factory Service center is staffed with world-class repair technicians whose extensive working knowledge of guitar-building techniques and precise attention to detail enable them to bring any brand of guitar back to great playing condition. Using the advanced tools and machinery of the Taylor factory, Taylor's repair techs give each guitar the signature "Taylor touch" to remedy distress that may range from normal wear-and-tear to extreme guitar damage. For guitars in need of a periodic tune-up, the Service Center offers four comprehensive guitar maintenance packages: Refresh, Revive, Renew and Rejuvenate, all designed to restore the guitar to its optimum health.
Taylor Vice President of Customer Service and Repair David Hosler emphasizes that Taylor's passion for guitar quality extends over the entire life of a guitar, noting that a well-cared-for guitar can bring a player many decades of inspiring music. "As any player knows, a quality repair by a knowledgeable repairman can make all the difference in restoring a guitar to its ultimate playing state," Hosler says. "With the resources of the Taylor Guitars factory and the know-how of our service techs, whether it's a quick tune-up or a completely new top, the Service Center will return your guitar to tip-top shape."
Taylor owners wary of shipping their prized guitars can rest assured that our service technicians offer instructions to ship it safely. Taylor guitars are returned in the company's specially engineered shipping carton, which features custom inserts that cushion the guitar to give it the best support possible during shipping.
Open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the Factory Service Center is located at 1900 Gillespie Way, in El Cajon, California. Players who visit the Factory Service Center will be greeted in a storefront that stocks a variety of popular Taylor parts, including the solderless, "plug and play" pickups for the SolidBody Classic electric guitar, as well as accessories and apparel from TaylorWare, the company's line of Taylor-branded items.
For the travel-worn guitars of gigging troubadours, the Factory Service Center is currently offering its Refresh package at a special rate. Taylor's repair technicians will restore a guitar to its proper humidity level, adjust the tuners, clean and condition the fretboard, and adjust the truss rod. With a thorough cleaning and polishing and a new set of Elixir strings, the guitar's travel travails will all be remedied. Now through August 31, the Refresh package is offered at a special introductory price of $75. To schedule service, please call 1-800-943-6782 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur says she's recovering from a bout with the H1N1 influenza strain.
"It turns out that, somewhere between a video shoot in Vermont, a heavy metal concert in London, and my own musical showcase in Toronto, I had indeed fallen victim to a world pandemic," Auf der Maur wrote in a first-person account at online magazine, the Mark.
"I am now officially on the mend - thanks to a combination of naturopathic treatments and heavy-duty antibiotics, among other survival tools."
Auf der Maur says she initially started feeling symptoms in May, suffering from a stuffy nose, a sore throat and body aches.
"But they came all at once, and were far more intense than I had ever experienced," wrote Auf der Maur, who spent five years in Hole and played on 1998's "Celebrity Skin." "For a person who only gets ill once or twice a decade, it was scary."
She went to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics, which she says she took reluctantly. She said she didn't feel any effects from the medication for days, and then suffered a nightmare about taking the wrong medication.
But she travelled to London anyway to play shows. She then went to Toronto to perform at North by Northeast and showcase her new multimedia project, "Out of Our Minds."
By late June, she still felt unwell and had to begun to suffer from shortness of breath, but still didn't put the pieces together until she read a newspaper article about swine flu. Then, she took a turn for the worse.
"Suddenly, a week into my shortness of breath, it really hit: a roller coaster of fever spikes," she wrote.
"Over the course of 48 hours, my temperature went from 95 F to 101, and back again. It was a very strange feeling, being pulled back and forth between severe illness and feeling fine."
She returned to the doctor and this time, she was diagnosed with swine flu. She says she was treated with another round of antibiotics, and is now beginning to feel better.
Looking on the bright side, she hopes she's now immune to the virus.
"When many other swine virgins will be falling ill, I'll be good to go!" she wrote.
"However, have no fear friends: it's a terrible flu, but it is manageable, and we swine veterans will be here to help you through it. Here's to good health."
Country Picker, Brad Paisley Books White House Gig
billboard.com Country musicians Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss will play a high-profile gig next week at the White House.
A spokeswoman for Paisley said Wednesday that he and Krauss, who had a hit duet a few years ago with "Whiskey Lullaby," will participate in the White House Music Series hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama.
On Tuesday afternoon, they'll help with an educational workshop for 120 middle and high school students from across the country.
That night, they'll play in the historic East Room for President Barack Obama and his wife, White House staff and members of Congress.
Michelle Obama launched the series to encourage arts and arts education. It featured jazz last month and will continue in the fall with classical music.
Queensryche Asking For Help With Thier Latest Video
sleazeroxx.com
Queensryche's touching ballad "Home Again" from their latest album American Soldier has really struck a chord with the military community and now the band wants your help making a video. Queensryche is asking members of the military to submit pictures of themselves with their families to be featured in the upcoming music video for the song "Home Again."
Photos can be uploaded photos from 7/14/09 - 7/26/09. One grand prize winner will be selected at random from all eligible entries. No purchase necessary. To read the official rules, click here.
About "Home Again"
Like all the songs on American Soldier, "Home Again" is based on a real soldier's story as told to singer Geoff Tate. The song features a rare duet between Geoff and his 11-year-old daughter Emily and examines the emotional toll of war from two perspectives - Geoff singing from the soldier's point of view and his daughter singing from that of the child left behind.
"This song is inspired by a series of letters between a soldier and his young daughter back at home. He was laughing about how he thought it was really cute to him that in the letters, they were both saying the same things and even using the same terminology," says Tate. "There is a lot of emotion attached to this song. The whole idea of separation between loved ones is one of my favorite topics, perhaps because I live and breathe it being away from my kids and my wife while touring. You miss them so much, and it's like you live two separate lives. When you're a soldier and you're away, it's very difficult to bridge those two worlds."
To enter simply submit your photo as an email attachement to: queensrychevideocontest@gmail.com
To ensure proper entry be sure to place your full name in the email subject line. In your email, please include first name, last name, street address (no P.O. Box numbers accepted), city, state, zip code, email address, and telephone number.
No purchase necessary. By submitting a photo to queensrychevideocontest@gmail.com and being entered into the Queensryche Home Again Video Contest, you affirm that you are a legal resident of the U.S./D.C. (excluding Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam), 18 years of age or older (or if a resident of AL or NE, 19 years of age or older) at time of entry and that you are in compliance with the Official Rules
In what has to be a record-breaking run of injuries for a single band, Aerosmith have suffered yet another setback on their Guitar Hero-themed summer tour with ZZ Top: bassist Tom Hamilton will be sitting out an unspecified number of shows due to what a press release describes as "non-invasive surgery." Band pal and Joe Perry Project musician David Hull will fill in for Hamilton while he recuperates.
The rest of Aerosmith will be returning to the road tonight, July 15th, in Atlanta, another press release confirms. The band's reps have also finally revealed what fans have suspected " that the reason Aerosmith have missed all of their shows this month was a leg injury sustained by frontman Steven Tyler at a gig at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut, on June 28th. Seven shows were nixed for rescheduling, including a July 1st date in Ohio, July 3rd in Pennsylvania, July 5th, 7th and 9th in North Carolina, and a pair of Florida dates: July 11th and 13th. Fans have been instructed to stick with Aerosmith's official Website for updates on the rescheduled dates.
When Aerosmith do hit the stage tonight, it will be with guitarist Brad Whitford, who missed the first handful of dates the band played due to his own offstage mishap: he smashed his head on his Ferrari so forcefully, he suffered an internal injury and had to undergo surgery. After Tyler's leg strain, Perry Tweeted, "Pray 4 Stevens speedy return"; he hasn't posted an official comment about Hamilton's condition yet. The band's past medical problems include 1996 throat surgery for Tyler and throat cancer for Hamilton; 2008 foot surgery for Tyler which sent him to rehab to recover; March 2008 knee replacement for Perry; and Tyler's recent bout with pneumonia, which stalled work on the band's new LP.
Rolling Stone had the rare to chance to go backstage with Aerosmith at their hometown Boston show last month.
A painting of the Rolling Stone's Ronnie Wood, depicting him as a vampire, is being auctioned for charity from today (July 14).
The portrait of the star, by his wife Jo Wood's brother and artist, Paul Karslake, was commisoned TV channel FX to help launch the new series of hit US drama True Blood.
Kerslake has previously painted another Stone, creating the iconic image of Keith Richards as a pirate, that was used 12 years later inspiring the Jack Sparrow character in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Karslake has commented on his new work, explaining, "Ron's a vampire, all those Rolling Stones guys are. They stay up all night and sleep all day."
He adds:"I sat down to watch it [True Blood] and one of the characters, Vampire Bill, straight away reminded me of Ronnie. Once that happened I couldn't get the image out of my head."
Fans have the chance to buy this original work of art on ebay. All money made will be donated to the Give Blood charity.
Robert Plant received a royal honor from Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace in London on Friday, putting the former Led Zeppelin front man one notch above his old band mate Jimmy Page.
But Plant joked he and Page would not be fighting over rank, even though Plant's new Commander of the British Empire is a higher honor than Page's Order of the British Empire. Advertisement
"If we can remember each other's phone number at this time in life, it's a miracle. We're still good friends. We both enjoy a rather dark sense of humor that comes, I think, from being from rather the wrong side of the tracks for all those wild years," said Plant, who's spent lots of time in Nashville recently. Plant opted not to take part in a Led Zeppelin reunion tour last year, choosing instead to concentrate on his collaboration with Alison Krauss.
Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer has come out in defence of the popular computer game Guitar Hero.
The franchise has recently attracted criticism from top electric guitar players such as Jimmy Page and Jack White.
However, Kramer said the game is simply a new means of exposing the rock genre to younger people.
"If that's what you got to do to get kids to understand what a band like Aerosmith's all about, then that's just one more way to find out about it," he commented.
Despite this assertion, Kramer conceded that Guitar Hero is not the "ideal" way for younger people to find out about classic rock.
He added that bands may warm to the idea of allowing their songs to be used on the game when they are offered "boatloads" of money.
Led Zeppelin have so far been extremely reluctant to license their music in this way, although a number of their tracks have been heard in movies such as School of Rock, Almost Famous and Small Soldiers.
Kings Of Leon frontman Caleb Followill is regretting smashing up his favourite guitar at T In The Park.
The band headlined the Scottish festival on Friday night and at the end of their set Caleb trashed his Gibson 325 axe and threw what remained of it into the crowd.
He told the crowd at sister festival Oxegen, near Dublin, on Saturday night: "I got a bit angry after T In The Park last night and broke my guitar so I've have to get a new one."
PORTLAND, Ore. - Portland rock and roll icon Drake Levin, guitar player for Paul Revere and the Raiders, died July 4th at 62 after battling cancer.
Levin's family said he died at home in San Francisco.
Levin joined the Raiders in Portland at age 16 in 1963. The band went on to have 23 hit singles and more TV appearances than any other band in the 1960s.
Monday night Drake was acknowledged on The Late Show with David Letterman, when Paul Schaffer said, "This is for Drake", breaking into Raiders' epic garage hit "Just Like Me." Schaffer called the Raiders, "The greatest show band in the history of Rock n’ Roll".
After leaving the Raiders, Levin, Phil and Mike Smith formed The Brotherhood and went on to record three albums.
Levin's last tour with the original group was in April, 1967 and he played at a 30 year reunion show with four of the original Raiders in 1997.
His nickname was "The Kid," and he is credited with influencing the likes of Jimi Hendrix, who watched the band play in 1963.
A memorial service for Drake will be held Saturday July 18th at the Hilton in downtown San Francisco at 6PM.
Contributions for the Levin Family should be sent to: Sonic Wheel Records 889 South Rainbow Blvd. Suite 572, Las Vegas, NV, 89145.
grandforksherald.com Dan Christianson was excited he would finally get to see one of his favorite bands live in concert, just like a lot of other teenagers at the Green Day concert Friday night at the Fargodome.
The recent Grand Forks Red River High School graduate had unsuccessfully tried to catch up with the band earlier in the day at a CD signing, and had barely missed the cutoff to get backstage passes for after the show. He was disappointed by the near-misses, but had no idea he’d be playing guitar onstage with Green Day by the end of the night in front of nearly 8,000 screaming fans.
Getting picked
Christianson said he went to Fargo on Friday with the two other members of the Neckties, his band based out of Grand Forks. It was an exciting weekend event and something they all were anxiously waiting for.
"We kind of wanted to go down as a band and see these guys just because they've been such a big influence on us," he said.
They tried to meet up with Green Day during a Hot Topic CD signing, but missed the band and then were a little too far back in a line to get backstage passes. Christianson said they did get great seats and the show was "incredible."
"Green Day rocked the house - they were so good," he said. "They were just amazing to see."
As the show was coming to a finale, the band asked for a volunteer to come onstage and play the guitar part for "Jesus of Suburbia" during the encore. Christianson's friends pointed to him and yelled for lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong’s attention.
Before he knew what was happening, Armstrong had pointed to him and another guy in the crowd, but only one could come onstage and play the song. Armstrong asked what key the song was in " Christianson said C sharp, the correct answer, "so he told me to get my ass up there," he said.
He admitted he got a lump in his throat when Armstrong looked right at him and pointed him out, "but once he pulled me up, I wasn’t really that nervous anymore," Christianson said. "It's one of the songs that I actually learned to play guitar to."
He was handed Armstrong's own guitar and got to play most of the song onstage, and also joined in on vocals for a bit. He said the experience was "really surreal" but didn't totally sink in until he had climbed back off the stage and rejoined his friends.
Christianson said it was all business on stage, and his friends have told him he did a great job with the spontaneous gig. But his chance to spend a few minutes onstage with musicians he has idolized for years will be a memorable event, he said.
"It was definitely the best concert I’ve ever been to," he said. "It's one thing that you hope for, but I never would have expected it would happen."
Scott Rowley of www.classicrockmagazine.com caught up with Ozzy Osbourne last week at the Slash & Friends gig in Norway, where the whispers backstage had guitarist John 5 (ex-Marilyn Manson, currently with Rob Zombie) lined up as a possible replacement for Zakk Wylde...
"Well, I'm getting a new guitar player as we speak," said Ozzy, "and everyone has been saying to me for a long time, 'Get Johnny 5!' And I tried him at one time and I didn't really give him a chance. We'll see, I don't know. I haven't fallen out with Zakk, but Zakk's got his own band, and I felt like my stuff was beginning to sound like Black Label Society. I just felt like I wanted a change, y'know?
"I've got a guy from Greece coming in - not the musical, the country of Greece - but I'm not going to say too much about it, cos I don't know myself at this point. I've got a new album, I'm working on it as we speak. I've got a studio at my house and I've got a guy called Kevin Churko, the guy that did the last album [Churko also worked on Ozzy's Under Cover album, produced Cheap Trick's highly rated 2006 album Rockford, and has credits on releases by Britney Spears, Celine Dion and Shania Twain] - he's great to work with.
"And it's great to have your own studio. On one hand it's great and on the other it's not, cos when you're at the studio you can go, 'Sorry darling, I can't get home for dinner, I'm stuck at the studio...' But she can fucking come down stairs now! But I'm just enjoying my life now..."
The entire interview can be read at this location
Zakk Wylde replied on his twitter page with the following, "I haven't heard anything about this. Until I talk to the Boss I don't know. I love Ozzy. I'm doing Blizzcon with him in August and supposed to finish up the cd in September....this is news to me"
Rocker Jack White is so used to playing the guitar at deafening noise levels, he can no longer tell how loud it is.
The White Stripes and Raconteurs star always cranks his amp up to the max - but only realizes the exact volume when sound engineers show him decibel readings on a meter.
He tells Rolling Stone magazine, "I need to feel it (volume). I've gone through things where I go onstage and the sound guy at soundcheck comes over and he'll hold the decibel meter and show it to me while we're playing - and it's 127 decibels.
"That's not good. And I can't even tell. If it's not right there, it feels wimpy, it feels uninspiring."
Paul Revere And The Raiders' Guitar Player Dies At 62
kgw.com
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Portland rock and roll icon Drake Levin, guitar player for Paul Revere and the Raiders, died July 4th at 62 after battling cancer.
Levin's family said he died at home in San Francisco.
Gino Rossi - Alex Hart Management
Levin joined the Raiders in Portland at age 16 in 1963. The band went on to have 23 hit singles and more TV appearances than any other band in the 1960s.
Monday night Drake was acknowledged on The Late Show with David Letterman, when Paul Schaffer said, "This is for Drake", breaking into Raiders' epic garage hit "Just Like Me." Schaffer called the Raiders, "The greatest show band in the history of Rock n' Roll".
After leaving the Raiders, Levin, Phil and Mike Smith formed The Brotherhood and went on to record three albums.
Levin's last tour with the original group was in April, 1967 and he played at a 30 year reunion show with four of the original Raiders in 1997.
Gino Rossi - Alex Hart Management
His nickname was "The Kid," and he is credited with influencing the likes of Jimi Hendrix, who watched the band play in 1963.
A memorial service for Drake will be held Saturday July 18th at the Hilton in downtown San Francisco at 6PM.
Contributions for the Levin Family should be sent to: Sonic Wheel Records 889 South Rainbow Blvd. Suite 572, Las Vegas, NV, 89145.
Guitarists are typically a pretty hesitant bunch when it comes to adopting new tech. In fact, most guitarists I know spend their time lusting after vintage guitars and vacuum tube amps--casting disdainful sneers at anything that looks as though it were invented after 1980.
That said, most of my musician friends are also iPhone owners. Their excuse for allowing a smartphone into their otherwise low-tech lifestyle is that they want to stay connected with their fans via e-mail, SMS, Twitter, or whatever app of the month might help them promote their music and their shows.
If you're a guitarist with an iPhone or iPod Touch, you may be interested to know that there's a handful of helpful apps out there made just for you. Useful tools such as chord finders, guitar tuners, multitrack recorders, and scale libraries, can all be had for just a few bucks.
To get a sense of some of the better iPhone apps on offer for guitar players, we've put together a roundup of five of our faves.
FretSurfer helps guitarists sharpen their note-recognition skills using a gamelike series of timed prompts, such as "Name this note" or "Find C on string #3." Users accumulate score statistics and can increase the game's difficulty as they improve their recognition.
Pros: Straightforward interface, played notes are both seen and heard, advanced settings for alternate tunings and left-handed fretboard orientation. One of the few iPhone guitar apps on offer that emphasize education.
Cons: As a game, FretSurfer is not exactly "fun" and the graphics are a bit crude.
FourTrack is a deceptively simple-looking multitrack recorder and mixing console. If you're a songwriter looking for a way to sketch multi-instrumental song ideas on the go, FourTrack acts as a fully baked portable recording studio.
Pros: Familiar interface for anyone who's worked with recording gear, real-time volume metering, track bouncing for limitless layering, and support for dock-connecting stereo microphones.
Cons: The app is relatively expensive, iPod Touch users will need to purchase a mic or headset, and recordings only transfer over Wi-Fi with no option to e-mail or upload to a Web host.
iGuitarKit packs a ton of guitar tools Into a single app. For $2, you get a chord finder, scales, progression recommendations, a custom tablature library, tuner, and a metronome.
Pros: Tons of features, and one of the only apps to include progressions and tablature.
Cons: Tablature section is complicated to use, graphics are basic, no options for alternate tunings, right-hand only, interface isn't as intuitive as ChordMaster and ScaleWizard apps.
Like ChordMaster, ScaleWizard just tackles one aspect of the guitar (scales), but does a very thorough job.
Pros: Beautiful interface, tons of advanced parameters (arpeggios, modal scales, rare scales such as Semi Locrian b4). Landscape position offers full-screen fretboard view. Info screen includes options for left-handed orientation, alternate tunings, and automatic scale playback.
Cons: Not all-encompassing like iGuitarKit. Added background info or advice on scale choice would be helpful for novices.
ChordMaster does just one thing, but does it very well: demonstrates where to place your fingers for any guitar chord.
Pros: Intuitive interface, tons of chord parameters (major, minor, diminished, dominant) great graphics, authentic sounds and strumming. Info screen includes options for left-handed orientation.
Cons: Not all-encompassing like iGuitarKit. No options for alternate tunings. No full-screen fretboard view. No suggestions for chord progressions.
Greg Prato of www.rollingstone.com reports that until recently, heavy metal's leading female rocker has been laying a bit low. In addition to being the guitarist for the Runaways in the '70s, Lita Ford was responsible for two solo pop metal hits in the '80s: "Kiss Me Deadly," and a duet with Ozzy Osbourne, "Close My Eyes Forever." But with a new album on the horizon, Wicked Wonderland (out September 15th via Ford's own label, JLRG Entertainment), Ford is back. "What happened was I got married to Jim Gillette [ex-singer of uber hair metallists, Nitro], and he and I started 'island hopping,' " she says. "We found these fantastic islands out in the Caribbean. At that same time, I was pregnant with our second child. We wanted a good, safe place to raise our kids. We ended up moving to the Caribbean -- right after 9/11 -- where we built this massive house, and we've lived there since then."
A few months ago, Ford hooked up with producer Greg Hampton, and work began on Wicked Wonderland (co-produced by Ford, Gillette, and Hampton), her first studio release since 1995. "The new album is extremely heavy, extremely sexual. I would say it's my best album yet. As soon as you hear the vocals and lead guitar, you know it's Lita. But at the same time, it's completely different, because it's so heavy." While Ford describes the entire album as "slamming" -- as proven by such cuts as "Scream" and "Betrayal" -- it's the album's lone ballad that stands out for her. " 'Sacred' is probably my favorite track, because it was written for me from my husband. It's a beautiful song."
Lita Ford Returns With Sexual LP, Explains Runaways Movie Rift
Recently, Ford has also hit the road for select shows, and is planning more gigs for the fall. In addition to reviving her music career, Ford recently lent her voice to the upcoming video game, Brutal Legend, which also features the voices of Jack Black, Lemmy Kilmister, and Rob Halford, as well as the aforementioned Lita song, "Betrayal." "I'm 'Queen Rima' in the game -- the queen of my troops," she says. "We go out to kick some ass. I get axed, electrocuted, and thrown off a second story building- and I manage to survive the whole thing!"
Ford also offered her thoughts on the upcoming Runaways movie, Cherry Bomb, which features Twilight star Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett. "I just want people to know that I have nothing to do with that film," Ford clarifies. "Joan's manager offered to buy the rights to my life story for a thousand bucks. I thought that was pretty disgusting -- we never even replied."
That said, is Lita still in touch with Joan? And could they ever work together again? "Well, I just gave you an answer about what I thought of their film. Their manager has managed to cause a war between us -- this has been going on since 1985. So far, I've kept my mouth shut, and I don't know how somebody like him can spend so much time trying to destroy somebody else's career. Joan and I have done nothing to hurt each other. I've always loved Joan. I don't know what the problem is with him -- he really goes out of his way to fuck me up. I despise him for it. But there's a place in my heart for Joan that will always be there."
Paul Reed Smith Guitars said Wednesday it would lay off 30 employees and implement a 4-day manufacturing week as it grappled with the recession.
The Stevensville company is disbanding its nightly manufacturing operations, spokeswoman Rebecca Eaddy said in an interview.
Eaddy said the recession has impacted musical instrument sales overall and Paul Reed Smith, known for its stylish craftsmanship, is not immune.
The cuts will bring Paul Reed Smith's work force to 250.
Despite the economic downturn, the company has completed an 84,000-square-foot expansion to accommodate its new acoustic guitar and amplifier lines. The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Developed helped finance the expansion with a $10 million bond.
Paul Reed Smith said it would hire 60 new employees as part of the expansion. Eaddy said the company has hired new workers, but couldn't pinpoint exactly how many.
Eaddy said the company is seeing "what it is we can bring to market that our consumers might not already have."
The company plans to roll out a 25th anniversary line of guitars later this year.
Some of the finest musicians in rock music, including Carlos Santana and Rush's Alex Lifeson, play Paul Reed Smith guitars. The company manufacturers around 70 guitars a day.
United Airlines Breaks Guitars And Makes Dave Carroll Famous
latimes.com
Here, without rhythm, harmony or rhyme, is Dave Carroll's problem: Last year, while he was flying from Nova Scotia to Nebraska on United Airlines, somebody broke his $3,500 guitar.
Big deal, you're thinking. Who has time to keep track of all the things United breaks? (See bottom of story for some statistics, which suggest that several other airlines are worse.)
But Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, have told their tale with rhythm, harmony, rhyme, not to mention some wicked humor, and their four-minute, 37-second complaint, "United Breaks Guitars," above, is racking up views on YouTube.
Before we tell you what United has to say about all this, here's a quick version of Carroll's saga, as distilled from his website. (Messages to Carroll's home phone and e-mail address went unanswered Tuesday night.):
In spring 2008, Carroll and company headed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Omaha, by way of (shudder now, frequent fliers) Chicago. Just after landing at O'Hare airport, says Carroll, one of his bandmates and another passenger looked out their windows and saw baggage handlers heaving around guitars with wanton disregard.
Carroll says he complained immediately to three flight attendants, but was met with indifference. Some time after arrival in Nebraska, Carroll says, he discovered that, sure enough, the base of his 710 Taylor acoustic guitar had been smashed.
But he had gigs to play, so he found a way to do that. As Carroll acknowledges, he didn't attempt to complain again until beginning his return flight a week later.
Over the following days, weeks and months, Carroll made many phone calls to United representatives in Chicago and (who didn't see this coming?) India, but basically he says United did nothing for him.
Meanwhile, Carroll spent $1,200 getting the guitar repaired "to a state that it plays well but has lost much of what made it special."
The capping blow, Carroll says, was an e-mail from a Ms. Irlweg, who denied his claim for compensation because he didn't complain in the right place, or at the right time. The airline wouldn't even give him $1,200 in travel vouchers, Carroll contends.
So he vowed a sort of musical revenge - not one protest song, not two, but three, with a video for each, all to be posted on the Web. Carroll says he told Ms. Irlweg all about it, but got the usual response.
The video was posted on July 6. In its first 23 hours, "United Breaks Guitars" had drawn 461 comments on YouTube, most of them maligning the airline, and one of them hearkening back to Tom Paxton and his tune of aerial guitar trouble, "Thank you, Republic Airlines." (The viewer counter appeared to be stuck at 3,441, but the video quickly went viral, with the Consumerist showing more than 24,000 views by Tuesday night.)
Among the comments: "Revenge is a dish best served with country accompaniment."
So what does United have to say about the song?
"This has struck a chord with us, and we've contacted him directly to make it right," said Robin Urbanski, a spokeswoman for United. (Urbanski also said she "loved" the video.)
Urbanski said a phone meeting had been scheduled for Wednesday, and that before the airline decides exactly what to do for Carroll, "we need to have that conversation with him directly."
Meanwhile, Carroll's website says he's written and recorded the second song, with video to follow soon. And he has all sorts of other plans for a third song, and various tactics to achieve a million Web hits, which he believes will give some sense of revenge.
In fact, he writes, "I should thank United... If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I'm glad it was you that did it."
By the way: In the U.S. Department of Transportation's tally of lost, damaged, delayed or pilfered baggage in April 2009, United ranked 10th among 19 carriers, with 13,517 "baggage reports" among 4.03 million passengers.
George Fullerton, a longtime associate of Leo Fender who played a crucial role in the electric-guitar innovator's extraordinary success through his broad-based skills as a musician, artist and technician, has died. He was 86.
While Fender tinkered away, coming up with improvements in guitar design that led to the creation of his revolutionary Telecaster and Stratocaster electric guitars, Fullerton was charged with making those innovations practical for mass production in their Orange County factory that opened in the late 1940s. Nearly 1,000 people were working there when Fender sold it to CBS in 1965.
"Leo's domain was the lab: innovation, getting ideas together on the conceptual level. George's domain was the shop," said Richard Smith, curator of the Leo Fender Gallery at the Fullerton Museum Center and author of "Fender: The Sound Heard Round the World." Fullerton "made the machine that threaded the guitar necks. He came up with the neck shaper and all these unique tools they used. If Leo had problems, [Fullerton] needed to solve them."
Fullerton's lifelong interest in art allowed him to create sketches of new designs based on his conversations with Fender, whose background was in accounting and electrical engineering.
George William Fullerton was born March 7, 1923, in Hindsville, Ark. He was one of six children in a family in which "everyone was musical," Geoff Fullerton said. "There was definitely a music gene going on there."
Fullerton moved to Southern California shortly before World War II. He picked up technical skills working in an aircraft manufacturing plant during the war, after which he periodically ran into Fender, who ran a radio repair service and retail store.
Fender had begun making guitars -- originally focusing on steel guitars -- and amplifiers with Doc Kaufman (under the K&F brand), but their partnership ended quickly because of differing ideas about how to run the business.
Going it alone, Fender offered Fullerton a job helping with radio repair, but he soon shifted over to provide warranty service on Fender's steel guitars and amplifiers. Fender was as impressed by Fullerton's musical credentials -- he was playing in two bands at night after work -- as by his technical know-how. Fender was confident in his own technical expertise but often hired employees who also were musicians because he could barely play a note, much less a song.
In the late 1940s, various guitar makers were experimenting with ways to amplify the sound of a guitar to allow it to be heard in larger dance halls and ballrooms that featured live music. Fender wasn't the first to come up with a solid-body electric, which could handle a much greater degree of amplification without the sound feeding back, but his innovations in design allowed the instruments to be mass produced affordably -- something no one else had then figured out how to do.
They started working out of Fender's small shop in Fullerton, then expanded to two buildings. The early Fender team also included Don Randall, originally a salesman who became Fender's chief sales and marketing executive. At its height before the sale to CBS, Fender was turning out a guitar a minute from its 27 buildings in Fullerton and Anaheim.
Fender said he never regretted the sale, but he did have reservations about leaving many of his associates behind. Fullerton stayed on for about five years, but was disheartened by what he considered the new owners' bottom-line mentality.
"Quality issues were always at the forefront of his mind," Geoff Fullerton said. "The people at CBS would tell him 'We can save a nickel by doing this,' and his response would be 'Yes, but you'll screw the guy who's playing it.' So immediately there was a conflict there."
He teamed again with Fender at the Music Man amplifier company, creating a new line of guitars, then they created G&L Guitars around 1980.
In recent years, Fullerton had served as a consultant to the Fender Custom Shop in Corona, the company's high-end division that crafts upscale custom guitars for superstar clients as well as meticulous recreations of celebrity guitarists' favorite instruments. "George was very passionate about music, as a lot of the people who worked at Fender were," Smith said. "They thought they were doing something great for musicians, and they were. That whole spirit originated with Leo, that spirit of building better instruments to help musicians."
Besides his son, Fullerton is survived by a daughter, Diane, and two grandchildren. A memorial has been scheduled for 10 a.m. July 25 at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. Instead of flowers, the family has asked that donations be sent to the St. Jude Memorial Foundation.
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20090705/ENTERTAINMENT/906299925/-1/SPORTS?Title=Ailing-guitarist-gets-second-chance-with-left-hand MINNEAPOLIS - Guitarist Billy McLaughlin was at the top of his game a decade ago, a fingerstyle player noted for his technique of tapping on strings, when he began having problems controlling his right hand, missing notes with no clue why. Audiences thought he was drunk. After a maddening couple of years in which his playing grew so bad he couldn't perform his own songs, McLaughlin finally received a diagnosis: an incurable neuromuscular disease. "When this first started happening, I thought I had done something wrong, I had committed some sort of musician's sin or something," McLaughlin said. "I didn't sleep enough, maybe I was out too many nights after the concerts carousing around." McLaughlin has focal dystonia, a mysterious ailment that affects about 10,000 musicians around the world. For horn players, it can mean clenched jaws or immobile lips. For pianists, violinists or guitarists, the result can be frozen fingers that spell the end of a career. In McLaughlin;s case, the pinkie and ring finger on his left hand - the hand a right-handed guitarist uses to form chords or run scales on the fretboard - curled inward.Instead of giving up, McLaughlin decided to relearn how to play the guitar left-handed - something another Twin Cities acoustic guitar virtuoso, Leo Kottke, likens to "trying to breathe through your feet. It's exactly that hard." Now McLaughlin is back on the road and the subject of a recent documentary, "Changing Keys: Billy McLaughlin and the Mysteries of Dystonia." On a late spring day, McLaughlin - in jeans and boots - shows off his skills at his friend Jeff Arundel's studio in downtown Minneapolis. His eyes closed and his shoulder-length blond hair waving, McLaughlin runs through his composition "Church Bells," and the familiar Pachelbel's Canon. His right hand runs across the fretboard while the index and middle fingers of his left hand hold, then release bass strings. The pinkie and ring finger of his left hand remain bent behind the neck of his guitar, which is emblazoned with "BILLY" on the head. The sound is smooth, calming, flawless. Arundel, 51, a producer and fellow guitarist, knew McLaughlin in his heyday and watched his return. "Imagine a guy learning to pitch with the other hand - the idea that a guy would get back to the major leagues doing that," Arundel said. McLaughlin, 47, grew up in Minneapolis and started playing guitar around 13 after "failing" on piano and trumpet. He studied guitar performance at the University of Southern California, switching to steel-string acoustic when his electric hollow-body Gretsch was stolen after graduation in 1984. While performing with an ensemble, McLaughlin developed his signature percussive style, a hammering technique that demands strong fingers. He would step out on stage while the band took a break and wow the crowd with his tapping style. Eventually McLaughlin developed a solo act and became a big draw on college campuses, performing 200 days out of the year and logging 400,000 miles on his van. After self-releasing seven CDs, McLaughlin signed a contract with Narada, an instrumental and world music label, in 1995. His first Narada release, "fingerdance," reached No. 7 on Billboard's New Age chart. It was around the time of his second Narada release, "Out of Hand," in 1998 that McLaughlin's finger problems began.McLaughlin slipped on ice on the way to a photo shoot for the album and dislocated two fingers on his left hand. He underwent therapy and had gotten past the injury, but he said "something never felt quite right in that hand." He ended his contract with Narada, completing his deal by releasing a best-of CD in 2000, and his marriage fell apart. McLaughlin found his pinkie wouldn't reach notes and that he had to refinger even easy pieces. He tried acupuncture, deep tissue massage and a chiropractor, spending "a small fortune trying to get this hand to work." Finally McLaughlin visited the performing arts clinic at the Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, where he was told he had focal dystonia. He didn't believe it and continued trying to practice through the problem until Mayo Clinic confirmed the diagnosis in 2001. Focal dystonia is a localized movement disorder that's part of a family of neurological disorders. In one form, it can cause a person's eyelids to involuntarily close, effectively resulting in blindness. Writer's cramp is another form. A generalized dystonia can contort a person's entire body. The origins of dystonia - which affects about 300,000 people in North America - may be genetic. Treatments can involve anticonvulsants or surgery, but there's no cure. Normally muscles work together to raise or lower a joint, but in focal dystonia the muscles don't act together and instead are in a "tug of war," explained Dr. Mahlon DeLong, a neurology professor at Emory University in Atlanta. After his diagnosis, McLaughlin called renowned concert pianist Leon Fleisher, whose own career was derailed by focal dystonia that affects the fourth and fifth fingers of his right hand. Fleisher, 80, switched to a left-hand piano repertoire before undergoing Botox injections in 1995. The injections, combined with deep tissue massage, allowed him to resume playing two-handed (he recently released his first two-handed recording of concertos in more than 40 years). Fleisher told him the skills McLaughlin enjoyed at his height were gone forever. But McLaughlin said he was relieved just to talk to someone who understood what he was going through. For a musician, according to Fleisher, focal dystonia is "truly, profoundly tragic." "Your life is over, and it takes a special kind of courage to do what Billy has done," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Baltimore. For McLaughlin, who didn't want to give up music, the answer was to switch hands. He had his two guitars refitted and restrung for left hand and is about to receive his first custom-made left-handed guitar. "What allowed me to do what I'm doing now is making a mental break from 'What's wrong with me?' to 'What do I have that still works?'" McLaughlin said. He took a left-handed guitar with him on vacation and for two weeks worked out his pieces note by note. "The biggest hurdle initially was me allowing myself to sound like crap," McLaughlin said. "I'm a beauty addict, and to not be able to create anything that sounded beautiful was difficult to get through." Ron Tracy of Hoffman Guitars in Minneapolis was the one who turned McLaughlin's right-handed guitars into left-handed models. "He basically had to start like a kid learning to crawl and walk, and did it," Tracy said. "It's really starting over. He had the noise in his head, but couldn't make it come out his hands." When he was ready, McLaughlin debuted as a left-handed guitarist at a solo performance in Detroit in late 2005, an event captured by the "Changing Keys" documentary. "We didn't know what the story was going to be yet. We didn't have an ending. It was a leap of faith," said "Changing Keys" producer and director Suzanne Jurva. The documentary has been shown on Twin Cities public television and is looking for national distribution. In April 2006, McLaughlin made what he calls his "comeback" performance, rounding up his old bandmates and playing a mix of old and new music with a string orchestra in suburban Maplewood for a self-released CD, "Into the Light." "That was me saying, 'If I never play again, this is how I want to go out,'" McLaughlin said. McLaughlin tours Texas in July. He's busy being a single dad to his 16- and 13-year-old sons and believes his best days of playing lie ahead. He lives with the possibility that his dystonia will migrate to his healthy hand. "You know the vase hits the floor and in that moment that it shatters and that sound comes out you realize, 'Oh, oh, that's gone forever,'" McLaughlin said. "And in my case, there's no new hand to put on. But I found another way around it. And that's a lesson for every area of my life."
PLYMOUTH, PA - Township police recently arrested three people who were allegedly trying to sell stolen musical instruments back to a retail store.Officers received a call on June 21 from the Guitar Center in the Metroplex Shopping Center on Chemical Road after an employee encountered three people attempting to sell guitars that were believed stolen.The employee told police that a male and a female had come into the store with two guitars and had asked about selling them. The employee told the pair he would have to research the instruments first, and became wary of the proposition when the two asked for only $100 for one of the guitars when it was worth at least $1,000.After checking the serial number on the guitar, the employee found that it had been purchased at the store on June 17 for $1,754.96 by another woman, so he called police.After arriving at the store, officers made contact with the three suspects in the parking lot, identified as Stacey Shrout, 26, of Watkins Glenn; Gerald Martin, 19, of Troy; and Michael Crunetti, 30, of Huntingdon Valley.The three suspects were standing next to a black Ford Focus, and in plain view officers could see seven guitar-type cases in the backseat and hatchback area.When asked of the instruments, Martin said that they had bought them from a Hispanic male in Philadelphia for $20, and that the three had pooled their money to buy them in hopes of selling the items later to turn a profit.Officers then placed the three under arrest before conducting a vehicle search and towing the car. Inside the car police found six guitars, a viola, an assisted listening system, a UHF stereo transmitter, two black nylon bags containing clothing and personal items and two sets of keys. They estimated value of the items exceeds $7,000.After being transported back to Plymouth Township Police Department, it was found during processing that Crunetti was a wanted person under the alias of Jason Charles Crunetti, with the warrant listed out of Bradford County, PA.Police then contacted the woman who had purchased the guitar that was attempted to be sold inside the Guitar Center, and she checked where she had last put her instrument to find that it was indeed missing.
nme.com Rock's greatest chameleon, throughout the 70s and 80s Bowie regenerated more times than 'Dr Who'. From Ziggy Bowie to Berlin Bowie to Mad Psycho Clown Bowie to Suave'n'Sophisticated Bowie to Bit Rubbish In Tin Machine Bowie, he kept us guessing and gasping for decades.
David Bowie is to give fans the chance to own and remix the multi-track recordings of his seminal 1969 track 'Space Oddity', when he releases a new EP featuring the song to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man walking on the moon.
Released on July 20 - 40 years to the day that Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon - the 'Space Oddity EP' consists of four variations of the track. When fans purchase the EP they will also receive the original eight stems/multi-tracks for the track for free.
They will then be able to remix the song through their own software, or through iKlax software).
13 Year Old Bluegrass Musician Headed for Nashville
voanews.com Making music is second nature to Gaven Largent, 13. "When I'm playing, that stuff is just coming into my brain," he says. "Everything I play is coming through my brain and into my hands."
"When Gaven was about two years old, 'guitar' was one of his first words," his mother Melissa says. When he was eight, he asked for a guitar of his own, but she says teachers told him he was too young to play, because his hands weren't big enough. "And Gaven persisted, 'I just want a guitar, please.' So we bought a guitar and sought him a teacher."
Gaven soaked up everything he could from that teacher and a second, and then decided he didn't want to take any more lessons. "I was like, look, I'm not learning anything; it's boring."
He also decided to take on a new instrument, the Dobro, or resonator guitar. "I'd been playing [guitar] about two or three years, and all I wanted was a Dobro." He even tried converting his first guitar into a resonator guitar, without any success.
The Dobro is played in a horizontal position: one hand sliding a steel bar against the frets, the other hand picking the strings. The sound is similar to that of a Hawaiian, or pedal steel guitar.
Gaven didn't stop with the Dobro. "After I had been playing the Dobro for about two or three years, then I got the banjo," he says. "Once you master one [instrument], it channels into another one, which channels into another one."
Gaven also plays the mandolin, but the Dobro remains his instrument of choice. Last year, at the age of 12, he competed against adults and won the gold medal for Dobro at the prestigious Old Fiddler's Convention in Galax, Virginia.
As for the future, Gaven says he's trying to develop his own style, "not just copy what other people have done." And he's working on composing. "I haven't written too many songs with lyrics, but that's something I'd like to work on."
"If you are playing with other musicians, you are blending your two styles together, making them fit in a new way and you're coming up with new things together. It's really something special."
On July 9th, he'll take the stage in Nashville, alongside bluegrass legends Rhonda Vincent, Bobby Osborne, and others at the legendary Ryman Auditorium.
MONTREAL - Jeff Beck is a guitar god to some of his fans. He sees his hard-driving style somewhat differently.
"It's a form of musical Tourette's," he told a news conference at the Montreal International Jazz Festival on Monday. "It's involuntary spasm. I think it's probably a form of insanity, to be quite honest with you.
" I think most people who play are quite nuts. You become obsessed about sounds and positioning and notation and chords and we just get drawn into it. I try not to be boring and that's all it is."
A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Beck has always been known as an innovator. He even made his own guitar out of cigar boxes and pieces of wood when he was a child.
He acknowledges that sometimes he makes a mistake despite his fans' insistence on greatness.
"If it's a great mistake, I put it in there and then expand it," he said, tapping his skull.
Beck was honoured at the jazz festival for a standout career which includes pioneering work using distortion, feedback and the fuzzbox and destroying rock's boundaries to explore jazz fusion.
One of his most notable career moves was joining the Yardbirds in 1965, teaming up with Jimmy Page. He also later had his own group, with Rod Stewart on vocals.
"It's hard to put the finger exactly where my present style comes from," the 65-year-old said of his current output, which has been described as a mix of guitar rock and electronica.
"It's just years of listening to people that I was drawn to, from rockabilly to the '60s - you know, Hendrix, and even Ravi Shankar, who twisted everything around for me."
He's also been influenced by music from Arab countries, he added.
"I don't care about politics or anything like that. If the song sounds good, I'll play it and try to embroider what's there and embellish it and try to make it my own."
Beck, whose concert at the festival sold out as quickly as his fingers race along his guitar, said he and his band will start in earnest on a new album at the beginning of August but he wasn't giving many clues about what will be on it.
"We're dreaming up ideas of how to modify existing songs," he said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to put some original stuff in as far as the 'up' stuff, the danceable stuff, the stuff with groove.
"There is a dilemma about whether to make it a double album with the tear-jerky stuff one side and the rock 'n' roll on the other but all will be revealed by the end of August or maybe September."
He did say the album will go for an "eclectic sound" and getting that means he'll use a variety of musicians in the disc's production.
But Beck says he is definitely sticking with his current band.
"They're great," he said. "You build up a camaraderie and I think anybody'll tell you that a band is better than pickup players any day of the week.
"You become a soap opera, you become a family, really, and you share travel griefs and misery and all the rest of it. We've been together for almost 18 months now. It would be a shame to spoil that."
He drew a few laughs when he talked about how he feels looking back on some of his old albums.
"It's like an old photo album where you think, 'Aww, sorry about the hair or the trousers."
But he allowed a lot of it stands up, particularly material he did with Jan Hammer.
Beck said one thing that pleases him is seeing the enduring popularity of the electric guitar, an instrument he says could have easily fallen down into "the black hole of nothingness."
An example of the electric guitar's popularity is Beck's inclusion on the latest version of the popular Guitar Hero video game, something he says has him plenty excited.
"Let's just see how excited I am when the cheque comes in," he joked.
For all his accolades, Beck says he never thinks of himself as a legend.
"It's very nice at this stage in my life to be listened to," he said.
The first edition of the Barrios WorldWideWeb Competition has launched a unique new genre of musical competition. Guitarists from 18 to 30 years of age, in any country of the world, can participate via the Internet by uploading videos showing their performance of "Allegro Sinfónico" and "Choro da Saudade" by Agustin Barrios Mangoré and registering their entry with the competition website, www.barriosworldwide.com. The competition opened July 1, 2009.
The first of the three rounds of the Barrios WorldWideWeb Competition ends on September 1, 2009 (closing of the entry period and the uploading of the first round entries). On September 15, the judges will announce the 20 semifinalists selected to compete in the second round, which requires the submission of a third video showing their interpretation of a Barrios composition that will be announced on the competition website.
From these 20 semifinalists, the judges will select three finalists to compete in the third round, in which they will fly to Barrios' homeland, Paraguay, for the Grand Finale on December 6, 2009, in the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. Pane in Asunción.
The winner of the competition will receive a prize of US $5,000 in cash, a trophy and a certificate of recognition; the second place prize is US $2,500 in cash, a trophy and a certificate of recognition ,and the third place prize is US $1,000 in cash, a trophy and a certificate of recognition. In addition, a prize of US $1,000 will be awarded to the semi-finalist with the greatest number of votes on his YouTube video entry. The 20 semi-finalists will also receive certificates of recognition for having participated in the competition.
A panel of qualified international judges will use their criteria of excellence to choose the best from the many. Judges include Carlos Barbosa-Lima (Brazil), Richard Stover (USA), Eduardo Fernández (Uruguay), Carlos Payés (El Salvador), and representing Paraguay, the extraordinary guitarist and creator of this original venture, Berta Rojas.
For more details on how to enter the competition, visit www.barriosworldwide.com. The website also contains detailed information about prizes, judges, the life and works of Agustin Barrios, and the country of Paraguay.
NAZARETH, Pa. -- At a bustling factory on the outskirts of this eastern Pennsylvania town, one of the world's oldest guitar makers is using a Depression-era strategy to keep production flowing and avert layoffs.
Workers at C.F Martin & Co. are putting finishing touches on the solid-wood 1 Series model, so named for its simplicity. It lacks inlay, as did the company's stripped-down 1930s model, and is expected to sell for less than $1,000, breaking a key price point and far less than its $100,000 limited-edition guitars made of Brazilian rosewood. More popular Martins generally sell for $2,000 to $3,000.
At Martin's Nazareth, Pa., factory, Sophie Eckhart inspects a 1 Series guitar. The new model is an effort to maintain sales with cash-strapped musicians.
Initial reaction is promising. The company, which had sales of $93 million last year, introduced the 1 Series in April and promptly sold out its first year's output of 8,000 guitars.
"We needed something so we wouldn't have to start laying people off," says Chris Martin, the company's chief executive and sixth generation of his family to lead the closely held company, which was founded in 1833 in New York City. Martin employs about 575 workers, who make 52,000 guitars a year, at the plant here. It has another factory in Mexico that makes beginner guitars.
Although Martin's guitars have been favored by music legends including Elvis Presley, Gene Autry and Eric Clapton -- who once said if he could be reincarnated as anything, it would be as a Martin guitar -- the company began struggling when consumer spending swooned last fall. Guitars aren't necessities, and anything other than food, shelter or clothing has felt the downdraft as job losses mounted, home prices fell, and investment values dropped. Since autumn, Martin's sales have dropped 20%.
Meanwhile, Martin's inventories of its high-end guitars ballooned. The company eliminated overtime and didn't replace workers who retired or quit, cutting its staff by about 50.
But given the special woodworking skills involved in guitar making, Martin wanted to avoid layoffs. The company figured it is better to find a way to keep workers occupied than face the challenge of having to train new ones after the economy recovers. The solution: Copy what many big retailers do by offering a lower-priced alternative. The dilemma was how to do that without sacrificing quality or muddying its image.
It's an approach that many believe saved the company during the Depression, when Mr. Martin's great-grandfather introduced an all-mahogany unadorned guitar, void of inlay and frills, which sold for $20 to $30, a small fraction of the price of its other trim-laden models.
Stan Werbin, owner of Elderly Instruments in Lansing, Mich., ordered about 20 of the new guitars and has sold a half-dozen in the past two months for $800 to $900. "It was really smart of Martin to come out with these in the current economy. They seem to be filling the niche quite well," he says.
Mr. Werbin says the new guitars are in a sweet spot in terms of pricing: under $1,000. "This is the price range that is not hurting as much."
After putting on the strings, Virgil Remaly tunes a newly built 1 Series.
"Soundwise, for the money, they're very good," he says, but aren't necessarily comparable with more expensive models.
(Martin has other models that are even lower priced, but they use laminated plywood for the backs and sides. The 1 Series is an all solid wood guitar.)
Others in the $472 million annual acoustic-guitar market are trying something similar. Santa Cruz Guitar Co., a small California producer, recently introduced a "1929 model," which company President Richard Hoover says is "not so much about austerity. But it's simple, and most importantly, something that feels OK to indulge yourself in during difficult times." The 1929 sells for $3,500.
Kurt Listug, chief executive of Taylor Guitars in El Cajon, Calif., says he has no intention of developing less expensive models. He doesn't believe the current slump will make any long-term changes in the types of guitars consumers want to buy, so he sees no reason to reach down market. "This is a passing episode," he says.
Not all manufacturers are so adaptable. Unlike most mass producers of items like appliances and tractors, Martin's factory is still largely run as a handcrafted process. Each guitar travels through a series of 60 workstations, with more than 300 distinct production steps.
Workers use modern equipment, including robots that polish guitars to a high sheen, but much of the work is still done by hand. Pieces are fitted and glued by workers hunched over workbenches. Workers tune each guitar carefully to make sure its sound is true.
The upshot is extreme flexibility, which is critical in the recession, when fortunes turned swiftly and unexpectedly. The ability to come up with a new design quickly and without tearing apart a production process allowed Martin to get a lower priced product into stores without a huge investment.
Subtle differences in construction are crucial in acoustic guitars. In the case of the new model, cost savings included switching to a type of lacquer that doesn't require time-consuming polishing.
"There's less man-hours in each instrument," Mr. Martin says.
Jowi Taylor, a Toronto broadcaster whose first name is pronounced "Joey," set out in 1995 to create an object more quintessentially Canadian than hockey, Tim Hortons doughnuts, insulin, the CN Tower or Lake Louise.
Eleven years later, he was able to hold it in his hands - an acoustic guitar made from 64 bits of Canadian history, including Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle, Paul Henderson's hockey stick, fabric from one of Karen Kain's ballet costumes and the only wood ever taken from Haida Gwaii's tragically felled golden spruce.
A craftsman named George Rizsanyi built the guitar in six weeks, though the project " with what Taylor calls "research, consultation, futile attempts to get funding," plus "meetings and letters and phone calls and emails and endorsements and false hopes" - stretched beyond a decade.
Stephen Fearing played the guitar before 80,000 people on Parliament Hill on Canada Day, 2006. And last Valentine's Day it received a nickname that has stuck: Voyageur.
In Six String Nation, which Douglas & McIntyre released on Canada Day, Taylor writes: "This guitar was not built by a corporation and it was not funded by the government. It is the product of the combined efforts of a dreamer, a craftsman and those mad enough to lend support."
Douglas & McIntyre got involved when broadcaster/author Bill Richardson arranged for Taylor to meet publisher Scott McIntyre at Toronto's Royal York Hotel. Here's how McIntyre recalls the meeting: "This guy comes in with this yellow guitar case. After about 15 minutes, I said, 'OK. I don't know what this book is, but we're doin' it.'"
The idea of making a guitar out of such disparate materials as a piece of wood from a sideboard in Sir John A. Macdonald's office, a walrus tusk from Rankin Inlet and a piece of canvas from one of the original Stratford Shakespeare Festival tents is quixotic in the extreme, but it's proved to be a playable instrument. In Six String Nation, Guujaaw and Feist and many lesser-known Canadians are shown rocking out on it.
D&M's art director, Peter Cocking, and in-house designer Naomi MacDougall have melded the text, insets, sidebars and photos (many by Doug Nicholson) into a smooth whole, paralleling Rizsanyi's work on the guitar. McIntyre says the book isn't Douglas Coupland's Souvenir of Canada, but it's "in that spirit of visual celebration of who we are."
The Canadians in the photos aren't all young and thin. Some are overweight; some have white hair or dreadlocks or yarmulkes. There's a slight danger of its coming across as an expensively produced see-Canada ad. On the copyright page, one of the ways of cataloguing the book is given as "Nationalism - Canada."
MADRID - Barcelona authorities might fine U2 for rocking too long and loudly during rehearsals for their latest world tour, the city council said Thursday.
While the city said it is proud to host the beginning of U2's world tour, it also said that one of its districts received a formal complaint by residents about the band playing after permitted hours and making noise.
"The District of Les Corts has fulfilled its duty in attending to neighbours' complaints and has acted administratively in the face of a possible failure to comply with time and noise creation regulations," the statement said.
The council said they had given the band permission to rehearse until 10 p.m., limiting the amount of sound they could make.
Regional newspaper El Punt said the band had rehearsed till midnight at sound levels measured at 70 decibels - the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner at one metre.
When called by The Associated Press, city authorities would not say how much a possible fine could add up to. But newspaper El Mundo said on its website that under current noise pollution legislation, fines of up to 15,000 euros were possible.
The Irish quartet kicked off their "360 degree" tour at Barcelona football club's Camp Nou stadium by playing 22 songs in front of 90,000 fans on Tuesday.
The show features a large, modernistic four-legged construction which houses what the band calls "a giant spherical screen."
Singer Bono told the audience after four songs, "This has been our neighbourhood for the last couple of weeks."
Some neighbours clearly were not impressed with the band's state of the art sound equipment and assiduous rehearsals.
"While business outlets cash in on fans flooding in, residents can't even open their windows at home," local businessman Alfons Huescar told journalists.
Dave Grohl is forming a spectacular new supergroup with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Queen of the Stone Age star Josh Homme, according to reports.
The trio is currently holed up in a Los Angeles recording studio working on a new album, reports MetalHammer.co.uk.
Faith No More frontman Mike Patten is also rumoured to be involved in the project.
When approached for comment, Homme's rocker wife Brody Dalle refused to confirm details, but admitted a supergroup was in the works, saying, "I'm not at liberty to talk about it... but I think (the project) is pretty f**king amazing. Just beats and sounds like you've never heard before.
Aerosmith's next album might be "on the bench, in pieces," waiting for the group to resume recording after it finishes touring in mid-September, but guitarist Joe Perry's next solo album is just about ready to go.
Perry tells Gary Graff of Billboard.com that he's just finishing mixing the follow-up to 2005's Grammy Award-nominated "Joe Perry" and expects it to be mastered next week. He plans to release a single in late July or early August, with the album coming out this fall.
"It's a lot different than the last one," Perry reports. "The last one was a straight-ahead rocker. This one's got some different things on it." The album was recorded in about seven weeks at Perry's home studio, The Boneyard; he shares lead vocal duties with a German singer his wife, Billie, discovered on the Internet, and there's one instrumental track. David Hull from the Joe Perry Project and Ben Tileston, who plays with two of Perry's sons in TAB The Band, were also involved.
"We were working around the clock, through weekends and everything, and it was all live," Perry says. "In fact, a lot of the vocals are live along with the rest of the band. (Sound) was bleeding from one track to another; if somebody had a bad take everybody had a bad take, and we played it 'til we got a good one. Of course we went in and overdubbed a lot of the other stuff, but the energy is there. You can feel it."
The one thing Perry doesn't have yet is a title; for that he's holding a contest via Twitter, letting fans make suggestions. If one of the fan's is chosen, the winner will receive a guitar. "It's tough, obviously, without having heard the record for people to name it," he notes, "but we may find something really good. There've already been a bunch that are possibilities."
Once the album is released Perry hopes to hit the road with his own band for "a short, fast, hard tour. That's what I'm really looking forward to...getting back out there with some old friends and some other musicians and doing it like the old days."
The Aerosmith album, its first since 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo," will also be a consideration at that point as the group -- which wraps up its current tour with ZZ Top on Sept. 16 -- hits the studio again with producer Brendan O'Brien. "That is the next project right after we get off the road," Perry says. "We'll take a little break and then put it together. I'm hoping it will come together pretty fast, but I've been saying that for five years, so..."
examiner.com This Hofner Senator guitar formerly owned by John Lennon was sold at auction July 1. (Photo: Christie's Images, 2009)
John Lennon's vintage Hofner Senator guitar, accompanied by a letter written by George Harrison that confirmed it belonged to him, sold Wednesday at Christie's auction house for £205,250 (roughly $335,331.00 at current exchange rates).
The guitar had been estimated to sell from £100,000 to 150,000, according to the auction house (roughly $163,379 to $245,069 at current exchange rates).
The buyer's name was not released by the auction house because of client confidentiality.
For Randy Bachman, collecting Gretsch guitars was simply a case of taking care of business.
The Canadian rock and roll legend amassed one of the world's largest collections of the instruments over the past 40 years, and last year sold them for "several million dollars" to the company's museum in Savannah, Ga.
"It's like anything else in life that you collect, there comes a time when you want to sell them and move on," says Mr. Bachman, most famous for his time in the bands Guess Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive.
Mr. Bachman's fortune was built on more than 300 of the vintage guitars, which he started collecting after his late-1950s Chet Atkins model was stolen from his hotel room in 1975. He scoured pawn shops hunting for the instrument, picking up others along the way.
If not for an odd series of coincidences, the value of his collection would have been substantially less. The Gretsch factory burned to the ground in the early 1970s along with all of the original plans for the company's guitars. Then in 1989, the Traveling Wilburys shot a video using the guitars, causing a spike in demand and effectively relaunching the brand (using Bachman's collection as prototypes for new models).
"The Wilburys made them famous again," Mr. Bachman says. "The value went up because everyone wanted something that was quite rare."
The average investor need not count on tragedy and aging super-groups to make a profit on guitars.
Here are some tips for would-be collectors:
Not sure what to buy? Vintage Guitar Magazine has an index of 42 classic models. Anyone who had held the guitars in the index - such as a 1953 Blond Fender Telecaster or a 1954 Les Paul Jr. - from the index's inception in 1991 would see an average annual return of 27.7 per cent -though the returns were down 7 per cent in 2008.
Go big: With the economy in the tank, many collectors are looking to offload holdings. "Buy a whole collection from someone who is selling at a slight discount," Mr. Bachman says. "You want two or three dozen guitars, glean through them and pick the really good ones. Sell the others to pay for the ones you keep."
Go really big: Tommy Byrne of London's Anchorage Capital Partners is creating a $100-million fund that will invest in classic guitars. It still needs a lead investor - about $30-million will do, he says.
"The amount of the lead investor's investment isn't as important as the quality of the investor," he says.
Condition: "If the vintage piece doesn't have 100 per cent of its original gear on it (excluding strings) then you are collecting more science fiction than you are vintage guitar," Mr. Byrne says. "Both sound and the iconic value get hit with any changes made, so therefore collectors don't see the point."
Fact check: Mr. Byrne warns that checking serial numbers is a good starting point, but if you're dropping thousands of dollars on a guitar it may merit some forensic work to ensure the piece is the same age as the seller purports. "These fraudsters are able to find wood from the same period with paint and hardware to make it look distressed," he says. "Sometimes the only way to tell the difference is by examining the glue inside the body."
Saying last week was rough for Guitar Haven owner Dave Johnson is quite an understatement.
His downtown Grand Haven guitar store was shut down by the Michigan Department of Treasury for late taxes on June 23. Three days earlier, his parents' Holland home was flooded with raw sewage, ruining what he says are some of his most precious possessions.
"That Saturday, I lost about 80 percent of everything I wanted to keep in life, and I lost everything else when they closed my store," Johnson said.
But now things are looking up.
After a week of dealing with the state, officials gave Johnson back the keys to his 115 Washington Ave. store Wednesday afternoon. He said Wednesday that he planned to reopen the store at noon today.
Johnson took full responsibility for not filing his taxes correctly. He said it was an organizational blunder, and it doesn't mean Guitar Haven is in financial trouble.
"I'm not an accountant - I'm a guitar guy," Johnson said. "I screwed up, and I didn't realize the problem I had."
Johnson said he has been taking care of his father, who has Alzheimer's disease; and his mother, who suffers from diabetes and epilepsy. His parents had to be moved out of their home for a week while the flooded basement was cleaned up.
"It's been a roller-coaster ride, and basically it's all downhill," he said. "It's difficult to stay positive when you're shoveling manure as fast as you can."
Along with selling guitars and accessories, between 120 and 150 students take music lessons at Guitar Haven.
Darius Pimpleton, who teaches piano and saxophone lessons at the store, said he's taken calls from parents who were concerned about Guitar Haven's future.
"I had a number of parents say the community needs this store," Pimpleton said.
Bryan Willits, a regular at Guitar Haven and a local "battle of the bands" judge, said Johnson is an advocate for local up-and-coming musicians and helps make local events happen.
"This man here is always behind the scenes doing 'battle of the bands' and that kind of stuff," Willits said.
Michigan Department of Treasury officials placed signs on the store's windows on June 23, stating that the store was seized and the items inside would be auctioned off July 23. But by Wednesday, the signs were taken down and the auction canceled.
Treasury spokesman Terry Stanton said he is not allowed by law to speak about specific cases, but said business owners are sometimes able to clean the slate with the state.
"The taxpayer always has the opportunity to become current with any liabilities they might have," he said.
Stanton said with more than 250,000 businesses in the state, there's always some businesses dealing with tax issues.
"It's something that occurs on a fairly regular basis," he said.
After four years of spending six to seven days a week at Guitar Haven, Johnson said it was a strange feeling to be locked out for more than a week.
"It was a good vacation, but I wish I could have spent it doing something else," he said.
Even while the store was closed, Johnson said he was able to return some instruments he was in the process of repairing to their owners.
Right after he was let back in the store Wednesday, Johnson was busy tuning guitars and preparing to reopen. A few customers even trickled in to check out guitars.
As friends stopped in to welcome him back, Johnson asked them to spread the word about the store's reopening.
"I'm back and the state's gone," Johnson said. "I've satisfied their immediate needs, and will continue to do so."
Motor City Mayhem, the CD/DVD/Blu-ray celebration of Ted's 6,000th concert, hit stores on June 30 -- just in time for it to be blared loud and proud this Fourth of July! And here's something else to blast out your speakers this Saturday: Ted's Motor City Mayhem version of the "Star-Spangled Banner", available now as a free download.
Jay Boone has seen a lot since opening Emerald City Guitars in Seattle's Pioneer Square in the summer of 1996.
His business has seen the dot-com bust, and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that turned Seattle's popular, historic tourist area into a ghost town.
And before that, there was the World Trade Organization riot in 1999, when Boone feared his small shop would be looted. Luckily, it wasn't.
Now he's navigating what is likely the worst recession since the Great Depression, looking for new ways to connect buyers to some of his vintage instruments that range in price from a few hundred dollars to six figures.
Emerald City Guitar has four employees, including owner Boone. The company had gross sales of just over $1 million in 2008, Boone said.
Boone caters to a niche clientele of professional and amateur musicians. Still, like many retailers, Boone said he saw sales tank in late 2008. And this year, sales have been slow. But he has strategically tweaked his staff, and has put more emphasis on using the internet for a targeted approach to reach potential customers.
Prior to the recession, Boone, who also appraises instruments, said there was a vintage guitar bubble much like the housing bubble. As prices rose, more and more old instruments started coming on the market as people brought out their old guitars that had been stored away and dusted them off in hopes of cashing in.
But the recession has taken a bite out of business, although Boone said that sales have picked up in the last few months.
"I have definitely seen business pick up," said Boone, sitting in his showroom in a chair next to a curved lime-green sectional that looks like it could be for sale in a vintage furniture store.
"I am more optimistic now."
That doesn't mean the shop hasn't had to adjust. Boone laid off one worker, hiring a replacement with more sales experience. He also has been more selective about where he places advertising. He still buys ads in trade publications, but he also registered as a dealer and is listing his inventory on Gbase.com, a website dedicated to used and vintage musical equipment.
The Gbase.com listing was a smart move. And Boone said he also plans to revamp the store's website, uploading short video clips showing himself with his vintage guitars. About 60 percent of his sales come from the internet, with inquiries coming in from all around the country as well as from Europe and other parts of the world.
The shop is tucked away on a side street in the shadow of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and away from the main summertime bustle of Pioneer Square's busiest streets. But the shop is most definitely on the map, especially among vintage guitar aficionados.
Past clients have included Eric Clapton; the great Joe Strummer of The Clash once came in. A picture of ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons' visit adorns one of the shop's walls.
Among Boone's customers are many local working musicians, famous or not. And customers also include many middle-aged guys who have long wanted to own a vintage Gibson or other prized guitar, but until now, could not afford one.
On a recent weekday morning, Emmet McCusker entered the shop like a man on a mission. He gazed at instruments, which hang from any available space on the walls like the trophies they are.
McCusker's eyes stopped on a vintage instrument made by Tacoma Guitars. Soon he was sitting on the green sectional, strumming away.
"I love this guitar. This plays like butter. It's beautiful," said McCusker, who was visiting Seattle from Vancouver Island, where he is an engineering and transportation superintendent for a small town.
McCusker had just completed the Ride to Conquer Cancer from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Seattle and said the highlight of his stay was his visit to this shop.
The beauty of Emerald City Guitars, said McCusker, is that the stock is "lean and mean." The shop offers a wide selection of guitars and amps, but does not carry a large number of instruments, choosing instead to focus on the best guitars in the best shape.
"Even in a downturn, people will buy quality," McCusker said.
PLYMOUTH - Township police recently arrested three people who were allegedly trying to sell stolen musical instruments back to a retail store.
Officers received a call on June 21 from the Guitar Center in the Metroplex Shopping Center on Chemical Road after an employee encountered three people attempting to sell guitars that were believed stolen.
The employee told police that a male and a female had come into the store with two guitars and had asked about selling them. The employee told the pair he would have to research the instruments first, and became wary of the proposition when the two asked for only $100 for one of the guitars when it was worth at least $1,000.
After checking the serial number on the guitar, the employee found that it had been purchased at the store on June 17 for $1,754.96 by another woman, so he called police.
After arriving at the store, officers made contact with the three suspects in the parking lot, identified as Stacey Shrout, 26, of Watkins Glenn; Gerald Martin, 19, of Troy; and Michael Crunetti, 30, of Huntingdon Valley.
The three suspects were standing next to a black Ford Focus, and in plain view officers could see seven guitar-type cases in the backseat and hatchback area.
When asked of the instruments, Martin said that they had bought them from a Hispanic male in Philadelphia for $20, and that the three had pooled their money to buy them in hopes of selling the items later to turn a profit.
Officers then placed the three under arrest before conducting a vehicle search and towing the car. Inside the car police found six guitars, a viola, an assisted listening system, a UHF stereo transmitter, two black nylon bags containing clothing and personal items and two sets of keys. They estimated value of the items exceeds $7,000.
After being transported back to Plymouth Township Police Department, it was found during processing that Crunetti was a wanted person under the alias of Jason Charles Crunetti, with the warrant listed out of Bradford County, PA.
Police then contacted the woman who had purchased the guitar that was attempted to be sold inside the Guitar Center, and she checked where she had last put her instrument to find that it was indeed missing.
gazettetimes.com Sid Beam's Saturday started out pretty well: The musician was loading up his gear at about 8 a.m. Saturday in front of his house on 12th Street, getting ready for a day of performing at the Corvallis Farmers Market. Just before he left, Beam realized he needed something else. He returned to his house, leaving his wood-bodied Austin resonator guitar
"When I came back out, it was gone," Beam said.
Beam, who plays, sings and writes songs with the band Gumbo, was crestfallen. He bought the resonator because it puts out more volume than a normal guitar, which makes it better suited to playing outdoors.
So far, there are no leads on the missing guitar. The guitar was on the cover of the June 26-July 3 edition of The Entertainer as part of a story about Gumbo. Beam is hoping that getting the word out about the guitar's theft will lead to its return.
"I've got a lot of people out on the street who are checking it out and asking around," he said.
Beam said he's waiting to file a police report until he can get the serial numbers from the friend he bought it from, who is on vacation. The guitar is worth somewhere around $500. It's essentially a copy of a more expensive instrument, he said, but it has been modified.
"It's worth a little bit more than what you would pay if you just went in the store and bought one like it," he said.
Beam's bandmates are disappointed, but unfortunately, not too surprised.
"We've been playing music for a long time, and so it's not the first instrument that's been stolen," Beam said. "It's always a drag.
"You'd like to think that your town or your neighborhood wasn't like that."
But he's got a lot of eyes looking for him, including most of the area music store owners.
"If something turns up from it," he said, "I'll be happy and it'll be out there on the street again, making music."
And that will make other people happy.
"That's what it's for," he said.
Anyone who has information about the stolen guitar is asked to call the Corvallis police at 766-6924.
Many electric guitar players do not mind their instrument becoming a little roadworn, as it can add to its character considerably. Gibson Les Paul Standard Electric Guitar Electric guitar player sells lightning-charred Gibson Les Paul Superb prices on musical instruments
However, one musician has taken this concept slightly further by auctioning off a guitar that was hit by lightning.
A Gibson Les Paul owned by Charles Hoyt from Mississippi was struck by the bolt back in 1992, but he has held on to it ever since.
But recently, an anonymous buyer spent nearly £50,000 on a mailbox that had been hit by a meteorite, so Mr Hoyt has decided to see whether he can cash in to a similar extent.
"This is probably the only guitar in the world that's ever been struck by lightning," he commented.
Mr Hoyt added that he has often thought about getting his Gibson Les Paul repaired over the last 17 years, but the passing of time has prompted him to decide to "let it go".
JOHN LENNON A 1958 Hofner Senator Guitar Serial No.4697, Senator model, natural finish, 22 fret fingerboard with five triple dot inlays, back of the neck applied with a square paper sticker the blue background with cream lettering spelling LOVE; Compensator tailpiece, bound f-holes, plastic facia with a Hofner logo, simulated tortoiseshell pickguard; and contour case containing a few pieces including a contemporary set of Martin Bronze strings, and a simulated tortoiseshell guitar pick; accompanied by: a facsimile copy of a typescript letter from George Harrison to Mal Evans' widow Lily on October 26th, 1982 on Harrisongs Ltd. headed stationery, regarding this guitar which states that this: Hofner is one of the first guitars of John's going back to the early days in Liverpool (1960-ish)... ; and a photograph of Lennon playing a Hofner Club 40 at the Top Ten Club, Hamburg, 1960 -- 8x10in.(20x26c.) (printed later).
Guitars owned by John Lennon very rarely appear on the market. George Harrison's verification of this guitars provenance in his letter to Lily Evans is invaluable. Harrison's own keen interest in guitars meant that he had a clear recollection of the models he and his fellow Beatles owned and used over the years. In the course of Christie's research, Lennon's friend and colleague Pete Shotton told us that although he himself didn't remember who played what guitar [Shotton himself was not a guitarist but played the washboard in the Quarry Men] George had an extremely good memory for detail and would not put his name to a statement unless it was correct. There has been some written speculation in the past that this Hofner Senator may be the very one that former Quarry Man Ken Brown owned, however this seems unfeasible when the provenance of this guitar is analysed. In the course of our research we spoke to Ken Brown himself about this rumour and he stated that he did not believe this to be the same guitar as the Hofner Sentator he owned. Also when it is considered that fellow Beatle George Harrison recalls Lennon owning one of these models, and that this guitar's history shows that John gave his Hofner Senator and a white Vox guitar to trusted friend and road manager Mal Evans. Evans did not appear on the Beatle scene until 1963 long after Ken Brown's six-week interlude with the Quarry Men in 1959, and as far as we know their paths never crossed. All these factors appear to refute the Ken Brown association with this particular guitar entirely. In the late '50s and early '60s American electric guitars were not readily available in the UK and if they could be found were very expensive, as a result budding guitarists had to rely on German-made and European electric guitars. Although Lennon came to be identified with the Rickenbacker 325 from late 1960-1961 onwards, what he himself described as his first 'real guitar' was a Hofner. As soon as John Lennon and George Harrison began to earn some money by playing at the Casbah club in Liverpool with the Quarry Men, they both purchased Hofner Club 40 electric guitars, John's first Hofner, and George's second, his first being a Hofner President. John's guitar was acquired via hire-purchase from Hessy's Music Shop on August 28th, 1959 and he recalled in an interview that when ..George and I saw a Hofner Club 40 we thought it was the end. All the Quarry Men's performances in 1959 at the Casbah Coffee club were without a drummer - if they were asked about this absence, they would respond: "The rhythm's in the guitars". The line-up of guitars at this time was John and George with their two Hofner Club 40s; Ken Brown with his Hofner Senator [for the 6 weeks he was with the Quarry Men] and Paul McCartney with his Zenith.
Hofners are closely associated with all the early Beatles, although in November 1959 George Harrison had moved on from his Hofner Club 40 to a Futurama, the closest thing he could get to a Fender Stratocaster. In January 1960 when Stuart Sutcliffe joined the group as bass player he purchased a large electric Hofner 333 bass guitar with money he had received from selling one of his canvases at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. With the addition of Sutcliffe the group's name changed from the Quarry Men to The Beatles [as a tribute to Buddy Holly's Crickets although initially spelt Beatals]. Photographs of the group during their landmark first tour of Hamburg show Lennon playing his Hofner Club 40. It was this gruelling tour which provided the group with the foundation for their success, as Mark Lewisohn wrote: Five hundred hours on stage in Hamburg...forged the style that would conquer the world. It seems highly probable that Lennon may have purchased this Hofner Senator whilst earning money in Germany either in 1960 or the following year. It was there in Hamburg in 1961 that Paul McCartney acquired what was to become his signature instrument, his first Hofner 500/1 violin bass.
The lack of photographic evidence of Lennon with this Hofner Senator suggests that he probably kept this guitar at home for writing purposes. It is significant that John Lennon had this guitar during those formative years in the early sixties, and that it was with him right at the beginning of his phenomenal career, when he was writing such early classics as: Please Please Me - The Beatles first No 1; Do You Want to Know A Secret, There's A Place, I Feel Fine, Help! and Ticket To Ride to name but a few. Putting speculation aside for a moment, it is certainly true that John Lennon guitars with provenance are exceptionally rare and to see one from Lennon's early career supported by documentation from fellow Beatle George Harrison is scarce indeed.
The MG15FXMS Micro Stack is the latest addition to the popular MG4 Series of Marshall amplifiers. The three-piece micro stack includes a 15-Watt compact head plus two matching speaker cabinets - one angled, one straight. Each cabinet is loaded with a full-range 10" speaker. In addition to being highly transportable, the MG15FXMS also allows many entry level and budget conscious players to enjoy the look, feel and classic tone of the iconic Marshall Stack.
Preserving the best features of the MG4 series, the MG15FXMS provides a three-band EQ section and features four programmable channels - Clean, Crunch, Overdrive1, and Overdrive2 - to provide a wide range of tone colors from a single amplifier. The Gain, EQ, Volume and Master Volume knobs are presented in Marshall's tried-and-true layout for extreme ease of use. Push-button channel switching offers smooth, silent transitions.
Digital Reverb is built-in, along with a full complement of Digital Effects - Chorus, Phaser, Flanger and Delay. The Delay time can be set using the Tap button on the front panel, and the Effects are programmable to match each channel.
The MG15FXMS Micro Stack provides a versatile array of inputs and outputs. The Line Input allows players to jam along with an MP3 player, CD player or other source. The combination Line Out / Headphone Out features speaker cabinet emulation, so the full Marshall sound is always preserved when recording or practicing through headphones.
The optional STOMPWARE® footswitch provides seamless transitioning from sound to sound, as well as tap tempo control and display for the built-in tuner. STOMPWARE technology allows this multi-function pedal to be connected using a traditional guitar cable - eliminating the need for special or hard-to-find cables.
The MG15FXMS Micro Stack carries an MSRP of $510.00 and will be available in October 2009.
Rocker Joan Jett apologized to Kristen Stewart after reportedly reducing her to tears during a heated confrontation on the set of upcoming biopic The Runaways.
The pair have struck up a friendship since Stewart signed on to play the I Love Rock N Roll hit-maker in a new biopic about her 1970s band.
However, the actress allegedly broke down crying after Jett gave her a 'hard time' during filming in a bid to improve her performance - prompting the rocker to apologize.
A source tells the New York Daily News, "Joan just wants Kristen to play an authentic version of herself, so she needled her a little bit too much. But she apologized when she realized how upset Kristen got."
In April, the Twilight actress admitted she was feeling the pressure that comes with playing a real person onscreen: "It's one of the most immense responsibilities to play a real person. Her story's important. It's an incredibly triumphant feminist story really."
sleazeroxx.com Chickenfoot are sorry to inform theirr Spanish fans that the band cannot perform tomorrow night in Madrid due to a serious injury to drummer Chad Smith.
Chad was performing on stage last night in Paris and during the show he hurt his right arm badly. He has torn his small bicep and cannot play the show Wednesday July 1st. The band is very sorry they cannot play for their Spanish fans this week and plan to return as soon as possible.
visit chickenfoot.us for more info
Chickenfoot's debut album, released earlier in June, opened at No. 4 in the U.S. pop chart and No. 1 in the independent music chart. It maintained its position in the main chart the following week before slipping to No. 7 in the latest list.
"It's the first time I've ever been up in that territory, above the clouds," said Satriani, who is embroiled in a copyright infringement suit with British band Coldplay over its hit single "Viva La Vida."
According to band manager Mick Brigden, U.S. album sales totaled around 180,000 in the first three weeks, around one quarter of which were bought digitally, suggesting a younger, technology-savvie audience.
