Might have to pick this one up. Johnny Cash played a legendary gig at Folsom Prison in 1968 that resulted in a classic killer live recording. Now, Sony Legacy has (re)released Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison,a 2 CD/1 DVD set that includes not only the classic tracks (and a lot of unreleased ones as well) [...]

Click the link below to see a great video of a sitar version of Sweet Child of Mine (I didn’t embed it because it starts playing automatically. I wish they wouldn’t do that…). I think this may have been a TV commercial, but I don’t care. It still rocks.

What a great idea. Get 55 musicians of varying degrees of skill and a multitude of tastes to throw their names into a hat, and then divide them up into 12 randomly arranged bands. Then? What else? Organize a 2-night show to let the bands hash it out on stage!
Organizer Jesse Stover, 30, sound engineer [...]

I passed the teenager audio test, and here’s the little banner to prove it:

Jeez, you would have thought all those years of guitar would have kind of put the kibosh on hearing super-high frequencies. Guess not.

Holy crap! Michael Jackson is autioning off his entire arcade/pinball game collection. And some of it is cheap. One example is his Megatouch XL, a Merit Industries game that I developed 4 games for. It’s going for $200. Really?!?! Those suckers used to cost like $1500.
Check out the auction site.

Blues legend Taj Mahal (born Henry St. Claire Fredericks) has been tapped as a 2009 Blues Hall of Fame Inductee. Taj is an interesting fella with a great website:
Composer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Taj Mahal is one of the most prominent and influential figures in late 20th century blues and roots music. Though his career began [...]

Speaking of great players, I found this article about Eliot Fisk today and decided to post about this great classical player.
“So I taught myself guitar,” he says as matter of factly as if he were talking about teaching himself to tie his shoes.
From first strum, Fisk was hooked, practicing hours daily at an age where [...]

Great article by Jeff Howe over at wired.com:
Nobody expected the number-one-with-a-bullet rise of the music videogame—least of all the music industry. Armed with little more than crappy graphics, plastic guitars, and epic hooks, play-along titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have become an industry in their own right, raking in more than $2.3 billion [...]

Great vid of one of my all-time favorite players, Pat Metheny, playing Minuano (Six Eight) from Still Life with the Metropole Orchestra:

Pat’s name is rarely mentioned when you talk about fast players, but he’s really quick. And in a very good way. He’s also got the coolest hair in jazz today.
I once saw him give [...]

I ran across an article on acousticguitar.com today about Ledward Kaapana, a legendary Hawaiian slack-key guitarist, who gave a short interview (with mp3 examples) about his playing.
Kaapana began his solo career in 1983 with Lima Wella, his first solo album. He toured widely in 1992 through 1994 with the National Council for the Traditional Arts’ [...]

Long article on Derek Trucks over at austin360.com:
For a guy who’d rather talk about Indian classical music than the Billboard charts, Trucks (who plays Wednesday at La Zona Rosa) is pretty close to hitting the mainstream. He started making waves about six or seven years ago as the reviving light of the Allman Brothers Band, [...]

In these tough economic times, acquiring new guitars can become…well…challenging. Feed the kids or buy that new Martin? Fix the water heater or shell out for the new B. C. Rich Beast V? You know what I’m saying. Fortunately, Guitarbalooga is here to solve all your problems. Okay, maybe not all your problems. Really just [...]

Parker is featured in Queensryche’s 5th video podcast:
Well, coming into… Joining QUEENSRŸCHE, I know that I definitely have some big shoes to fill, because every guitar player they’ve ever had has been amazing — incredible guitar players, really great songwriters.
I guess the main thing that I’m gonna try to do is to recreate what they’ve [...]

Yesterday, a supposedly unreleased take (number 20) of the Beatles’ Revolution 1 (from the White Album) hit the tubes, and I missed it because EMI pulled the plug on the YouTube video:

Damn copyright laws getting in the way of all our fun again. Boy, it’s a good thing we’ve got lawyers to shove the proverbial [...]

Have you been looking for a way to send the message to your co-workers that you’re hardcore? That you’re about much, much more than your cubicle and mad Excel-pivot-table skillz? That The Man hasn’t crushed your spirit and killed the kid who used to wear an AC/DC jean jacket and smoke cigarettes in the high-school [...]