A guitar reported to have been smashed by Pete Townshend at the famous 1969 Woodstock music festival will be on display in July at the Hard Rock Cafe in London. The guitar in question is a Gibson SG Special, similar to the one shown at left. Although most news sites are reporting this guitar as [...]

The long-awaited Chickenfoot CD finally hit stores yesterday. As I write this, Amazon is selling the MP3 Version for a mere $3.99, so I didn’t hesitate to take the plunge. There is so much hype about this band that they would have had to deliver the equivalent of Led Zeppelin IV to live up to [...]

The Boston Globe has posted a not bad/not great review of Chickenfoot’s May 26 sold out show in Cambridge, MA: With his more virtuosic background, Satriani seemed like the odd man out on Chickenfoot’s occasionally paint-by-numbers ’80s-metal material. “Avenida Revolution” and “Turnin’ Left” were tuneless grinds, and the riffs of “Sexy Little Thing” and “My [...]

Bobbi Fleckman and I were fortunate enough to snag tickets for the sold-out Unwigged and Unplugged show at the Beacon Theater in NYC last night (no, the picture to the left is not from the show last night, it’s a tribute to a picture I would have gotten had pictures been allowed), featuring the comedic [...]

Anvil! The Story of Anvil is a documentary I’ve posted about before and finally got a chance to see this weekend in New York. The documentary follows Steve “Lips” Kudlow and Robb Reiner, founders of the heavy-metal band Anvil, as they try to achieve rockstardom with a European tour and release of their 13th album. [...]

I’m willing to bet that Jeff Beck doesn’t make it into the Wall St. Journal very often, but he did today–complete with audio and video clips: There’s something satisfying about the recognition he’s received, which is for his playing rather than his pursuit of celebrity or his record sales. Even to his fans, the reticent [...]

Jack Black, 1/2 of the rock power duo Tenacious D, has a starring role in a new Double Fine Productions/Electronic Arts game, Brütal Legend, due out for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in the fall of 2009. Brütal Legend is the rock-child of Tim Schafer, a video-game designer with a sense of humor who also brought us [...]

Missed this in January. Electronic Musician editors singled out the $6000 Moog Guitar this January as an Editor’s Choice: It’s rare that an instrument gets reinvented, but that’s what Moog Music has done with its Moog Guitar. Although it’s from Moog, it’s not a synth or a MIDI guitar. Rather, it’s a super-high-quality electric guitar [...]

Long-time Red Hot Chili Pepper’s guitarist John Frusciante released The Empyrean Jan. 20. I’ve always admired John’s work with the Chili Peppers. He’s got a great tone and a unique way of throwing together licks that marry themselves perfectly to the tune. According to Adam Hughes of the Brandeis Hoot, John might have missed the [...]

I’ve always been a fan of guitar instrumentals, particularly in the heavy-metal genre, so I was excited to discover this excellent brand-spanking-new release from Magna Carta Records: Guitars That Ate My Brain: “Guitars That Ate My Brain”, a dozen mind-altering instrumentals from today’s most accomplished metal axe grinders — a twelve-headed hydra of monster guitar riffage that slashes, shreds [...]