Jack Thammarat of Bangkok, Thailand has won the 2009 Guitar Idol competition (how those guys avoid lawsuits from Fox, I’ll never understand). Born in 1979, Jack began playing at 13. He says his style is a combination of rock, blues, jazz and progressive. He works as a guitarist, composer, studio musician, and guitar teacher.

I like [...]

Last Saturday, June 6, 2009, Kyle Busch won the Nationwide series race at the Nashville Speedway. After being presented with a Gibson Les Paul hand-painted by Sam Bass, Kyle smashed it (or tried to–Les Pauls are pretty damn strong), Pete Townshend style.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m one of those people who doesn’t really get [...]

80’s metal queen Lita Ford has hooked up with Bumblefoot guitarist Ron Thal and drummer Dennis Leeflang for a short summer world tour with plenty of dates in the States. Bumblefoot will open. She’s also scheduled to play a select number of festivals and motorcycle rallies.
Jun. 12 – Redwood Run – Piercy, CA
Jun. 13 – [...]

Les Paul turned 94 yesterday, June 9. Les Paul is credited with innovating many recording techniques we think of as commonplace today, such as multi-track recording and overdubbing. He also built and owned one of the first electric guitars, the first of which was named The Log. In addition to his technology innovations, Les Paul [...]

Well, at least some good has come out of the whole Coldplay/Satriani plagiarism affair. Winnipeg guitar teacher, Andrew Wasson, owner of CreativeGuitar.ca, made a 9 minute video analysis of the tunes and posted it on YouTube.com. It went viral:
Since then, Wasson’s video on YouTube has received more than 670,000 views and earned him a coveted [...]

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 [...]

Steve Vai has done a very cool thing and released a 7-CD box set named Naked Tracks, which consists of nothing but backing tracks. What a great idea!
“Through the years, whenever I would mix my records I would usually do a mix of specific songs without the lead guitar. This allowed me to play along [...]

In a new book, Rock Roadie: Backstage and Confidential with Hendrix, Elvis, the “Animals”, Tina Turner, and an All-star Cast, from one-time Hendrix roadie, James “Tappy” Wright, makes the startling claim that Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, Michael Jeffrey. James alleges that Michael Jeffrey made a drunken confession to him about a year [...]

Ozzy Osbourne filed a lawsuit in New York on Friday against Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi over the name “Black Sabbath.” Ozzy believes that Tony is claiming to be the sole owner of the name:
Osbourne, 60, filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York, on Tuesday accusing the guitarist of falsely claiming to be [...]

Speaking of Manowar and concept albums, Manowar are currently collaborating with Wolfgang Hohlbein, a German writer, on a concept album called The Asgard Saga. The album’s concept will center on Hohlbein’s tales of Thor, the Norweigian God of Thunder. Manowar are due to play material from the new album at the Magic Circle Festival III [...]

The New York Times reports that we’ll soon be seeing a new guitar magazine on the shelves of our favorite newsstands. The mag is called “Guitar Aficionado,” and targets older and presumably more moneyed guitarists with a taste not only for expensive guitars but also for “Aston Martin automobiles and the West Hollywood hotel Sunset [...]

Do you have a lot of spare change lying around? Or maybe your lawyer got you a sweet deal in your divorce settlement? If so, you might be interested in this eBay auction:
Presenting a once in a lifetime opportunity to own a piece of rock and roll history. Available for your consideration, we are offering [...]

Here’s an interesting story for you… Ronnie Montrose, founding member of the band Montrose, bought a guitar from J. Geils backstage during a 1972 concert in Dudley, Massachusetts.
The guitar went missing shortly thereafter.
Ronnie stopped the show and turned up the house lights, determined to catch the culprit, but whoever stole the guitar, one of the [...]

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new kind of internet search engine in town, brought to us by the same scientist who gave us Wolfram Tones. WolframAlpha is a lot of things, but it’s essentially a semantic or knowledge engine linked to terabytes worth of hand-picked and tagged data. You enter search queries that [...]

AC/DC is a famously super-loud band. As proof, a show they played over the weekend in Munich, Germany had noise complaints from people as far as 12 miles away. 12 friggin’ miles. Rock on!
Complaints came from as far as Unterhaching, a suburb almost 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from the stadium. Police said the neighbours [...]