Category — Guitar

The Cure have been releasing singles/b-sides leading up to their forthcoming album, set to be released October 13th.

The two newest songs that debuted this Wednesday (August 13th), are both classic Cure. “The Perfect Boy” is pretty poppy but in a good Cure way and actually features sitar. The b-side “Without You” is equally as good, its a little more relaxed sounding, with an easy strumming guitar and Robert Smith’s traditional vocal approach.

There’s really nothing new in the style of these new Cure songs, but the songwriting is great and I guess thats all that really matters. I think fans can probably expect a great new album to be released by the band this October. Follow the source link to listen…

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Veteran rockers Iggy and The Stooges have had all of their gear stolen yesterday (August 4th) in Montreal, just outside the Embassy Suites.

The band’s gear was parked outside in a truck, and the entire truck with all the gear was stolen somewhere between 6:30 and 7:30am. Inside was an insane amount of gear worth tens of thousands of dollars if not more. Everything from electric guitars, guitar amps, drum sets, effects pedals and accessories were inside the truck.

For more information and a full list of the gear you can go here. This really sucks, I hope for the bands sake they get it all back, some very serious pieces of equipment have been lost. In the meantime, they will be playing the remainder of their shows on rented and/or new gear.

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Metallica has set September 12th, a Friday, as the release date for their new album “Death Magnetic”. This is unusual as traditional release days are Monday/Tuesday for albums.

The band’s last album “St. Anger” also saw a Friday release, reasons cited for this are that it prevents leaks. How true that is, im not so sure.

The band  has also filmed a video for the first single from their new record, entitled “The Day That Never Comes” with director Thomas Vinterberg.

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Guitar Blog has a great piece up (dated July 28th, 2008) about the inappropriate use of decals on guitars. In it, several points are mentioned about how it is not only deceiving to mark a guitar with the incorrect decal, but also an insult to the guitar you may currently have..

The most commonly used decals are Fender’s, these are put on everything from strat knock-offs to guitars that don’t even closely resemble a Fender. Squier guitars are common victims of the fake decal routine but as stated at Guitar Blog, you shouldn’t be ashamed to play a Squier Guitar as some of them are great guitars in their own right.

The desire to want guitars beyond your means is something every guitarist goes through. It is only after you  see many of your musical idols performing with cheap gear that you realize the instrument isn’t usually what makes them so good, it is their playing and that is what is most important.

Hoping to pick up on the absence of Guitar Center’s and convenience, Best Buy has announced that they will begin carrying musical instruments. The store won’t change into solely a musical instrument retailer, but they will allocate a certain amount of space per store to instruments/musical equipment.

“The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 of the music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add even more locations in the future, executives told The Associated Press.”

“Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland.”

“When the rollout is complete, Best Buy — already considered by many investors to be a global powerhouse in the electronics retailing world — will become the second-largest instrument seller in the country based on locations.”

While I am usually weary of huge corporations in general, I really think this is a postive thing. A lot of kids in smaller towns or areas don’t have any local music stores or even Guitar Center and I can see a lot of kids getting their first guitar from a place like Best Buy.

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Stereogum is having  a giveaway through their monthly newsletter and this time its a guitar. The guitar in question is an Epiphone SG, not the nicest guitar ever but very nice for free!

“You can learn more about it here. Speaking of knowledge gathering, maybe you can learn a Scars On Broadway song or two. The band’s the new collaboration between System Of A Down’s Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan. They mention Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Neil Young as influences on the new material, opened for Metallica last month and have a debut out 7/29 on Interscope. Take a listen. Practice. The winner gets the guitar and a copy of Scars On Broadway’s self-titled debut.”

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Above is the cover art for Metallica’s new album “Death Magnetic” due out in September. James Hetfield recently revealed more info about the album’s title to VG TV…

“‘Death Magnetic’, at least the title, to me, it’s… It had something to do with… It started out as kind of a tribute to people that have fallen in our business, like Layne Staley and a lot of the people that have died, basically — rock and roll martyrs of sorts. And then it kind of grew from there. Thinking about death… some people are drawn towards it, and just like a magnet, some people are drawn towards it, [and] other people are afraid of it and push away. And the concept that we’re all gonna die sometimes is over-talked about and then a lot of times never talked about — no one wants to bring it up; it’s the big white elephant in the living room. But we all have to deal with it at some point. So that’s kind of the subject matter.”

He sounds a little confused about it himself. Once again, nothing from this album has been heard yet besides snippets teased on the bands official website. The album is supposed to be a return to older form for the band, supposedly featuring furious guitar solo’s by Kirk Hammett. This would make sense as the band has brought back their classic logo.

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An all-star cast of rock bands are participating in another installment of VH1’s Rock Honors series, this time to pay tribute to legendary rock-act The Who.

The Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Flaming Lips, Tenacious D and Incubus will all cover a Who song, followed by The Who themselves performing. This means we’ll most likely see Townshend smashing Gibsons SG’s and Stratocasters at the end of the performance, which is always cool.

Billboard spoke to Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, The Flaming Lip’s Wayne Conye and Incubus Brandon Boyd about how The Who has influenced them and their music. Check it out here…

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The show airs tomorrow on VH1.

Metallica haven’t even revealed the artwork for their forthcoming album “Death Magnetic” but they have already announced a deluxe coffin-style package. What? You ask, well here’s the info…

“In addition to the album, the package will include a disc of demos, a behind-the-scenes DVD chronicling the making of “Death Magnetic,” a T-shirt, a flag, guitar picks and a poster.

Also featured is a Metallica credit card with a code redeemable for a download of a “special European show happening in September.” This edition is only available from the band’s Web site.”

This is a cool idea on the bands part, if not a little extraneous. Although it makes a lot of sense, as I’m sure a lot of you out there, are still sticking with Metallica and would like to get extra stuff from the band. It is also worth noting that the band is including guitar picks in the package, as I’m sure they know a lot of their fans are guitar players themselves.

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It’s obvious at this point that Guitar Hero and spin-off games such as Rock Band have gotten so popular that some individual bands now have their own games (see: Guitar Hero Aerosmith). What isn’t so obvious amongst the myriad of bands featured in Rock Band and Guitar Hero is the absence of several high-profile acts.

While essential bands like Nirvana and others have recently signed on to have their songs featured in-game and in advertisements…other major acts like Metallica, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, etc… have not signed on to either Guitar Hero or Rock Band, not yet anyway. So will you be able to get out your plastic Gibson SG controller and rock out to these bands soon?

“Although rumors continue to buzz, Metallica and the Beatles aren’t headed to the “Guitar Hero” franchise just yet, according to Kai and Charles Huang, the sibling founder of game publisher RedOctane.”

Speculation abounds that Metallica will be the next band featured in their own version of “Guitar Hero,” much like the just-released recent Aerosmith-centric game.

“We’re not ready to comment about Metallica yet, but what I will say is that we’d love to work with all of the top rock bands of all time, whether it’s Aerosmith or Metallica or AC/DC or Led Zeppelin,” Kai Huang tells Billboard. “If we get an opportunity to work with those bands, we would love to do that.”

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