Category — Guitar

Pitchforkmedia has a new interview with Beck up where he discusses several interesting things. A few of them are the fact that his first massive hit single “Loser” was created as part of a side project and that he’s working on recording an album directly to vinyl. Well worth checking out.

Also, Beck will be taking the stage at the Hollywood Bowl on September 20th with Spoon and MGMT as openers. It will also mark the first time ever that Beck will be joined by his father David Campbell. Campbell is a string arranger and composer and has played on some classic albums himself. In this instance, he will conduct the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra Strings along to his son’s music. This should be a unique show on Beck’s current tour. The rest of those dates below…

09-19 San Diego, CA - Street Scene Festival
09-20 Los Angeles, CA - Hollywood Bowl
09-22 Phoenix, AZ - Dodge Theater
09-23 Albuquerque, NM - Kiva Auditorium
09-25 El Paso, TX - Abraham Chavez Theatre
09-27 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)
09-29 Kansas City, MO - Uptown Theater
09-30 Minneapolis, MN - Wilkins Auditorium
10-02 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom
10-03 Chicago, IL - Aragon Ballroom
10-05 Toronto, Ontario - Sound Academy
10-06 Montreal, Quebec - St. Denis Theatre
10-09 New York, NY - United Palace
10-10 New York, NY - United Palace

A new documentary called “It Might Get Loud” will feature Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge discussing their electric guitar techniques and how they approach the instrument.

According to a press release, “The movie revolves around a singular day when Jimmy Page, the Edge, and Jack White first met and sat down together to share their stories, teach, and play.” The doc “captures the guitarists as each explains and demonstrates how he changed the sound of the electric guitar to suit his own distinctive musical style.”

It Might Get Loud will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.

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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.