Katy Perry thinks guitar-noodling boyfriend
John Mayer is a ‘genius’ - Do You? 

Katy Perry thinks her guitar-wailing, sunglasses indoors-wearing baby-lipped boyfriend John Mayer is, and this is a quote, “literally a genius”.

The Roar singer and slightly more popular, likeable half of the Perry-Mayer chimera said this week that John should donate his brain to science after he has died – not so they can incinerate it in a medically unambiguous environment, but instead study it, so future generations can be more like John Mayer. That is Katy Perry’s dream.

“He literally is a genius,” she told Billboard, literally. “As is evident from his songwriting."

“I always tell him, ‘Darling, you know I’m going to have to give your mind to science after you've passed, because we're going to have to understand how all these sparks work'."



No plans on what Katy Perry intends to do with John Mayer’s heart, lungs, and other vital organs after he’s gone, but it’s good to know there’s at least half a plan in place.

The couple released a duet for John Mayer’s last LP Paradise Valley, which you probably didn’t hear because who buys John Mayer albums, genius or no.

Prism, Katy Perry’s third studio album, in out in the UK on October 21, which is presumably why she is busying herself saying mad things like ‘John Mayer is a genius and I intend to sell his brain’ in the run up to that.

What do you think - is John Mayer a genius? 

 

Oscar's Guitar Shop - Tony MacAlpine Interview... 

This was just emailed to me this morning by a fellow guitar-nut, and although it is several months old now, (from before the summer yet), it's such a good interview - especially if you are a MacAlpine fan - that I felt that I had to post it here on the CGS Blogger page...

Back on the 18th episode of Oscar's Guitar Shop (May-3-2013) Tony MacAlpine, (classical / neo-classical shred guitar virtuoso), joins Oscar for a great interview.


Oscar discusses Tony's career-start in Springfield, MA., Tony's creative process, his conservatory training, the early days with Mike Varney, touring with Steve Vai... along with Tony's up coming solo album and tour with Billy Sheehan, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Portnoy.



During the interview; Tony stresses the importance of learning to read music, practicing improvisation, classical training, and how we all, (as musicians), must learn to work hard at finding our own personal style of playing.

Check out the entire 52 min. interview below...

Metallica were in New York City last weekend... They performed at the Apollo Theater Saturday night, at Yankee Stadium Sunday, and were on Howard Stern's radio show last Monday.

The guys at Stern's SiriusXM satellite radio show must work incredibly fast because they've already posted a video from Metallica's visit, and you can check it out below.


The heavily edited three-minute clip features bits of "One," "Nothing Else Matters," an interview with the band and a whole lot more.




For those of you who don't know, the guy they keep cutting to is Richard Christy, who works as a writer and producer on Stern's show. You can hear his reaction to Metallica's visit via the Soundcloud player below.



Check it out the video clip from the Sirius XM Satellite Howard Stern Show below!

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich has been talking to Huffington Post about the legacy of the band's infamous lawsuit against Napster. As Ulrich concedes, the band wasn’t quite prepared for what they got themselves into...

"We weren't quite prepared for the sh-tstorm that we became engulfed in. It started out as a street fight ... There was a song we were working on for the 'Mission Impossible II' movie called 'I Disappear' that all of a sudden showed up on radio stations across the country ... it wasn't even mixed, it wasn't even finalized ... We were like, 'How did that happen?' I got a call from our office the next day : 'It traces back to something called Napster.' And we were like, 'Well, they f--ked with us, we'll f''k with them.'"

The drummer also iterates that his decision to take the file sharing network to court was not motivated by greed, but the idea of personal choice:

 "We stood our ground and fought the fight. Obviously it was a difficult time. It's not easy being finger wagged at that level. Especially because the Napster people were really smart in that they made the whole fight about money and: 'Metallica are technologically inept and they don't want to give stuff away for free' and we were like, 'Hang on, it's not about money. It's about control. It's about whose choice should it be.' We were saying it should be our choice. I we wanna give our stuff away, we'll give our stuff away. That's a no brainer, but that should be our choice. The choice was taken away ... They made the 'it's about money' argument way louder and they were very smart."



Ulrich also believes that the band was "somewhat right" in doing what they did, even if it has come to define him in the public eye:

"13 years later, it was what it was. I'm proud of the fact that we stood up at the time and I think that history has proved that we were somewhat right. "It'll be in the first five sentences of my obituary, and I sort of accept that for better or worse."

What do you think. Has history proved Ulrich right? Or do you still feel that the band was wrong to take Napster to court?

The Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer chats with the guitar legend...

September 25, 2013,

When Chad Smith walked into the San Jose Repertory Theater in San Jose, California, last month to participate in the 2013 DRUM! Night, he was looking forward to entertaining the sold-out crowd with a blistering display of his celebrated funk-rock chops, as well as checking out performances by other world-class drummers such as Cindy Blackman Santana, Jason Bittner and the Street Drum Corps.


He got something else, too: a private sit-down interview with one of his biggest musical heroes, none other than guitar legend Carlos Santana.



The Grammy Award-winning, Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame-inducted (and future Kennedy Center honoree) musician was on hand to witness his wife's guest spot at DRUM! Night, and after rehearsals for the event, he sat down with Chad for a special video edition of In Conversation to talk about the art of live performances and how drums and drummers affect his approach to music. "God is a drummer," Carlos told Chad (words which, no doubt, further endear him to Mrs. Santana). "I owe everything to drummers."

Metallica have told of the time they were banned from playing "Master of Puppets" and other popular songs because of one line of lyrics in the song.

In an interview on the Howard Stern show this week, Kirk Hammett described how the government screened their material ahead of a show there.

"We had to give them a whole set of songs and they went through all the lyrics and okayed which ones we could play, which ones we couldn't play," he said (via Blabbermouth). "They see a lyric like 'Master Of Puppets' being so subversive that they're not allowing us to play it. It's kind of scary."



But the band say it was worth it when they finally arrived and saw a stunning reaction from 40,000 local fans enjoying their show.

Hammett adds that he still managed to sneak in classic riffs from their banned songs.

"What I did is, I had an open guitar solo thing where I just sit there and riff," said Hammett. "I played the riff for 'Master Of Puppets' and a couple of other songs that weren't allowed to be played. I played just the music, so I kind of snuck it in there."

Motorhead fan Taylor Mathes was banned from wearing the sweatshirt of his favorite band in school due to the school officials labeling that renowned Motorhead Snagletooth logo as being too, "gang-related."

Young Taylor decided to share his run-in with the authorities with the band itself, who then posted his story and words of support via the official Motorhead Facebook Fan Page.





"My name is Taylor Mathes and today I wore my Motorhead England sweatshirt to school and I was sent to the office because of the Snagletooth logo on the front," Mathes explained... "I was then told that I could not wear it to school due to some relation to a gang. However I told them I'm going to continue wearing it and showing my Motorhead pride every day!"




The email to Motorhead on Facebook clearly struck a nerve for the hard rock legends, as the official response was soon to follow. "We spoke to Taylor and we support him 100 percent!" the announcement reads. "He's a cool kid and we are sending him a Motorhead Merch Package so he can continue to wear his favorite band proudly! We all have your back Taylor! Motorhead for life!"

And as if that wasn't enough, Taylor received words of support from the man himself - the one and only Lemmy Kilmister. "Taylor - Thank you for your diligent defense of Motorhead ... glad we're still worthy!" the frontman said. "Don't ever let the b-tches grind ya down! Lemmy."

The new Motorhead record, "Aftershock," is set for October 22 release featuring 14 new tunes.

Following the launch of Rocksmith in 2011, an instructional tool-meets-rhythm game that followed the wave of Guitar Hero and Rockband games of the era... the development team at Ubisoft San Francisco "weren't surprised" by the negative reaction from critics, creative director Paul Cross told Polygon during a London event for its sequel Rocksmith 2014.

In Cross' words, the game suffered as the team worked to hit its impending launch deadline. "It was a nice idea but dodgy implementation" he says, describing an often frustrating menu system that plagued the earlier game. "We knew it was a pain in the ass. Sorry! But it was too late."

The team, however, was "disappointed" in critical appraisals of the game that stated Rocksmith failed to teach its users to learn guitar despite acquiring a passionate and active community of aspiring guitarists. According to Cross, there was resistance from some because of the unconventional methods of teaching music - Rocksmith's ad hoc, punk ethos meant users could learn dynamically, at their own pace and avoid traditional music theory until they were ready.

While musical theory can be necessary for classical training, Cross says it can also be "dull as dishwater and doesn't necessarily help in early stages" of learning the instrument.

Alternatively, he cites the Montessori approach to education as having a similar method to education theory as the makers of Rocksmith. Both adopt a "discovery" approach to learning, where students learn by working with materials rather than being instructed.

Rocksmith 2014 is two years in development - which Cross says is the necessary amount of time to "fix" the earlier games' problem. And now, two years since the release of its predecessor, it's a decidedly faster and more streamlined game.



The team has honed a new and faster system that lets the player get straight to the song. Gone are clunky, maze-like menus; They're replaced now with a system that makes options available simply by pausing mid-song, not by backing out to a separate set of menus. Similarly, where the earlier game forced players to tune their guitar before each song - a process that became tedious considering its roster of over 50 tunes - this too is gone. In Rocksmith 2014, a game that features 50 new songs as well as all DLC downloaded for the previous title, the player only tunes once.

Mid-song, users can access practice mode which lets you choose any section and section-length of the tune to practice at any speed and any difficulty. The sequel will now recognize mistakes the player makes throughout this mode and point out what needs to be perfected - the earlier title would only point out a mistake was made without specifying what.

Also gone is Rocksmith's Journey Mode: a progression system structured around the player's rise to stardom by performing setlists that increase in difficulty as the game progresses. Cross tells us Rocksmith 2014 is "split down the middle" in terms of how it balances its role as an instructional tool and a game. The alternative for 2014 is the mission system, which offers three goals for players to reach at any time, an aspect that scratches the typical gamer itch for successfully following through with tasks.


Like Rocksmith, its sequel offers unconventional methods for learning scales and chords. Rocksmith 2014 continues the tradition of the earlier Arcade Mode which turns these lessons into arcade games in the vein of Typing of the Dead and Duck Hunt. The sequel also introduces Session Mode, which allows the player to choose a particular scale, and four additional instruments including various drum types, basses, and slightly more out there additions like kazoos, rain, city noises and vinyl scratching. The player can jam their way through the scale as the backing instruments dynamically change their rhythm, tone and volume based on how the user is playing.

When Cross describes the team's fears when first marketing the original Rocksmith, he says: "We were scared of saying 'learn,'" on the basis that it might scare away the gaming public. Since its 2011 launch, however, two national studies performed by Research Strategy Group and Toluna Group have reported the game is the fastest way to learn the instrument compared to traditional methods. These studies stand in the face of those who say games can't be successful educational tools, says Cross who adds "People forget what you learn from games already."

Cross cites a separate study from earlier in the month that highlights improvements in the brain based on gaming. The study alleges that games designed to challenge the brain in older adults can improve its function, particularly in areas of memory and attention; this suggests brains are more malleable than we once thought.

"And similarly, we've even had Jerry Cantrell (famed Alice in Chains guitarist) tell us the game's going to help him," says Cross. Cantrell himself has been a professional musician since the early 1980s; however, he's never had formal training. With Rocksmith 2014, Cross says, it's taken two years of "discovery and different choices" to fully evolve to this point, into what the team first intended.

Rocksmith 2014 launches Oct. 22 for: Windows PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

As the September 24 release date of Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction: Live" record steadily approaches, the thrash titans have unveiled the album's official trailer, (see below).

Described as "a definitive document of the acclaimed, sold-out tour," the live release was recorded and filmed at LA's Fox Theatre last December and will be available in various formats, including Blu-ray, DVD, CD and more.






The album marks the 20th anniversary of classic Megadeth effort "Countdown to Extinction" and is somewhat of a sequel to "Rust in Peace: Live" release.

Outside of North America, the record will be available on September 23, also through Tradecraft. Apart from each of the "Countdown to Extinction" tracks, the live album also features six extra songs.

 Check out the full track listing and of course the trailer clip below.


"Countdown to Extinction: Live" track listing: 
01. Intro
02. Architecture of Aggression
03. Ashes in Your Mouth
04. Captive Honour
05. Countdown to Extinction
06. Foreclosure of a Dream
07. Hangar 18
08. High Speed Dirt
09. Holy Wars
10. Peace Sells
11. Psychotron
12. Public Enemy
13. She Wolf
14. Skin O' My Teeth
15. Sweating Bullets
16. Symphony of Destruction
17. This Was My Life
18. Trust
19. Outro

VIDEO: 'Journey of the Guitar Solo' Traces 50 Years of Guitar Solos!

Breakdown:
This video focuses on the 'electric guitar solo' in its mainstream form. The electric guitar was, and is, still doing wild stuff across unprecedented amounts of sub-genres. The acoustic guitar has also been doing amazing things for hundreds of years, but this video focuses on what happened to electric guitar in mainstream Western music.

...In the video, guitarist Mark Sidney Johnson leads the viewer through 28 songs spanning more than 50 years in a medley that takes a look at the evolving roll of the guitar solo.

Despite some issues with chronological accuracy (Why does the Shadows' "Apache" from 1960 follow the Beatles' "Day Tripper" and the Stones' "Satisfaction" from 1965 and, even worse, the Who's "Pinball Wizard" from 1969? I could go on about this ...), it has its nice moments.

Fact Man might just want to brush up on his facts a little.



This video was posted by YouTuber CDZA.

The last interview guitar legend Jimi Hendrix ever gave recently appeared online and is available for streaming through Team Rock Radio...

During a 30-minute chat, Hendrix discussed future plans and superstardom among other subjects, noting that he couldn't feel anything music-wise at the moment.

When asked on whether the music excitement is gone for him, Jimi was quick to reply. "No. I was feeling like that before, because I was thinking too fast," he said. "It's hard to know what people want sometimes – right now I can't feel anything. I just need to lay back and think about it all."

The axeman also confessed wanting to perform less because in his mind "it would count for more if we did less."

Hendrix also touched on the matter of future plans and the departure of bassist Billy Cox from the band, currently the only surviving member of both Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Band of Gypsys.



"I think I'll get a small one together," he said (via Classic Rock Magazine) "It's really hard to decide. I'd like to have both, if I could. I'd get two guitarists – one being myself – an organist, a singer, drums and bass. That would be out of sight."

Finally, Jimi stressed he had realized that paying attention to the hype surrounding his career was pointless, also noting he didn't want the crowd to separate his performing from writing.

"I’d hate to be in one corner, put only as a guitar player, only as a songwriter, only as a tap-dancer or something like that," he said. "I like to move around."

Check out the full chat below...

Sammy Hagar will launch his first solo album in five years called "Sammy Hagar and Friends" with a nationwide radio special with his Chickenfoot bassist Michael Anthony called "The Sammy and Mikey Happy Hour Radio Show."

Hagar called on fans last week to ask questions for the show, which will reportedly include calls from various celebrity guest including those who features on the star-studded recording.

Musicians who appear on the new record, due on September 24, include Kid Rock, Nancy WIlson of Heart, Neil Schon from Journey with Joe Satriani and his fellow bandmates in Chickenfoot.



Fans can collect the album in either a standard edition, or a deluxe CD/DVD package with bonus live music and a "making-of" documentary.

A list of radio stations and broadcast dates for "The Sammy and Mikey Happy Hour Radio Show" are available here.

Watch a preview from Sammy Hagar's new solo album "Sammy Hagar and Friends" here:

WASHINGTON – The music and movie industries are sounding the alarm again on online piracy, saying illegal downloads are on the rise and search engines like Google aren’t doing enough to stop them!

Entertainment executives say... they have no intention of trying to revive failed legislation that would have imposed unprecedented regulations on Internet companies. That proposal last year prompted a fierce backlash from tech companies and activists who said it would damage the Internet as a free and open enterprise.

But the industry’s top lobbyists returned to Capitol Hill this week to try to renew interest in online piracy, which has largely fallen off the public’s radar. They are distributing to sympathetic lawmakers their own research on what they say are the growing perils of piracy — some of which is contested by Internet activists — and telling Congress that Google and other search engines aren’t doing enough to redirect consumers away from known pirating sites.

The suggestion was that private talks between entertainment executives and Google on anti-piracy efforts had failed to produce a solution, prompting two lobbying giants — the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America — to make their case instead in news conferences and hearing rooms on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, while Google declined to comment.

“We invite Google and the other major search engines to sit down with us to formulate a plan that goes beyond promises of action and actually serves its intended purpose of deterring piracy and giving the legitimate marketplace an environment to thrive,” RIAA Chairman Cary Sherman told a House panel on Wednesday.

Earlier that day, MPAA Chairman Christopher Dodd, a former U.S. senator, joined several House lawmakers in telling reporters that “as the Internet’s gatekeepers, search engines share a responsibility to play a constructive role in not directing audiences to illegitimate content.”

While Google declined to discuss the allegations, a spokeswoman pointed reporters to its own recent piracy assessment. In that report, Google claims consumers are more likely to find pirated material from friends or social networks than by using its search engines.

“Google search is not how music, movie and TV fans intent on pirating media find pirate sites,” Google wrote in a report titled “How Google Fights Piracy.”



The precise amount and damage done by pirated content has long been a source of debate among Internet activists, who don’t want any government regulation, and entertainment executives, who say rampant piracy hurts the U.S. economy. Independent research on the issue has been scarce. A 2010 study by the Government Accountability Office concluded it was “difficult, if not impossible” to determine exactly how much U.S. companies were losing to counterfeited goods and piracy in general.

Since last year’s hotly contested anti-piracy legislation, which awakened a grass-roots lobbying movement of Internet activists, lawmakers have had little appetite to revisit the issue. And industry has said it has abandoned legislative reforms in lieu of voluntary measures, such as ad networks advising members not to advertise on sites known to offer illegal content. Payment processors like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal also have agreed not to do business with sites that continue to pirate copyrighted material.

And, last August, Google announced it would tweak its search engine to lower the visibility of any site that acquires a high number of copyright removal notices.

But the music and movie lobbyists said this week that by their account, the change hasn’t worked. MPAA’s eight-month study, conducted through online surveys by the Boston-based consulting firm Compete for an undisclosed amount, found that 20 per cent of visits to sites with illegal content were “influenced” by a search query.

NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast Corp., commissioned a similar study, also released this week. That study, done by a London-based digital brand monitoring company called NetNames, found that illegal content available on the Internet jumped some 159 per cent between 2010 and 2012.

David Price, the chief researcher on the study, said his analysts came to that conclusion by reviewing the top 12,500 files out of 3.5 million on a public BitTorrent network — it enables people to swap large files — to determine how much of it was legal. After omitting pornographic files, the group determined that 99.97 of files shared using the popular peer-to-peer protocol were illegal.

Not everyone is swayed...

Matthew Schruers, a copyright law expert with the Computer Communications and Industry Association, which opposed last year’s industry-backed piracy bill, said the 12,500-sample size used in the NBCUniversal study would be too small to determine an accurate percentage of infringing content. He also questioned MPAA’s definition of what it means to be “influenced” by a search engine.

“Nobody is saying infringement isn’t a problem,” Schruers said. “The question is what to do about it. … Bad numbers lead to bad policy.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, co-chair of an anti-piracy caucus, said he remains sympathetic to the plight of industries reliant on copyright. But he is hoping that the two sides can work out their disagreements on their own.

“I’m a big fan of voluntary agreements,” said Schiff, D-Calif. “I’ve seen what happens with legislation.”

Cort Guitars unveiled today their 20th Anniversary Artisan bass guitars. Each model will be available in limited quantities, built with the finest materials and adorned with the 20th Anniversary logo on the electronics cover plate.


The Artisan A Custom 20th is available in four and five strings models (A4 and A5 respectively) and has a bird’s eye maple top and back body. The 34” scale, nine piece neck is a thru body design made of bubinga, maple and African wenge for aesthetics, durability and tone topped with an Indian rosewood fingerboard. The electronics consist of Bartolini Custom MK4CBC pickups and HR5.4AP preamp featuring a master volume (active/passive), a blend control, a three band EQ and mid frequency switch. The gold Hipshot Ultralight tuners and Hipshot TransTone bridge allow for tuning stability and accuracy under any kind of playing conditions. A-Custom 20th is provided with Cort Deluxe Hardcase.

Chastity Belt are a real band. But before they were a real band, they were a chant, a scribble — a joke taking wry ownership of an almost unbelievable concept. The lore of the literal chastity belt seems to begin at the Crusades, when people assumed husbands kept their wives locked up in metal underwear to assure fidelity while they were away fighting dragons for Jesus.

Though the internet claims the devices didn't actually come into physical existence until much later (only the metaphorical concept was there, in medieval poetry I never want to read), the idea is no less horrifying, or hilarious. I'm glad we can all laugh about it now.

Which brings us to the other, much better Chastity Belt, a Seattle four-piece whose songs of male ponytails and nip slips are delivered with swoony, intricate guitar and subdued/raw vocals.


The band is Julia Shapiro on guitar and vocals, Annie Truscott on bass, Lydia Lund on guitar, and Gretchen Grimm behind the drums. I met up with Shapiro and Truscott to learn about how they got started, what the fuck they thought they were doing (young lady), and how they got so good at it. The following interview is by Emily Nokes of the Seattle Stranger...


It started freshman year at Whitman College in Walla Walla (a place Shapiro and Truscott tell me is "filled with wheat fields—the thing to do was buy a bottle of wine and sit in a wheat field"). "Annie, Gretchen, and I played in this band called Combo Pack," Shapiro begins. "We strictly did covers of songs like 'Kiss Me Through the Phone' and 'Buy You a Drank.' We found this chord progression that matched every pop song ever, we just had to change the key." The following school year, "Lydia and I came up with just the name Chastity Belt—we would go to frat parties and flip over tables, like 'We're punks, chastity belt!' We'd start chastity belt chants, break bottles," Shapiro says. "But then feel bad and sweep it up," adds Truscott.

The first instance of the band Chastity Belt came when the four entered a fraternity-sponsored battle of the bands. "We wrote one song, and it was like five minutes long, maybe longer. Maybe like six or seven," Shapiro recalls, "and the chorus was: Take your chastity belt off/And surrender/To the god of punk!, and we had all these lines about eyeliner, hair dye, and stealing cigarettes from your mom." Truscott adds: "And we wore shirts that had our name on them, written in a tag that Lydia made up—she'd rented out library books on graffiti and made a Chastity Belt tag. It had little quotes around it—she noticed a lot of tags in the book had quotes around them for some reason, so Chastity Belt was in quotes." The band kept with it and started "actually playing some songs" during their junior and senior years in school (2010/2011). "We had a lot of different songs back then," Shapiro says. "'Teenage Hooligan' was our biggest one, and there was another one with a really good line: I wanted to hold his hand, but his dick was too big/It got in the way. We also had one song about this guy who went to our school, Mark Glasionov, who had a 15-piece drum kit and never stopped jamming­—Andrew from Dude York was touched by that one, and he wants us to bring it back."

At this point in the interview, I've been laughing so loud, I know I'm disrupting the sensitive ecosystem of the coffee shop we're in, but I could listen to these stories all day—I'm positively in awe of anyone who had the ability to take stereotypical shitty college experiences and flip them into pure, fun satire while they were still in college.

In 2012, after graduation, the band moved to Seattle, where they fit right in, playing shows alongside bands like Pony Time, Stickers, Wimps, and fellow Walla Walla–ers Dude York. Having witnessed one of their debut performances at the Josephine, I've watched them progress from that sillier "who-gives-a-shit" band to a more confident, stage-owning "we-still-don't-give-a-shit-but-now-we're-really-good" one. For one, they're less nervous. "For a while when we were first playing shows, we thought that you just had to get really wasted in order to do them," says Truscott. "But then we realized it was so much easier if we weren't drunk—like, 'Oh that's where that cord goes.'"

Chastity Belt's adventures have culminated in the release of their first full-length, the cleverly titled No Regerts (out last month on new Seattle label Help Yourself). The album took less than three days to record with José Diaz at Heartland. "He was really encouraging," says Truscott. "We'd have a recording where we'd say, 'I guess we're pretty happy with this,' but he'd say, 'No, we're gonna try this again.'"

The work paid off. No Regerts has Chastity Belt sounding their absolute best—clean, minor-chord-driven guitar lines balance the summery laid-back rhythm. Even the older songs have a fresh new feel I didn't expect—like sandblasting an already beautiful building to reveal a better color you didn't realize was underneath. The smart and lightly shocking lyrics are delivered in Shapiro's distinctive wail, which can sound rather serious if you're not paying attention to what she's saying. In "Seattle Party," Shapiro moans sarcastically about the deep tattoos and rough lives of austere partygoers; in "James Dean," she screams, "You're a slut, I'm a whore/We've fucked everyone before," and casually laments how she feels like a prostitute.

But faced with such a solid album containing absolutely NSFW (if your WFSux) songs, more "mainstream" folks seem to be confused as to how to address Chastity Belt's brash humor. Using their fantastic band photo (a slyly dramatic shot taken by local photographer Sarah Creighton, in which we see the band standing stoically in dour 1950s-style dresses, with Shapiro in front, lifting her skirt to expose a steak covering her crotch, held in place with a lock and chain), eye-rolly click-bait site Buzzfeed put Chastity Belt in the number-one slot on their "21 Painfully Awkward Band Photos" list. The caption reads, "No chastity belt is required—thanks, ladies. This is plain terrifying." (The snark is lazy and doesn't land, especially since the other 20 photos are mostly kitschy album covers from the past.)

"The same time the Buzzfeed thing happened, we also got on NPR and Pitchfork, but Buzzfeed was the biggest, which is funny," Shapiro says. "The list was so stupid, but I'm not complaining—a lot of people found out about us that way." Fair enough. And really, judging from comments on the list and real-life conversations, the idiots seem to separate themselves rather cleanly from the people who know the other people are idiots. With a solid 7.5 from Pitchfork (though they named every member in the band except Truscott—to make up for that, I would like to say this: Annie Truscott, Annie Truscott, Annie Truscott) and largely positive response to the new record, Chastity Belt's momentum has them leaving for a three-week tour next month with Pony Time. The ladies even recently took a weekend retreat and wrote five or six new songs for no other reason than they didn't want to get sick of their current songs on the upcoming tour.

New Chastity Belt songs might see more of the members singing and different approaches to song structure. "People told us that we sound like Electrelane—I looked them up and really liked them," Shapiro says. "They have a lot of songs that kind of jam at the end or have a weird guitar solo that doesn't sound like a bro-y guitar solo. It's more like someone trying to figure out how to solo, but it sounds really cool—one of our new songs has something like that." But rest assured, they won't be losing the smirk anytime soon. "I think we have a new song called 'I Don't Care,'" says Shapiro. "You have to let go at a certain point; if you control it too much, you're ruining it."

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — An eastern Missouri native has written a book about the B.B. King' guitars after finding one that had been stolen from the blues legend.

The Southeast Missourian reports that Eric Dahl found King's missing electric guitar in a Las Vegas pawn shop in 2009.

The discovery led to a meeting with King, and prompted him to write the book, "B.B. King's Lucille And The Loves Before Her."

The book details the history and color photos of each guitar King is known to have used during his lengthy career. It starts with the one-string Diddley Bow that King played as a child in Mississippi.

Dahl is a Fruitland native and graduate of Southeast Missouri State University. Today he works in Nashville as the regional promotion supervisor for the Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Rush has announced details of a new DVD release recorded on last year's Clockwork Angels tour. It will be released via Anthem/Roadrunner Records on November 19, Blabbermouth reports.

"Rush: Clockwork Angels Tour DVD" was filmed and recorded last November at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, Texas, during Rush's highly successful "Clockwork Angels" tour. The eleven month-marathon world tour crossed North America twice and ventured overseas to Europe in support of the band's acclaimed 2012 studio release "Clockwork Angels." In capturing the tour's electrifying three-hour set, "Rush: Clockwork Angels Tour" pairs Rush classics ("Tom Sawyer," "The Spirit of Radio," "2112"), with a nod to the '80s RUSH era ("The Analog Kid," "Territories," "Subdivisions") alongside newly reworked arrangements specifically for the tour featuring the Clockwork Angels String Ensemble ("Headlong Flight," "YYZ," "Red Sector A"). The string section marks the first time the trio has brought additional musicians on the road with them.


To showcase their latest studio release, the epic setlist also features nine tracks off "Clockwork Angels". Other highlights include tracks rarely performed and never before recorded live ("The Body Electric," "Middletown Dreams,") in addition to three separate drum solos by the incomparable Neil Peart. Beyond the incredible live performances, the DVD includes a 25-minute tour documentary, featuring interviews with all three members and exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage. Titled "Can't Stop Thinking Big," the piece offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the Rush tour machine and insight into the band members themselves. Other special features on the DVD include the trio of hilarious shorts created specifically for the tour as well as interviews and outtakes captured during their filming. Additional filmed sketches and a rare soundcheck performance of perennial favourite "Limelight" round out the exclusive offerings.

"Rush: Clockwork Angels Tour DVD" comes on the heels of Anthem/Atlantic's September 30 release of "Vapor Trails Remixed", a newly remixed version of the band's 2002 album "Vapor Trails" and 7-disc boxed set "The Studio Albums 1989-2007", which features every studio album RUSH recorded for Atlantic Records.

If there's one thing that makes many amateur guitarists sick to the bone, it's seeing a little kid playing damn-near as good at them on a guitar.

 Okay, so this seven-year-old little dude might not beat Jimmy Page in a guitar shootout, but he'd certainly make the old rocker proud. Watch the clip below to see him in action - you might be surprised.

The stranger thing is that no-one knows who this kid is. The video was originally uploaded in 2007, and the original uploader doesn't mention where they found it. By now the young player will be aged around 13, and probably slaying at Battle of the Band contests at high school by now.

Rock on!

From Hendrix to Page to Clapton, anybody who has ever picked up a guitar (or failing that, a tennis racket) has their nominated guitar-god... 

Even your heroes have heroes of their own - and that's exactly what this gallery is all about. As part of a new weekly series, Music Radar will be finding out which guitarists keep other players picking up the instrument and aspiring to new creative heights.

They'll be talking to a wide variety of guitarists from across a broad spectrum of genres about their picks, which will include everyone from bonafide guitar icons to lesser-known talents.

Maybe you might be surprised at some of their choices. And who knows? Perhaps you'll even discover a new guitar hero of your own.



Munky (from Korn) Fav. Player: Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails, Guns N' Roses) Reason: "He's an amazing guitar player: live, technically, he puts his heart into every show I've seen him in, and he can do everything. I like the dynamics of his playing, because he can go from super-fucking aggressive to just playing a nylon-string on Hurt.

"That is super-delicate, and then he can just go to fucking smashing guitars. I love that – and I think he's an underrated player. You don't see him in magazines. I'm like, 'What the fuck's wrong with people!? I've just always thought he was a great player for, like, 20 years."


Austin Williams Fav. Player: John Frusciante

Reason: "I love John Frusciante. I think his riffs are so good. He's so clever and melodic, and there's this certain peaceful vibration that comes off him. You feel like you know what he means by that guitar line…

"That's who I aspire to play like. That funky style sounds so great, and the dance element is integrated into it. I really like to make people move when I play guitar. When you find yourself dancing to it, that's great."


Sam Fryer Fav. Player: Mick Jones, The Clash

Reason: “I suppose Mick Jones from The Clash was a guitar hero of mine. That kind of thing really inspired me. His playing seemed really effortless, and it wasn't about all of the notes that he hit.

"He only hit the notes that he needed to hit, and his guitar was really crunchy and crisp. And then, if you go through the different Clash albums, it sort of adapts and changes – it's really special.”


Jake Pitts Fav. Player: Paul Gilbert

Reason: "My favourite guitar player is Paul Gilbert. The techniques and styles that he uses [have fed into my own playing]. It’s funny, because I like a lot of sweep-picking and stuff, but he’s not really into that, he’s more into the string-skipping arpeggio kind of stuff, which I think sounds cooler.

"It sounds similar, and a lot of people mistake it for sweep-picking, but the dude is just insane. I don’t know if I could ever be that good. But I try and pick up on his techniques and his styles and incorporate it into my own style."


Will Rees Fav. Player: Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew, (80s-era) King Crimson

Reason: "I really liked the way they played together. Robert Fripp had a very mathematical approach. Live, he’d be sitting on a stool, playing these grid-like arpeggios, like a metronome – everything pre-worked-out.

"Whereas Adrian Belew’s style was very spontaneous. He played a Strat with a whammy bar, and he was pulling out very weird parts, almost like animal noises - he was more of a fluid player. I always felt, 'Well, what if I could embody the two of those and combine those two styles?' I wanted to marry the mathematical with the crazy, the human. I think they did it so well. I really recommend them."


Corey Beaulieu Fav. Player: Marty Friedman, (90s-era) Megadeth

Reason: "I'd have to pick Marty Friedman. Rust In Peace was a record that was one of those defining moments. Being a young guitar player, I was like, 'Holy crap. I can't believe what I'm hearing.' The lead playing on that record blew me away.

"He's a guitar player that has so many exotic playing ideas - scales and weird bends and stuff like that. Whenever I'm in a rut or need something new to play, I'll go to his solos. His lead playing has always been a huge thing for me as far as giving me the inspiration to make my own playing better."


Ritchie Kotzen Fav. Player: Doyle Bramhall II

Reason: "If you don't know who he is, you should Google him. He's amazing. He's a buddy of mine, and we've written songs together. He's produced and written with Eric Clapton [on Riding With The King] and with Roger Waters [playing on the In The Flesh tour].

"There's a certain calm to his playing that I really like. A certain calm and confidence. It's not overdone. He's very tasteful, and he's a great singer, as well."


Paul Mahon Fav. Player: Leslie West

Reason: "I think he's very underrated. Clapton gets the credit for the 'Woman Tone', but I think Leslie one-upped that. I think his tone is even better.

"And also his phrasing. He's a master at that. I really like Never In My Life and Mississippi Queen, of course, and I like the octave pedal stuff he does as well. But yeah, he's an underrated player - a great singer, as well."


Danny Jones Fav. Player: Gary Moore

Reason: "It's his blues playing [in particular] that I love, his Blues Alive tour. I was just gobsmacked every time I heard that.

"I saw him twice at the Manchester Apollo, and as a kid I dreamed of playing like him – and I still can't play like that. He's a god. And I grew up on old blues music, so I love that side of him. He really was one of the best modern blues players."


Dan Auerbach Fav. Player: Fred McDowell/ Lightning Hopkins/ Junior Kimbrough

Reason: "When I was starting to play guitar, Fred McDowell blew my mind. He played in open-tuning with a slide; it was very rhythmic in his finger-picking, and a lot of it was just kind of one chord.

"It was not your basic 12 bar. That’s the kind of stuff I love, like Lightning Hopkins. He played 12-bar blues, but not basic at all. There was no time signature; rhythmically, he was very hard to follow.

"If you wanted to start hearing some weird electric s***, I would definitely say listen to Junior Kimbrough. He’s just amazing – he played his own style. He was another guy that was almost just one chord the whole song and just hypnotic finger-picking. I love that stuff so much.

"With Lightning Hopkins, Junior Kimbrough, Fred McDowell, their music was who they were; it was their life, whether they made money or not. It was a beautiful thing – the music just represented them. It was a natural extension of their personalities, of who they were as human beings."

Steve Vai has posted this cool 4 minute video showing some behind the scenes clips shot from during his current "Story Of Light" tour...

by Mike Cramer of Premier Guitar... 

To successfully participate in a jam session, whether it’s a formal session or just some friends getting together to pick in the living room, you’ve got to know tunes—or at least the chord progressions to those tunes. This is true of any style of music, including the blues. The focus of this lesson will be on the essential chord progressions you’re expected to know as a blues rhythm guitarist. We’ll survey chord patterns that every aspiring blues guitarist needs to know, so if you’re just getting started with the blues, this lesson should serve you well.


12-Bar Blues 

 Let’s start off with the most common blues progression: the 12-bar form. Countless songs—in many styles—are based on this structure. Fig. 1 shows its basic form. Roman numerals indicate the quality of the chord (i.e., major or minor), as well as the position the chord occupies in the key. For example, if we’re in the key of A, the I chord is A, the IV chord is D, and the V chord is E. Uppercase Roman numerals indicate a major chord and lowercase Roman numerals indicate a minor chord. The benefit of learning a progression this way is it’s not locked to a specific key. This makes it easier to transpose the progression to a new key—you simply need to know the key you’ll be playing in and that becomes your I chord.




It’s common to move to the IV chord in the second measure and then back to the I chord in measure three. This is referred to as a “quick change.” If you’re jamming on a blues tune you’re unfamiliar with, keep your ears open because not all tunes employ the quick change.

A turnaround usually occurs in the 11th and 12th measures of the progression. These two measures set things up to bring you back to the top of the form. The turnaround ends with the V chord, and this creates tension. The ear wants to hear the resolution to the I chord, which it gets when the form starts over.

Now that we’ve laid the foundation for a basic 12-bar progression, let’s explore ways to embellish it. By the time we work through these variations, you’ll be able to negotiate everything from a simple blues to its jazzier adaptations. Fig. 2 shows a basic 12-bar blues with the quick change in the key of A. Both these examples serve as a starting point for the variations we’ll discuss from this point on.



Listen to fig. 2  here

To check out the complete article visit Premier Guitar.

Many believe that women fall for men who have a stable job, but a new survey reveals that they find guys who can play a guitar more attractive.

Apparently, men who play a guitar have an instant appeal about them for women, which was considered more important than salary, jobs and interesting hobbies!

Online dating site Lovestruck.com conducted the study. As high as 62 percent of Lovestruck members found that a man who plays a guitar is far more attractive than those who have no musical aptitude.

Around 46 percent of people surveyed said that a guitar player might be thoughtful, soulful and creative, which were qualities they ranked highly in a relationship.

As much as 37 percent assumed it would be romantic to be serenaded by a man with a musical flair and 39 percent said that if the man could play the guitar, they would be more forgiving if the guy was not that good looking!

"I regularly coach men to improve their skills in approaching women; and hands down a man who is passionate about something in his life, apart from getting a girlfriend, is immediately more attractive,” said dating expert Hayley Quinn.

“As for guitars - think what it communicates. Thanks to everyone from Mick Jagger to John Mayer (singers who also play the string instrument), guitars still symbolise a man who is sensual, creative and who other women are attracted to,” she added.

So, France, Israel, Hoboken or Bumpass, Virginia — it doesn't matter where the guitarist is from. The point is, male guitarists are generally viewed as promising mating material (as if we didn't all know that already)!

Another French study, which was conducted by researchers at the Universite de Bretagne-Sud (University of South Brittany) and published in Psychology of Music, was centered around a 20-year-old man “previously evaluated as having a high level of physical attractiveness.”

One day, this fellow approached 300 women ranging in age from 18 to about 22. He said hello and added, “I think you’re really pretty” (which sounds very nice in French) and asked for their phone numbers. During a third of the encounters, he was carrying a guitar case. For another third, he was holding a sports bag. For the last third, he wasn't holding anything.

When he was carrying the guitar case, 31 percent of the ladies gave him their phone number. Only 14 percent gave him their number when he was empty-handed, and that figure dropped to an unhealthy 9 percent when he was holding the sports bag.

In an Israeli study, which was published in Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 100 single female students at two universities received a Facebook profile of a single guy accompanied by a "friend" request and the words, “Hey, what’s up? I like your photo.”

Half of the women saw a photo of the man playing a guitar. The other half saw a photo of the man looking like a "regular" person, as in, devoid of a guitar.

“While five of the 50 women responded positively to the friendship request that was sent by the profile without a guitar, 14 of the 50 women (28 percent) responded positively to the friendship request that was sent by the profile with the guitar,” wrote the research team.

Once again, the guitarist got more chicks!

Bottom line, grab your guitar case and your little black book and hit the streets of Paris! Or Bumpass, Virginia!

Or, in the words of the French study: "This experiment tested the assumption that music plays a role in sexual selection. Results showed that holding a guitar case was associated with greater compliance to the request, thus suggesting that musical practice is associated with sexual selection." Of course, you can just walk around with a guitar case and be a phoney, or you can actually take guitar lessons or buy a quality instruction book. I'd highly suggest the Creative Guitar Studio YouTube Channel.

 Joe Satriani's Unstoppable Answers - Part1

In this multi-part series, Joe Satriani answers fan questions from the road of the North American leg of his Unstoppable Momentum tour.

Satriani along with his touring band of Mike Keneally, Bryan Beller and Marco Minnemann will hit 48 stops in support of the new album "Unstoppable Momentum."

In the video below, which was posted today, September 13, Dream Theater guitarist (and current Guitar World cover star) John Petrucci demos and discusses DiMarzio's new Illuminator pickups...

The pickups are based on Petrucci's existing signature model pickups, the Crunch Lab and LiquiFire, but with a twist.

“This pickup set is building upon the Crunch Lab and the LiquiFire, so we’re starting there, and most of it — really all of it — is the work of Steve Blucher at DiMarzio."

"In the case of this one, knowing that the guitar was going to have a preamp in it and everything, he was able to predict what would be necessary to make the guitar be more open-sounding and able to breathe more. He did a fantastic job, and I’ve been working with him so long that I barely have to say much. He just instinctively knows. It’s wonderful.”

For more about DiMarzio, visit dimarzio.com. For Guitar World's new review of the Sterling by Music Man JP100D John Petrucci Signature Series Guitar, head HERE.


For more about the November 2013 issue of Guitar World, which features Petrucci on the cover, visit the Guitar World Online Store.

The opening piece for my September 13th, 2013 YouTube Guitar lesson,
 "Shifting Positions Smoothly."


I hope you enjoy the lesson on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/user/creativeguitarstudio 

Donations keep the FREE lessons coming - Please consider!
www.andrewwasson.com/donations.php

Dream Theater: 

'Young People Are Obsessed With Fame, Everybody's Acting Like Movie Stars'

Prog metal giants Dream Theater recently touched upon an interesting subject of modern stardom hunger, calling it a severely present trend these days...

Guitarist John Petrucci and vocalist James LaBrie broached the topic during their new album track-by-track rundown. While discussing "The Looking Glass," song No. 3 off "Dream Theater," Petrucci explained the lyrics he penned.

"The subject of that song is kind of how young people are really, really obsessed with fame - the idea of being famous," the axeman stated.

"And everybody's living their lives now as if they're famous, with Facebook and everything. There's blogs, pictures of yourself - everybody's acting like movie stars, as if people want to know what's happening."

Petrucci explained further, "It used to be that you had to do something substantial in order to be famous, but now anybody can be famous and there's all these TV shows to be famous. Whether it'd be in dance or in singing - there's tons and tons of those type of shows, so it's kind of a weird thing that everybody's so obsessed with that," he concluded.

The tune's musical part also comes as somewhat nontraditional for Dream Theater, seeing that it features what was described as an arena rock riff.

"It's one of two songs on the album that are very different from everything else," Petrucci kicked off. "'The Looking Glass' has more of like an arena rock, big guitar riff - major kind of sound. It's a challenge to write something like that because most of those riffs have been played before, so to come up with something original that's in a major key and has that big hooky riff that people can kind of latch on to is a challenge, but it was a lot of fun to do."

"Dream Theater" is scheduled to drop on September 24 through Roadrunner Records as the twelfth release in DT opus.Watch the video interview below.

Casselberry, FL. USA (September 11, 2013)

EARasers virtually invisible revolutionary new earplugs are made of soft medical grade silicone, which creates a comfortable “Smart Seal".

No need for costly Impressions. The innovative patent pending design strategically places the filter at the tip, instead of the opening of the ear canal, thus retaining the ear's natural shape, and allowing sound to travel farther more naturally. The resulting high fidelity keeps musical layering intact.

EARasers unique “V” filter reduces approximately 19dB in the most damaging range of the ear canal resonance. In addition, it filters less for sounds under 1000Hz and sounds above 8000 Hz to accomplish a more natural and clear sounding experience, creating The World's First Flat Frequency Response earplugs, as opposed to the common "flat attenuators".

Music and speech are not lost or muffled, and there's No “Plugged Up” feeling. The revolutionary inner-ear placement allows EARasers to be virtually invisible. They are comfortable, provide listening clarity, and can remain in the ear for conversations, or to talk on the phone.

EARasers replace the costly custom-moulded earplugs, (which can run musicians up to as $200.00 per pair), for a fraction of the price!

MSRP: $49.99

There's little doubt that the new Cilia Guitar CGA7 is one super-awesome Gig-Bag...

The first thing you notice about these gig bags is how thick they are, there is an inch of high density foam as well as EVA impact panels and a neck brace that helps to cushion the neck against any impact whilst holding the guitar in position.

The inside of the case is made from 100% true velvet and thick Softmesh-lined side panels to ensure that the finish of your guitar is never harmed or scuffed in any way. There's ample pocket space and the backpack style straps even have their own hideaway pocket as well.

- Neck brace suspension system with adjustable, locking security strap.
- Interior protector pads at headstock and endpin.
- EVA-reinforced laptop compatible multi-pocket.
- Rubberized headstock pocket.



Reunion Blues seem to have thought of absolutely everything for the working guitar player with this case. Their goal was to make carrying your guitar convenient and safe, with a lightweight super-strong gig bag that can match the safety of a hard-shell case.



Check out this "Drop-Test" video...


GuitarNoize Video Review:


For more information on the RB Continental Midnight Series gig bag click here.