Guitar tabs,electric guitars,acoustic guitars

Today’s a black day for guitar players all around the world: Les Paul, the father of solid body guitars died at the age of 94 because a complication of pneumonia.

I have been informed about it by the guys at Terapeak, I must admit I was taken by surprise, I didn’t expect it…

I must tell you that when I first got in contact with a Gibson guitar, I didn’t know where’s the name coming from, then I found out about Les Paul and then I’ve found that he is alive and…still playing, which was a great surprise for me at that time, because I was expecting that the man behind such a great guitar be already a long gone legend, like Peugeot, Ferrari etc, the fact that this man succeeded to build such a great name for his guitars while being among us suddenly threw another light on the story…

Now Les Paul is not longer with us, but his guitars will continue to feed the dreams of so many of us all around the world. I don’t think there’s any of us around here, playing guitar, that never dreamed about having a classic Les Paul. Don’t you dare telling me you were a Fender or Ibanez fan right from the start and never dreamed about keeping one of these beautiful guitars in your hands. I won’t buy it! I personally dreamed for years about buying a classic Gibson and honestly I still dream about it…

A few weeks ago Michael left, now Les Paul, quite a dark summer for music lovers all around the world.

RIP Mr. Les Paul…

Later edit: I have decided to add a black stripe on my blog header, as a sign of respect, I will keep it there for a few days.

Also, for those of you who want to pay respects to Les Paul, here’s a 125 x 125 banner that you can add on your sidebar. Just right click it and save the image on your hard disk.

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Yesterday at the rehearsals we discussed about covering Billie Jean. OK, not an easy task, if you want to do it right…

So we started to “shop around” to see a few versions, YouTube makes it quite easy and gives you a lot of ideas, Billie Jean is a popular song, so you pretty much have where to pick at least a few goods ideas.

I have found a version of this song by Cris Cornell (ex Soundgarden), cool live version, a few others that I enjoyed, but I think that I have found what could be like the coolest cover so far of this song, David Cook’s version, the guy on TV with that show, I guess you know him.

I must admit I wasn’t expecting much but I was really impressed.

So, without any more words, I give you the best possible cover of Billie Jean.

Enjoy and comment!

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It’s very interesting to see how people all over the world build statues for celebrating their music stars.

So, as a curiosity, I have started to look around for statues and I could find the following:

Phil Lynott’s statue, outside Bruxelles club in Harry Street, Dublin, Ireland

Bon Scott,  Fisherman’s Wharf, Fremantle, Western Australia

The statue of Jimi Hendrix, Seattle

The statue of SRV in Austin

I also searched for a statue of Elvis, there are plenty so I couldn’t stop at a particular one, I know one myself, close to where I live so in the end…no statue of Elvis here.

Any other you may know?

PS: I was quite sure I will find a statue of Jaco Pastorius, isn’t there any?

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Just a song that made my day today, a happy song: Chicken fried.

Enjoy!

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I was watching a live video of Chickenfoot on YouTube today, very interesting, considering the fact Joe Satriani plays a two necks guitar.

Do you remember my post of a few months ago where I was wondering if we will be able to recognize Satriani’s style and sound in Chickenfoot?

The fact is that when soloing maybe we could recognize him, but other than that, I’d say he totally reinvented his way of playing, playing for the song, not for himself, which is a great thing coming from somebody who’s known for his trademarked sound and way of playing…

So, here it is Chickenfoot live.

What do you say, how’s Satriani’s sound comparing to Flying in a blue dream or Surfing with the aliens?

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I love the power that viral marketing has these days. I didn’t know about it, but I had the chance to find about it today, so I thought to share it with you here.

The story goes like this: Dave Caroll and his band travel by airplane, his Taylor guitar gets broken, he doesn’t succeed in getting a positive answer from United Airlines so he and his band put up this video about the whole story.

Long story short, in 4 days he had over a million views on YouTube, had the video featured on CNN, and had over 19,000 blog mentions as VerticalMeasures.com mentions it! Damn! United contacted him the next day but seems that it was one day too late, the video was out and seems to be a hit!

Anyway, seems that the publicity that the video generated turned out to be a great thing for the band after all.

So here it is, United Breaks Guitars!

Taylor guitars provided also a video response and shared some great information about the fact that you could take your guitar with you on the plane, just print out the info and show the paper to the airport employee that won’t let you take it!

Here’s the video response of Taylor guitars.

Enjoy and Stumble that!

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For me releasing an album was always a full service story: record demo, get the contract with a company, record album, distribute it using “regular channels”, pretty complicated, I might say, reasons for which not many do it. Including us, me and my band, that is. We recorded like 7-8 songs, never released them, even if we discussed about it a lot of times.

But the fact is that in today’s world, things can work using other ways of promoting yourself, the internet is such a huge channel for communicating your music, so many bands get out there using the internet that “the regular” way of doing things may die soon…Or already did?

This post came to me after listening this song on YouTube, I didn’t know the band, Company Of Thieves, the song is Even In The Dark. I liked it, but most of all I was intrigued by the way they did this, the recorded it on a mountain, not even in a room.

What can I say? I like it, and it didn’t work so bad, they have like 15k views, for one single song recorded on a mountain, it’s equivalent to a good show in front of 15k people. How many of us can say they can skip the occasion of playing in front of 15k people?

Well? What do you say about it?

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I wanted to say a few things here but I just don’t know what to say. I’m speechless!

Really, enjoy and comment!

Later edit:

After posting this, I have been pointed by my internet buddy Pzychotropic (Mac) to this impersonation of Jimi Hendrix. If you don’t get it from the first moment, that’s the guy from Police Academy!

I ask myself, can these guys actually sing, if they are able to use their voices this way?

And now stumble that, or even blog about it  !

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What is the source of the creativity for all the artists around? What makes them come up with all those beautiful songs and lyrics?

From where I’m standing, the source of creativity is pain or at least the lack of inner peace…

I mean, do you see a great composer happy with himself, not having any dare in his life, working from 9 to 5 on his piano? We see all day long great artists doing foolish things, we sometimes laugh, we sometimes blame them, hey, look at this stupid guuy, he has all he wants and still does this crap…

Did you ever think that he may need that crap to stay alive from a creative point of view?

I mean we all love and hopefully we look for and find inner peace. Probably great composers too, but do you really think that all those love songs that we love would have been created if the composer was happy and happy with his life?

For me, Bon Jovi’s “In these arms” describes it best:

I would do anything Id beg, Id steal, Id die
To have you in these arms tonight
Baby I want you like the roses want the rain
You know I need you like a poet needs the pain
I would give anything my blood my love my life
To have you in these arms tonight

Considering the last period, with Michael Jackson being dead and all the buzz around his life, do you think his creativity would have been the same if his life would have taken a different path 40 years ago?

What do you think?

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Today I have read the funniest conversation ever about Manowar (again Manowar).

It is between a dad and his 6 years old daughter, about rock and pop music.

I love Manowar but I do have the power to make fun of such stories.
If you have a bit of sense of humor, you should really read it here. The story is called Death match: Manowar vs Jonas Brothers.

By the way, I don’t know who Jonas Brothers are. Do you?

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