Boles Blues

Jimi Hendrix died almost 40 years ago -- and yet today, he is more popular and relevant than ever.   Here is Jimi is on the cover of the April 2010 edition of Guitar World Magazine.

On February 16, 2010, Eric Clapton joined Yoko Ono on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to celebrate her 77th birthday and to make a joyful noise with her Plastic Ono Band.  I love this image from the performance.  Clapton is clearly shocked/awed/amazed/bemused by Yoko's classic screaming-as-singing while her son, Sean, is obviously used to her raggedy voice and just plays along.

When we are listening to the words of a song being sung by a musician, does the gender of the musician matter? I think it really comes down to the subject matter of the music itself. There are songs that are completely gender neutral and there are many songs which imply some sort of gender from the very subject of the song itself.

We recently reviewed the David Gilmour Signature GHS Boomers and I should have added this subtitle to that review: "The Blue Package for Stratocasters."  I knew there was a "Red" version of the Gilmour Boomers, but for some reason, I thought the Reds were for acoustic guitars.  They are not.  The Reds are for Les Paul electric guitars!

I'm a huge fan of records in the vinyl format. Well, it seems I have finally hit the mother lode as far as organizations go that are interested in keeping alive the vinyl format and doing wonderful new creative things for it. This organization is the Third Man record label, led by SuperGenius Jack White, founder of The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, and The Dead Weather.

In 2005, The Mountain Goats released an emotionally rich album called "The Sunset Tree." The entire album was full of references to John Darnielle's painful childhood and the years of abuse from his late stepfather. Around the same time that this album was released, The Mountain Goats released a vinyl only alternate version called "Come, come to the Sunset Tree" that had stripped down songs that were just John with his acoustic guitar.

Take a look at the cover of this "Albert King" signature licks DVD.  Just looking at the cover en passant, you would think you are going to watch Albert teaching you signature licks just as he did with Stevie Ray Vaughan in Session.  No so fast!  Read the small print in the left gutter on the DVD cover and you'll see "Featuring Andy Aledort" spelled out and that little text phrase means there's no Albert King on the DVD.  You get Andy pretending to be Albert and you feel cheated.