Virgin Galactic heralds ‘The Year of the Spaceship’ with the unveiling of the designs of SpaceShipTwo and White Knight Two

January 31st, 2008

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New York, 23rd January 2008:

Virgin Galactic today unveiled the design of its new, environmentally benign, space launch system based on the X Prize winning technology of SpaceShipOne, which successfully flew into space for the third time in October 2004 and won the $10m Ansari X Prize.
The construction of the White Knight Two (WK2) mothership, or carrier aircraft, is now very close to completion at Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA and is expected to begin flight testing in the summer of 2008. It is the world’s largest, all carbon composite aircraft; it has a unique high altitude lift capacity, capable of launching SpaceShipTwo and its eight astronauts into sub-orbital space flight. The WK2 mothership is powered by four Pratt and Whitney PW308A engines which are amongst the most powerful, economic and efficient engines available. The WK2 mothership has also been designed to be capable of lifting other payload and launching it into space. Both Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic believe the system has sufficient lifting capability to launch unmanned vehicles designed to carry small satellites and other scientific payload into low earth orbit. While the first priority for Virgin Galactic is developing the market for human spaceflight, the Company is already assessing the potential for unmanned launch capability.

SpaceShipTwo is now nearly 60Complete. It incorporates both the lessons learned from the SpaceShipOne program and the market research conducted by Virgin Galactic into the requirements future astronauts have for their space flight experience. It also has built-in flexibility to encompass future requirements for other scientific and commercial applications.
Whilst the two vehicles comprising the space launch system have been under construction, Virgin Galactic’s cadre of future astronauts has continued to grow strongly to well in excess of 200 individuals with around 85,000 registrations of interest to fly. The deposit base now exceeds $30m representing more than $45m of future income to the fledgling spaceline.

Astronaut orientation for spaceflight is progressing well and already 80 of SpaceShipTwo’s first passengers have been through medical assessment and centrifuge training at the NASTAR facility in Philadelphia. During their G Force acclimatization program, the participants were spun to 3.5GZ (head to toe) and 6GX (front to back) to simulate the actual flight profile of SpaceShipTwo during a 110km (68 miles) apogee sub-orbital space flight.

Commenting on the unveiling, Burt Rutan, CEO of Scaled Composites, said: “Virgin Galactic produced a demanding output specification for the world’s first private human and payload space launch system. This required us to produce a safe but flexible design capable of multiple applications in new market sectors. I am confident that these vehicles, now in an advanced stage of construction, will achieve just that. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the whole team at Scaled Composites. “Looking up – way up!” is an expression we have shared since the X Prize began and now we are all excited that this year the dream will start to become a very tangible reality for everyone involved.”
Sir Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Galactic, added: “The designs of both the mothership and the new spaceship are absolutely beautiful and surpass any expectations for the future of commercial spaceflight that we had when first registering the name Virgin Galactic in 1999. Burt and his team have done a fantastic job and I am also delighted with the wonderful vision that Foster and Partners, working with URS, have shown in the final designs for Spaceport America in New Mexico. Finally, we are all very excited about the prospect of being able to develop a bio-fuel solution for the space launch system and we are looking forward to working with Pratt and Whitney and Virgin Fuels to trial an appropriate bio mix for the PW308A engines that will be powering our new carrier aircraft.”

In addition to the unveil of the space launch system, a model of the final design for Spaceport America was put on public display for the first time. Situated in Sierra County, New Mexico, Spaceport America will be the world’s first custom designed private spaceport. It has been designed with environmental considerations to the fore and its highly innovative structure will use a combination of geo-thermal, solar and wind power to create a very low carbon footprint. Virgin Galactic is also looking at the opportunities of operating from other locations worldwide and is already investigating the feasibility of operating from Spaceport Sweden.

Virgin Galactic will make further announcements regarding the progress of the launch system, development of its markets, the test flying program and start of commercial operations at Spaceport America in due course.

www.virgingalactic.com

For information contact:

Jackie McQuillan
Tel: + 44 207 229 4738

Cell: + 44 7905 309096

E-mail: Jackie.mcquillan@virgin.co.uk

Ftp site for images, press release, b-roll footage, animation:
www.virgingalactic.com/pressftp

Fund Your Future with Scholarships.com

January 30th, 2008

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How to pay for the education? At scholarships.com you can find the right one for us with their scholarship search. This constantly updated expansive college scholarship database is offering free access to an extensive list of relevant and accurate grants and college scholarship opportunities so you can see which one is right for you. There are two basic types of financial aid scholarships: GIFT AID and SELF-HELP
AID. Gift aid is money that does not need to be paid back, and includes GRANTS based on financial need, Scholarships based on academic, artistic, or athletic merit, and Fellowships for graduate students based on academic merit. Self-help aid includes Loans and Student Employment.

KISS to Tour Europe in May and June

January 30th, 2008

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According to a posting on KISS' official website, the group will hit the road later this year and play several arena and stadium shows throughout Europe in May and June. The group currently has confirmed shows in Australia and New Zealand only.

For KISS' confirmed show dates, and more on the possible Europe shows, click here.

Rocky Point Vacation Rentals

January 30th, 2008

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Rocky Point is a beautiful Mexico resort. Locals call it ‘Puerto Penasco'. If you want to experience a different place with all the amenities of home, you should consider a fun vacation in Rocky Point, overlooking the famous Sea of Cortez. Coming with a beach front view of the Sea of Cortez, these rental units are complete with satellite television and fully equipped kitchens.
Rocky Point vacation rentals from Rocky Point house rentals are affordable. They are the premier Beach Home and Condo Rental Company in Puerto Rocky Point and have one of the finest selection of beachfront rental houses, condominiums. Their beach front homes and condos offer a relaxing ambiance with a panoramic view of the Sea of Cortez.

Battlestar Galactica Code - Season 4 - Teaser

January 30th, 2008

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I can’t wait the premiere of the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica. Here’s two trailer of new season: Galactica will return on April 4th and will run for 10 episodes. If you don’t want to know any spoilers about the upcoming season of BSG, read no further!

Image taken from Moore Offers New Clues About Battlestar Galactica

He juiciest clue was for #10. As you can see in the photo, there is an empty space there. Moore brought up the fact that they haven’t revealed the final Cylon yet. EW’s Adam V. Vary responded by asking, “Does that mean the people already at the table aren’t the final Cylon?” To this, Moore said, “You ferreted that out pretty slyly. I didn’t really want to give that away.” I guess that means that we can deduce that Starbuck, Lee, Baltar, Roslin, Adama and Helo are not going to be revealed as the fifth Cylon. Asked for some details on Season 4, Moore said “Lee Adama is taking an interesting journey… in a bizarre and strange direction.” He also promised plenty of exploration on the newly revealed four hidden Cylons, and “The Cylon nation” in general. He also stressed that the upcoming Galactica TV-movie Razor would not resolve the Season 3 cliffhanger, though the Season 4 premiere would. As for Razor, the producers reconfirmed how it tells several stories, mainly centering on the Battlestar Pegasus, in various time frames. Eick also confirmed “You’re going to see the original Cylon Centurions and the original Cylon Raiders” from the 1970’s Battlestar series, in sequences set during the original Cylon war. A discussion of Gaius Baltar’s ability to draw women in led to Helfer saying “Baltar’s getting a lot of action this season, and I haven’t been involved.” When a fan said they wanted to see more interaction between William Adama and Kara Thrace, especially in light of her mysterious return at the end of Season 3, Moore said that the Season 4 premiere would make them “very happy.” He added that the last thing the person will be saying will be “Gee, I wish there was more Adama/Kara scenes.”

Park West Gallery

January 30th, 2008

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If you love art and if you are looking a piece of art that is beautiful and affordable, Park West Art Gallery is the place to be. Park West Gallery is the home to the largest collection of fine art in the world. They are located in in Southfield, Michigan, Park West and conduct fine art auctions throughout the United States and Canada. Park West Art Gallery has twenty-three different galleries, each one devoted to either a particular artist or style of art. Every week, about 6000 works of art are cataloged, photographed, custom framed, carefully checked, registered before distributed to the auction and exhibitions.
At their website you can select titles by artist to view the detailed information about the art piece including dimensions, description, volume and serial information, pricing information. You can also read about the biographies of artists and also includes some general information about the style or technique the artist specializes in.

Simon LeBon of Duran Duran to Rock J-45 on World Tour

January 29th, 2008

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Check out these shots of Simon LeBon of Duran Duran using his new Gibson J-45, custom made for Simon by Gibson Montana.

Duran Duran's new album, Red Carpet Massacre, is out and they are getting prepared for a massive world tour.

MARRIAGE ON THE ROAD

January 29th, 2008

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The Flying V Turns 50

January 29th, 2008

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The sleek, space age lines and bold tones of Gibson Flying Vs have seduced generations of players, putting the "Wham" in Lonnie Mack's licks and making Albert King's big-bellied southpaw bends hang in the air like smoking Crisco at a Saturday night fish fry.

Though its origins may lie in the blues, the Flying V found a home in rock and roll, too. A fleet of three Vs gassed Jimi Hendrix's jams 'til he kissed the sky. The guitar humbucked up T. Rex's roar and gave the Scorpions enough wind to "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Metallica's monolithic wall of sound has a vein of V at its igneous core, and Zakk Wylde has blasted his signature model on-stage and in the studio with Ozzy.

This year marks the golden anniversary of the debut of the Gibson Flying V, and this is the story of the guitar's birth.

GUITAR WARS

The Flying V was born on a field of battle that still rages: Gibson verses Fender. In 1957 Gibson's then-president Ted McCarty wanted some new six-strings to tussle with Leo Fender's popular Stratocasters. Sure, the Les Paul was already making history, but McCarty wanted more contemporary reinforcements with some eye-candy appeal. After all, the Les Paul had debuted in 1952 during the height of the Korean War. It was a new era.

So Gibson's design gurus came up with patents for both the Flying V and the Explorer. They were modern looking instruments during a period when Americans were enjoying peace and prosperity, and more leisure time than ever before. And they smacked of the day's yen for progress. Scientists had elaborated on technology from World War II and Korea to make great leaps in rocketry. Satellites began to circle the Earth. Science fiction novels and movies were the rage.

The aerodynamic charms of both models, but especially the "swept back, forward looking"—as Z.Z. Top's Billy Gibbons has put it—Flying V made it seem like personal jet packs were just around the corner.

The prototype Flying Vs were mahogany and deemed a bit too heavy and a bit too costly to compete with the Strat. So the first models to leave Gibson's original factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, during 1958 were made of the lighter and more readily available korina wood. Their sales didn't break the sound barrier. According to Larry Meiners' thoroughly enjoyable Flying "V": The Illustrated History of This Modernistic Guitar, less than 100 were ordered by dealers in '58 and '59.

It would take another decade-and-a-half before the Flying V would have the last amplified laugh, but early sales were so slack that in 1960 the model was struck from Gibson's catalog. Dave Davies of the Kinks tells a story about buying an original-production V from a Los Angeles guitar shop in 1964 at the fire-sale price of $60. The V's suggested retail at the time was $247.50. Today a '58 or '59 V fetches between $120,000 and $145,000.

Nonetheless, the Flying V began carving its place in history almost immediately thanks to two players.

Bluesman Albert King named his brand new 1958 V "Lucy," a sleeker-shaped little sister to B.B. King's "Lucille." With that guitar Albert perfected a highly original strain of blues powered by primal funk that would influence Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and countless others thanks to classic songs like "Born Under a Bad Sign" and "Crosscut Saw."

Lonnie Mack's V, which he called "Seven," was practically a mail-order bride. He put money down at Cincinnati, Ohio's Glenn Hughes Music after eyeballing the model in the Gibson catalog. While many players scoffed at its cut, Mack marveled at the arrow-like shape—a figure that literally aimed toward the future—and admired the pair of humbuckers on the V's face.

When his arrived, Mack was told it was the seventh off the production line. Almost immediately Mack modified "Seven" with a Bigsby vibrato arm. Mounting the vibrato required setting a metal bar between the guitar's Cadillac-like fins and transformed "Seven" into the most recognizable Flying V on the planet.

A half-century later, the guitar has survived two fractures and is still Mack's beloved main axe. Its most recent appearance was on 2007's Stevie Ray Vaughan retrospective Solos, Sessions and Encores, where Mack uses "Seven" to spar with his acolyte on a live, roasting-hot "Oreo Cookie Blues," recorded in 1986 at Atlanta's Fox Theatre. Albert King also appears on that disc's opening track, wielding his V as he trades solos with Vaughan and B.B. King on the Elmore James classic "The Sky is Crying."

THE RETURN OF THE V

Some Flying V fanatics say the original korina Vs and their more contemporary reissues, including a Lonnie Mack signature model from the 1990s, have greater sonic presence than other V variations due to their strings-through-body design. Mack appears to have gotten extra lucky. When Gibson's Custom Shop examined "Seven" to create the Lonnie Mack Flying V, the pickups were found to have extra windings, which adds tonal beef.

Nonetheless, plenty of guitarists have gotten gigantic amounts of primeval growl with subsequent versions of the Flying V, starting with Jimi Hendrix shortly after Gibson returned the model to production in 1967 with one prominent modification: a stock Vibrola tailpiece to anchor its strings.

Though Hendrix was known for show-stopping finales wherein he reduced his Stratocasters to splinters or turned them into firewood, all three of his Vs survive. Hendrix hand-painted his first with original psychedelic artwork shortly after he bought it. The guitar may have been used to record tracks for Axis: Bold As Love, and it appeared onstage in '67 and '68. Sadly, Jimi's paint job was stripped off at some point and replaced by a facsimile.

His second Flying V was a Sunburst model—also a departure from the instrument's original natural korina finish. It now resides near the entrance of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The Hard Rock franchise also owns Hendrix's third V, a left-handed model.

The whammy tailpieces and Cherry, Sunburst, and Sparkling Burgundy finishes weren't the only big differences between the run of 175 Flying Vs made between 1966 and 1970 and their '58-'59 forefathers. Mahogany replaced korina as the wood of choice, and the 1969 models were also made in natural walnut and featured a three-piece neck.

There were minor differences, with some variation from year-to-year, in the way these tailpieces were attached to the bodies of the guitars, and in truss rod covers, and in the contour of the neck joints.

What they all share is the balance of clarity and crunch that is the V's sonic fingerprint, and the comfortably tapered necks typical of vintage '50s and '60s Gibsons.

A STARFLEET OF FLYING Vs

Starting in the 1970s, Gibson began making some radical changes in its existing guitar lines: headstocks typically became less streamlined and angled, necks often widened a bit. The Flying V was no exception.

When a run of 350 so-called Medallion Flying Vs debuted in 1971 they each had a two-piece body and three-piece neck, and a shorter, less pointed headstock. Also, the Vibrola disappeared and was replaced by a stopbar tailpiece—a popular modification with owners of the '60s run. And last, each of the Medallions sported a namesake gold-colored medallion bearing its production number.

Despite the profile of seminal players like King, Mack, and Hendrix, sales of the rocket bodied Flying V didn't really blast off until the mid-1970s when heavy metal's second generation started soaring up the charts. Kiss, the Scorpions, UFO, and Wishbone Ash all dug into Vs, as did Z.Z. Top, who crept from the blues-rock camp into the pop world with frontman Billy Gibbons toting a Flying V—at least when he didn't have his arm wrapped around his beloved Les Paul "Pearly Gates."

Since then the Flying V has been unstoppable. Gibson has produced more than 25 variations and reissues of the Flying V model since 1975. They've all been notable, but among the most radical were 1980's Flying V2, whose "Boomerang" style pickups emulated the sound of single-coils, and the maple-necked Flying V CMT of 1981. The latter was introduced to compete with the less expensive maple-topped V designs introduced by manufacturers like Ibanez, Dean, and Hamer. Soon B.C. Rich and Jackson, who put out a Randy Rhodes model, also jumped on the Gibson V design's bandwagon.

In the early '80s Gibson introduced a big, burly V bass. And some of the coolest Vs were inspired by the model's top exponents. These include the harlequin-bodied Scorpions Edition, Jimi Hendrix Inspired By model with the psychedelic paint job, a Rudolf Schenker V, the Lonnie Mack, and a concentric circle covered Zakk Wylde Inspired By Flying V.

The most recent members of the Flying V family are every bit as radical and striking as the original appeared 50 years ago. In 2007 Gibson created a limited run Reverse Flying V, with the tips of the wings facing forward and a backwards V headstock, but other aspects of the design—rounded body contours, vintage style pickups—remained faithful to the original instrument. Epiphone also makes an authentic, lower-priced model patterned after both the original korina 1958 Flying V and Explorer designs. And a 50th Anniversary Flying V from Gibson Custom is slated for this year.

It's been a half-century of evolution and innovation since the original Flying Vs landed in the hands of musicians. We may still be waiting for our jet packs, but the Flying V took off long ago.

Gibson Guitar Clinics (Europe)

January 29th, 2008

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One of our newest Gibson clinicians has not only made the guitar a part of his life, he’s made playing the guitar his lifestyle.Guitarist Ryan Roxie has adopted “the road” as his home away from home for the past 20 odd years and that is why it is not so shocking to see Roxie yet again traveling the world. This time he’s out touring with a headlining act that has over 113 years experience: Gibson Guitars. Putting on a clinic that can only be described as Entertaining AND Educational, Roxie covers Gibson’s rich history of tradition and innovation through the many intriguing “eras” that has brought Gibson Guitars to where it is today: An iconic symbol of Americana. Ryan’s own musical history is rich as well with versatility and experience. Roxie has appeared on over 30 albums to date, including his own bands HappyPill and Roxie77. He has also written, recorded and toured with household names such as Alice Cooper and Slash. From the straight ahead rock n’ roll riffs of The Gilby Clarke band to the pop guitar layerings of Tal Bachman’s top ten hit “She’s so High”, Roxie explains in his clinics that every SONG needs just the right amount of the right guitar on it and that it’s not always about what parts you play, but sometimes what you don’t.. Whether it’s his “first girlfriend” (the ’71 Goldtop that helped him secure his first record deal), or his current love (an ES-335 reissue), Gibson guitars have always been a big part of the sound, the look, and the personality of Ryan Roxie. Come and enjoy a Clinic that combines Historical and Personal anecdotes and experiences about the guitar designs that have shaped the way we see and hear popular music. Ryan Roxie is currently touring Scandinavia with his guitar clinic- “Gibson Guitars- over 100 years of tradition and innovation.”

Houston Siding Experts

January 29th, 2008

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All-Tex Exteriors are a family based company which was formed in 1991 and specialises in exterior home improvements. They can replace sidings, update windows, paint the exterior of houses or repair roofs. If you are looking for a home improvement expert then All Tex could help you. They will even give you a free quote online for all sorts of work such as replacement windows, decks, covered patios, exterior painting, wood repair, pergolas, sunrooms, room additions or other work.
Pergolas, also referred to as lattices, arbors or shade covers, can be a beautiful addition to any Houston home. Whether you need a small Houston pergolas to provide shade for a porch, or desire a large custom pergola to accentuate your home, garden, pool, or landscaping, All-Tex Exteriors can design and build the perfect lattice for your home.
Contact them at their own web site and find out what they can offer you!

AMON AMARTH

January 29th, 2008

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OFFICIAL HOMEPAGE

Around the year 500 A.C. the Vikings set sail to conquer new lands, leaving nothing but death and destruction in their wake. 15 centuries later, AMON AMARTH, their only true heirs, are repeating history with guitars as their weapons and death metal as their battle cry.

Since their humble start in 1992 as an underground band from Tumba, a suburb in southern Stockholm, AMON AMARTH have managed to establish themselves as one of Europe’s top death metal acts through hard work, relentless touring, and consistently solid albums. What has set AMON AMARTH apart from the rest of the death metal scene since the very beginning, is their use of Viking mythology and imagery in lyrics and artwork, as well as a talent for writing epic, memorable melodies, which underline their solemn yet barbaric approach to heavy music.

Band members:

Johan Hegg - Vocals

Ted Lundström - Bass

Olavi Mikkonen - Guitars

Johan Söderberg - Guitars

Band Website: amonamarth.com

Official MySpace: myspace.com/amonamarth

Record Label: Metal Blade Records

Career Advancement? Lose Your Accent

January 29th, 2008

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ELTlearn.com is the industry leader in providing English and foreign language training including Italian language training and French language training. ELTlearn.com not only has language courses, but they also have accent reduction training. They are the industry leader in providing English and foreign language training including Italian, French and Portuguese language training language training. If you are competing for jobs or business, you may have to worry about people making harsh judgments about you based on your accent. Eltlearn.com has a one-on-one or small group Business English course and is designed to help participants advance their English for Business communication competency and succeed in today's business world.
At this website you will find all the information you need according to what your needs and goals are.

Bill Berends

January 28th, 2008

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Bill Berends is most widely recognized as band leader & guitarist of the progressive rock band Mastermind known worldwide for their many acclaimed CD releases & concert appearances. What is lesser known is the foundation of the Bill's musical world is built on the blues.
In an interview a few years back the guitarist states "In my formative years it was the hard rock and psychedelic bands of the 60's that moved me; The Beatles, Cream, Spirit, etc. Later on I fell under the spell of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the whole jazz-fusion scene like Miles, Return to Forever". The experimental nature of these bands eventually lead him into the world of progressive rock such as King Crimson and Emerson Lake & Palmer, the world from which Mastermind was born.

But these early influences also lead him back to their influences, the real bluesmen; Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Dawkins, Howlin' Wolf, which had a profound effect on the budding musician at the time.

"Although the music I liked was primarily outside of the mainstream, the common thread through all of these seemingly different musical styles I enjoy is blues. Bands without any sort of blues element never really did much for me." Another common element is his favorite guitar players of the time such as Cream era Clapton, Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, Mick Taylor, Alvin Lee, they all played Gibson guitars.

Having loved & played the blues for over four decades, it is little wonder with the music industry losing direction that Berends choose to revisit his first love of the blues at this time. A universal language that has stood the test of time. "It simply feels right" says Bill who cut his teeth at the tender age of 17 gigging with the popular local Baltimore blues act "Cabbage" in the early 70's. "These were black guys twice my age and literally from the wrong side of the tracks, but man did they teach me something about playing real blues."

Although the visceral and intellectual world of progressive rock & fusion led him down a very different path for many years, his blues heart never beat very far from the surface. It has been said that the record business is finished, but as long as people are playing music with their hands the blues will survive. This is exactly what Bill & the Berends Bros Band are doing now, playing music with their hands. Keeping the flame alive. No computers or digital magic. Just real people playing their guts out.

Bill's first electric guitar was a Gibson SG Standard he received on his 14th birthday in 1968. His main axe for most of his life, the '68 SG is heard on every Mastermind album and has toured the world by Bill's side. He still treasures this guitar which will celebrate its 40th birthday in 2008. A diehard fan of the Gibson (and Marshall) sound, Bill recently expanded his Gibson family with a 2003 Firebird V and a 2006 SG Special (both purchased from Guitar Center). "The '68 SG is the benchmark for all other guitars I play, so I am very pleasantly surprised how often I will reach for the new SG, it has some mojo. The Firebird of course is in a class of its own."

Hear Bill's Firebird in action: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WLaGL_6E450

Additional links:
www.myspace.com/billberends

www.myspace.com/mastermindband

youtube.com/mastermindband

www.mastermindband.com

Texas ATVs

January 28th, 2008

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Texas ATVs is an online site that provides a place for four wheeler lovers to interact and share their experiences, reviews and interests of ATV lovers. The online site has been established since 2001 and since then has allowed ATV’s fans to interact with teach other and share their videos.
There is a forum on the site as well as a section for photographs and a section for videos including ATV mudding videos. You have ATVs, events and forums and there is even a section for local clubs and groups.
On the online site you will find ATV lovers form all around America with whom you can interact with. So, let's just see for yourself, take a look.

Hard Rock Park

January 28th, 2008

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Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach unveiled a partnership announcing Gibson as the Park's official musical instrument sponsor at an official ceremony on Thursday, January 24, 2008. As part of this multi-faceted partnership, Gibson will most notably be celebrated in the center of the Park, where a 70-foot tall Gibson Guitar icon, the world's largest guitar, will tower over the Hard Rock Park lagoon. The interactive icon will be a feature in the laser and fireworks show every evening at the Hard Rock Theme Park. The icon will sit on a 600 square-foot Gibson retail store and gallery which allows for it to tower 90 feet in the air. Park-goers will be able to view displays of one-of-a-kind Gibson guitars, including the new, Gibson Robot Guitar, an automatic tuning guitar. The store will feature a special hand rail imprinted with a timeline of Gibson's history, and the interior is designed in such a way that guests will feel as though they are actually entering the inside of a guitar. The Hard Rock Theme Park will open to the public in Summer 2008.

Backgame.com: backgammon...I love it!

January 28th, 2008

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Do you love to play backgammon? I really do. Backgame.com is a site that offers an all in one game lobby, which includes games such as blackjack, poker and obviously backgammon.

Switching from one language to another has never been easier; players simply select their language of choice in the Backgame Game Lobby and instantly switch the interface language (english, Turkish, Danish, German, etc).
So it's really for everybody, online backgammon.

Backgame networked game software is currently the only free software. Play backgammon online for real money. Includes instructions on how to play and information about tournaments.

Learn and practice on this site: http://www.backgame.com/.

That’s Captain Dickinson to You; Iron Maiden Singer To Pilot Tour Plane

January 28th, 2008

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Rock bands have leased large commercial aircraft to stage tours for decades―and not necessarily as ego trips, but rather the most efficient and economic way to transport their entourage from one city to the next. But who could imagine Eddie Vedder or Mick Jagger at the controls, wrestling a heavily-laden jetliner into the sky? Iron Maiden for one―their 2008 world tour will not only be traveled via a chartered Astraeus Airlines Boeing 757 emblazoned with a likeness of their skeletal mascot Eddie, but captained by none other than lead singer Bruce Dickinson. And if the idea of Dickinson himself piloting the band’s 113-ton 757 evokes a tragic-comic Spinal TapmeetsAirplane! scenario to some, be advised the singer/former world-class fencer was not only fully trained as commercial jet pilot by a British Airways Captain some years ago, but in 2006 piloted another 757 to Cyprus on a volunteer mission to fly home some 200 British refugees of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon. Dickinson claims he came up with the idea of turning the Boeing into a de facto tour bus last year, accomplished by removing the last 10 rows of seats to facilitate transporting the band’s equipment. “We will be packing as much of the show into the plane as we possibly can,” said Dickinson of his double-duties on the tour. “And it allows me to combine two of my greatest passions: music and flying!” —Jerry McCulley

Concentric Business Solutions

January 28th, 2008

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Concentric.com is a shared hosting provider that offers domain name registration services and email hosting for small business web sites. Concentric offers marketing services and technical services. Technical services include account setup, DNS and domain registar configuration, GroupWare Wiki, HTML edits, web site application service, web site migration, and custom services. Get a free domain name with every hosting account; plus web hosting, email hosting, private domain registration, and free spam filters and virus protection.
Concentric provides a 99.99span class="caps">SLA with a 3 month money back guarantee. They claim to provide a 24×7 support.
Chech it out their web page at www.concentric.com and read what they can offer you.
shared hosting

Tupelo, Graceland Events Mark Elvis Presley’s Birthday

January 28th, 2008

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The King would have been 73 today, a milestone that’s being marked by public events in Elvis Presley’s Mississippi birthplace as well as in Memphis, the city that both launched him to fame and became his beloved home. In Tupelo, a Mississippi Blues Trail marker will be unveiled at the Elvis Presley Birthplace Museum, an event sponsored by the organization in conjunction with the Mississippi Development Authority Tourism Heritage Trails Program, the Mississippi Blues Commission, and Tupelo Convention and Visitors Bureau. “By all accounts, Elvis Presley was the single greatest influence on modern day rock and roll in America, and much of his musical inspiration drew on the Mississippi blues,” Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said on Friday.
In Memphis, Presley’s birth was honored by several days of events, including a Saturday concert of the singer’s music by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra that featured James Burton, Glen D. Hardin, and Ronnie Tutt from Elvis’s famed TCB touring band. Today’s ceremonies at Graceland, the icon’s Memphis estate and final resting place, will include a ceremonial cake-cutting and proclamations marking Elvis Presley Day in the city and county, with Priscilla Presley hosting the day’s events for the first time.

Free Web Polls

January 28th, 2008

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Easy Poll is an easy and effective way to add variety to your online service and make it more interactive. Easy-Poll has the largest selection of patterns and colors for free polls. They offer two sorts of polls: a yes or no poll and a multiple-choice poll.
Polls are always a good way to know the opinion of readers. Most of us have participated in polls on websites and blogs. A poll allows you to ask your website visitors or email respondents a question for which you will give them a series of answers to choose from.
So check it out their web site at www.easy-poll.com.

Les Paul in a Coors Commerical from 1997

January 27th, 2008

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New Zealand Tour.

January 27th, 2008

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If you are planning travel to New Zealand, cheaperthanhotels.co.nz has offers a wide selection of Auckland accommodation option for all budgets. You can find cheap hotels in New Zealand and cheap hotels in Auckland from this site too, or even Wellington Hotels.

In New Zealand you can experience landscapes so special, they have been internationally recognized as irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration.

They are providing you last minute hotel bookings to you at very affordable rates. The main city to visit in New Zealand is Auckland.

To get more information, please visit the website and believe me after checking out out this site you will want to head to Auckland youself!

Billie Joe Armstrong’s Side Band Pinhead Gunpowder to Perform Two Shows

January 27th, 2008

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Green Day announced today on their website that they’ll loan out frontman Billie Joe Armstrong for several gigs with his longstanding side band, Pinhead Gunpowder, for two shows in California next month.
Pinhead Gunpowder will perform at Chain Reaction in Anaheim on February 3 and at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on February 4. The band was formed in ’91, and its members have rehearsed and performed on and off ever since, maintaining outside projects while releasing three full-length albums, the most recent one being 2003’s Compulsive Disclosure.

Prime Florida Real Estate Properties

January 27th, 2008

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Bardell Real Estate is not your typical real estate company. They are highly professional and knowledgeable licensed Florida real estate agents. Through Bardell Real Estate's website I found out that Bardell Real Estate has been in the business for over 17 years assisting its clients to find their dream vacation homes and properties. They have many villas for rent or purchase. The properties for sale are built by the top developers in Florida and are made for the good life. Bardell Real Estate agents are highly trained professionals who main focus is to show properties specific to their clients specifications.
So.. If you are looking to purchase a Florida holiday villas in the near future you will want to take a look at this site.

Foo Fighters Embark on Tour, Plan to Proceed with Grammy Gig

January 27th, 2008

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Following the September release of the Foo Fighters’ critically lauded sixth album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, the band embarked on an exhaustive stadium tour last week that will take them through the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and England.
Against Me! and Jimmy Eat World have joined the Foos for the first leg of the tour, and Serj Tankian and Hi-Fi Hand Grenades will take over as tour mates for later shows.

“We played together [with the Foo Fighters] at a radio festival in the fall,” Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel told Rolling Stone of the pairing. “My bandmates were hanging out in the Foos’ dressing room saying, ‘Come on, take us on tour!’ We didn’t think it would actually happen, but here we are!”

In other news, the Foo Fighters announced that their performance at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards will go on as planned despite the ongoing writers’ strike.

“There’s no question that the Grammys are a highlight of every year for the industry and audiences alike, and we’re thrilled that the Foo Fighters will be performing on the show,” said their manager John Silva in a statement.

The Foo Fighters have been nominated for five Grammys this year—Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Best Hard Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album.

Check out the Dave Grohl Signature from Gibson Custom.

Security Systems

January 27th, 2008

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IT Planet offers discount hardware for businesses, bar code label printers, barcode scanners, touchscreens for POS, and a large selection of security cameras systems. Discount technology for data capture, label printing, point of sale security, RFID, and security systems to keep your workspace and office buildings safe. IT Planet.com offers the lowest price in the industry guaranteed. If you find a lower price from another online store you could be eligible for a price match.
If you are planning to open a business or if you already own one but needs new equipments such as bar code scanners or security cameras, check out their site at security surveillance system.
They are worldwide distributor of auto-id equipment and others accessories.

New Report: Beatles Nearly Recorded Revolver in Memphis

January 27th, 2008

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Deanie Parker, former publicist for Mecca Stax, now claims in Mojo magazine that the Beatles had booked two weeks at the Memphis, Tennessee-based studios in April, 1966 to record their seminal Revolver album. The plans were reportedly nixed over well-founded security concerns. Indeed, John Lennon’s infamous “bigger than Christ” comments to British journalist Maureen Cleave would cause a violent backlash in the South when they were reprinted in an American teen magazine a few months later. "I was seeing dollar signs,” Parker said. “I talked to [Stax founder] Jim Stewart and said, 'If the Beatles do come, will you give me permission to take the carpet up, cut it into squares and sell it?'" With the exception of Let It Be and a few other isolated sessions late in their career, all of Fab Four’s epochal recordings were made at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London. It’s also claimed that the Fabs were offered secure accommodations in Memphis from another famous local musician—none other than Elvis Presley. —Jerry McCulley

Paul McCartney Plans Photo Exhibition of Linda McCartney’s Work

January 27th, 2008

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An upcoming photography exhibit featuring the work of the late Linda McCartney was announced last week. Paul McCartney, his photographer daughter Mary, and curator James Hyman went through thousands of Linda’s photos—many of them family snapshots, landscapes, and celebrity portraits. Also in the mix, of course, are photos of the Beatles.
“Hyman, my daughter Mary, and I have worked on it for three years,” Paul McCartney told the Guardian Unlimited. “The result is a sensitive selection of works that really demonstrates Linda’s prodigious output. The photographs not only illustrate her incredible talent as an artist, but as someone who was very much connected to the culture of the times, and wasn’t afraid to challenge herself, or her subject.”

The exhibit will open at the James Hyman Gallery in London sometime between April and June. It will be the first major exhibit of Linda McCartney’s work.

Improve Your Business with ActionCoach

January 27th, 2008

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ActionCOACH is a site that will help you locate business coaches for your buisness. They make allot of claims about how they can help you, and they have coaches from all around the world locatable through their site.
They work within what they call their “14 Points of Culture” to make sure that everyone who touches, or is touched by the ActionCOACH team, benefits and in some way move closer to becoming the person they want to be or achieve the goals they want to achieve. ActionCOACH, reportedly the world’s #1 business coaching firm and franchise company, has won an International Stevie Award for Best Overall Company.
If you’re in need for business coaching, you could evaluate ActionCOACH to see if it suits your needs.

Eddie Vedder’s Into the Wild and Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood Scores Disqualified from Oscar Consideration

January 27th, 2008

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In the flurry of Oscar nominations announced this morning, there were two missing names of particular note: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
Vedder, whose original score for the film Into the Wild has garnered him a heap of praise, had been considered a shoe-in for an Oscar nod, especially following his Golden Globe win for Best Original Song this month. But the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed the soundtrack ineligible for consideration due to “predominant use of songs.” The Pearl Jam frontman still has the Grammys to look forward too, though. His Into the Wild song “Guaranteed” has been nominated for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media.

Also ruled ineligible for an Oscar was the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood, composed by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. According to Rule 16 of the Academy’s Special Rules for Music Awards, any score that’s “diluted by the use of tracked themes or other pre-existing music” cannot be considered. The soundtrack includes excerpts from “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” a 20-minute classical piece Greenwood wrote in ’06.

Advantage Term Life

January 26th, 2008

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Have you ever think to purchase Insurance?

I was searching online to see if I could find some good information and I found a website that was very helpful called advantagetermlife.com.

They have many different kinds of Coverage for insurance that you can imagine.
They have Family Insurance Plans like term and whole life insurance. They best news is that they also have insurance plans that help you Save on your insurance premiums .
If you are interested in a whole life policy or a term life policy in any of the other areas covered by advantagetermlife, you will visit the appropriate page and will follow the same simple procedure.<
I suggest you to visit them now!

Scott Weiland Speaks About Stone Temple Pilots Reunion, Misses Velvet Revolver Gig

January 26th, 2008

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Stone Temple Pilots are prepping for a reunion, according to the band’s lead singer Scott Weiland, who announced his plans on-stage during a recent solo performance in Florida. This isn’t the first fans have heard from Weiland about a possible reunion. In 2007, his comments in a Washington Post story hinted that he wasn’t done with Stone Temple Pilots, and this month he confirmed to the Miami Herald that there would be a reunion in the coming months.
Interestingly, Weiland was absent from his show with current band Velvet Revolver, scheduled for the Sundance Film Festival this past Sunday. Instead, the band enlisted vocal help from the audience. It’s been speculated that Weiland missed his flight to Park City, Utah.

Finale Music Notation Software

January 26th, 2008

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Finale Music Notation Software is not the easiest tech to come by. While you can find hundreds of games, applications, and other mindless pursuits to install on your computer for free the act of writing and printing high quality music notation for free is much more difficult. MakeMusic, Inc. is a world leader in software for music educators and musicians. Finale Music Notation Software is a software package for writing music. It does the boring bits and lets you concentrate on the music. Finale® is one of the most popular music notation software products in the market today. The Coda family of music notation software products includes Coda Finale, Coda Allegro, and Coda Printmusic. Coda products also includes SmartMusic®, the complete music practice system that features Intelligent Accompaniment® and the world's largest interactive accompaniment library.
music engraving
Entering the tune is extremely easy - normally one key stroke for the pitch and (sometimes) another for the duration - much quicker than click and drag.

New Metallica Album in September?

January 26th, 2008

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A report on StereoWarning.com claims that "sources from the band's record label" have said that Metallica's new album has "been delayed again" to a September release. But a representative for the group's management told us that the disc has not been "delayed" since there "has never been an actual release date." As for when the record was likely to surface, the representative said, "It will be out when it's ready."
Metallica began working on its ninth studio album in 2006. Since then the group has taken its time to write and record the new disc, but drummer Lars Ulrich told us it isn't hard to stay inspired even 25 years into the band's career.

"I don't use the word 'career,' 'hunger,' I use more words like 'fun.' As long as we keep it fun for ourselves and keep it kind of manageable, the days of the word 'career' and the business and, I don't know, it just seems kind of part of the past. Now it's just about, like, having fun and wanting to do it. You know, as long as it doesn't turn into too much work, it's not hard to be inspired."
Metallica has been recording the new album with producer Rick Rubin after ending a 15-year collaboration with Bob Rock.

The new Metallica CD will follow up 2003's uninspiring St. Anger.

As late as last October, Ulrich said in interviews that he expected the new album to arrive in February of 2008.

Metallica has booked a number of European festival appearances starting in late May, although it has yet to schedule any North American dates.

The Hits, Misses, and Head-Scratchers of This Year’s Coachella Line-up

January 26th, 2008

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Having impressed hardcore music fans with previous reunion coups such as the Pixies, Jane's Addiction, and the Stooges, there was a whiff of disappointment about the just-revealed line-up for this year's Coachella Festival. It's impressive to see freshly reunited '90s alternative radio hit-makers like the Verve, Portishead, and the Breeders on the bill, but their presence seems a little underwhelming when measured against last year's comeback kids—Rage Against the Machine and the Jesus & Mary Chain, who trotted out insufferably hot guest vocalist Scarlett Johansson.
As great as it's going to be to watch Dark Side of the Moon performed in its entirety by Roger Waters under the Southern California desert sky, celebrating a well-worn classic rock record seems totally out of place for a festival that was built on celebrating misfits. But it's not all bad news. Not only will it be a lot easier to get a decent hotel room, but there are a lot of acts on the bill worthy of the 120-degree heat.

Here's our breakdown of the bill:

THE HITS: Despite the peculiar names at the top of the bills for the three-day festival, once you glance down a little bit you can tell that the organizers at Goldenvoice Concerts haven't totally lost their marbles, offering an awesome mix of buzz acts from just about every genre imaginable, including underground R&B greats Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A., superstar DJ and producer Mark Ronson, nerdy indie songwriter Jens Lekman, and up-and-coming British singer Duffy. Plus, there's Kraftwerk. Overall, it's a pretty solid bill with more than enough different stuff going on to keep even the most jaded MP3 blogger raving through July. Coachella remains about the small-scale acts.

THE MISSES: Jack Johnson is a great singer-songwriter, fantastic acoustic guitarist, and all-around nice guy. Hell, he recorded his new album using nothing but solar power. But like Waters playing an album that most of our grandparents used to get high to, the laidback surfer dude that was last heard on the Curious George soundtrack seems totally out of place at a festival that was seemingly created to celebrate the acts that were going against the grain. Couldn't Bonnaroo fit him on the bill? Oh, and one more note about Waters—he's been playing that album live for the past two years, making the Coachella appearance anything but special. Now if they would have gotten Pink Floyd to reunite ...
THE HEAD-SCRATCHERS: Love and Rockets get awfully close to top billing on Sunday, but it's hard to imagine anyone has given the band—made up of three-quarters of Bauhaus—much attention in recent years. Do they really deserve to go on just before Waters or is it just the organizers' way of traffic control on the final night of the festival? Other acts that are getting higher placement than they probably deserve include Slightly Stoopid and Madness. Then again, any festival that can bring those three acts together must be doing something right.

Here's the full bill:

FRIDAY, APRIL 25: Jack Johnson, The Verve, Raconteurs, The Breeders, Fatboy Slim, Tegan and Sara, Madness, The Swell Season, The National, Animal Collective, Slightly Stoopid, Mum, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Stars, Battles, Aesop Rock, Midnight Juggernauts, Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Minus the Bear, Spank Rock, Dan Le Sac Vs Scroobius Pip, Diplo, Adam Freeland, Santo Gold, Jens Lekman, John Butler Trio, Vampire Weekend, Dan Deacon, Architecture in Helsinki, Sandra Collins, Busy P, Cut Copy, Black Lips, Datarock, Professor Murder, Reverend and the Makers, The Bees, Porter, Rogue Wave, Modeselektor, American Bang, Lucky I Am.

SATURDAY, APRIL 26: Portishead, Kraftwerk, Death Cab for Cutie, Cafe Tacuba, Sasha & Digweed, Rilo Kiley, Dwight Yoakam, M.I.A., Hot Chip, Cold War Kids, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, DeVotchKa, Flogging Molly, Mark Ronson, Turbonegro, Scars on Broadway, Islands, Enter Shikari, Calvin Harris, Boyz Noize, Junkie XL, Cinematic Orchestra, Jamie T, The Teenagers, VHS or Beta, Carbon/Silicon, Erol Alkan, Yo Majesty!, Little Brother, Bonde Do Role, St. Vincent, Akron Family, MGMT, Institubes DJs (Surkin, Para One and Orgasmic), James Zabiela, Sebastian, Kavinsky, Dredg, The Bird and the Bee, Grand Ole Party, New Young Pony Club, 120 Days, Yoav, Electric Touch, Uffie.
SUNDAY, APRIL 27: Roger Waters performing Dark Side of the Moon, Love and Rockets, My Morning Jacket, Spiritualized, Justice, Gogol Bordello, Chromeo, The Streets, Metric, Danny Tenaglia, Simian Mobile Disco, Booka Shade, Murs, Dmitri from Paris, Autolux, The Field, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Les Savy Fav, The Cool Kids, Sons & Daughters, Sia, Holy Fuck, Black Kids, Black Mountain, The Annuals, Kid Sister w/A-Trak, Man Man, Duffy, I'm from Barcelona, Manchester Orchestra, Deadmau5, The Horrors, Austin TV, Shout Out Louds, Plastiscines, Brett Dennen.

National Auto Shipping

January 26th, 2008

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Transporting a vehicle is a big deal… it’s also one of those things that happens so few times in life that when it does happen, you don’t know where to turn. National Auto Shipping is one of the most reliable and trustworthy companies around when it comes for truck or car shipping.
National Auto Shipping is a company which provides auto transport. When your vehicle is in transit, they track it every step of the way so that you can talk to a customer representative at any time and know what progress it has made on its journey. National Auto Shipping is specialise in transporting cars, boats, tracktors and more. They also ship outside the United States like Virgin Islands, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Jamaican and more upon request. National Auto Shipping value the customers. And their main goal is customer service and getting the job done. They can provide you with dependable vehicle transport anywhere throughout the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii.
car shipping

KT Tunstall: The Gibson Interview

January 25th, 2008

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Over a scampering, Latin-flavored beat, KT Tunstall’s infectious new single, “Hold On,” enjoins one and all to “Hold on to what you’ve been given lately/ Hold on to what you know you’ve got.” Coming from a singer-songwriter-guitarist who made her bones busking in the streets of her native Scotland, and who, by her late ’20s, was written off by every record label as “too old to make it,” this comes as sage advice, indeed.

That Tunstall (whose first name is Kate, although she prefers the “rock sound” of KT) made a cannonball-sized splash with her zippy, glossy pop-folk debut album, 2004’s Eye to the Telescope (released in the U.S. in 2006), is reason enough to be amazed. Ever since Britney Spears begged to be hit one more time in the late ’90s, female singers past puberty have pretty much been given the heave-ho. But years of playing in Edinburgh bands (along with all that busking) sharpened Tunstall’s songwriting chops to the point of urgency. Smash hits such as “Suddenly I See” and “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” (the latter of which showcased KT’s biting guitar skills) have shown her to be an artist with the kind of goods that last.

Drastic Fantastic, Tunstall’s new album, proves this in spades. A nearly flawless piece of popular art that takes not an ounce of effort to enjoy, it finds the Gibson Dove enthusiast briskly strumming her way through a collection of spotlessly produced songs that are equal parts enchanting, love-struck come-ons and righteous, poisonous kiss-offs. During a recent interview with Gibson, KT admitted that the worldwide acclaim, the mega-sales, and the awards are all sweet relief (and revenge) after years of hardship and doubt.

**First off, what’s the deal with the Gibson Firebird on your album cover? It looks huge.

That's because it’s not a real guitar; it’s a prop. In my video for “Hold On,” you can see me with an actual Firebird that's covered with mirrors; it supposed to have sort of a mirror ball vibe. When we did the album cover, a couple of props guys made me a mock version of a Firebird covered with mirrors. They got the dimensions kind of wrong and it came out much bigger than the real thing. I thought it looked great, though, a little surreal, like an optical illusion. All the tuning pegs are actually whiskey decanter tops, and the strings are necklaces and all sorts of stuff, so it was a really amazing piece of work. It looks great.

Besides the Firebird, you also love Gibson Dove acoustics.

I really, really love my Dove. It's got a fantastic breadth of sound to it. I'm a pretty aggressive rhythm player, and I'm very reliant on my bottom E string, so I need an acoustic guitar that's got a very, very rich bottom end, as well as having the nice brightness at the top. The Dove is really fantastic for that. And then my back-up at the moment is a Hummingbird, which is a little bit more honky and a bit more breezy, so you get a different sound out of it. But I'm very excited because Gibson has actually made me a Custom Dove, which is an Elvis Dove. It's black with a white scratch plate and it has stars all the way up the fretboard. It looks absolutely beautiful.

Talk about your playing style. On “White Bird,” from the new album, you’re doing some marvelous fingerpicking.**

I actually started off as a fingerpicker. I didn’t use a pick to strum for a long time. I would strum with my bare fingers because I found it really difficult to use a pick at first. There were two albums that had a big impact on me at the same time: Blue by Joni Mitchell and Bone Machine by Tom Waits. Both had this mixture of surreal, beautiful, and inimitable fingerpicking and this very kind of percussive rootsy sound. Lately, I’ve gotten into strumming with a pick─I just like as much noise as possible─but I'll never stop fingerpicking.

What kind of pressure did you experience recording a follow-up to a multi-million-selling debut?

The greatest pressure was simply feeling totally knackered from touring and promoting the first album. It was three pretty relentless years. Sure, I was doing something I’ve always wanted to do quite passionately, which was get on a bus with a band and take my music to the world, but it left me in a situation where I didn’t want to take any time off; I wanted to get another record out quickly. In terms of sales, the first one did so well, I feel as though I’ve taken my share from the sell-lots-of-records box already. So all I wanted to do, cliché as it sounds, was to make something that I really loved and could be happy about. Trying to do that when you’re completely worn out was very difficult.

How do you feel about being called a pop star?

For a long time, I just really couldn't accept that. It was a very bizarre concept, and I kind of had my fingers in my ears and just really didn’t want to think about that side of things. But then I got to the point where I was like, “All right now, come on, let's see what this ‘pop star’ stuff is all about,” and I just wanted to, you know, grab it by the balls.

But pop stars don’t continue to busk. Word is, you were in Glasgow the other day busking.

Yes, I was. It was fantastic! It was so nice go to back and do that. Obviously, I don’t really need the cash anymore, but it was great to just go out and play, which is what I’d be doing anyway no matter what was happening with me. It a tremendous feeling to know that I can always just get out with my guitar and rip it up.

What can you tell us about the single “Hold On”? How did it come about?

“Hold On” was spawned from where I live in London─I live in Northwest London─which is steeped in dance hall. Even in the streets, it's just dance hall all day and night, just these huge beats pumping out of cars and windows. That’s how the beat came about. I wrote it with a friend of mine who's a garage producer. He comes from that part of London, and he's done the garage remixes to some of the Gorillaz stuff. We just wrote this thing together, and it turned into this great hybrid of London dance culture, with my own kind of melody and chord sensibility. The lyrics are important to me. They say, “Judge not before you judge yourself. Judge not before you're ready for judgment.”

Had success happened to you 10 years ago, would you have handled it as well as you seem to be?

It's difficult to say. I do wonder about that because I definitely feel a sense of relief that I'm a bit older. Hitting 30 for me was absolutely brilliant. I just realized many things. I realized I knew nothing! But I realized I was happier than I had ever been. I also kind of figured out that there’s lot of stuff I want to do before I die, which might happen at any time, so I want to get on with it. You only have one life, so you may as well try to have a good life with people you love in it.

The Pacific Wood Preserving Companies

January 25th, 2008

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The Pacific Wood Preserving Companies are a group of companies that sell and produce treated lumber for all of your teated lumber needs. They sell all kinds of styles of pressure treated wood. Other products offered by the Pacific Wood Preserving Companies include transmission poles, distribution poles, agricultural treated wood products and more. Another interesting service offered by Pacific Wood, is the possibility that you bring your own wood and they treat it.
agricultural fences
The thing to keep in mind is that they are the most environmentally mindful and innovative wood treater in its marketplace and that is quite rare in this day and age.

Revisiting Black Sabbath: The Dio Years

January 25th, 2008

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Heaven and Hell may wrap up its North American tour this week but that doesn’t mean you need to kick yourself for missing out on the fleeting reunion of Black Sabbath’s founding members—guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Terry “Geezer” Butler, vocalist Ronnie James Dio, and drummer Vinny Appice.

In March, Rhino Records sent its crew to document Black Sabbath’s first tour date at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, which sold out in just 20 minutes, and the result is the incredible Heaven & Hell: Live from Radio City Music Hall.

During a tour stop in Chicago last month, Dio said the band was taken aback by the overwhelming response to the reunion of the post-Ozzy Black Sabbath line-up that recorded just three studio albums between 1979 and 1982, plus the classic Live Evil.

“We didn’t really know what was going to happen when we announced the show,” Dio said. “Deep down inside I felt that it would do well. I thought the entire tour would do well just because we haven’t been together for such a long time and there’s always been interest. Whenever I go out on tour with my own band the question is always there, you know, ‘Are you guys going to get back together again?’ So I was confident it was going to do well but it was pretty amazing.”

For those that missed out altogether on Dio’s run with the heavy metal legends, Rhino also released an excellent sampler available called Sabbath: The Dio Years. It includes all the classic high school parking lot jams like “Neon Nights” and “Die Young,” along with three new tracks—“The Devil Cried,” “Shadow of The Wind,” and “Ear in the Wall”—that show that Iommi is still untouchable when it comes to conjuring that primal gothic metal with his Gibson SG.

Dio said it didn’t take much prodding to get the band inspired again. “[Rhino] was releasing that album, and they wanted something that they had not released before and they asked us if we had anything,” he said. “We didn’t do any music that we didn’t put on a record when we started. There really wasn’t anything to make this project more interesting. So they asked us to write two songs for the album, and after a little bit of thought about it and some getting back together we decided to do it. We wrote three songs.”

The tour, which heads over to Europe next month, is the natural conclusion to the whole project. “For Geezer and Tony, who for the last 15 years have been doing Ozzfest and playing nothing but ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Iron Man,’ they wanted to recapture the chapter of music that we had done together, which was a whole lot different,” Dio said. “They were just purely interested in playing those songs again.”

To view clips of Heaven and Hell in action, click here.

Eagle Mountain Reserve

January 25th, 2008

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Eagle Mountain Reserve is a lakeside location which has planning for homes to be built on it. It is a breathtaking location on the mountain overlooking Lake Buchanan which is in the heart of Texas Hill Country. The Eagle Mountain Reserve planned community is a master planned one hundred and eighteen acre facility on the northeastern foothills of Buchanan Lake near Texas Ranch Road.
Texas waterfront property
Please visit the Eagle Mountain Reserve planned community web site today for more information about this beautiful place to live. So if you are looking for Texas investment property or want to move to this location then take a look at the website to find out more details about Eagle Mountain Reserve.

Zoom G 9.2TT

January 25th, 2008

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**Technical specifications Zoom G 9.2TT :**
Effect Types : 120

Effect Modules : 10

Maximum Simultaneous Effects : 10

Patch Memory : User 100+Preset 100, Total 200

Sampling Frequency : 96kHz

A/D Conversion : 24bit, 64times over-sampling

D/A Conversion : 24bit, 128times over-sampling

Signal Processing : 32bit

Frequency Response : 20Hz-40kHz+1.0dB, -3.0dB(10kΩload)

Guitar Input : 1/4" phone jack(Rated input level : -10dBm, Input impedance : 1MΩ)

AUX Input : 1/8" stereo phone jack(Rated input level : -10dBm, Input impedance : 10kΩ)

External Return : 1/4" phone jack(Rated input level : -10dBm / +4dBm)

Line Output(L/MONO, R) : 2 × 1/4" phone jack(Rated output level : -10dBm / +4dBm, Maximum output level : +19dBm, Output load impedance : 10kΩ or more, Output Impedance : 1kΩ or less)

Headphone Output : 1/4" stereo phone jack(Rated output : 60mW / 32Ω load, 20mW / 300Ω load, Output impedance : 47kΩ)●External Send : 1/4" phone jack(Rated output level : -10dBm / +4dBm)

Tube Circuitry : 2 × 12AX7

MIDI : IN/OUT

USB Interface : 16bit, 32kHz / 44.1kHz/48kHz

Display : 2digit 7segment LED, backlit LCD

Power Requirements : 15V AC, 1.5A

Dimensions : 595(W)x 235(D)x 85(H)mm

Weight : 5.5kg

Supplied Accessory : AC adaptor(AD-0012)

Giving body to the guitar sound and adding supple power and intensity - that is the task of the Energizer. Turning up the TUBE control to drive the 12AX7 produces warm crunch with rich harmonics. The BOOST control spruces up highs and lows, resulting in more transparency. Enjoy a powerful tone also when recording directly to a line input or via USB on a computer.

ZFX-3 - a 32-bit DSP designed by ZOOM

The heart of any multi-effect device is its processor and decoder section. ZOOM has started a fresh chapter with its new ZFX-3 chip. The 32-bit architecture ensures outstanding performance and allows smooth and detailed signal processing. Accuracy and speed ensure that even delicate picking and fingering work come across with impressive clarity.

● DSP sound modeling plus tube circuitry create the ultimate in distortion

96 kHz sampling and 24-bit A/D/A conversion assure super high resolution sound. An abundance of signal processing power allows accurate recreation of the complex upper-range harmonics that are the hallmark of tube amplifiers. Analog circuitry using a 12AX7 tube then adds that classic warmth and sonic impact to the DSP sound. The result combines the best of the digital and analog worlds: distortion so advanced and sophisticated it elevates your guitar playing to the next level.

● Preamp section with two channels

The preamp section, comprised of the amp/drive-modeling, and EQ modules offers two channels per patch. You can easily select a channel by simple foot switch operation. Toggle between a Fender clean sound for rhythm and a Marshall drive sound for lead, while keeping modulation and spatial effect settings the same. The user interface with analog knobs lets you shape the sound with the same facility as on a guitar amp.

● Great for stage work or direct recording

The amp/drive-modeling blocks have two dedicated algorithms for each amp/drive type, designed for live playing and direct recording. The CABINET effect simulates amp and mic recording characteristics as well, and the algorithm is automatically switched according to the CABINET on/off setting.This lets you bring the same guitar sound that you used during practice or recording right on to the stage. Alternatively, sound settings that were determined during a session with the band can be used seamlessly in the studio as well.

● Amp select feature

This function optimizes frequency response to match the amp that you are using. Settings are available to get the best out of popular models such as Roland JC-120, a Fender combo, and a Marshall stack. The -10 dBm/+4 dBm output level switch allows the G9.2tt to be used as a preamp, directly connected to the power amp input of a guitar amplifier.

● 6-band graphic equalizer

The built-in EQ module has six frequency bands optimized for electric guitar. Peaking type filters in the crucial middle range (400 Hz, 800 Hz, 3. 2 kHz, 6.4 kHz) are augmented by shelving type filters at the low and high end (160 Hz and 12 kHz). This ensures the shortest possible route from inspiration to actual sound.

● Guitar amplifier/stomp box modeling

Analog devices such as tubes and diodes have unique clipping characteristics. Sophisticated digital simulation finally makes it possible to recreate the sound of Vintage tube amps and effect devices with astonishing realism. From popular names such as Fender, Marshall, and VOX to modern amps including MESA BOOGIE, Hughes & Kettner, and Diezel - the list of choices is extensive. The cabinet simulator even has settings for mic position, to achieve totally natural sounding performance.

EZUnsecured.com - Quick and Easy Reviews

January 25th, 2008

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If you need Business Financing then go to EZUnsecured.com this site offers an unsecured financing that easy! When we talk about credit line and financing for your business, this site shouldnt be missed. EZUnsecured.com provide the opportunity for entrepreneurs to grow in their business by providing business working capital and not even charge upfront funding fees.
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EZUnsecured provides great service, and is easy to work with. EZUnsecured.com make it simple for the clients to apply for application. With the great services that provided by them, sure you can get what you needed for your business.

Report: New Guns N’ Roses Album ‘Was Finished Before Christmas’

January 24th, 2008

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Yesterday, Classic Rock magazine reported on a recent chat with Axl Rose's manager Beta Lebeis. She revealed that production on Guns N' Roses' long-anticipated sixth album, Chinese Democracy, was completed before Christmas.

"Everybody knows that," said Lebeis, who has worked with Rose for 15 years.

Furthering speculation that the marketing of the album is a source of some conflict between Rose and Geffen Records, Lebeis said that Axl is "in negotiations."

Chinese Democracy will be the first collection of original Guns N' Roses material since the Use Your Illusion I and II releases in '91. The band reportedly began writing the album in 1994, but progress was halted due to disagreements between Rose and Slash, who left the band in '96.

In 2005, the New York Times reported that production costs on Chinese Democracy had reached $13 million, making it the most expensive recording never to be released.

Are you ready for Valentine's Day?

January 24th, 2008

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Valentine's Day is coming up soon and I’ve been trying to decide what to get to my sweetheart. Everybody is excited with one of the most celebrated day of the year, Valentine’s Day. Are you excited also? Are you ready for it? Do you have gifts for your loved ones? The coupon chief is ready to help you with coupons online and coupon codes.Just make a wish list of what you are going to buy for your loved one and your family and then just make use of this shop. CouponChief.com They're the website with loads of online shopping coupons. Coupon chief site can help you for the Valentine's Day. They've got coupons from great stores like Old Navy, and Best Buy.

The Early Years of Van Halen: A Paper Route, a High School Essay, and a Couple of Lucky Breaks

January 24th, 2008

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It took a decade of false starts, misfires, and acrimony, but David Lee Roth's return to Van Halen after a 22-year absence was not only a dream come true for many faithful fans, but it produced a blockbuster tour that began in September of '07 and is still rolling on, scheduled out as far as April '08.
It's now been 30 years since Van Halen's Warner Bros. debut became a breakthrough commercial success. Considered one of the most wildly influential hard rock albums ever, Van Halen has inspired many a critic to compare guitarist Eddie Van Halen—aged 22 at the time of its release—to Jimi Hendrix in terms of his immediate and enduring impact on guitar playing.

But like many a vaunted overnight success story, Van Halen's was a long time coming. Having emigrated to California from Holland with their parents in 1962, Alex and Eddie Van Halen had some classical piano training before embracing their instruments of choice—albeit exactly opposite of the ones they're known for. Al originally studied flamenco guitar, while Ed, inspired by the Surfaris' "Wipe Out," delivered newspapers to buy a $125 Japanese-made drum kit.

"I'm out throwing the paper—five in the morning, in the rain, with a bicycle with a flat tire," Eddie once groused. "And my brother is practicing on my drums. He got better so I said, 'You take my drums.'"
Eddie's second instrument choice was a $70 Teisco Del Rey with four pickups: "I used to think the more pickups, the better!"

But while the Van Halen brothers collaborated in haphazard music projects throughout high school, it wasn't until their days at Pasadena City College that their careers began to gel.

"I had an English class where I had to do an essay on what my future plans were—what I wanted to do in life," Eddie has said. "I said I wanted to be a professional rock guitarist—not a rock star."

To that end Eddie would spend most of his free time listening to '60s rock guitar icons—especially Eric Clapton—learning their solos note-for-note. "I like phrasing; that's why I always liked Clapton," Eddie has explained. "He would just play it with feeling. It's like someone talking, a question and an answer."

College classmates recall Eddie pulling guitar picks from his pocket to show off his phenomenal pick speed, one of the cornerstones of his groundbreaking technique. By 1972 the brothers Van Halen were playing covers and a few originals in a local power trio called Mammoth—with Eddie handling vocals. "I got tired of singing," he later admitted. "I couldn't stand that crap! I'd rather just play. [David Lee Roth] was in another local band, and we used to rent his P.A. We said, 'It's much cheaper if we just get him in the band!'" Another local band had already copyrighted the Mammoth moniker so, at Roth's urging, the brothers dubbed their band with the family name.

Van Halen soon graduated from the backyard party circuit to playing mostly covers in what was then a burgeoning small club scene in Southern California. KISS' Gene Simmons took interest in 1976, producing a demo tape containing the core of what would become their debut album. But "nothing really ever came of it," Eddie has admitted. "Because we didn't know where the hell to take our tape. So we had a bitchin' sounding tape—the world's most expensive demo tape, which he paid for, but we didn't know where to take it. We just kept playing everywhere, and eventually they came to us."

"I guess the main thing that really got us going was the Pasadena Civic Auditorium," Eddie explained. "We used to print up flyers, with some local people helping us. But it was basically our own thing. We'd put thousands of 'em in high school lockers. And the first time we played, I guess we drew maybe 900 people. The last time we did, we drew 3,300 people at four or five bucks a head. And that was still without a record out or management or anything. It was about the only place where we could play our own music."

Local radio personality Rodney Bingenheimer took an early interest in Van Halen, with Roth appearing on his influential KROQ show to say thanks and debut a few tracks from the Simmons demos. Bingenheimer also helped move the band up the food chain of local clubs, from playing Top 40 covers at Gazzari's on the Strip to a crucial few months of gigs at the more prestigious Starwood. It was there that Marshall Berle, nephew of pioneering TV comic Milton Berle, discovered the band, eventually becoming their first manager.

"We played a good set in front of no people," Eddie has recalled. "It was an empty house at the Starwood on a rainy Monday night, and all of a sudden Marshall walks in with [producer] Ted Templeman and [Warner executive] Mo Ostin. It was heavy. I remember talking to other bands who were always trying to get Ted to produce their records, but he only works inside of Warner Brothers. Within a week we were signed. It was right out of the movies."
Templeman and Ostin recorded two-dozen plus demos in 1977, most of the Van Halen debut album, and proto-versions of such later staples as "Beautiful Girls," "Light Up the Sky," "DOA," "Mean Streets," and others—along with a batch of also-rans that would never be officially released. Sessions for their debut album spanned three weeks that October, with the band playing what would be its farewell Pasadena Civic show in the midst.

"The album is very live with no overdubs," Eddie has said of the whirlwind sessions for their debut. "That's the magic of Ted Templeman. I'd say out of the 10 songs on the record, I overdubbed the solo in two or three. One of them's doubled in 'Ice Cream Man' and 'Jamie's Cryin''—all the rest are live! I used the same equipment I use live, the one guitar, soloed during the rhythm track. And Dave stood in the booth and sang a lot of lead vocals at the same time."

As for Eddie Van Halen's most famous guitar solo, he's said, "My guitar solo in 'Eruption' wasn't really planned to be on the record. Me and Al were dickin' around, rehearsing for a show. I was warming up, you know, practicing my solo, and Ted walks in. He goes, 'Hey, what's that?' I go, 'That's a little solo thing I do live.' He goes, 'Hey, it's great. Put it on the record!'"

cheaperthanhotels

January 24th, 2008

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Are you planning to take a Vacation? heaperthanhotels can help you. Here you can find and search some place that suit your budget. Either you want to be in Rome, you will find some hotels that fits you whether you are looking for budget rates, 5 star luxury accommodation, and also 4 star hotels in Rome. Rome is a place where many wonderful movies were taken. The Colosseum, the Vatican, Trevi Fountain are example of some places I would visit if go Rome. If you want to visit Rome, book for hotels in Rome at Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk. At Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk, you can search for many hotels at around the world. Visit Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk to book for hotels in Venice or even hotels in Milan! Get online and start searching and start your the reservation of the a luxury place you want to stay. Its affordable you won't be disappointed.

Gibson Repair & Restoration - Hillbilly Jim's Gibson J-45

January 24th, 2008

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When WWF wrestling legend and Blues Guitarist, Hillbilly Jim, brought his Gibson J-45 into the shop, it looked like it had just lost a cage match....with a package delivery service (who shall remain nameless)! The defeating blow to the guitar was delivered during transport from New York to Nashville.

Hillbilly was skeptical, to say the least, but we promised him that all was not lost and we could put his ‘baby’ right again. A promise is not a thing given lightly, especially when the guy you’re making the promise to is 6’7”, 285 lbs. and solid muscle! It took a couple of headlocks, but we were able to convince him to leave the guitar with us for the repair work.

Using traditional methods combined with our proprietary process for broken necks and headstocks, we had Jim’s guitar back together in short order. And he has our guarantee that it will never break again!

Needless to say Jim’s a happy guy!

TravelHERO.com Flight, Hotel, & Car Reservations

January 24th, 2008

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When traveling you need very important things over anything else like a way to get there, known as the mode of transportation. TravelHero.com, flight, hotel, car rental reservations, is an online provider of flight and package. TravelHERO.com is a valuable resource for all travelers. They're a full-service internet travel agency, offering lodging, airline, rental car, and cruise reservations worldwide. Thay have built the largest database of hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, inns and other lodging properties on the Internet today. With more than 125,000 properties in 23,000 cities in 216 countries, this site offers you a powerful tool to locate accommodations anywhere you want to go.
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Gibson Repair & Restoration

January 24th, 2008

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Gibson Repair & Restoration
World Class Repair of Stringed Instruments

All Types – All Brands

Gibson Guitar is now accepting all brands of stringed instruments in need of attention at the in-house repair and restoration facility. Offering a state of the art, temperature and humidity controlled environment, as well as a full staff of highly skilled and experienced luthiers, Gibson is fully equipped to perform any and all operations required in all phases of repair and restoration.

• Pro Set Up – Acoustic or Electric
• Fretwork – Fret dress to Plane & Refret

• Structural repairs – Body cracks, Broken headstocks,

• Neck resets

• Custom Paint

• Total Restorations

Check out the Tone Quest Report Interview with Gibson Repair

Download a Brochure HERE!

Emmylou Harris New L-200

January 24th, 2008

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Gibson's legendary J-200 acoustic has long been associated with the singing cowboys of the '40s and '50s, but in recent decades the instrument's most prominent player has been incomparable singing cowgirl Emmylou Harris. From her career beginnings in the mid-'70s, Harris has favored the J-200, calling the guitar "a thing of beauty." In late 2002, in the form of the L-200, Gibson designed the Emmylou Harris Signature version of the J-200.

"Robi Johns and Ren Ferguson of Gibson Acoustic in Bozeman, Montana, met with Emmylou and suggested a small-body guitar that she could write and travel with," says Mike Voltz, product manager for Gibson Acoustic. "For the original, they selected the LC-1—a model in current production—and then put all the signature art features of the J-200 onto that guitar. They added a smaller version of the signature J-200 moustache bridge, the J-200 binding, and the distinctive fingerboard inlays of the J-200. The guitar was first presented to Emmy at the Newport Folk Festival in 2003."

Flash forward five years, and the Emmylou Harris L-200 has just received its first substantial makeover. With Harris's blessing, Gibson has enhanced the L-200 by reshaping the body to more closely resemble the original J-200, while also updating the electronics.

"The new body-shape is exactly like a J-200, reduced by two inches," Voltz explains. "As a result of the new shape, the bridge is pulled more towards the center of the lower bout. That's an improved placement, given that the lower bout pumps like a speaker. The geometry and the physics of the new shape generate more sound.

"The other change involves the pickup system," Voltz continues. "Lloyd Baggs, owner of L.R. Baggs Pickups and a terrific designer, spent two days tweaking and adjusting his dual-source system until it was perfect for this guitar. The electronics reproduce the tone of the guitar—in amplified version—very faithfully."

No changes would have been made to the L-200 without approval from Emmylou Harris herself. Indeed, Harris's reverence for the Gibson J-200 is such that she was reticent, five years ago, to have a model crafted in her name.

"She was being modest," Voltz says. "She felt she might be pulling attention toward herself and away from this wonderful guitar. That's how much respect she has for the J-200. The truth is, we would have done anything for Emmylou."

Featured Guitars

The New Gibson Emmylou Harris L-200

The Original Gibson Emmylou Harris L-200

Gibson SJ-200

Epiphone EJ-200

Washington DC Tour

January 24th, 2008

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Trusted Tours & Attractions are a company which run sightseeing tours of major cities in the USA. To be eligible to win the 4 sightseeing tours tickets, visitors need only to subscribe to the Trusted Tours and Attractions monthly newsletter from the company’s website. Also, undersigning their newsletter, there is the possibility to win a handheld GPS device. In addition to a chance to win, visitors will also receive the company’s informative travel newsletter which offers interesting stories, travel tips, travel articles, and money saving deals. A few years ago, my friend and I went to Washington DC. Rather than taking one of those guided sightseeing tours from a company like Trusted Tours & Attractions, we decided to take on the city ourselves. We had driven there in her car and we were staying outside of city so we decided we would take a bus into the city and then walk around. Keep in mind that it was July in Washington DC and many of the things need to be seen from the outside. The time we spent in the air-conditioned Smithsonian was nice. After that we got the bright idea to walk from the Vietnam Memorial Wall to the White House without the aid of a map. In that days everything went for the correct verse because we had the fortune to use the GPS devide awarded with their newsletter!!! Without that device we would have turned in round for times. Now, to distance of time, I still use that device on my car..
sightseeing tours
Featuring the most fun and interesting tours and attractions for top US cities and locations, this site is all about mainstream tourism: the pictures you have to get from the site, the places you must visit and the shows you can't afford to miss.
Plus you get to buy tickets for the recommended attractions at special prices, thus saving you not only money but time and hassle, taking into account that these are, after all, the most visited attractions in the US. Also interesting about Trustedtours.com is the comments area, where you can take a look at what other customers have said about the suggested locations, and check to see if you agree.
Though it is true that it might not be appealing to everyone, it sure does meet the expectations of those planning a family trip, especially if they are running short on time or having a road trip, since you are informed about the approximate time you need to visit one or other attraction.

A Look at Gibson’s John Lennon Les Paul Junior

January 24th, 2008

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"I can make a guitar speak. I can make it howl and move. I was rhythm guitarist. It's an important job.”
– – John Lennon

Whenever John Lennon played a Gibson, it became more than a guitar. It transformed into a powerful instrument of change. Whether issuing a desperate cry for "Help!" with his Gibson J-160E acoustic (a guitar he originally nicked from George Harrison), inciting political activism in "Revolution" on his prized Epiphone E230TD Casino (a guitar famously employed during the rooftop session of the Beatles' Apple headquarters), or during one of his last public appearances, at which he played his customized Gibson Les Paul Junior, Lennon's choice of guitars were an essential extension of his unique personality and creativity.

In 1999, Epiphone created two limited-editions John Lennon Casino models, the Epiphone John Lennon "65" Casino (in Vintage Sunburst) and the Epiphone John Lennon "Revolution" Casino (stripped to its natural finish). Both guitars were immediate hits with players and Beatles' fans alike. And in 2002, Gibson Montana introduced the Gibson John Lennon J-160E Peace Model, a limited edition replica of the 1962 guitar that Lennon used faithfully while recording, in movies, and for live performances.

The Gibson Custom Shop has now added to the prestigious line of John Lennon Gibsons, the Gibson John Lennon Les Paul, a faithful reproduction of the modified 1950s Les Paul Junior Lennon played at his unforgettable performance on August 30, 1972 at New York City's Madison Square Garden to benefit the One to One Organization, a group that helped children with learning disabilities.

When Lennon bought the single-cutaway Gibson Les Paul Junior, it was still in its original factory condition—Tobacco Sunburst finish, single P-90 pickup, wraparound tail piece, and Kluson tuners—but he wanted it modified. As he told New York guitar luthier Ron DeMarino, he wanted a "humberdincker" pickup in it—obviously referring to a humbucker. (Somewhat surprisingly, the songwriter and musician who had helped usher in a cultural renaissance was blissfully unaware of many guitar specifics.) "I'm a rhythmer," he would say. "I don't know anything about these things." Instead of a humbucker, however, DeMarino installed a Charlie Christian pickup in the neck position. First used on the Gibson ES-150 in 1936, the Charlie Christian pickup, with its narrow string-sensing blade, was noted for its clear and powerful sound. Other changes to the guitar included removing the wraparound tailpiece, plugging the holes, and installing a Gibson tune-o-matic bridge with a stop tailpiece.

Lennon was delighted with the results, but he had one final request: Sand off the Sunburst finish. When Lennon played the guitar at Madison Square Garden, the guitar's body was bare wood mahogany.

"It is such a special guitar," says Edwin Wilson, Gibson Custom's Historic Program Manager, who personally oversaw every aspect of the Gibson John Lennon Les Paul. "Of course, any guitar the Beatles played is of significance. But because this was such a high-profile concert for John, his return to the stage after several years, the guitar is especially notable. Beyond that, there's the modifications he made to it—in and of themselves, these made this guitar an obvious choice to reproduce."

Once Yoko Ono gave her enthusiastic endorsement of the project, Wilson flew to the John Lennon Museum in Japan, where the original instrument is on display, to inspect the guitar and document its unique characteristics. "The museum's curator laid it out for me," says Wilson, "and I went about taking pictures and recording various measurements. Yoko had a couple of stipulations: I couldn't remove or loosen the strings, and I had to wear cotton gloves when handling the guitar."

Wilson recalls being overcome with a sense of awe when holding the original guitar. "I've held a lot of special guitars in my time," he says, "but this one was played by John Lennon himself at Madison Square Garden. Come on—who even gets close to a guitar like that every day?"

Among the peculiarities of the original Les Paul Junior, Wilson noted, were the frets: They were in unusually good shape. “Pre '57, Gibson made very thin frets, so if you had a very heavy fretting technique, or if you bent strings a lot, you’d have a lot of wear and tear. Nothing like that existed on the Lennon original. That leads me to believe that he played with a very light touch with his fretting hand. Another factor could be the extremely light gauge strings he used—.009s, I believe; they were very thin. It’s funny: John performed with such force, but I think it came from his entire body; he didn’t beat his strings to death.” (It should be noted that the John Lennon Les Paul is strung with a set of .010s. “That’s our one change,” says Wilson. “Most players prefer a little heavier gauge.”)

While inspecting the original, Wilson was allowed to remove the back plate and section in front that covers the pickup magnets and toggle switch. Photos were taken so that the guitar builders at the Custom Shop could accurately reproduce the pickup wiring. According to Wilson, including the Charlie Christian pickup was a “have to.” Being that it was a unique modification that Lennon himself insisted on, to reproduce the guitar in any other fashion, in Wilson’s words, “would’ve run counter to the spirit of Lennon’s wishes.”

After performing at Madison Square Garden, Lennon had his original Les Paul Junior refinished in Cherry, and the John Lennon Les Paul is representative of this alteration. “Getting the color to be exact is a real science,” says Wilson. “A lot of research and development goes into the aging process of what we do. We use a variety of tools and stains, not to mention a special buffing process. Plus, we have a special glaze that changes the patina of the color—it literally makes the guitar look old!” Various dents and dings have been scrupulously recreated; chief among them are Lennon’s scratch marks between the Charlie Christian pickup and the top cutaway. "It’s such a distinctive mark," says Wilson. "You look at it and think, Now, how would that ever happen? But that’s what separates John Lennon from everybody else. He had his own style of playing."

Included in the purchase of the Gibson John Lennon Les Paul is a Custom Shop case, a certificate of authenticity, a custom care kit, and a signed Lennon print by famed artist Allison Lector.

"The bottom line is very simple," says Wilson. "It’s a superb instrument. It plays like a dream and it sounds incredible. Not only that, but when you hold it, you feel like you own a piece of history."

Featured Guitar

John Lennon Inspired By Series

The Gibson CJ-165 EC: Contemporary Twist on a Classic Voice

January 24th, 2008

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In the hands of everyone from Maybelle Carter to Big Bill Broonzy, Elvis Presley to Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan to John Lennon, Gibson acoustic guitars have resided front of stage for more than a century of popular music. Although they’ve always been versatile instruments, in the heyday of the Kalamazoo- and Nashville-made flat-tops the Gibson emblem was most notably seen on guitars like the big SJ-200 Super Jumbos, J-185 Jumbos, and J-45 round-shoulder dreadnoughts that pounded out the rhythm for countless bluegrass and country artists. Today, flat-tops handcrafted in Gibson’s Bozeman, Montana, workshop are acclaimed for their unparalleled versatility, and are proving themselves superior in all walks of music, from flat picking to fingerstyle to strum-and-jangle pop stylings.

In rendering this achievement, the Bozeman luthiers are blending legendary design virtues with features and modifications essential to the contemporary performing artist, and in doing so have created a new breed of Gibson classic—the Modern Classic—perhaps most perfectly embodied in the CJ-165 EC.

The CJ-165 EC carries the lushly curvaceous shape of the big SJ-200 launched way back in 1937, but is built to a smaller scale that has proved friendly to fleet-fingered pickers and fingerstylists. With a 15” wide body and a 24.75” scale length (compared to the SJ-200’s 17” and 25.5” dimensions) it’s easier to snuggle up to, while the neck’s 1.725” width at the nut still offers plenty of real estate around the rosewood ’board for speedy, tangle-free fingering. A rounded cutaway that gels beautifully with the body’s classic lines affords the high-fret access that modern players demand, and a gentle-V neck profile combined with Gibson’s new “Big Sky” radiused fingerboard edge (a gentle “rolling” of the neck edge into the fingerboard that yields a comfort level that has to be played to be believed) make it an extremely smooth ride across all 19 frets.

But don’t equate restricted dimensions with a constricted tone. The CJ-165 EC’s deep body contributes to a big voice, while the solid premium Sitka spruce top, solid premium Indian rosewood back and sides (AAA figured maple also available), genuine bone nut, and Tusq saddle help to keep it rich and balanced across the entire frequency spectrum. Look deeper, and better still, play the guitar a while, and you’ll see and hear what a coup the Bozeman craftsmen have achieved with the CJ-165 EC’s top: modified scalloped X-bracing beneath the carefully gauged spruce yields a combination that is light and resonant enough to sing and project beautifully for flesh-only fingerstyle players, but give it some gas with a firm pick and an aggressive rhythm, and it’s still sturdy enough to retain excellent clarity and definition, with impressive volume and projection.

Naturally you can take it all right to the stage with confidence thanks to the Fishman onboard Ellipse Aura System, often hailed as the best sounding and most fully featured system in the industry. With its Volume control and automatic Anti-Feedback and Phase feedback squelching controls, this powerful active preamp offers everything a player could need to tweak the CJ-165 EC’s amplified tone to suit any room. Beyond this, however, the Ellipse Aura System also offers the sophisticated Aura Acoustic Imaging Technology, which lets you select the sound of the CJ-165 EC as recorded through any of four classic microphones, to cut all the extra cables, restrictions, expense, and hassles out of getting top-quality, miked-up tone in the studio or on stage.

To bring out the distinctive tonal features from the rosewood and the maple CJ-165 EC, Fishman recorded both models in its state-of-the-art studio, using four specialty microphones. The combination and placement of the microphones is exclusive to these Gibson guitars, and has served to provide almost unlimited tonal selections, especially in combination with the under-the-saddle pickup which can be used as much or as little as the player wants with a flick of the Blend control.

Of course, there’s a big dose of “classic” in this Modern Classic model, too, and the CJ-165 EC exhibits evidence of its heritage at practically every turn. Located just within the sound hole, the Ellipse Aura System maintains the guitar’s clean, classic look while providing easy access to all controls. The distinctive mother-of-pearl (MOP) parallelogram markers of so many great high-end Gibsons of the past grace this new model’s neck, while a subtly stylish abalone rosette, four-ply top binding, and single-ply back binding adorn the body. Add to these the Grover Rotomatic tuners, MOP headstock logo, and the CJ-165 EC’s seamless blending of classic and contemporary is complete.

There’s more to “classic” than just appearance, though; thanks to the achievements in Bozeman, Gibson is today offering some of the best acoustic guitars the company has ever produced, and the workmanship on this professional-grade acoustic—from headstock to tailblock—stands tall alongside that of any flat-top builder on the planet. All in all, the CJ-165 EC is a professional performance tool to suit a myriad of requirements, and a guitar that just might be the most comprehensive all-rounder on the market today.

New York Real Estate Services

January 23rd, 2008

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Prudential Douglas Elliman is New York’s Largest Real Estate Company. They have 60 offices serving 350 communities from Manhattan to Montauk, guaranteeing the continuity of one company helping each purchaser explore housing throughout New York City, Long Island and the Hamptons.
Visit their site at New York City real estate for read what they can offer you.
Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate and Douglas Elliman have:
• Over 3,300 sales professionals throughout New York City and Long Island
• Over 60 offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island, including the Hamptons and North Fork
• Over 13,200 transactions, and $12 Billion sales volume, yearly
• Prudential Douglas Elliman is New York’s largest real estate services company, and ranks among the Top 10 in the U.S.A.
• Property Management – largest co-op and condo manager in New York, presently managing 42,000 units in 250 buildings
• Mortgage – 64 loan officers covering New York and Long Island
Prudential Douglas Elliman is New York’s largest real estate services company, and ranks among the Top 10 in the U.S.A.

Gibson Custom Shop Proudly Introduces the Dave Grohl Inspired By DG-335

January 23rd, 2008

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Gibson Custom Shop is proud to announce the release of the Dave Grohl Inspired By guitar—the DG-335. Beginning Thursday, October 4, the guitar—modeled after Grohl’s much-loved Gibson Trini Lopez signature model—will be available to Foo Fighters fans and guitarists everywhere. A fitting tribute to Grohl, this Gibson Inspired By model combines the bedrock authenticity of tradition with the power and passion of innovation. The DG-335 not only provides guitarists with the chance to channel the rock prowess of the Foo Fighters’ versatile frontman, but it also has the tone, performance, and style to be one of the most popular Inspired By models of all time.

A longtime Gibson enthusiast, Grohl worked closely with the luthiers of the Gibson Custom Shop to create the DG-335. The quintessential guitar for today’s player, the DG-335 combines the style and versatility of the Trini Lopez (built by Gibson from 1964 to 1971) with a pair of gritty, vintage-voiced Burstbuckers and a rare Pelham Blue finish. The original Trini Lopez model was a striking take on Gibson’s ES-335 semi-hollow body guitar, and today’s DG-335 is a further fine-tuning of the legendary ES-335.

True to Grohl’s specifications, the Inspired By DG-335 has the classic Firebird-style headstock with six-on-a-side tuners set into an ES-335 style semi-hollow body. Available in either Pelham Blue or Ebony, the guitar has diamond f-holes, and the inlays on the rosewood fretboard are acrylic split diamond, a unique feature that remains from the original Trini Lopez. At Grohl’s request, the DG-335 is powered by a Burstbucker 1 in the neck and Burstbucker 2 in the bridge. Within the original Patent Applied For humbucking spec, these pickups are known for their clean and articulate distortion and singing vintage tone.

A brilliant songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Dave Grohl is one of the most dynamic and powerful performers in recent memory. Channeling the intensity of his legendary drumming into his guitar playing, Grohl rose from the ashes of Nirvana and has spent more than 10 years as the frontman and guitarist for the Foo Fighters. Gibson Custom is proud to honor Dave Grohl with the new Inspired By DG-335.

**Gibson Custom Shop’s Inspired By Dave Grohl DG-335:**

Model: DG-335

Pickups: Burstbucker 1 (neck); Burstbucker 2 (bridge)

Hardware: Chrome

Fingerboard: 22-fret rosewood with split diamond inlay and white binding

Scale: 24 ¾”

Nut Width: 1-11/16”

Bridge: ABR-1 and stop tailpiece

Neck Material: Rounded neck profile

Body Material: Laminated maple top, back, rims

Controls: 2 volume, 2 tone, 3-way selector switch

Color: Pelham Blue and Ebony

National Paramedic Institute

January 23rd, 2008

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The National Paramedic Institute (NPI) offer continuing education credits for IAFF first responder, EMT and paramedic members. Canadian and U.S. members who access NPI online training programs via the IAFF web site are eligible for discounts on individual training required for EMS certification at all levels.
Visit their link at CPR AED training and check what they can offer you.
Their one-stop EMS education online training center features case-based continuing education with streaming video, mandatory Bloodborne Pathogens and AIDS training, online ACLS and CPR recertification, online AED training, and the Dr. Bryan Bledsoe lecture series in one easy-to-navigate learning management system (LMS).

'68 Flashback: Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland

January 23rd, 2008

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Jimi Hendrix with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding

Jimi Hendrix secured his throne in psychedelic rock's Olympus with the completion of Electric Ladyland. The double album was the final and brightest jewel in the acid-and-paisley-era trilogy he'd begun in 1967 with his debut full-length Are You Experienced and the next year's Axis: Bold As Love.
For Hendrix, it was a triumph over considerable obstacles. His band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was falling apart, and the studio he envisioned, where he intended to record the album, was plagued with construction and cost troubles. (His Electric Lady Studios was finally completed several months before his death in 1970.) The Experience's hectic concert schedule made the Electric Ladyland sessions at New York City's Record Plant sporadic. And then, there was Hendrix's drug intake, which by all accounts was astronomical by the time the band returned from a European tour and began recording in April 1968.

Nonetheless, Hendrix's efforts were rewarded. Taking the producer's role from manager Chas Chandler, Hendrix was able to capture both his freewheeling improvisational aesthetic and his visionary sonic architecture in the studio for the first time. His experimentation with amplifiers, guitar tones, multi-tracking, and the extended use of the wah-wah pedal allowed him to construct the "electric church" he often spoke about when describing the spiritual destination he longed to create with sound.

Jimi Hendrix Electric LadylandFurther, the public responded. Electric Ladyland became Hendrix's only No. 1 U.S. hit album when it was released in October 1968, and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" and "Crosstown Traffic," as well as an epic version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," remain rock and roll classics—recognizable from the first note.

Among guitarists, the tunes "Gypsy Eyes," essentially a superheated R&B vamp, and "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," with its mournful, wailing lines and quavering wah-wah footwork, are revered. And the jam "Voodoo Chile," Hendrix's longest studio recording at 15 minutes, is a spellbinding journey from his blues roots to his psychedelic flowering. Forty years later students of studio technique remain spellbound by the layering of "1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" and the playful wash of tape effects in "…And the Gods Made Love."

During the period Electric Ladyland was recorded, Hendrix was most closely associated with his battery of Stratocasters and the famed 1967 Flying V he hand-painted with a psychedelic pattern. However, he appears to have written many of the album's songs on his Epiphone FT-79 acoustic. According to Chandler, Hendrix typically worked out the chord changes and riffs of songs he was writing on the Epiphone. Then he refined them on an unplugged electric guitar before taking them on stage or into the studio. In 2001 Hendrix's FT-79 was sold by an auction house for $77,000; on January 8, 2008 a 1949 model was sold on eBay for $676.66, establishing the value of the Hendrix touch at $76,323.34.

The Electric Ladyland sessions forced Hendrix's split with manager Chas Chandler. Chandler felt that drugs and the entourage of hangers-on who settled into the studio eroded Hendrix's focus. Previously the guitar wizard had nailed tunes in just a few takes, but Hendrix did 43 of "Gypsy Eyes" alone.

It's a matter of perspective. Hendrix felt his previous recordings underJimi Hendrix's Epiphone Chandler's stewardship were rushed. This time he was in control and he alone would determine the disc's balance of perfectionism and spontaneity. Hendrix pushed his A-list musical guests as hard as he pushed himself. Dave Mason had to play the acoustic guitar track of "All Along the Watchtower" 20 times before Hendrix was satisfied.

Hendrix actually played bass on "Watchtower" after Experience bassist Noel Redding left the studio in a snit. The song's legend also holds that Hendrix used a Zippo lighter for the song's unique slide with wah-wah pedal guitar solo.

Redding and Hendrix had been increasingly at odds during early '68. To dissipate the tension Redding was thrown a creative bone and allowed to record his "Little Miss Strange" for Electric Ladyland. He and Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell sang on the tune and Redding played acoustic guitar. He'd been given a similar gift on Axis: Bold As Love, which featured his "She's So Fine." Both songs are pleasant pop excursions, but lack the gravitas and drama of Hendrix's creations.

The album's two longest tracks are polar opposites in terms of their creative process. The 14-minute "1983…(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" is an elaborately tailored studio opus with layers of guitar lines and feedback, including backward tracks and other tape manipulations. "Voodoo Chile" is one of the greatest improv sessions ever committed to disc.

"Voodoo Chile" began on a May night after Redding had once again stomped out of the sessions, bringing them to a halt. Hendrix went to the Scene Club and jammed there with Steve Winwood and Jefferson Airplane's Jack Casady. They played a lengthy variation on the Delta standard "Catfish Blues" and when the club closed, Hendrix invited everyone back to the studio. By 7 a.m. tape was rolling, according to Charles R. Cross' definitive Hendrix biography Room Full of Mirrors. By take three the theme of "Catfish Blues" had taken on a new life as the grinding, deep-toned,Jimi Hendrix Delta-and-deep-space boundaried "Voodoo Chile." Hendrix's sparring—with Winwood's Hammond B-3 organ and Casady's throbbing bass—is a journey through the fundamentals of his style, ricocheting from sinewy blues to feedback to gentle melodicism to psychedelic screaming to chitlin circuit R&B licks. And his tone and string bending, especially at the song's head and conclusion, is a lush, breathtaking ode to Albert King.

The 16 songs of Electric Ladyland remain the defining compendium of Hendrix's creative interests. The set is awash with psychedelia, blues, R&B, pop, and the results of experiments with the studio and effects like phase shifting and wah. Even his then-growing interest in politics surfaced for the first time on the album. The anti-violence message of "House Burning Down" was a response to the riots that were a by-product of the Civil Rights struggle of the '60s.

Two numbers also provided a bit of foreshadowing. "Rainy Day, Dream Away" and "Still Raining, Still Dreaming" were Hendrix's first recordings with drummer Buddy Miles, who, along with organist Al Kooper, completed the album's guest list. After Hendrix broke up the Experience in June 1969, he regrouped with Miles and his Air Force buddy, bassist Billy Cox. They became the Band of Gypsys. Their brilliant, spontaneous 1970 live Band of Gypsys album was Hendrix's final artistic triumph before his death on September 18, 1970.

Key Realty School

January 23rd, 2008

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Key Realty School is based in Las Vegas and teaches real estate and business. It has served over 30,000 students and is therefore experienced in what it does.
If you are looking for a top quality school for real estate and business education, then I suggest you check out Key Realty School. This real estate school offers interactive classroom settings, correspondence and online work, which allows for the most flexible educational course work available. I surf online and I found a online real estate school which is good for me as a stay home mom.
Nevada real estate appraisal courses
The instructors are all regarded as some of the most knowledgeable and effective in their field of expertise. Key Realty School of Las Vegas, Nevada owns its own publishing company, allowing for the most up to date and accurate educational materials in the country.
So if you are looking for a Key Realty School then take a look at their website and see what they can offer you.

Courtney Love Chooses Actor to Play Kurt Cobain

January 23rd, 2008

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Courtney Love has said she wants to Half Nelson actor Ryan Gosling to play her late husband Kurt Cobain in a film.

Love, who is executive producer on the $60 million movie Heavier Than Heaven, has also asked Scarlett Johansson to portray her, according to British paper The Mirror.

The movie is based on Charles Cross's biography of Cobain.

A source said: "Kirsten Dunst was rumoured to be in the frame, but Courtney really admires Scarlett and has already sent the contract out for her to sign. Courtney even copied Scarlett's sleek blonde movie look when she was in London for the Fashion Rocks party last year.

"Courtney wants the best actors to portray them--she will be on set all the time giving Scarlett and Ryan advice on what it was like being one part of the most notorious couples since Sid and Nancy. It will be explosive."

Who better to handpick an actor to portray her scruffy, pained husband than Courtney Love? Kurt Cobain's widow has named Ryan Gosling as the actor she'd most like to play Kurt in the film adaption of Charles Cross' biography of Cobain. After considering Kirsten Dunst, Love reportedly chose Scarlett Johansson to play her role.

Keep Your Carpets Clean with an Awesome Vac

January 22nd, 2008

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When cleaning and using the vacuum it doesn’t always perform the best job, but with the Dyson Vacuum Cleaners, you can be assured to see a big difference. Dyson is known to be one of the best providers for vacuum cleaners, and they are a company who provide you with the best quality product, which performs its job to the maximum level.
Lately I have been bugging hubby to buy me a new vacuum because I thought the old we had is not doing so well when I clean up, especially I have a little one that keeps messing around on the carpet.
Dyson animal
Visit the website, If you wish to get their new products. So hurry now...don't miss their great offers...

Kate Nash Turns Cheeky Teenage Sentiment into One of the Season’s Finest Records (Listen Here!)

January 22nd, 2008

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English pop newcomer Kate Nash’s debut LP, story goes, came in a rush of attention. The 20-year-old singer/songwriter grabbed a record deal after issuing only a debut single, then hurriedly piled Made of Bricks’ songs together by scrambling through notebooks. The result is an endearingly quirky and hook-filled album that’s garnering press nationwide.

The fact that Nash’s songs were born of teenaged journal scribblings is something you hear straight away, though that sensibility is the larger part of what makes Made of Bricks as oddly compelling as it is.

It’s a youthful record, certainly, and an easily relatable one, Nash dealing up unpretentious word tumbles that come off alternately like LiveJournal ramblings and slyly funny high school poetry. That she delivers the sentiments with a jazz-pop diva’s vocal control isn’t so much a weird mix as a fascinating one, her voice wholly earning the comparisons she gets to Lily Allen’s graceful cool, her lyrical sense coming off more like the Streets’ Mike Skinner.

Nash can be precocious both vocally and melodically on Made of Bricks—“Pumpkin Soup” is a mature and riotously catchy pop song that lets her waver vocally from trip-hop sensuousness to R&B power, and the chorus melody of “Foundations” is as finely tuned as a Matrix creation. But it isn’t precociousness that draws you in so much as unapologetic, smirking childishness.

“We Get On” is big-band bombastic, though it might be relatively unremarkable were it not for Nash’s lip-bitingly blunt and funny lines about unrequited love. “When I saw you kissing that girl my heart it shattered, and my eyes they watered,” she sings, before turning on her heels, spitting, “My friends were like, ‘Whatever, you’ll find someone better, his eyes are way too close together/ And we never even liked him from the start and now he’s with that tart/ And I heard she done some really nasty stuff down at the park.’”

It’s a laugh, sure, and Kate Nash piles more than a few of those into her debut. But it’s neither the cheekiness nor the confident melodies that really make Made of Bricks. It’s that she reminds us that while making lovely music is a charge worth taking up, beauty and fun don’t always have to live in separate houses.

Astronomy Equipment, News, and Reviews

January 22nd, 2008

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Amateur astronomer who wants to learn more by socializing with other astronomers and finding the best used and new equipment? Astromart is a great resource, providing digital camera reviews, astronomy news, classified ads and telescope reviews.
Astromart.com is the leading portal for astronomy news, classified ads and telescope reviews.
digital camera reviews
Well, through this site, you can get digital camera reviews and other equipment as well as astronomy news and all sorts of other information related to the field.
Astromart.com has a huge selection of telescopes, optic accessories, articles for those of you who will be going out into the field this fall for hunting.

Recording Guitars: Miking Acoustics, Part 1

January 22nd, 2008

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Click here to read Miking Acoustics, Part 2.

Welcome back to Gibson’s quick-hit column on techniques for recording guitars. This time I’m going to discuss some basics for recording acoustic guitars, offering a few pointers that are largely very simple but can help you achieve dramatically improved results in many home studios. This is another two-parter that will investigate some more complex acoustic miking techniques next time out.

The first installment of this series discussed the three main types of microphones used for recording electric guitars—dynamics, condensers, and ribbons—and these are all used for recording acoustics, too. Condensers have traditionally been the most popular mics to capture acoustic guitars because of their sensitivity and broad frequency range, which usually includes more prominent and “shimmery” highs than the other two types, something many artists like to hear in their acoustic sound. Thankfully, decent condensers are a lot more affordable than they were just a few years ago. The renewed popularity of some ribbon mics has led many recordists to use them on acoustics, too, the Beyerdynamic M160 being a perennial favorite for guitars and other stringed instruments too. Standard dynamic mics such as the seminal Shure SM57 and SM58 and mics based on those formats tend to be less flattering than condensers, but if that’s all you’ve got handy you can still get perfectly good results from them with careful use. In some cases, when you want to capture a thumping, midrangey rhythm part without intrusive highs that might get in the way of cymbals or other instruments, a dynamic might be your best bet anyway. Whichever type you have available to you for recording acoustics, keep these basic pointers in mind:

Condenser mics are generally very sensitive and will usually be placed between 6" and 18", or even further from the guitar, in standard front-miking techniques (further still in more creative or “ambient” techniques).

Dynamic mics are less sensitive than condensers, and will need to be positioned closer to the guitar, in relative terms, to capture satisfactory volume levels.

Ribbon mics are also less sensitive than condensers, but many types also over-accentuate the lows if placed too close to a sound source (this is called “proximity effect,” which can affect almost any standard cardioid microphone, but tends to be accentuated in many ribbons). For this reason, many ribbon mics also need to be placed 10" or 12" from the sound source. Because they are a type of dynamic mic, they are not especially sensitive. You will also need a good, clean sounding microphone preamplifier with high gain levels to boost the signal adequately, without inducing too much noise, in order to get satisfactory results.

As with miking guitar amps, the best way to find the right place to put your acoustic guitar mic is to listen in a number of different positions to the sound your guitar produces, record a little of it with a mic placed there, and listen back. One important tip at this point, however, and perhaps the most important thing to get down from the start, is that you should not place the microphone pointing straight into the sound hole. Do this, and you capture a woofy, muddy, booming sound that is pretty loud, certainly, but not really representative of your full acoustic guitar tone in any other way. For beginning recordists this can take some getting used to, because of course whenever you take your guitar out to an un-amped acoustic gig the sound engineer points an SM57 right into the soundhole. Even in live performance this doesn’t capture the most flattering acoustic tone, but it does tend to capture the most volume from an acoustic in a live situation, and that’s a compromise that we are often willing to live with in a small club or coffeehouse gig.

An acoustic guitar’s sound isn’t produced from the sound hole alone, and in fact that is really just the point where sound reflected from the backside of the top and off of the back of the guitar escapes the guitar’s body. A lot of the tone is produced in the area around the bridge and the broad portions of the lower-bout section of the top, while other frequencies are produced in the region of the upper bout where the fingerboard joins the body, and the sound coming off the back of the guitar has its own tone, too. Usually you will want to use a technique that captures a blend of a few or all of these sounds.

One of the most popular traditional studio techniques for recording mono acoustic guitar involves placing a microphone at around the 12th fret, a few inches away from the fingerboard, and aimed back toward the end of the fingerboard (at the body end), but not into the soundhole. This captures a bright, lively acoustic tone with a good, rounded body and some string sound for added jangle.

Another position that captures a full, woody, and somewhat less jangly tone is found by pointing a mic at the guitar’s top in the region of the lower bout just below and behind the bridge. Moving the mic further down and away from the lower end of the guitar and aiming it at the edge of the body, where the top meets the side of the guitar, can produce another interesting tone, one which is usually heard as being a little more edgy and cutting.

Experiment with these and any other positions you can think of, and see what works for you. Again, as with recording guitar amplifiers, the “best” sound won’t be a universal, but will depend on what works when you hear the guitar in the full mix, if it’s a full band track. Next time, we’ll check out some more unusual mic placements, as well as some stereo and multi-mic techniques.

LGI Inc - Commercial Shipping Company

January 22nd, 2008

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LGI Inc is a commercial shipping company. They operate within USA, Canada and Mexico. They can provide various sized transport such as van, flatbed, stepdeck, double drop, removable gooseneck and specialised heavy haul trucking. If you need commercial shipping services in the United States of America, Canada, or Mexico heavy haul, then you should visit the Logistics Group International Inc for additional information. The company pride themselves in getting your cargo to its destination on time and within budget. So if you are looking for USA, Canada or Mexico heavy haul or smaller vehicle transportation then take a look at their website.
heavy haul trucking
Logistics Group International Inc has contacts with border officials in order to legally speed quick border responses for expedited freight and trucking needs including refrigerated trailers.
This company will deliver whatever you have that is considered heavy equipment. They have many vehicles available, including, van, flatbed, stepdeck, double drop, and removable gooseneck trailers for hauling.
You can be sure they will do their best to make you a happy customer!

The Resurrection of Psychedelic Pioneer Roky Erickson

January 22nd, 2008

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“I first heard Roky and the Elevators in Houston. I said, ‘Well, that’s it.’ It had a fierce background in R&B and blues, an enjoyably frightening intensity. And then Roky Erickson, one of the finest rock singers since Little Richard [and] Jerry Lee Lewis. His voice was so cutting and fierce and manic. In terms of out-and-out-wildness, it doesn’t get any better.” —Billy Gibbons (You’re Gonna Miss Me documentary, 2005)

…

If 13th Floor Elevators frontman Roky Erickson had done nothing but pen the garage-psych classic “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” he’d still be noted in rock history books. But it turns out that the barreling hit song Roky wrote in 1966 was just a page in a fascinating life wracked by drug abuse and mental illness, and ultimately redeemed by family, friends, and a drive that kept him writing songs through the madness.

Along with a trademark scream inspired by heroes Little Richard and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Roky (pronounced “Rocky”) Erickson had it all: looks, charisma, and talent. The first band to coin the term “psychedelic” in relation to music, the Elevators were musical pioneers and early acid experimenters who recorded two groundbreaking albums, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (1966) and Easter Everywhere (1967). (In 1968, International Artists also rushed out a poorly recorded live disc and a final Elevators LP, Bull of Woods, which featured little input from Roky.)

It was during the 13th Floor Elevators’ shows in San Francisco in 1966 that they cemented their reputation—and influence—as short-haired, no-nonsense Texans playing hard driving rock and roll to a crowd of post-folk flower children who’d yet to really turn up. They played with the Great Society (an early version of the Jefferson Airplane) and bands like the Grateful Dead dropped in on their shows. At the height of their brief fame, the 13th Floor Elevators even appeared on American Bandstand to perform “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” When Dick Clark asked the group who the head of the band was, electric jug player Tommy Hall deadpanned, “We’re all heads.”

With their cranked Gibson semi-hollowbodies drenched in reverb the likes of which had never been heard before, the Elevators’ influence on the budding San Francisco scene cannot be underestimated. But by the time the major labels started signing up the Bay Area’s “psychedelic” bands the following year, the Elevators were already back in Texas, unable to tour due to legal problems stemming from drug busts.

The history of the Elevators and how their trip took a dark turn is vividly chronicled in Paul Drummond’s exhaustive biography, Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound. Eight years in the making, the book was released last month and mixes archival interviews and photos with insights from the surviving Elevators (guitarist Stacy Sutherland was shot and killed by his wife in 1978). Interestingly, Drummond pins the group’s massive ingestion of LSD and search for spiritual truth through music on self-appointed guru Tommy Hall, who joined the band on electrified jug since he didn’t play an instrument. Drummond paints him as having a Svengali-like hold on Roky, who was a mere 18 when they met and had a childlike, malleable personality.

“Tommy did have an agenda—a vision of the band as the medium for his message,” Drummond writes. “The idea was that the band would take the LSD and then ‘play the acid,’ provoking a synesthesis reaction from the audience.” Drummond writes that, with those early audiences also tripping, no matter how incoherent Elevators shows became the audience seemed to follow them.

But as psychedelic pioneers in a state where owning one joint was a felony, the Elevators―Roky and Stacy in particular―paid dearly. Their plans for a national tour never materialized and the band members’ subsequent drug busts made leaving Texas out of the question.

And then came the 1969 arrest that would change Roky’s life, landing him in the East Texas Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for three years. Roky wrote a lot of powerful songs at Rusk, but his work was filled with darker images and informed by the vintage horror movie and sci-fi films that he’d loved as a child. After his 1972 release, he became an enormously influential cult artist for his releases both as a solo artist and with Blieb Alien (later Roky Erickson and the Aliens), but his record deals were iffy and the labels increasingly obscure. Royalties were virtually non-existent, even though this era produced one of his most loved albums, The Evil One.

A 1989 arrest for mail theft, along with an addiction to junk mail “free” offers and sweepstakes—Roky was using it as found art, taping it to his walls—landed him once again in a mental hospital.

…

Musicians and friends never forgot Roky: fellow Texan and Warner Bros. executive Bill Bentley produced the 1990 tribute to Erickson, Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye. The title is a quote from Roky when asked to define psychedelic music―“It’s where the pyramid meets the eye, man.” With artists ranging from ZZ Top, R.E.M., Doug Sahm, and Julian Cope contributing songs to the album, it sparked a renewed interest in Roky’s work. In 1995, Roky fan Henry Rollins published Openers II, a complete collection of Erickson’s lyrics compiled and edited by Casey Monahan, with assistance by Roky’s youngest brother Sumner. The book coincided with the release of Roky’s album All That May Do My Rhyme, released by Trance Syndicate, Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey’s label.

By then, Roky’s lifelong battles with personal demons and mental illness had taken their toll; he was living in subsidized housing and seeing few people other than his mother, who believed in prayer more than medical care. Unable to quiet the voices in his head, Roky kept himself wrapped in a cocoon of white noise―every radio, TV, and sound-making piece of electronics would be blaring at once, while he contentedly watched cartoons. It was a dark period that Erickson slowly transcended through the love and patience of friends, family, and fans.

Today, Roky is back and better than ever, thanks to the efforts of his brother Sumner, former principle tuba player with the Pittsburgh symphony and a musical prodigy in his own right (he now plays with the Texcentrics). It was Sumner who got Roky the medical care he needed and started him on the path to recovery (all chronicled in Keven McAlester’s harrowing Crumb-like 2005 documentary of the Erickson family, You’re Gonna Miss Me). The fact that the musical world was ready for Roky’s return is a testament to the respect of his peers and the timelessness of his music.

Henry Rollins, in a quote in the Austin American-Statesman, said of Roky’s work: “When the real book on American music gets written, he’s [Roky] going to be one of those Mount Rushmore Faces. Guys like Roky make music that amazing place to go. Coltrane and Miles and Hendrix were able to do this. It becomes more than the music and more than the lyrics, a total environment.”

In many ways, 2007 was Roky’s year. He celebrated his 60th birthday in July at home in Austin, Texas with a Friday the 13th gig at the Paramount Theatre, a bigger “rock star” than he’d ever been in his band’s 1960s heyday. With his backing band the Explosives, he also returned to San Francisco, the scene of the Elevators’ first taste of national success, for a triumphant gig at the Noise Pop 2007 Festival. There, he was reunited with Tommy Hall and his wife, Elevators lyricist Clementine Hall. Roky went on to play at Coachella, Bumbershoot, and England’s Royal Festival Hall, as well as his first shows in New York City. Arguably, the high point was his taping for the PBS show Austin City Limits. There, Roky was joined on-stage by longtime friend and fan Billy Gibbons, now slated to produce Erickson’s long-awaited new solo album.

The year also saw the enhanced DVD release of You’re Gonna Miss Me with a postscript the filmmaker and the participants could have never predicted—Roky, under the guardianship of brother Sumner since 2001, regained his full legal rights in 2007 and has weaned himself of psychiatric drugs. He also reunited with his first wife, Dana Gaines, and their son, Jegar Erickson, who road managed a string of sold-out Scandinavian shows for his father.

During the time of his acute mental illness, Roky Erickson had a legal document drawn up declaring himself to be an alien, but in one of the greatest comeback stories in the history of rock, he is once again very much of this earth.

Spock.com hopes to become the Google of people searches

January 22nd, 2008

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I’ve been playing around with http://www.spock.com, the “people” search engine (a sort of meta-social network). Spock is a free people and information search engine. What can you do on this website? People can be searched by name or by a "tag" consisting of a personal piece of information (for example Police Officer, blind, red hair, etc). Type in Liberal Democrat and you get a very interesting set of results. Barack Obama is the first result (if only), with Chris Huhne, Charles Kennedy, Ming Campbell, Lynne Featherstone and Nancy Pelosi in places 2-6.

Stephen Tall is in seventh place, but in the photo he appears to have turned into Jock Coats. Richard Allan, 8th, appears to have turned into two different people I don’t recognise at all.

Spock is a really cool idea, and I like a lot of the clever things they’ve done in assembling information and making it searchable. There appear to be a number of useful applications possible in Spock, aside from the fluffier celebrity profile stuff.

Spock.com - the best people search on the Web

Texas Bluesman James Hinkle Takes Lessons from Marcia Ball, Doyle Bramhall, and Freddie Cisneros

January 21st, 2008

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Fort Worth’s stylin’ Goldtop slinger James Hinkle came up in a Texas flood of guitarists. While he was literally getting a grip on the instrument in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jimmie Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Vaughan’s little brother Stevie were driving over from Austin to play the city’s blues haunts—a circuit where U.P. Wilson was already lord of the bent string and Robert Ealey was running a juke joint called the Bluebird.

Fort Worth’s stylin’ Goldtop slinger James Hinkle came up in a Texas flood of guitarists. While he was literally getting a grip on the instrument in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jimmie Vaughan and the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Vaughan’s little brother Stevie were driving over from Austin to play the city’s blues haunts—a circuit where U.P. Wilson was already lord of the bent string and Robert Ealey was running a juke joint called the Bluebird.
But it was lesser-known local musician Freddie Cisneros who taught Hinkle to play blues guitar and took him to the African-American nightspots where the music was sharp and stinging.

Hinkle proves on his new release, Blues Now/Jazz Later, out on his own Blue Lights label, that he was an apt pupil with an interest in expanding on his early lessons. The disc straddles the realms of hardcore Texas blues, early rock and roll, and smoky jazz, and features the sweet growl of Hinkle’s ’56 Goldtop Les Paul Reissue.

"I got that guitar in 2002," Hinkle says. "When I heard it, I thought, ‘Oh yeah!’"

In the ’56 Goldtop, he’s found a P-90-powered partner that helps him draw a bead on every sonic target he sets. The instrument shimmies and struts in response to his honey-and-dust voice on the uptempo Bobby "Blue" Bland homage "Love from a Fool" and rings cool Kenny Burrell-like tones on both the jazzy funker "Ain’t Gonna Make That Call" and the smooth, cutting instrumental "Bopped in the Mouth." Hinkle employs a bit of tremolo to coax a world of heartache from the guitar’s strings on "Brother Love," especially in a slow, sensitive fingerpicked solo. And he comes on like a swamp rat raised on a diet of ’50s Excello Records hits in "Say It to Me One More Time," a primal rocker that’s also colored by accordion and sax. He also knows his way around a Stratocaster, and the disc’s opener "Track You Down" features the deep, snapping Fender-on-Fender sound that’s been etched into the Texas blues cannon by players like the Vaughans.

"I don’t use any effects," Hinkle says. "I just plug right into a Fender Vibroverb, and the Goldtop lets me dial in anything I want. For Blues Now/Jazz Later, which we recorded in a studio in a house, we put the amp in the bathroom and cranked it up to get a great tone."

Hinkle’s been getting great tones for years—a fact he first documented in 1985 when he made his debut record, a 45 produced by Austin legend Doyle Bramhall. Since then he’s released several CDs under his own name, fronted an Austin outfit called the Hoodoo Cats, and co-led a group with fellow Fort Worther Johnny Mack, who sings and plays the frottoir, a ribbed metal instrument akin to a washboard. Hinkle developed his jazz chops in an Austin-based band called Tempest, named after the Texas town where he attended art school. While in Tempest, he caught the ear of Marcia Ball. That led to his highest-profile gig, a three-year run with the barrelhouse piano queen that ended in 1991 after Hinkle returned to Fort Worth. These days he continues to tour under his own name. His dates can be found here.

Hinkle explains that Blues Now/Jazz Later is the middle disc of a trilogy he started with 2005’s Straight Ahead Blues, a collection of mostly obscure blue-to-the-bone covers that concentrated on the tradition that’s his musical backbone. Blues Now/Jazz Later features only Hinkle’s originals, except for the gritty acoustic "East Dallas Dagger," originally cut by Durwood Haddock. The third disc, which Hinkle recently completed for 2008 release with his new rhythm section from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is tentatively titled Whatcha Lookin’ For.

"It’s all originals and is a blend of Texas blues with New Orleans and Baton Rouge rhythms,” Hinkle says. "It’s funky, but like everything I do, it’s also very blues oriented."

Country Music's Legendary Gibsons

January 21st, 2008

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Plenty of musicians have day jobs, but Bill Lloyd’s is sweeter than most. The power-pop singer-songwriter and ex-member of the late ’80s country-rock duo Foster & Lloyd spends his nine-to-fives at downtown Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where he’s stringed instrument curator.

That makes the guitarist caretaker of a collection of 400 axes—108 of them Gibsons. Some, like Maybelle Carter’s Gibson L-5, Bill Monroe’s Gibson F-5 mandolin, and Jimmie Rodgers’ Martin 0-18 acoustic guitar, are part of the fabric of country music. They were played on the genre’s bedrock recordings. Others are rare birds, like a 1924 Gibson mandola, a beefy relative of the mandolin that’s tuned like a viola (C-D-G-A) and was made by the company’s master builder Lloyd Loar, who also designed Monroe’s F-5. And some are simply beautiful works of art, like the stunning mother-of-pearl- and Bakelite-decorated Gibson J-200 acoustic that songwriter Skeets McDonald used to perform his hits like "Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" and "This Old Heart" on the Town Hall Dance Party TV show from 1951 to 1960.

And yes, Lloyd does get to handle them. And to play them, too.

"The instruments are meant to vibrate and have voices, and need to be played if their voices are going to remain open, so that’s an important part of Bill’s job," explains Carolyn Tate, who, as vice president of museum services, is Lloyd’s boss.

On a recent afternoon in the Museum’s climate controlled inner sanctum, Lloyd and Tate gave Gibson.com a behind-the-scenes look at some gems from the vaults, including the Lohr mandola and McDonald’s J-200.

"Take a look a this," Lloyd said, removing a pristine tobacco sunburst Les Paul from its case. "Isn’t it beautiful? It’s one of the first Les Pauls Gibson made when the company moved to Nashville"—in 1974—"and it’s hardly been touched. There’s not even a fingerprint on it."

Then he shifts his attention to one of the acid-free costume boxes with custom-built cradles that are used to house instruments without cases, and removes a Gibson J-50 acoustic.

"This is the guitar Loretta Lynn got from her husband Mooney in 1960," Lloyd says. "She wrote ‘Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)’ and her other early ‘60s hits on this guitar. When I got this guitar, I changed the strings, cleaned it, and polished it. The strings were corroded enough to need changing, but I kept them in the case as artifacts.

"Anything that’s wrong with an instrument when it arrives gets fixed, whether that’s just a clean-up or a bad tuning peg," he explains.

"Unless it’s part of a story, like a bullet hole," Tate adds. "If anything needs to be altered, we discuss it and make a decision. Although we want to keep the instruments in as original a state as possible, they need to be kept in good playable condition to preserve them and to keep them stable so we can have them a long time."

Lloyd continues, "You get the feeling you’re bringing these instruments back to life. Like the McDonald guitar. It had a lot of smudge marks on it, but when I cleaned it up and played it and aired it out, its personality reemerged."

Although the vast majority of the Hall of Fame’s instruments—including Les Paul’s legendary prototype "Log"—are in storage due to limited display space, you don’t have to get behind the scenes to view some of the most exquisite guitars in the collection. Currently a half-dozen of the most spectacular—Carter’s L-5, Monroe’s mandolin, Rodger’s 0-18, Johnny Cash’s Martin D-35S, Chet Atkins’ D’Angelico Excel, and Merle Travis’ Gibson Super 400—are the cornerstones of an exhibit titled "The Precious Jewel." They’re beautifully displayed and lighted—and joined in their large glass case by Atkins’ first Gibson Country Gentleman model and a handful of other notable guitars.

The oldest is Rodgers’ Martin, which he used on August 4, 1927—his day in a week of performances by various artists at a furniture store in Bristol, Tennesse that yielded the first commercial country music recordings. There, the former railroader cut "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" and "The Solider’s Sweetheart," launching his career as "the Singing Brakeman."

Maybelle Carter’s group, the Carter Family, also participated in that string of sessions. The next year she used some of the group’s profits to buy the best guitar she could find: a 1928 Gibson L-5 arch top that she used until her death in 1978. Its bold tone defined the musical style of the Carter Family’s late 1920s and ’30s records. As the first F-hole arch top, the L-5 was designed to be twice as loud as any flat top acoustic of its day. And Maybelle used it to perfect her distinctive picking style, a blend of bass-string melody lines with frailed high-string rhythms, on such classics as "Wildwood Flower" and "Keep on the Sunny Side."

"A year-and-a-half ago it had to be cleaned up, so I got to put my hands on it, and it was a thrill," says Lloyd. "A lot of these instruments sound a certain way. They were captured on records that we all know and love, and when you play these instruments and make that sound you know from the records again, that’s an unbelievable feeling.

"Of course, a lot of that is what you bring to it as well," he says.

"These instruments have been to a lot of places and have had incredible experiences. If you think about where they’re been and whose played them, it’s amazing."

Monroe’s 1923 F-5 mandolin—a masterpiece by famed Gibson designed Loar—almost succumbed to one of those experiences. In 1986 it was smashed to bits and left in a fireplace in the bluegrass pioneer’s home by an intruder—allegedly a disgruntled lady friend.

"Monroe had spotted it in a barbershop window in Florida and bought it for $150," Tate relates. That was an astronomical amount for a mandolin in the early 1940s, although less famous Loar F-5s auction for as much as $65,000 today.

"He came into his own as a songwriter with this instrument, and when it was destroyed he was heartbroken," she continues. "He gathered all the pieces and sent them back to Gibson."

There, luthier Charles Derrington took on the daunting task of reassembling the instrument’s roughly 500 pieces. Some were so small they needed to be bound together with glue-dampened thread. More than a year later, Monroe got his mandolin back "and he wailed the tar out of it for the rest of his career," Tate says. Despite that interruption, Monroe and his mandolin’s partnership lasted 50 years. The rattlesnake tail Monroe placed inside to absorb moisture and frighten mice still remains.

Despite their current status as museum pieces, the ultimate fate of Carter’s L-5 and Monroe’s F-5 became uncertain last year. Nashville area philanthropist Bob McLean donated funds for both instruments to the Hall of Fame.

McLean was the target of investigations by several federal agencies and had been forced into involuntary bankruptcy by creditors when he committed suicide in 2007. Those creditors are now seeking restitution in a manner that could require the sale of the L-5 and F-5. The Hall of Fame has in turn filed a suit of its own to protect its right to the historic duo.

For cool looks, it’s hard to beat Merle Travis’ blonde custom-built Gibson Super 400 Special. When the star famed for his thumb-and-finger Travis Picking style received it in 1952, his Super was the most expensive six-string Gibson had produced. It was his main axe for the last 30 years of his career and is still a gloriously shiny beast with its Bigsby vibrato arm, elaborate headstock, and Travis’ name inlaid along the fretboard in pearl script.

Johnny Cash’s Martin D-35S is just the opposite, with nearly every inch covered in scratches because of his hard-driving, up-and-down-the-neck strumming style. But the acorn and leaf pattern along its fretboard remains stunning, and the torch inlay on the headstock is unique. It’s also the most-seen instrument in the Hall of Fame’s collection, since Cash used it regularly on his popular 1969 to 1971 TV show.

The most recorded "Precious Jewel" in the exhibit is Atkins’ D’Angelico. He used it almost exclusively in the 1950s while establishing his session musician and solo careers. Handmade D’Angelicos from the late 1940s and early ’50s with their original binding are typically valued at $36,000 or more, although Atkins’ is a stretch from stock. He added a metal bridge, a vibrato bar, two pickups, volume controls, and other electronics. It also has a neck repair from an accident at a 1953 radio show. While Atkins was supporting Maybelle Carter and the Carter Sisters, June Carter accidentally knocked it off a stand.

When Lloyd, who’s coming up on his third year at the Hall of Fame, isn’t watching over its instruments, he’s making sure many of the people who’ve played them get their due. He established the Museum’s "Nashville Cats" program, which features conversations and performances with notable studio musicians. Harmonica virtuoso Charlie McCoy, pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, and guitarist Ray Edenton are among those who’ve been honored.

And if all that isn’t cool enough, there’s one more hip wrinkle to Lloyd’s day job. His bosses are so musician-friendly that when he needs to travel for a concert, like, say, performing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the Hollywood Bowl with Cheap Trick, which he did in August, or slip out to rehearse for a show with his Nashville-based tribute band the Long Players, who performed Layla and Led Zeppelin IV last year, it’s not a problem. Sweet gig, indeed.

GlobalPandora

January 21st, 2008

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GlobalPandora that allowed non-U.S. residents to again access the custom radio site Pandora.

Web site globalPandora unlocks the popular web-based music discovery service, Pandora, for users outside of the United States.We've highlighted how to access Pandora by using web proxies, but globalPandora handles all the nitty- gritty for you so that all you need to do is point your browser to the globalPandora web site and start listening.

And if you don't want to deal with a proxy, despite Pandora being as fascinating as it is, there is a nice selection of other online radio alternatives that might work for users outside of the U.S. - a number of which GlobalPandora has been good enough to list on it's "we're down" page.

Finetune

Jango

Spotify

Songza

SHOUTcast

Now it work perfectly :D

Quick D.I.Y. Fixes for Malfunctioning Guitar Hero III Wireless Controllers

January 21st, 2008

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The enormous success of Activision’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock video game has brought the guitar—kind of—into millions of new homes thanks to the addition of a wireless controller based on the design of the Les Paul.

There are reports, however, that some consumers have experienced technical issues with the toy controllers, most of which stem from the detachable neck’s contact system. PlayStation 3 and Wii users in particular have complained that fret buttons are not registering when depressed, incorrect frets are registering on the game, and that the tilt sensor erroneously registers tilt. Others have noted that the fretboards on some units seem loose.

Even though Gibson does not actually manufacture the product, we feel it’s important to help resolve some of the technical difficulties people may be experiencing. So we scoured the web and found some potential D.I.Y. fixes for these problems. If you’re having issues with your wireless Les Paul controller, give these a try, and let us know which works best for you.

1) CLEAN THE CONNECTION

The easiest and most common fix is to clean the connection where the neck and the guitar meet. The best way to do this is to use a cotton swab and small amount of rubbing alcohol to wipe down the connecting chip and needles, let dry thoroughly and then reattach.

For more information, click here.

2) HI-FI FRETBOARD FIX

One Xbox 360 user noticed that the fretboard on his unit felt too loose, so he came up with a detailed workaround that has drawn nearly 25,000 views from other players that are experiencing the same problem.

In brief, the fix recommends unlocking and removing the fretboard from the guitar—using a T8 Torx screwdriver to remove two screws from the end of the fretboard, prying the unit far enough apart to get access to the green PCB (Printed Circuit Board) to move it in front of the tabs, and then closing the board and reapplying the screws.

There are step-by-step directions along with additional photographs here, as well as an alternate fix for wiring issues.

3) LO-FI FRETBOARD FIX

For those who are too squeamish to crack their plastic fretboards open, another clever gamer came up with an extremely basic yet effective way to deal with the issue of ill-fitting necks.

By attaching a small utility hook to the back of the body just above the locking lever and looping a plain rubber band around it and the strap peg, the problem is effectively resolved.

See the step-by-step photos here.

4) DOWNLOAD THE SOFTWARE PATCH

There are official Version 1.1 software patches available for both Mac and PC users that offer many general fixes for Guitar Hero III.

Most of these address minor issues, but they include improving the whammy bar sound effects, adding a UI screen in the Controller Options menu that displays default keyboard controls, and mending the star power electricity effect so it displays correctly when using the Low Graphics Detail option. Download the patch here if you have a PC and here if you have a Mac.

5) GET IT IN STEREO (SOON)

Some Nintendo Wii users have complained that the game, which is supposed to play in stereo and support Dolby Pro Logic II surround-sound is actually outputting in mono.

In this instance, Activision has officially addressed the problem, but has yet to fix it.

"We recently became aware that some consumers have not been able to enjoy the full audio output in the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock," Activision spokeswoman Rhy-Ming Poon said in a statement. "We are currently working with Nintendo and are planning to issue an improved audio experience in future versions of the game. We expect to have re-mastered discs available by early 2008 and we will be offering consumers replacement discs at no cost once they become available. We thank all of our customers for their support and patience."

Human Touch Quality Massage Chairs

January 21st, 2008

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Every time I see Massage Chairs advertisements, I always drool. After all, I'm a HUGE fan of massages. Human Touch Massage Chairs offer you the best products which can make you feel as though you were in the hands of expert human masseur or masseuse. After all, they have been developing massage chair technology for over 25 years. The massage chairs here are one of a kind because they used the most advanced robotic massage technology and are made of fine materials like leather. These massage chairs are adjustable and are equipped with four amazing techniques like kneading.
It’s the first and best choice for your wellness and comfort. So, get one and pamper yourself.

Eric Clapton Uses eBay To Sell Memorabilia

January 21st, 2008

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Rocker Eric Clapton is selling off memorabilia online in an effort to raise funds for his Crossroads Centre at Antigua rehab facility. The guitar great has teamed with online auction site eBay.com to open a new store, which will sell the Clapton collectibles.

Items up for grabs include tour jackets, backstage passes, t-shirts, mugs and bumper stickers.

Clapton founded the Crossroads Centre in 1997. The facility provides a sanctuary for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.

Clapton himself has struggled with drug and alcohol dependency.

CreditNet.com

January 20th, 2008

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CreditNet is one of the Premier Credit Card resource sites on the net. They are here to provide you with with information and services for credit repair, exclusive card offer from selective providers, credit card company reviews, live chat help and much more.
Bad Credit Credit Cards are the perfect solution for those who are facing with any of the problems that I mentioned above. I know, if you have a bad credit credit cardhistory then it takes a long time to remove it from your credit history. But with these credit cards for bad credit you can make some good credit history which will help you to improve your credit score.
If you have bad credit, YOU are the only one who can improve it, and it probably won’t be a quick or easy process. But CreditNet offers credit cards and financial resources which may help you with the task.

Punk Rock Turns 30: Time to Move Out and Get a Job?

January 19th, 2008

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Punk rock turned a ripe old 30 in 2007. But if there was no birthday party, Rolling Stone Special Edition—or moment of silence at the ballpark—to mark the occasion, the impact of the musical revolution punk wrought in the ’70s and ’80s lives on. But ask that 15-year-old at the mall in the Misfits T-shirt and mohawk what it all means and you’ll as likely get a shrug as a surly look for an answer. Which begs a few questions: What do the trappings of the punk movement really mean to a teenager born more than a decade after the musical rebellion they signified? More importantly, what did all the sound and fury ultimately accomplish?

In the beginning, as professional pundits will gladly tell you ad infinitum, punk was the grassroots reaction to a rock scene bloated by arena rock excess and sweetened to the brink of a diabetic coma by the saccharine offerings of one too many sentimental ’70s singer-songwriters. Randy Newman excepted, of course. Punk has always been reactionary at its core, much like any number of musical movements that came before it. Punk was to rock what bebop was to jazz, what Hank Williams was to country music—or what Stravinsky represented to the entrenched classical interests of his era, for that matter.

Yet no less than Sex Pistol guitarist Steve Jones recently opined that the punk movement wasn’t all that different from the hippies who preceded them: “They kinda did the same thing. They said, ‘No, we’re doin’ it this way, ’cause we don’t like the way things are.’ [Punk] wasn’t much different other than the length of their hair and the flared pants. All generations need to be rebellious.” Bear in mind that this is the same Jones who now regularly plays Boston and Journey—two of the ostensible focal points for punk’s initial rebellion—on his popular and influential Los Angeles radio show without an ounce of intended irony. “I’ve always said I liked them, even when I was in the Pistols,” Jones admits now. “I didn’t tell too many back then that I liked Boston, but I did! And I loved Journey, too. All them bands. Unfortunately, your Journeys of the world have a bad rap, for whatever reason.”

It’s like finding out Henry Ford was a horse lover.

Hang around rock critics long enough—if that’s your idea of a good time—and you’ll hear some, er, fascinating things. Like an editor explaining it all in quasi-Marxist terms, that rock equals the people’s music, while classical music equals the oppressive elite. Don’t tell that to Mozart, who was beloved by the peasantry of his day and held performances especially for them. Or all the blue-collared folk who went to Journey concerts back in the day, for that matter.

Or watch the American Hardcore documentary and—with the notable exception of D.C.’s beloved Bad Brains—you’ll hear a lot of very white boys tell you the U.S. punk scene was fueled largely by their anger and free-floating resentment. That the violence and vandalism that went with the scene was at worst amusing. And how proud they were that their music wasn’t “ripping off the black man,” which strikes us as some sort of weird left-handed racism itself. Indeed punk—or at least the bastardized American stepchild of the U.K. original—was a 99 percent white, vastly male scene that was all about them.

It’s been 15 years since Nirvana brought the “movement” into the mainstream. But what did it get them—or us? Rock’s fortunes have generally been in decline on the charts, and mainstream country now sounds a whole lot like the arena rockers of old. To many cynical observers, the music business of 2008 seems uncomfortably like the one of 1958, dominated by an endless string of manufactured, interchangeable teen idols and pre-fab “hits” that are as utilitarian—and disposable—as a burger wrapper. But if an outrageous, auto-destructive public demeanor is still the yardstick by which some stubbornly judge how “authentic” a performer is, who’s more punk rock in 2008, Courtney Love or Britney Spears?

I’m not sure why a modern teen would evoke the rebellion of ’77 when dressing for the mall, though I suspect it has a whole lot more to do with fashion than art. Or how Henry Rollins has created a thriving contemporary mainstream media career out of having railed against the mainstream media all those years ago—though I’d guess it has a lot more to do with marketing than music.

That’s the thing about punk—it’s always been nice work, if you can get it.

City Hotel Guides

January 19th, 2008

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Do you want to know where you can find the most travel guides online? You can find them at HotelsByCity.net. HotelsByCity is an online travel booking site where you can find Cheap Hotels, vacation package, last minute deals and even the hottest show tickets. The first city I look for this is Singapore!

While English is spoken in other Asian countries, it is not as widespread as in Singapore. Most citizens of Hong Kong, another former British colony that is now a state of China, use Cantonese for daily conversation and while they learn English in school, only those that are directly involved in the tourism industry can speak English fluent.

Singapore also appeals as things are organised, efficient and affordable, as compared to other developed countries.

Singapore is a tourist playground with a host of spectacular attractions, exotic dining and luxury hotels. There is something for everyone, from families to business travellers. Cheap Hotels On the right, you can also have some other usefull information, like Country Guide, Official Singapore Tourist Information, in all languages, Singapore Weather , if you want find out all the information.

The webiste is really well done, with also widget to check the availability of hotels.
So make HotelsByCity the first choice when booking for your Hotels online.

IAN CURTIS - CONTROL

January 19th, 2008

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From the executive producer of the Bekers Film (Ali Yap) about "Control" to the official myspace owner, concerning the italian distribution of the film: "Dear Sir, Thank you for your e-mail and interest in our new film CONTROL about Ian Curtis and Joy Division. We currently have interest from Italian Distributors regarding CONTROL so I am sure you will have the opportunity to see the film in Italy in the future. Best wishes, Ali Yap-Sales & Event Coordinator BECKER INTERNATIONAL Level 1, 11 Waltham Street, Artarmon, NSW 2064 Australia T: +612 9438 3377 F: +612 9439 1827 E: aliy@beckers.com.au"

Official MySpace page: myspace.com/iancurtisfilm

The man himself!

January 19th, 2008

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Gibson Tone Tips: Keep Your Tubes Happy

January 19th, 2008

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Back in the late 1960s certain factions in the amplifier industry went to great pains to introduce radical, new solid-state guitar amps and to promote them, partly at least, on the premise that they were “sturdier than fragile tube amps.” Tubes can be fragile if you don’t treat them right, certainly, but look after your tubes and the amp they are in and both should reward you with toneful and trouble-free service. In this installment of Tone Tips, let's look at some easy ways to keep our tubes happy.

1) Let them warm up: Letting your tubes warm up for 60 seconds before switching the amp to “play” is not just an archaic function of an outdated technology, it’s crucial to preserving the life of your tubes. Tubes operate on two different types of electrical current, a low-voltage AC current that heats up their filaments, and a high-voltage DC current that drives their amplification duties. If the high-voltages DC hits them before the low-voltage AC has warmed them up it can do gradual harm to the components within the tube, and ultimately shorten their life. Most tube amps manufactured today have both Power and Standby switches. With the Standby in the off position, switch the Power to “on,” which will send the AC to the tubes’ “heaters” and start warming them up. After 60 seconds or so, flip the Standby to “on” to send the DC surging through the circuit and you’re ready to play—your tubes will be gently warmed up and ready to go. Some amps don’t have Standby switches, but more often than not they do carry tube rectifiers; because tube rectifiers themselves warm up slowly, they don’t send the DC voltages to the rest of the tubes immediately, but only gradually, once they have begun to warm up themselves. If you have an older amp with solid-state rectification (ie no rectifier tube) that is also lacking a Standby switch, I guess you either live with it that way, or pay a qualified amp repairman to install a Standby switch (although you will want to avoid devaluing any vintage amplifier, or voiding the warranty of a new one).

2) Let them cool down: When you’re done playing, switch the Standby off first, then the Power after a few seconds. Now, even though the amp is off, let it cool down for several minutes before moving it, or certainly before handling the tubes. Vacuum tubes are most susceptible to damage when hot—which renders their internal components more fragile and pliable—and moving the amp or handling the tubes before they have cooled down can lead to premature failure. There’s another reason to let tubes cool down if you’re swapping them, for tone-tasting or general maintenance: these things get hot! A fully-heated power or rectifier tube in particular can inflict a nasty burn. Let them cool down, and preserve both your tubes and your fingers.

3) Avoid excessive physical shocks: Even when cool, tubes can be damaged by excessive jolts or vibrations. On the whole they are usually a lot sturdier than those solid-state amp manufacturers might suggest, but hey, good tubes are expensive, and you might as well get as much life out of them as you can. Obviously you want to avoid dropping, knocking over, or heavily bumping your amp, but you should also avoid the kind of jolts and major vibrations an amp is subjected to when you put casters on it and roll it down a bumpy driveway or sidewalk. Rolling a road case with casters is usually okay, because these things have heavy internal padding, but I have known more than one guy who rolled his Twin or AC30 from the parking lot to the gig, and was dismayed when the thing failed to function on power-up. Roll it across the smooth tiled or wooden or carpeted floor, sure, but carry it over bumpy ground, please.

4) Use (or install) tube clamps: While many tubes will hold themselves in their sockets perfectly well, tube clamps—which come in various formats—will both help to prevent tubes from plummeting to their death if your amp should be bumped or dropped, and will also help to maintain a tight electric contact in the tube socket. The latter point is one that is too often overlooked; even a tube that seems to be seated tightly in a tube socket in a non-moving amp might jiggle, vibrate, or shift around in its contacts during the vibration produced simply by playing at high volumes, and in doing so might cause crackles, noise, or intermittent faults. Tube clamps are most often seen as simple “claw” types (a bent metal retainer with teeth that grip the base of a 6L6GC, 6V6GT or EL34, for example), or as a pair of springs and retainer cap, sized for use with 8-pin tubes or 9-pin output tubes such as EL84s. Another popular retainer for the EL84 is the simple bent-wire type of clip, which also works perfectly well. If your amp has no such clips you might consider having a qualified repairman install a set. Most preamp tubes have metal shields with internal springs that help keep them in place, although these tubes are smaller and lighter than most output tubes anyway, and therefore are less in danger of falling from the amp.

5) Keep your tubes cool: As distinct from No. 2 above, “Let them cool down,” tubes are also happiest when kept as cool as possible while operating. This means ensuring there is adequate air flow through the amp’s cooling vents, and never playing the amp in an enclosed box, small closet, or with its back up against a wall or a road case that might impede such air flow. Beyond this, installing a purpose-made fan to cool the output tubes in a large tube amp (which can usually be switched off for recording), or even using a small, quiet fan behind the amp, can really go a long way toward extending tube life.

6) Use the correct speaker impedance: Mismatching your amp’s output and your speaker(s) total impedance load will strain both your output tubes and your output transformer (OT), and possibly lead to premature failure in either or both. Most tube amp’s OTs will tolerate an impedance mismatch of 100 percent in either direction fairly well—that is, connecting a cab of either 4 ohms or 16 ohms to an amp with an 8 ohm output—although doing so will strain the tubes more than a correct load, and might also impede your amp’s full tonal performance.

7) Bias your output tubes: Some tube amps such as cathode-baised types or those with preset fixed bias circuits don’t require biasing. Just pop in the correct type and grade of replacement tubes and off you go. If your amp is one that is meant to be biased when the tubes are changed—or even as an element of routine maintenance when the output tubes are being retained—then do so. Tubes running at the wrong bias setting will not only age prematurely in many cases, they simply won’t sound their best, and that’s what it’s all about. There are a number of kits available today to let players safely bias tubes themselves, or any qualified amp repairman can perform the function for you for a nominal fee.

Buy good tubes, keep them happy, and maximize your tone. You know it makes sense.

Chet Atkins & Les Paul Chester & Lester

January 18th, 2008

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NASHVILLE, 1975. It was May, spring was in the air, and a rebirth awaited Les Paul. He’d been in semi-retirement and largely off the radar for the better part of the previous decade, the arthritis in his hands slowing a man who more than a generation earlier had single-handedly transformed 20th century popular music through sheer innovation and instrumental brilliance. Now, his 60th birthday just weeks away and an array of young musicians across virtually every musical genre playing guitars bearing his name, Paul entered a Music City studio for a historic two-day summit.

The man who joined him there was nine years younger, but every bit as iconic. Chet Atkins had seen his status as a living legend cemented back in the early 1950s via his staggering finger-picked guitar lines, not to mention his key role in the creation of the Nashville Sound. And aside from his impressive credentials, he had a special connection to Les Paul: Chet’s half-brother, Jimmy, had been a singer and rhythm guitarist in a mid-1930s incarnation of the Les Paul Trio, and Jimmy passed on to Chet a custom-built 1938 Gibson L-10 archtop that he’d gotten from Les. Chet, who employed it on his first recording session for RCA, never forgot the instrument.

“The high end of the neck had an additional six frets under the B and E strings to facilitate playing in the upper register in the key of F,” Atkins recalled in 2000’s Me & My Guitars, which was published shortly before his death from cancer in 2001. “Django had a guitar with a neck like that, and I’m sure that’s why Les wanted it because he was deeply into Reinhardt’s playing. Jim had traded Les out of the guitar, and when he saw how much I liked it, he surprised me by giving it to me. Riding back to Knoxville [from New York] on the train, I was so happy I didn’t know what to do. Every little while, I would open the case just to look at that guitar. I loved the way it looked, and the way it smelled. It was hard to believe it was really mine.”

So it was that unique historical connection with which the two six-string virtuosos from different musical worlds—Paul from jazz and pop, the Tennessee-born Atkins from country—would wax the Grammy-winning Chester & Lester, an effortless, swinging collection of standards that, more than 30 years after its original 1976 release, endures mightily among guitar aficionados everywhere.

According to none other than Les Paul, now 92 years old and still playing his weekly Monday-night gig at the Iridium Jazz Club in midtown Manhattan, the magic of Chester & Lester all came down to language. “ It was a great marriage because we were very different people, probably the two best-known guitarists in the world, and both of us had a lot to say,” Paul relates in the Rich Kienzle-penned liner notes that accompany the July 24 Legacy Recordings reissue of this classic album, which has been expanded to include four previously unreleased tracks.

Paul and Atkins work their magic on songs like the opening “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” with Chet’s dexterous, fluid finger-style approach seamlessly melding with Les’ sharp crystalline tone and Django Reinhardt-inspired lines. It’s the sonic template for what lies ahead: a medley that marries the big-band classic “Moonglow” with the theme to the mid-1950s film “Picnic”; the up-tempo “Caravan,” which Atkins had released on a 1954 LP and whose alternate version appears as a bonus track; and the gorgeous “It Had to Be You,” where Les tastefully accents the melodic lines played by Chet.

But it’s not just the freewheeling musical vibe that gives Chester & Lester its open feel. The casual, often-humorous banter between the two men, kept on tape for posterity at Paul’s suggestion, reveals the true informal nature of the sessions. One minute the witty Paul can be heard offering up some kind of wisecrack about Mel Bay instructional guitar books; the next, Atkins is dryly instructing Paul to increase the tempo on “Avalon.” (“You’ve been playing a long time and I admire you very much,” Atkins tells Paul. “You’ve been my inspiration… but you’re playing the damn thing wrong. You’ve gotta play it a little faster than that.”)

Of course, the verbal give-and-take aside, what ultimately carries the day is the music. Noted music scribe Nat Hentoff wrote the original album liner notes, and the description he offered then remains every bit as valid today: “What’s happening here is high-spirited jamming, a meeting of two quite mighty peers, each of whom has helped expand the possibilities of the guitar, including the sheer fun in playing it. And that’s the word for this set, fun, and virtuosity.”

Tahiti Pearl

January 18th, 2008

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I love pearl jewelry. Its timeless and elegant. Its perfect for so many occasions and I've decided to buy me a pair of pearls for my birthday. I start to find in internet and then I stumble thepearlsource.com who offers one of the largest selection of pearls online from pearl jewelry, pearl necklaces and earrings. http://www.thepearlsource.com Pearls are classic and beautiful, but it’s hard for someone without a trained eye and experience to know how to find a real pearl and could very well end up with fake pearls. If you are interested in Black Tahitian South Sea Pearls, then here you can find it.
These pearls are traditionally called "black," but their color can range from a metallic silver, to the color of graphite. And within this range of colors they can have bluish, purplish, or greenish overtones.
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They offer the wholesale pearl nacklace, earrings, pearl bracelets, pendants and rings.
A gift of Tahitian cultured pearls makes an extraordinary, unique gift.

Jesse Harris The Hottest State

January 18th, 2008

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Movie soundtrack albums are generally spotty at best, but this collection of songs—all penned by Americana singer-guitarist Jesse Harris but performed by various star musicians—shines as one of the most cohesive modern compilations. Though Harris developed his eye for the bigger picture by recording several solo albums that bridge the gaps between country, folk, jazz, and pop, he’s best known for writing Norah Jones hits like “Don’t Know Why.” The Hottest State—written, recorded, and performed on Harris’ 1956 Gibson LG-1—comes after years of close creative counsel with actor-director Ethan Hawke, who also authored the novel that inspired the film. Performing only three songs solo, Harris leaves the remainder of his plaintive acoustic tracks to diverse figures like Willie Nelson, Bright Eyes, the Black Keys, Feist, and Cat Power. High points include Nelson’s languid, near-coffeehouse rendering of “Always Seem to Get Things Wrong” (which evokes Nelson’s work with Daniel Lanois and features some Floyd Cramer-style piano from Jones); Emmylou Harris’ haunting, skeletal reading of “The Speed of Sound”; and the Black Keys’ blues-thrash treatment of “If You Ever Slip,” which sounds like the early Stones stripped to their trashiest essence. Holding his own among the stellar cast, Harris breaks out his LG-1 on four tracks. Of these, the best is “It Will Stay With Us,” an acoustic ballad that showcases his plucky guitar-work and boyish tenor. To capture the crux of a fleeting but all-consuming love affair, actor-director Ethan Hawke could hardly have chosen a better songwriter than Harris.

Uplogix

January 18th, 2008

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Uplogix offers secure remote management solutions for people or companies that have several computer networks in different locations.
Can you imagine driving for miles to a network point just to fix a simple problem? Well, you don’t have to imagine if you have already experienced it.
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Velvet Revolver - Libertad

January 18th, 2008

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Libertad, Velvet Revolver's second CD is so chock-full of the tight 'n' crunchy pedigreed hard rock that's in short supply these days, it feels both comfortingly familiar and vaguely exotic ... Our advice? Stop pining for a new Guns N' Roses release, break out your air guitars, and bask in the glory of Libertad.

I guess that Libertad is the most memorable. And with filth, loose morals, anger, frustration, big guitars and even bigger choruses at every turn, it's got all the DNA of a pure-bred rock classic.

I must confess, it is true that I always love Slash and he's a myth for me, but I also have to say that Libertad it's a kind of fantastic CD, also Scott's voice is getting better. And guitar Slash, well, what can I say more? :D I found "Get Out The Door" more punk style than other and "The Last Fight" it is a semiballad, with sweet and sensual voice of Scott, that remind me brit pop-rock.

In my opinion Libertad it a must have CD!!!!

Velvet Revolver just might single-handedly bring back the ascendance of arena rock. From lead singer Scott Weiland’s pained and anxious vocals to Slash’s epic guitar splatter, to Matt Sorum’s solid trash can drumming, this super group put together the high-profile remains of Guns N’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots to forge an identity of their own. While 2004’s Contraband was a flashy, swaggering beginning, grafting Weiland’s elegant glam rock sneer to the GNR behemoth sound, one was always conscious of a great divide between the two aesthetics. On Libertad they have breached that gap and have gelled as a heaving, strutting rock dirigible with their own rather fascinating histories and missteps, instead of harkening back to their parent bands. Weiland thrills with his romantic fixations and fascination with Jim Morrison on “Let It Roll,” which references the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” and his inamorata’s pouty lips. Meanwhile “She Mine” is a dissonant rant with unbidden drum fills and leering big guitars that reminds one how dangerous and threatening rock can be with its metaphysical hazards and obsessions—something that has always characterized the best rock bands from the Rolling Stones to the Stooges. On Libertad that mania doesn’t seem forced—in fact nothing seems to be. There’s a lazy, unstudied cool about most of these songs, just like Slash himself.

EMI rival confirms album deal with Rolling Stones

January 18th, 2008

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Kind of big news here. Another big group leave EMI.

The Rolling Stones announced Thursday they have signed a deal to release the soundtrack to their Martin Scorsese-directed concert film through Universal Music Group. EMI was bought by Guy Hands' Terra Firma private equity house in August for £2.4bn.

He though that Emi could save a lot of money (£200 million a year ) but, for me, it's not a concidence that Tony Wadsworth, EMI’s head of music, leave the company after more than 25 years.

A lot of big group hava that kind of treament and I guess that he's bought a big record company just as the virtues of bigness are in question.

And when also the last big band leave a company, what they gonna do?? Invest in untried talent?!?!

The move does not bode well for EMI Group, the label that has been the Stones' home for 16 years, raising the possibility that the band might follow Radiohead and Paul McCartney and leave the embattled record company. Kylie Minogue and Coldplay are also said to be unhappy. The Stones have already signed a one-album deal with Universal Music for the soundtrack CD to Martin Scorsese's film Shine A Light. It will be released in March both physically and digitally across Universal's labels around the world. A spokesman for the band added that they were "looking forward to working with Universal Music and are excited about this new venture". Last year Radiohead, another of EMI's top acts, left the label and allowed their fans to download their new album "In Rainbows" from the Internet -- and choose how much they wanted to pay for it. Paul McCartney left EMI in March last year. Coldplay's manager Dave Holmes has also reportedly hinted at discontent with the record company. Lucian Grainge, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music Group International, confirmed the Stones' move in a statement, saying: "We are really proud to be working with The Rolling Stones and so is everybody in Universal Music globally."

Cadre Technologies Warehouse Management Software

January 18th, 2008

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Cadre is the largest software provider to the third-party logistics industry. Cadre Technologies is the leading provider of supply chain management software for the fulfillment, logistics and manufacturing industries. Cadre’s software automates companies’ warehouse and fulfillment management processes.
Cadre Technologies, provides a logistics software for warehouses. The order can be taken over the Internet or any other way, the system will process them immediately and also provide automate shipping. The software is useful and time saving and it also ensures that the process of a warehouse runs smoothly.
Want to talk to an expert or book a live demo? Visit Cadre Technologies for your warehouse management systems solutions

MONSON GUITARS

January 17th, 2008

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Challenging convention and bringing affordable, custom hand made quality guitars to the underground

"Welcome to Monson Guitars. Here you will find some of the most unique guitars around. Inspired by The Misfits, specifically Doyle's Annihilator, and the custom guitars they built, I began building guitars in January 2001. I was looking to make something different. Having worked on guitars with bands, including my own, for years and having fifteen years of woodworking experience, I began. With a slab of Black Walnut, I designed and built my first guitar, The Impaler, complete with a coffin case and six handles. A labor of love began. I went on to build The Wizard, The Witch and The Dragon. I sold a few, but kept many for myself because I ended up liking the sound and feeling more than any of my other guitars. Most of all, they were unique.

Monson Guitars was started in Northern California and is now based in Austin, Texas. Over the years, I've developed an arsenal of designs to rival anyone. From my early designs to the more recent designs showing my design experience......shaping the future of how you'll see functional and extreme. My guitars are a combination of function and bad ass looks. I try to make all my guitars function well first. It should be comfortable to play, well balanced, sound even better and look unique. I also try to make my guitars affordable. People coming up in the underground should be able to afford them, hence the reason for offering a base model guitar that isn't "loaded". I do not mass produce guitars. All my guitars are hand-made to order. Getting a custom built guitar for $1,000 is completely unheard of in the guitar industry. There are some guys out there making some cool guitars, and there are some out there making some real expensive novelty items...Something I try to avoid. I make guitars for people who want to strap these suckers on and play! However, it should be said, handmade guitars are more sensitive and responsive than factory guitars.....they have personality and this is why we play them....they have feel and tone.

The longer I build guitars, it has become increasingly obvious that the guitar industry is much like the music industry itself. There's a bunch of people sitting in a office who are completely out of touch with musicians and the music scene itself, who are trying to sell their guitars as the next trendy thing, while the real music scene is happening right under their noses. Most of the guitar industry is run by corporations who are just looking at the bottom line. I have no desire to fit in with the guitar industry! I'm just a guy building guitars....no corporate agendas to think about. I take great pride in my craftsmanship and I'm always working on new and more unique designs. Quality is always a priority. I love to use black walnut as well as cherry because the tone and sustain, not to mention the beauty, are excellent in my view. I've got so many designs coming it's ridiculous!.....and that is never going to stop. Many have made Monson guitars a requirement on stage and in the studio. Monson guitars, creating guitars that inspire you to create."

Brent Monson

Monson Guitars

Monson Guitars: Official web site

MySpace: myspace.com/monson_guitars

Contact Brent: monsonguitars@yahoo.com