Charlie Sexton is an extraordinary gifted artist, whose lifetime musical odyssey has profoundly touched, as well as likewise been charted, by the extraordinary circumstances, fate, and people of music legend, legend of which the revered Sexton has often arguably been a part of himself.
Experiments can sometimes go horribly wrong. Beakers can boil over, frogs can mutate, and people can accidentally create unstable explosives when they are just trying to make a precipitate form in a solution. The Chicago edition of Dave Matthews Band Caravan was definitely an experiment, and although no unstable explosives killed anyone, not everything was peachy and wonderful.
Alter Bridge was formed out the fires of Creed in 2004 by Mark Tremonti and Scott Phillips after their relationship with singer Scott Stapp had gone array. The new band hooked up with then ex-Creed bassist Brian Marshall and former Mayfield Four frontman Myles Kennedy and together recorded their first CD; One Day Remains. It went gold in the United States and spawned three singles. In 2007 the band released the critically acclaimed second album, Blackbird, which included the hit singles “Rise Today” and “Watch Over You.”
“All Nightmare Long” is the fifth single from Metallica’s most recent release, Death Magnetic, and features nearly eight minutes of Metallica’s unique brand of destructive thrash, but with a heavy lean towards more progressive metal than they have been known for in the past. It is one of the songs from Death Magnetic that helped Metallica get back in the good graces of fans after their somewhat disappointing 2003 album St. Anger. Learn this song to get a quick, hard schooling in thrash riffage from guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, who throw down like no other for this marathon headbanging session.
By: Rob Cavuoto On a rain drenched evening in New Jersey, Def Leppard and Heart played the PNC Arena in Homdell NJ. The concert was a rescheduled show from July due to the passing of singer, Joe Elliot’s father. It may have poured this night but it didn’t slow the band down. They opened with […]
As Metallica’s fifth longest song, “…And Justice For All” is really difficult for the band to play live due to its complexity and layered nature. Although they vowed never to play it again live in 1989, Hetfield and company have been bringing it out again in recent tours, and it appears on their live DVD “Orgullo, Pasión y Gloria,” which was recorded in Mexico during touring in support of Death Magnetic, the metal juggernauts’ most recent effort. The song, which is the eighth track from the album …And Justice For All, gets its title from the last four words of the United States Pledge of Allegiance and plays off the idea that those words are a sick irony.
Although Robert Plant has said that “Kashmir” is the quintessential Led Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven” remains the popular go-to tune by the legendary Zep. Played so often in guitar stores that owners have put up signs demanding “No Stairway to Heaven,” the song has one of the most iconic (and possibly over-played) introductions in all of music. Those fingerpicked chords build in intensity and power until the Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones are at full tilt, accelerating their way into Jimmy Page’s monumental guitar solo. With lyrics inspired by Lord of the Rings, “Stairway” climbs higher and higher until the isolated and despairing last line, “And she’s buying the stairway… to heaven.”
“Since I’ve Been Loving You” is a slow minor blues tune by the legendary Led Zeppelin. Featured on their third album, Led Zeppelin III, the song was reportedly one of the hardest to record. Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones put down his bass for “Since I’ve Been Loving You”, instead playing a Hammond organ, using the foot pedals for the bass notes. After having difficulties during the recording process, they ended up recording it with almost no overdubbing, save for Jimmy Page’s guitar solo. That solo has been hailed as one of the best solos in the history of rock music by audio engineer Terry Manning, and wow, if it’s not the best, it’s definitely up there.
“Over the Hills and Far Away” has, along with “Stairway to Heaven,” possibly one of Zeppelin’s most distinctive guitar introductions. Jimmy Page plays it once through on a six-string acoustic then joins on overdubbed twelve-string, over which Robert Plant begins crooning about a lady’s love. This soft intro builds into the seemingly unrelated hard rock riff that forms the basis of the rest of the song, and the intro music isn’t heard until after the band fades out, when it is reprised by a distant electric guitar to close out the song. “Over the Hills” is a veritable mine of blues-rock riffage, guaranteed to give you plenty of ideas for riff-based rock of your own, so get down to it!
Meatloaf had to be “well done” while performing at Quick Chek Festival of Ballooning at Solberg Airport in NJ on one of the hottest summer days this past Sunday. Dress in black from head-to-toe, the 63 year old singer hit the stage at 4:00 pm with his 7 piece band, including guitarists Paul Crook and Randy Flowers. When most people were looking for shade or dousing themselves with water, Meat was cooking on the sun-drenched stage and rockin’ out.
