It’s 10:30 PM, I’m sitting at a wooden picnic table, and I feel great! The Monterey fairgrounds are still hopping at the 25th Monterey Bay Blues Festival, held June 25 – 27, 2010, with crowds of people standing in groups or walking around the grounds. The picnic table is in the middle of two different stages, so I can hear a blend of music from the acts still going strong.
“Heavy Mellow” is an intensely interesting and musically captivating album by the San Francisco based group Flametal.
Into the Night is an intense, metal thrill-ride by Florida based melodic metal band Oblivious Signal.
Sending My Love is a laid-back, smooth-jazz album by guitarist Norman Brown. Featuring nine original tracks, with a cover of the Kenny Loggins song “Celebrate Me Home,”
It isn’t often that I come across an album that’s so good I have to listen to it multiple times in a row. When I sat down to check out Devi’s album Get Free I found myself doing just that
Having used a PRS guitar for over twenty years, and being the first guitarist to appear on a magazine cover with a PRS back in the day, it’s not a big surprise that Al Di Meola would team up with the American guitar giant to produce the PRS Al Di Meola Signature guitar, otherwise known as the Prism.
There are many decisions guitarists have to make in order to find their optimal tone. What guitar do they play, what strings do they use? Do they use their fingers or a pick? What effects pedals, if any, do they run through and what amp(s) do they run that signal through. While many guitarists spend countless hours searching for the best tone possible, using some or all of these methods, the one thing that often misses their radar is the cable they’re using.
Dubbed the “anti-Oliver Stone” documentary, in reference to the controversial movie staring Val Kilmer as troubled lead singer Jim Morrison, Tom Dicillo’s documentary When You’re Strange aims to tell the “real” story behind the meteoric rise and tragic end to the ’60s rock band The Doors. The story that photographers, cameramen and interviewers captured in real time as the band redefined the rock genre and encapsulated what it meant to be a true Rock Star in the 1960s.
Singularity is a creatively conceived album by former Doors guitarist Robby Krieger. Walking the line between being highly improvised and carefully arranged, the album is a kaleidoscope of genres, sound, tone colors and timbres, directly representing the wide variety of Krieger’s musical influences.
It’s All About Groove by New York based guitarist, and Vermont native, Ethan Mann. Mann, who relocated to New York in 1991, currently leads the organ trio featured on this recording, consisting of Chip Crawford, keyboards, and Greg Bandy, drums. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Mann has studied with such jazz guitar luminaries as Rodney Jones and Jack Wilkins, and is currently on faculty at Crestwood Music Education Center and Manna House Workshops in East Harlem.
