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Blackmore's Night Premiere Music Video for "Dancer and the Moon"

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Ritchie Blackmore's current band — Blackmore's Night — have released a new music video for the title track from their latest album, Dancer and the Moon.

The album was released June 11 by Frontiers Records.

Dancer and the Moon, the band's eighth studio album, features several instrumentals, including "Galliard" and "Carry On… Jon," which Blackmore wrote as a tribute to the late Jon Lord of Deep Purple.

You can check out "Carry On... Jon"right here. You can hear another track from the new album, "The Moon Is Shining (Somewhere Over the Sea),"which we debuted here on GuitarWorld.com, via the Soundcloud player below.

Dancer and the Moon Track Listing:

01. I Think It's Going To Rain Today
02. Troika
03. The Last Leaf
04. Lady In Black
05. Minstrels In The Hall
06. The Temple Of The King
07. Dancer And The Moon
08. Galliard
09. The Ashgrove
10. Somewhere Over The Sea (The Moon Is Shining)
11. The Moon Is Shining (Somewhere Over The Sea)
12. The Spinner's Tale
13. Carry On... Jon

For more information about Blackmore's Night and Dancer and the Moon, visit blackmoresnight.com.


Pearl Jam Announce Fall North American Tour; New Song, "Mind Your Manners," Expected Thursday

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Pearl Jam ended their big online countdown yesterday by announcing a major North American tour. The 24-date trek kicks off October 11 in Pittsburgh and ends December 6 in Seattle. You can check out the full itinerary below.

However, it turns out the band are also releasing a new single — "Mind Your Manners"— this Thursday (July 11), almost a week earlier than the original July 16 release date.

The band's upcoming album, which is still untitled, should be available by early 2014, if not sooner. It will be their 10th studio album and the followup to 2009's Backspacer.

Pearl Jam tour dates:

10/11 - Pittsburgh - Consol Energy Center
10/12 - Buffalo - First Niagara Center
10/15 - Worcester - DCU Center
10/18 - Brooklyn - Barclays Center
10/19 - Brooklyn - Barclays Center
10/21-22 - Philadelphia - Wells Fargo Center
10/25 - Hartford - XL Center
10/27 - Baltimore - 1st Mariner Arena
10/29 - Charlottesville - John Paul Jones Arena
10/30 - Charlotte - Time Warner Cable Arena
11/1-3 - New Orleans - Voodoo Music + Arts Experience
11/15 - Dallas - American Airlines Arena
11/16 - Oklahoma City - Chesapeake Energy Arena
11/19 - Phoenix - Jobing.com Arena
11/21 - San Diego - Viejas Arena
11/23-24 - Los Angeles - Sports Arena
11/26 - Oakland - Oracle Arena
11/29 - Portland - Rose Garden Arena
11/30 - Spokane - Spokane Arena
12/02 - Calgary - Scotiabank Saddledome
12/04 - Vancouver - Rogers Arena
12/06 - Seattle - Key Arena

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PRS Guitars Introduces S2 Series of Maryland-Made, Mid-Priced Solidbody Electric Models

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PRS Guitars has announced its new S2 Series of instruments.

The new models — the S2 Mira, S2 Starla and S2 Custom 24 — offer the fit, feel, and attention to detail of PRS craftsmanship in a fresh, straightforward design.

Meaning “Stevensville 2,” the S2 Series is named for a second manufacturing line created inside the PRS Stevensville, Maryland, shop that blends new manufacturing techniques with practiced quality control and workmanship to create instruments at a new price point for players. The S2 Series will be in stores in early August and will be made up of the S2 Mira ($1,179), the S2 Starla ($1,249) and the S2 Custom 24 ($1,399).

“We are extraordinarily excited about the S2 Series. This has been a textbook example of how a very dedicated team can come together to create not only a fantastic series of guitars, but a state of the art production line to build them on. We look forward to offering this new series of guitars to an expanded artist and customer base while giving our current customers more options,” said Jack Higginbotham, President, PRS Guitars.

A diverse group of artists, from indie to rock to punk, have road tested these guitars and found them to embody everything they require in an instrument. S2 Artists include Thomas Fekete from Surfer Blood, Steve Stout from Blondfire, Dave Knudson from Minus the Bear, JJ Grey from MOFRO, Isaac Ellsworth from MoneyPenny, Jesse Lawson from Sleeping with Sirens and more.

“This guitar has already changed the way I play. The sounds you can get out of it are incredible. Right out of the box at the house the Starla's were a blast. Even without an amp they're really loud and very easy to play! Probably one of the greatest things about these guitars is that they refuse to go out of tune which is HUGE. Staying in tune is such a big deal for me and having total confidence in a guitar is like having total confidence in the people you play with onstage. I can't say enough about these guitars!” - JJ Grey on his S2 Starla.

This significant investment from PRS is the continuation of a long-term plan to diversify the company and its offerings both vertically and horizontally and to supply more artists and players with tools to create music. With their retro-inspired vibe, hallmark PRS quality, and popular pricetag, the S2 Series is perhaps the strongest example of this yet from PRS.

To explore the S2 Series from PRS Guitars, visit prsguitars.com/s2series.

Learn Hybrid Picking, Bending, Open-String Licks and More with 'Red Hot Country Guitar' Book/CD

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Red Hot Country Guitar is the complete guide to playing lead guitar in the styles of Pete Anderson, Ray Flacke, Danny Gatton, Albert Lee, Brent Mason and more!

This book-and-CD pack will take your country guitar playing to the next level with loads of red-hot licks, techniques, solos, theory and more!

You'll learn: hybrid picking, single-note soloing, open chord licks, double stops, bending, open-string licks, licks in the style of the masters, CAGED system, chord and scale diagrams, and more.

This 88-page book is available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $17.95.

Synth City: 10 Classic Guitar Synth Songs

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Here's an ode to a piece of gadgetry rarely heralded on GuitarWorld.com, something that has brought a whole new world of sounds to guitarists' fingertips: the guitar synthesizer, aka the guitar synth.

A guitar synth is a synth module whose input device is a guitar instead of a keyboard. To quote Norm Leet from Roland's UK website, "The most important part of a guitar synth system is the divided — or hexaphonic — pickup, which allows each string to be treated individually and for the attached synth to be able to detect finger vibrato and string bending."

At first these systems were farily sizable, taking up so much space that they had to be housed in specially designed guitars that were part of the entire synth system. Today's synth systems, however, are tiny things that can fit into pretty much any guitar.

Modern systems send the pitch information as MIDI to allow you to control external modules or keyboards. This also means that pitch information can be recorded by a MIDI sequencer.

Countless artists have dipped their toes into the world of guitar synths -- everyone from Eric Clapton to Steve Hackett to Eric Johnson and Jeff Loomis — and some players made it a massive part of their sound, including Pat Metheny, Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew. Carlos Alomar even recorded an entire album for synth guitar — 1990's Dream Generator.

Here are 10 classic songs that feature guitar synths. They demonstrate at least some of the many dreamy, bizarre sounds (or "soundscapes," as some people like to say in this context), these devices can create.

10. "Stranger In a Strange Land," Iron Maiden, Somewhere in Time, 1986

After completing a masterful trilogy of albums with 1984's Powerslave, Iron Maiden took a turn for the progressive, unleashing a barrage of synth guitars on their listeners with with sixth studio album, Somewhere in Time.

Easing their fans into the idea, the album's first single, "Wasted Years," was the only track on the album to feature no synthesizers at all. Its follow-up, "Stranger in a Strange Land"— the tale of an Arctic explorer frozen and lost in time — featured Adrian Smith and Dave Murray's guitars processed through synth effects, giving their dual guitar attack a distinctive larger-than-life chorus sound.


09. "Never Make You Cry," Eric Clapton, Behind the Sun, 1985

By the mid-'80s, the guitar synth was officially a bandwagon, and even ol' Slowhand himself, Eric Clapton, hopped on — if only briefly.

Clapton used a Roland guitar synth to record "Never Make You Cry" from his successful 1985 album, Behind the Sun, which was co-produced by Phil Collins of Genesis (a major guitar synth band, especially during the Duke tour).

It's only fitting that Clapton experimented with cutting-edge technology on Behind the Sun, the album that kicked off a period of slick commercial releases by the venerable guitarist, including 1986's August and 1989's Journeyman.

Before its release, he had been coasting along on a series of rootsy, laidback, Band- and J.J. Cale-inspired albums, from 1974's 461 Ocean Boulevard to 1983's Money and Cigarettes.


08. "Are You Going With Me?," Pat Metheny, Offramp, 1982

Over the decades, guitarist Pat Matheny has become closely associated with Roland guitar synths — especially the GR-300. But it all started with his 1982 album, Offramp, which featured his first documented use of the Roland GR-300.

The album features the samba-based "Are You Going With Me?," which has since become a trademark Metheny song. Its lengthy, trancelike guitar solo is played on the Roland. Check it out below.

Metheny still uses his GR-300, which has since been discontinued by the company.


07. "Who's to Blame," Jimmy Page, Death Wish II, 1982

In 1981, former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page was asked to compose and record the Death Wish II soundtrack by his neighbor, director Michael Winner. 

It was just what Page needed — an opportunity to start creating music again, now that John Bonham (and with him, Led Zeppelin) was gone.

Page mirrored the film's moodiness and edginess with a slew of new devices, including the Roland GR-505 guitar synth and TR-808 Rhythm Composer. The guitar synth can be heard on the entire soundtrack album, which was re-released on JimmyPage.com late last year in a "heavyweight vinyl package." Only 1,000 copies were made.

Page continued experimenting with guitar synths and even appeared in several Roland print advertisements in the early to mid-'80s.


06. "Venus Isle," Eric Johnson, Venus Isle, 1996

Texas guitar great Eric Johnson started dabbling with guitar synths in the late '80s, but he didn't seriously record with them until his 1996 album, Venus Isle, an album full of what he calls "extra textures." 

Johnson uses a Roland guitar synth to create those textures on several tracks, including "Mountain,""Battle We Have Won,""When the Sun Meets the Sky" and the title track, which you can check out below.


05. "Discipline," King Crimson, Discipline, 1981

If you were putting together a dream team of guitar synthists, you'd probably want King Crimson's Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew batting third and fourth in your lineup.

The guitarists were among the most proficient guitar synth users of their generation, and Fripp continues to push the boundaries of synthetic sound with his mesmerizing Soundscapes shows.

On King Crimson's Discipline album, Fripp and Belew made great and bountiful use of the Roland GR-300. On later albums, they moved into GR-700 territory.


04. "Racing in A," Steve Hackett, Please Don't Touch, 1978

The upbeat and catchy "Racing in A" is from Steve Hackett's Please Don't Touch album from 1978.

It was the first solo album he recorded after leaving Genesis and his first album to feature his pioneering work with the Roland GR-500 guitar synth.

"Racing in A" is a five-minute-long progressive-rock masterpiece that glides along for more than a minute with its almost-Yes-like rhythm before the vocals kick in (But Hackett keeps the spotlight squarely on the GR-500).

As is the case with several other selections on this list, be sure to check out the entire Please Don't Touch album for more examples of Hackett's guitar synth work.

By the way, that's Hackett's photo at the top of this page (and all the pages in this story).

NOTE: We've included a cool live performance of "Racing in A," plus (for the purists), the studio version.


03. "Turbo Lover," Judas Priest, Turbo, 1986

"Turbos were all the rage, the in-thing," said Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill of the mid-1980s. "I'd even bought a vacuum cleaner because it had the word 'turbo' on it!"

Perhaps this obsession with the super-charged is what lead the boys in Priest to experiment with guitar synthesizers on their 1986 classic "Turbo Lover."

Taken from the album Turbo— easily among the most divisive albums for diehard fans — the song featured a whole new sonic palette for the band, with guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton employing guitar synths and anything else they could get their hands on to give the song its distinctive futuristic, sci-fi feel.


02. "Don't Stand So Close to Me," The Police, Zenyattà Mondatta, 1980

"Don't Stand So Close to Me," which appeared on The Police's 1980 Zenyattà Mondatta album, features Andy Summers jamming away on an early Roland synth (He had a few models during the band's heyday, including a GR-707).

"After Sting had put the vocals on 'Don't Stand So Close To Me,' we looked for something to lift the middle of the song," Summers said in 1981. "I came up with a guitar synthesizer. It was the first time we'd used it. I felt it worked really well."

"I was sort of known for [guitar synth] then, and I was in a pretty high-profile band," Summer said in a more recent interview for Roland. "I was trying to fill out two hours with a trio, trying to keep it interesting all the way. The Roland synths blended in quite well."


01. "Ashes to Ashes," David Bowie, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), 1980

It's Hammer time. Guitarist Chuck Hammer is an accomplished player and Emmy-nominated digital film composer who has recorded with Lou Reed, David Bowie and Guitarchitecture, to name just a few.

But Hammer might be best known for his textural guitar synth work on "Ashes to Ashes" from Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album. Hammer used a Roland GR-500 with an Eventide Harmonizer to get the synthetic string sound that can be heard in the video below. He actually used four multi-tracked guitar synths, each one playing opposing chord inversions. Be sure to check out the rest of album, which features a healthy dose of Hammer.

Rolling Stone put Hammer in the category of "musical pioneers" along with guys like Robert Fripp and Allan Holdsworth.

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Exclusive Guitar Play-Through Video: Legion — "He Became Death"

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Today, GuitarWorld.com presents the exclusive premiere of Legion's guitar play-through video for "He Became Death," a track off their upcoming album, Woke, which will be released July 30.

Be sure to check out the video below — and tell us what you think in the comments!

Woke is available now for pre-order at iTunes.

For more about Legion, follow them on Facebook.

Queensrÿche Premiere Music Video for “Fallout”

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Queensrÿche have posted a new music video for “Fallout,” the first single from their recently released self-titled album.

The video was filmed in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, during the annual Rock Hard Festival in May. It features footage from the band’s set, plus some behind-the-scenes clips.

Their new album, Queensrÿche, was released June 24 via Century Media. It was produced by Queensrÿche and James “Jimbo” Barton. Queensrÿche is Todd La Torre (vocals), Michael Wilton (guitars), Parker Lundgren (guitars), Eddie Jackson (bass) and Scott Rockenfield (drums).

To check out our recent interview with Lundgren, who discusses the new album and more, step right this way.

For more information, visit queensrycheofficial.com and facebook.com/QueensrycheOfficial.

Queensrÿche Track Listing:

01. X2 (instrumental)
02. Where Dreams Go to Die
03. Spore
04. In This Light
05. Redemption
06. Vindication
07. Midnight Lullaby (instrumental)
08. A World Without
09. Don't Look Back
10. Fallout
11. Open Road

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Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals Premiere Music Video for "Bedridden"

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Phil Anselmo has released a new music video for one of the tracks — "Bedridden"— from his upcoming solo album, Walk Through Exits Only. Check out the clip below.

Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals’ Walk Through Exits Only is set for release on July 16.


Take Guitar World's "Raining Blood" Transcription Challenge and Compete for a Marshall 15-Watt Mini Stack Amp!

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Last month, Guitar World launched its new monthly transcription challenge. We kicked things off with Jason Becker's "Perpetual Burn," the transcription for which appeared in our July 2013 issue.

Guitarists checked out the transcription, learned the applicable section of the song and sent us videos of themselves playing the song's "Guitar 2" part to Jeff Loomis' backing track. The winner, Joshua Kraft of California, was selected by Becker himself after we sent him videos of our three finalists. The prize? A Carvin JB200C Jason Becker Tribute Guitar.

The subject of this month's challenge is Slayer's "Raining Blood," the five-page transcription for which appears on Page 112 of the August 2013 issue of Guitar World magazine. This month, you'll be competing for a new Marshall MG Series MG15CFXMS 15W Mini Stack Carbon Fiber guitar amp (MSRP: $540).

For more about this amp, visit marshallamps.com.

Here's what's involved:

ENTER the "Raining Blood" Transcription Challenge at our CONTESTS page. NOTE: You MUST officially enter the contest at this link, and it wouldn't hurt to read the rules and restrictions! For instance, you must be at least 18 years old and a resident of the US or Canada to enter.

CHECK OUTGuitar World's transcription of Slayer's "Raining Blood" (Page 112 in the August 2013 issue), and send us a video of yourself playing the song as close to our transcription as possible. To be more exact, video yourself playing sections A, B and C starting at the beginning of the transcription and stopping just before the vocals kick in (In other words, play everything before section D). Unfortunately, we do not have a backing track for you to use this month.

UPLOAD your video to YouTube and email the video link to Guitar World at guitarchallenge@guitarworld.com.

A team of Guitar World editors will choose the winner. Good luck!

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Learn How to Play Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time

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Guitar World picked 'em, and now you can play 'em — thanks to a new book, Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.

This collection of 100 must-know guitar leads transcribed note for note! This unique book also includes insightful background and performance notes for more than 40 of the best solos.

Songs include:

• Alive
• All Along the Watchtower
• Aqualung
• Bohemian Rhapsody
• Cliffs of Dover
• Crazy Train
• Cross Road Blues (Crossroads)
• Eruption
• Get the Funk Out
• Hotel California
• Layla
• Little Red Corvette
• Money
• November Rain
• One
• Pride and Joy
• Sharp Dressed Man
• Smells like Teen Spirit
• Stairway to Heaven
• The Star-Spangled Banner
• Sultans of Swing
• Sweet Child O' Mine
• Sympathy for the Devil
• Walk This Way
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Won't Get Fooled Again
• Working Man
• You Shook Me All Night Long

... And many more!

This 320-page book is available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $29.99!

Hopefully, you're following along with Guitar World's Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time Readers Poll. All summer long, the top 64 guitar solos (from the 100 solos in the book mentioned in this story) are competing in an NCAA tournament-style shootout! Vote for TODAY'S matchup — and check out all the matchups that have taken place so far.

Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time Readers Poll: Round 1 — "Cliffs of Dover" (Eric Johnson) Vs. "Sympathy for the Devil" (Keith Richards)

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A few years ago, the editors of Guitar World magazine compiled what we feel is the ultimate guide to the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time.

The list, which has been quoted by countless artists, websites and publications around the world, starts with Richie Sambora's work on Bon Jovi's “Wanted Dead or Alive” (Number 100) and builds to a truly epic finish with Jimmy Page's solo on "Stairway to Heaven" (Number 1).

To quote our "Stairway to Heaven" story that ran with the list, "If Jimmy Page is the Steven Spielberg of guitarists, then 'Stairway' is his Close Encounters."

[[ Head HERE to see today's matchup and all the matchups that have taken place so far! ]]

We've kicked off a summer blockbuster of our own — a no-holds-barred six-string shootout. We're pitting Guitar World's top 64 guitar solos against each other in an NCAA-style, 64-team single-elimination tournament. Every day, we will ask you to cast your vote in a different guitar-solo matchup as dictated by the 64-team-style bracket.

You can vote only once per matchup. The voting for each matchup ends as soon as the next matchup is posted (Basically, that's one poll per day during the first round of elimination, including weekends and holidays).

In some cases, genre will clash against genre; a thrash solo might compete against a Southern rock solo, for instance. But let's get real: They're all guitar solos, played on guitars, by guitarists, most of them in some subset of the umbrella genre of rock. When choosing, it might have to come down to, "Which solo is more original and creative? Which is more iconic? or Which one kicks a larger, more impressive assemblage of asses?"

Yesterday's Results

Winner:"Comfortably Numb" (76.44 percent)
Loser:"Master of Puppets" (23.56 percent)


Today's Round 1 Matchup (Day 31):
"Cliffs of Dover" Vs. "Sympathy for the Devil"

Round 1 is almost over! To celebrate, we present you with a simple case of shred mastery vs. gnarly, bendy, blues-fueled genius. We give you Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover" (17) vs. the Rolling Stones'"Sympathy for the Devil" (48), which features a solo by Keith Richards. Get busy! You'll find the poll at the very bottom of the story.

17. “Cliffs of Dover”
Soloist: Eric Johnson
Album: Ah Via Musicom (Capitol, 1990)

“I don’t even know if I can take credit for writing ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ ” says Eric Johnson of his best-known composition. “It was just there for me one day. There are songs I have spent months writing, and I literally wrote this one in five minutes. The melody was there in one minute and the other parts came together in another four. I think a lot of the stuff just comes through us like that. It’s kind of a gift from a higher place that all of us are eligible for. We just have to listen for it and be available to receive it.”

While it is true that he wrote the song in a blessed instant, the fact is that Johnson, a notoriously slow worker, took his time polishing it up to form. “It took me a while to achieve the facility to play it right,” he says. “I was trying to work out the fingerings and how I wanted particular notes to hang over other notes.”

Even allowing for Johnson’s perfectionism, it took an extraordinarily long time for him to record a song that “came to him” in five minutes. That epiphany occurred in 1982, and within two years “Cliffs of Dover” was a popular staple of his live shows. He planned to include the song on his solo debut, Tones (Capitol, 1986), but, ironically, it didn’t make the cut. “It was ousted by the people who were doing the record with me,” Johnson explains. “I think they thought the melody was too straight or something.”

Luckily, wiser heads prevailed on Ah Via Musicom. Though he had been playing “Cliffs of Dover” live for four or five years by then, it still took Johnson multiple takes to nail the song to his satisfaction—and he was never pleased with any version. “The whole solo is actually a composite of many guitar parts,” Johnson says. “I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound—almost regal—and though I had versions that were close, none quite nailed it, so I kept playing around with different permutations of the many versions I had recorded until I got it just right.

“As a result, I actually ended up using two different-sounding guitars. Almost all of the song is a Gibson 335 through a Marshall, with an Echoplex and a tube driver. But in the middle of the solo there’s 20 or 30 seconds played on a Strat. It really does sound different if you listen closely and at first I didn’t think it could work, but I really liked this string of licks so we just decided to keep it. It basically sounds like I’m hitting a preamp box or switching amps.

“The difficulty on that song was to make the sound as clear as the melody is. It’s just a simple little repeating melody, and for the song to work it had to be very up-front and crisp. Unfortunately, the G third on the guitar has a real tendency to waver and not be a smooth, clear note. As a result, I had to finger it just right—like a classical guitarist, using only the very tips of my fingers to achieve the best efficiency of my tonality. That’s what took me so long: to be able to play all the fast licks with just the tips of my fingers, with just the right touch and tonality. Without a doubt, the most important thing is the song and melody, which in this case came very easily. But I like to do the best job I can of delivering it to the listener by the best possible way I can play it—and that came hard.”



48. "Sympathy for the Devil"
Soloist: Keith Richards
Album: The Rolling Stones—Beggar’s Banquet (Abkco, 1968)

Writer Stanley Booth once suggested to Keith Richards that “Sympathy for the Devil” was cut from the same cloth as bluesman Robert Johnson’s haunting “Me and the Devil Blues.” “Yeah,” Richards replied. “All of us pursued by the same demon.” But while “Sympathy’s” lyrics reflect the Stones’ attraction to the dark side and allegiance to Johnson, the music is a prime example of how in a real band, composition is a group effort.

“It started as sort of a folk song with acoustics and ended up as kind of a mad samba, with me playing bass and overdubbing the guitar later,” says Richards.

“That’s why I don’t like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned beforehand. Because you can write the songs, but you’ve got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different. You can write down the notes being played, but you can’t put down the X factor—so important in rock and roll—which is the feel.”

[[ When you're done voting, start learning every guitar solo in this poll — and more! Check out a new TAB book from Guitar World and Hal Leonard: 'The 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of All Time: A Treasure Trove of Guitar Leads Transcribed Note-for-Note, Plus Song Notes for More Than 40 of the Best Solos.' It's available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $29.99. ]]

Cast Your Vote!

Head HERE to see today's matchup and all the matchups that have taken place so far!

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Korn to Release New Album, 'The Paradigm Shift,' October 1

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Korn will release their 11th studio album, The Paradigm Shift, October 1 via Prospect Park.

The album marks the return of co-founding guitarist Brian "Head" Welch. It will be his first album with Korn since 2003's Take a Look in the Mirror. The album also is the followup to 2011's dubstep/metal hybrid, The Path of Totality, which was named Revolver's "Album of the Year."

The album's title has special significance for the members of Korn.

"It's a term encompassing different perspectives," says guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer. "You can view a piece of art from one angle and it takes on a certain image. If you look from another angle, it's a completely different image. We liken that to Korn in 2013. With Head back in the fold, all of the elements fans have loved since day one are there, but we're interpreting them from a new perspective. It's a bigger, brighter and bolder Korn."

The Paradigm Shift represents the first time Korn have worked with producer Don Gilmore [Linkin Park’s The Hybrid Theory, etc.], who recorded the album with the band at Buck Owens' studio in their hometown (Bakersfield, California) and at Los Angeles' NRG Recording Studios.

Korn recently embarked on a reunion tour stateside, headlining the sold-out Rock on the Range festival, which drew more than 40,000 fans in Columbus, Ohio, and making stops at Rocklahoma and other events. Korn are now raging across Europe, playing main-stage spots at Download, Rock am Ring, Rock im Park and more.

For more about Korn, check out korn.com and the band's Facebook page.

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Listen: Jonny Lang Premieres New Song, “Blew Up (The House)”

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Jonny Lang, whose new album, Fight for My Soul, will be released September 17 via Concord Records, is streaming a new track from the album. Check out “Blew Up (The House)” below.

"This particular record has taken quite a long time to finish for a lot of different reasons," Lang said in a press release. "Most of all, I started a family a few years back. Between family time and being out on the road, I really had to pick my spots to fit in recording.

"This album is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. Some of these songs may surprise people, but that's what it's all about. It keeps it fresh, and it keeps me growing. Creatively, I think there is a lot more going on inside of me than I've been sharing on record so far. Much of what I've experienced through music and life in general is in these songs."

For more information, check out jonnylang.com and Lang's Facebook page.

Win Two VIP Tickets to Sunset Strip Music Festival and a Joan Jett Gibson Guitar!

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Teaser Content: 

<em>Guitar World</em> and <em>Revolver</em> magazines are giving you the chance to win an amazing prize from their partners at the Sunset Strip Music Festival, which takes place August 3 in West Hollywood.

Guitar World and Revolver magazines are giving you the chance to win an amazing prize from their partners at the Sunset Strip Music Festival, which takes place August 3 in West Hollywood.

The lineup for this year’s Sunset Strip Music Festival (SSMF) includes Awolnation, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Logic, Slick Rick/Doug E. Fresh, Asher Roth, Finch And Street Drum Corps. Check out the full lineup HERE.

Enter now below for a chance to win the following:

  • 2 VIP tickets to the Sunset Strip Music Fest
  • A Joan Jett Gibson Guitar
  • 1 year subscription to Revolver Magazine
  • 1 year subscription to Guitar World Magazine

Click HERE for more info on SSMF. Good luck!

All entries must be submitted by July 29, 2013.<p><a href="/official_contest_rules">Official Rules and Regulations</a>
Please send me the free Guitar World newsletter, with information about the Guitar World family of magazines and web sites, and musical instrument manufacturers.
Please send me more information from our partners.

Interview: Bad Company's Paul Rodgers Discusses Free Guitarist Paul Kossoff, The 40 Tour and New Material

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Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bad Company — both of whom are celebrating their 40th anniversaries in 2013 — recently teamed up for a co-headling US tour.

The 40 Tour, which kicked off June 20 in Auburn, Washington, draws to a close July 27 in Bethel, New York.

“The Skynyrds and I go back to the '70s and the days and nights at the Hyatt House on Sunset in L.A. aka the Riot House,” Rodgers said. ”In the '90s the band introduced me to my wife, Cynthia, and that’s why I am so damned happy and healthy these years.”

When we spoke to Rodgers before the tour, he was particularly thrilled to be catching up with his old friends. "It’s going to be an exceptional tour," he said. "It will be great to be back with my old bandmates playing these songs again.”

We recently caught up with Rodgers, who discussed the tour, his charities, Bad Company and much more. Check out our entire conversation below. For information on The 40 Tour, check out badcompany.com.

GUITAR WORLD: What can fans expect from Bad Company on this tour? Will there be any jams with the guys from Skynyrd?

Well, what I’m working on right now is our set list. I’m digging deeper into the songs we have available and I’m putting an exciting set together. I hope it’s exciting, anyway. We want to come out kicking! I think a set has to have light and shade and dynamics and certain elements — like a sense of intimacy at some point where the band and the audience come together. Where the crowd feels like they’re a part of what’s going on. We will put all of the elements together and hope for the best. I don’t know if we’ll be jamming with Skynyrd, though. We might have to be focusing on our individual sets. But in the past we’ve toured with other bands and they have came out and jammed with us, so who knows?

Animal-themed charities are near and dear to your heart. Why is that, and how can fans help out with some of these causes?

My wife really is the instigator of that, and I enjoy it too. She loves all animals. She will not see an animal be mistreated. We were down in Memphis, where I was recording, and there was a stray dog she rescued and found a home for.

We are very involved in the Willows Sanctuary for Animals. They take all animals in — horses, pigs, sheep, anything unwanted. They recently had a lamb that was pulled out of a flooded river. We had heard they were in desperate trouble and they were about to close down due to their government funding being cut. So we stepped in and did a concert for them and raised a bunch of funds and kept them going. What’s cool is that they’ve now been approached by a company that makes windmill turbines; in exchange for putting some turbines on their property, they will now have all the funding that they will need. Brian May also is really helping out a great deal with the charity.

People can visit willowsanimals.com if they wish to help out. They can sponsor an animal or help in a number of ways.

Your new song, “With Our Love,” is doing well on radio. Can people expect more new material like this in the near future?

That’s great that it’s doing good. I haven’t checked, actually; I’ve been in Germany. But yes, that’s an example of one of the songs I’ve been working on with a friend of mine, Perry Margouleff, who has an analog studio in New York. We’ve been writing songs together for the past couple of years. He’s been sending demos and I’ve been dealing with the lyrics.

We’ve been going back and forth, and we had that track “With Our Love” pretty much finished. So we figured we’d finish it and put it out and we made it so that all the proceeds will go to the animal causes. So that song is in the vein of where we are at with that. We’ll hopefully be releasing something next year with that.

Here are a few questions from readers. Rich asks, "How did you come across [guitarist] Paul Kossoff? How did you approach your vocal delivery and manner of phrasing when playing with Kossoff specifically?"

Wow, that’s a great question. I met Paul Kossoff for the first time when I was playing in the back of a pub room in Finsbury Park in London in 1967. It was kind of a blues thing going on, and he came up and said, “I’d like to have a jam.” So he came up and jammed with me and I just loved his playing right from the start. We had been listening to the same people — Albert King, B.B. King and a lot of Elmore James. We had a love of the great blues players and we just naturally flowed together.

There was a kind of sense of breathing naturally with the music, and it was so great. When I would sing something, he would respond with the guitar and it was just such a natural chemistry. We decided we had to put a band together right there on the spot.

Jeanne asks, "If you could compare the music industry now with the way it was 20 years ago, what would you say are the biggest changes in terms of new bands trying to break out?

I think it’s always been tough for new bands. It might be tougher now. There are just so many people making music out there. I’ve always promoted the idea that everybody needs to make music. I think the more music there is in the world, the better, but it does make it highly competitive.

Something that comes to mind is that technology has completely exploded since we kicked off in the '70s. How it is now compared to then is beyond anything we could’ve dreamed up in our wildest imaginations. It has good and bad elements. One good thing is that the communication all around the world is fantastic. It’s great that we can instantly communicate. But one of the things in the studio that I find is that the industry is using too much technology. You can get to the point where you mix the balls out of the thing by overproducing it.

Now you can actually correct everything to an insane degree. Auto-tune things, you can correct wrong beats and all that, but a lot of the slightly out-of-tune and out-of-beat stuff can really be a part of the spirit of the music. A lot of those early blues records and soul records were pretty much live. It was what it was, and they had goofs and mistakes, but it still kept its charm. We have to remember to keep the feel. It’s so important.

It’s so tempting when you’re in the studio to fix a little teeny mistake, but when I listen back now to my early records, there are all kinds of goofs, and I think, “Holy smokes, how did we let that one go?” But no one ever complained. I never heard anyone say, “You made a mistake in the second bar on the second chorus” or whatever. As long as the feel was there and the overall sound touched people and moved them, that’s what we cared about. So we have to remember that the groove and the feel are so important.

Vykki asks, "What do you do to keep your voice in amazing shape? What’s the secret?

I just keep doing it. I enjoy what I do and I just try to stay vocally in shape by doing different things all the time. For instance, I just came back from Germany and I did a 20-show tour over there with a 50-piece orchestra. They orchestrated some of my songs; stuff like “Shooting Star,"“Wishing Well" and “Feel Like Makin’ Love." It was very challenging and very interesting. So I do different things. I also went to Memphis and sang soul music recently — and, like, with Queen. Queen was very different; it keeps me fresh, excited and challenged. That’s a big part of it.

You’ve played with everyone, including Jeff Beck, Brian May, Jimmy Page, and more. Is there a particular guitarist you truly enjoyed working with? Someone with whom you feel you made your best work?

I enjoyed playing with Joe Bonamassa in New York. We did that for a DVD last year. He’s fantastic, a real blues guy.

I must say, though, that I’ve enjoyed working with everybody. Everybody’s been great, but I really loved being in Memphis recently playing with Al Green's band at the Royal studio. The studio hasn’t changed since the '60s. It’s still dusty around the edges and it’s still funky and has a really great sound. It’s almost like as the evening wears on, the place seems to warm up and the spirit seems to generate.

We were just laying tracks down left and right, everything from Sam & Dave tracks to Otis Redding tracks, the Temptations, etc. We focused on Stax records material, and I was in heaven. It was paradise because with these guys, you could snap your fingers and they could just play anything you could name and play it amazingly with the brass and everything! It felt great, like I was standing in Otis Redding’s shoes. So that is my current favorite thing [laughs].

What new artists out there, if any, would you really love to work with?

Adele. I love her. I think she has just got it going on. There’s a real great feel to what she does. I loved Amy Winehouse, too, I must say. I think as an artist and a singer she was awesome, absolutely fantastic. That’s what inspires me, is that there are people who can still really turn it up and make music that gets to you. Makes you stop in your tracks and say, “Wow." Makes you feel it.

Back in the day, did you have any idea Bad Company would have the impact they've had?

We did — and we didn’t. When we first started out, it was very organic. When we did the first album, we were just a bunch of guys writing songs and playing music we loved. We wanted to record it and get out and play. We were very fortunate that Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin took an interest in us. They got behind us and gave it to the world and everybody heard it.

We were pretty knocked out with the reaction we got, and it was the fact that it was very easy to identify with. We identified with it, it was real simple and we played it from the heart. I think people were receiving it in the heart too because our intentions were so clear.

After we did the first album, it was like, “Wow, what did we do again?" And then we tried to write the songs to live up to that to some extent, and I think we did. We came up with “Feel Like Makin’ Love,"“Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy,” and now we were established in a way. Now we had to deliver, so it was a different way of looking at it. “Simple Man” was a really cool song too. We were always very much true to ourselves in terms of the music. That was very key to the character of Bad Company.

Dave T. asks, "Who influenced you? Who are your favorite singers?"

I have so many! Otis Redding comes straight to mind, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Sam Moore, Sam & Dave, Aretha Franklin, Elmore James, B.B. King, Albert King, Wilson Pickett, Muddy Waters and so many blues and soul singers. Rod Stewart and Elton John are also great. I could go on and on.

The Live in Glasgow DVD looks incredible. What do you remember from that show; anything new or special?

It was a great tour throughout. We played in Newcastle the night before and it was absolutely wonderful. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. I wanted to take that show home and put it on the mantelpiece, it was so great. So was the Glasgow show. The vibe, the fans and the energy were incredible. And then I played in Chichester for the Willows Animal Sanctuary, and I played only Free songs. Free was very beloved in England, so it was very special also.

I heard you once worked with Paul McCartney. Is that true?

Not exactly. I’ve yet to meet Sir Paul, but I did do a song that they wanted to record, and it’s in the can. I did “Let Me Roll It." They called me up and asked, “Would you like to sing on this?” and I said, “Sure." I always liked that song, so I recorded it in Los Angeles. d I’m waiting to hear what’s happening with that, so we’ll see.

You’re considered one of the all-time best singers by guys like Eric Clapton, Ozzy Osbourne, Brian May, Paul Stanley, Sam Moore and more. What would you like to be remembered for?

For my music, I guess. For me it’s always been about the music. I’m not really a showbiz type of guy. Show is not really the thing for me. I admire people that it is part of their thing, but for me it’s all about the music. For me, the show is secondary. The connection you make with the audience is everything.

Dave Reffett is a Berklee College of Music graduate and has worked with some of the best players in rock and metal. He is an instructor at (and the head of) the Hard Rock and Heavy Metal department at The Real School of Music in the metro Boston area. He also is a master clinician and a highly-in-demand private guitar teacher. He teaches lessons in person and worldwide via Skype. As an artist and performer, he is working on some soon-to-be revealed high-profile projects with A-list players in rock and metal. In 2009, he formed the musical project Shredding The Envelope and released the critically acclaimed album The Call Of The Flames. Dave also is an official artist endorsee for companies like Seymour Duncan, Gibson, Eminence and Esoterik Guitars, which in 2011 released a Dave Reffett signature model guitar, the DR-1. Dave has worked in the past at Sanctuary Records and Virgin Records, where he promoting acts like The Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson, Korn and Meat Loaf.


Guitar Strength: Rip Up the Fretboard with Three-Note-Per-String Pentatonics

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As a guitar players' tastes and abilities evolve, and they begin to gravitate toward an appreciation for and desire to learn more technically demanding music, the pentatonic scale often gets a bad rap.

It's often considered cliché and not as impressive as three-note-per string (3NPS) diatonic scales.

But if you love loud, distorted guitar, somewhere early on in your development as a player you were turned on to the minor pentatonic “box” shape, like the Am pentatonic in Example 1a, and its adjacent shape, the C major (A minor’s relative major) “box” in Example 1b.

Mindful of the redundant notes shared between the shapes, Example 1c combines the two boxes into one 3NPS scale.

GW 3nps PentEx1ab.jpg

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Unfortunately, while this 3NPS fingering immediately opens up a myriad of technical possibilities for re-harmonizing any already perfected diatonic run, there can sometimes be a problem with repeated “double” notes as you cross from string to string.

Example 2 shows how this problem can be an asset by utilizing a fairly popular 3NPS pattern with the new pentatonic fingering.

As a coincidence of the pattern’s contour, the lick emphasizes the repeated notes on adjacent strings (three times in a row in beats 1 and 3, and 2x in beats 2 and 4 of each measure). Play it hard, tight and rhythmic, and manipulate the dynamic differences between the picked notes and the palm-muted legato hammers and you’ll see the possibilities!

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Example 3 combines tapping and legato and avoids any doubling/repeated notes while creating a cool melodic sextuplet pattern of “down 5, up 1, restart one higher." Be sure to note the “hammer-on-from-nowhere” that begins the latter third of each sextuplet and the subsequent hammer-on to the next higher note in the scale.

Start slow and hit/pull every note hard and in rhythm until you get the feel for the tapped “launch” of each sextuplet. I expect you’ll immediately see how this same pattern can be re-purposed with notes from diatonic 3NPS scales. I recommend experimenting with combinations of this and the same pattern using the related 3NPS diatonic scales.

Explore different string crossings/directions, string skipping, etc., while alternating and mixing different permutations of the basic lick.

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Emphasizing the "pentatonic-ness" of the fingering, Example 4a is an extremely-easy-to-execute picking pattern that climbs the neck through the remaining positions of the scale and demonstrates the visceral power of these combined fingerings when they’re torn through appropriately.

Example 4b is a variation on the same pattern with an intelligently applied legato phrasing in the second half of each beat (Rip into the upstroke that launches the pulls).

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As always, I encourage you to use these examples as an inspiration to explore the possibilities of this concept all over the fretboard, in other keys and with your own variations.

Happy shredding!

Scott Marano has dedicated his life to the study of the guitar, honing his chops at the Berklee College of Music under the tutelage of Jon Finn and Joe Stump and working as an accomplished guitarist, performer, songwriter and in-demand instructor. In 2007, Scott developed the Guitar Strength program to inspire and provide accelerated education to guitarists of all ages and in all styles through state-of-the-art private guitar lessons in his home state of Rhode Island and globally via Skype. Learn more at GuitarStrength.com.

Video: Rarely Seen Nirvana 'In Utero' Teaser Unearthed

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An obscure and frankly slightly disturbing promotional TV teaser for Nirvana's third album, In Utero, has surfaced online. Be sure to check it out below.

The rarely seen 1993 clip features Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl being coached by Bob "Bobcat" Goldthwait at ... well ... just watch it!

The "September 2013" tag at the video's end refers to the upcoming 20th-anniversary deluxe reissue of In Utero. Stay tuned for more info!

Additional Content

High Strung: The 25 All-Time Weirdest Guitarists

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Once upon a time, the mere act of strapping on an electric guitar and cranking up an amplifier marked one as an outsider, a rebellious badass who refused to live by the laws of a "decent" society.

But today's cookie-cutter rockers and forgettable pop janglers make studying for the priesthood seem like an edgier pursuit than playing guitar in a band.

Guitar World thought it might be instructive to salute some genuine rock weirdos — 25 individuals whose unique personalities and/or playing styles have been dictated not by popular trends, market research firms or knit-capped A&R guys, but by an all-consuming need to express themselves to the fullest.

Some have crashed and burned, especially when LSD was involved, and you probably wouldn't want to invite most them to dinner. But they're all colorful characters whose flying freak flags have contributed much to rock's rich tapestry.

Syd Barrett

Numerous books have been written about the late Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original leader and rock's first serious acid casualty. His madcap antics range from the amusing (fixing Pat Boone with a murderous stare during an interview on Boone's TV show; styling his hair with Brylcreem and crushed Mandrax tablets) to the psychotic (locking a girlfriend in a bedroom for days with nothing to eat but crackers).

An incredibly inventive guitarist who combined an unorthodox slide technique with various echo units to create a truly "interstellar" sound, Syd unfortunately became synonymous with "losing one's shit entirely."


Hasil Adkins

The wildest one-man band in the history of recorded music, the late Hasil Adkins cranked out warped rockabilly paeans to sex, dancing and decapitation for many decades.

A manic-depressive lover man whose diet consisted entirely of meat, nicotine and endless cups of coffee, the Haze liked to scare visitors to his rural Appalachian abode with his collection of mannequin heads, and had been known to send unsolicited copies of his new records to the White House.

True connoisseurs of weirdness (including the Cramps, who covered Hasil's "She Said") worshiped his every primal clang and growl.


Buckethead

This reclusive, robotic guitarist (whose personal brand of shred encompasses the most out-there elements of art rock, heavy metal, hip-hop and free jazz) is never seen in public without a white mask on his face or a fried-chicken bucket on his head.

According to legend, the latter helps him harness the spirits of all slain and martyred chickens, without which he is powerless.

Buckethead has visited Disneyland hundreds of times (He even claims to have jammed with Haunted Mansion house band) and dreams of building his own surreal theme park, Bucketheadland. For more on that, head here.


Roky Erickson

Guitarist and founding member of the world's first psychedelic band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Erickson has claimed at times to be from Mars, and his songs are filled with convincing references to aliens, demons and reincarnation.

Busted for pot in 1969, he tried to beat the rap by pleading insanity. Although his habit of tripping four to five times a day might have already qualified Erickson for the nuthouse, the ensuing three-year incarceration (complete with Thorazine and shock treatments) in Texas' Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane certainly didn't help.

Roky recorded prolifically in the Seventies and Eighties, but he currently spends most of his time at home.


Roy Wood

The very definition of "weird beard," Wood has always cut a uniquely hirsute figure in the world of English rock. A worrying number of his songs for Sixties psych-pop legends the Move dealt with paranoia, insanity and mental anguish and allegedly resulted from the band's manager instructing Wood to "write about what you know."

An inventive guitarist capable of everything from shuddering power chords to delicate classical filigrees, Wood spent much of the Seventies cranking out Phil Spector-meets-Sha-Na-Na Fifties pastiches with Wizzard, doubtless scarring countless impressionable youngsters for life with his hideous glam-clown makeup.


Ace Frehley

Like the man himself, former Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley's playing remains maddeningly unpredictable — to this day, he can sound like a teenager who's just picked up his first electric — but he always injected Kiss with a jolt of electricity.

Ace's coked-out 1978 self-titled solo LP perfectly encapsulates his "life is one big joke" philosophy, but it's also one of the great bonehead rock albums of all time, right up there with the first Ramones record and Foghat Live.


Glenn Ross Campbell

The visionary behind Sixties garage-psych ravers the Misunderstood, Campbell could barely play a chord on a six-string guitar. But armed with a pedal steel and a fuzz box, he produced a mind-blowing squall that sounded like the missing link between Jeff Beck's work with the Yardbirds and Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced.

Inspired by his spiritually oriented mother, Campbell and his band toyed with the vibrational effects of feedback and light, sending unsuspecting audiences in to a communal trance with the sensory overload of their powerful performances. Sadly the Vietnam War draft destroyed the band after it had waxed only a handful of tracks.


Zal Cleminson

A visual cross between the Joker of Batman fame and Ronald McDonald, Cleminson was the musical lynchpin of Scottish glam terrorists the Sensation Alex Harvey Band.

Cleminson's contorted, grease-painted mug, green Lurex body stocking and synchronized dance moves invariably provoked an avalanche of catcalls and projectiles from audiences who didn't appreciate the SAHB's theatrical bent — ditto the band's "talent show" routine, wherein Cleminson recited Shakespeare while tap-dancing.

But his deft fretwork and monstrously fat sound endeared him to mid-Seventies rock fans with a taste for something beyond the usual arena fodder.


Dave Davies

Slashing his speakers to create that distorted "You Really Got Me" sound, Davies has clearly been thinking outside the box from the early Kinks days onward.

In the late Seventies, Davies became deeply interested in telepathy and mental visualization, and claims to have used these concepts to energize or heal concert audiences many times since then. In 1982, he was telepathically contacted by "five distinct intelligences" from another dimension, who significantly enhanced his consciousness and taught him the principles of "etheric magnetism."

Davies loves to scan the skies for UFOs, and extraterrestrial elements abound on Purusha and the Spiritual Planet, the techno/dance/New Age record he recorded in 1998 with is son Russell.


Euronymous

The mustachioed fret-mangler for Mayhem, Norway's original black metal band, Euronymous spent most of his downtime concocting explosive potions in his home laboratory, or presiding over pagan rituals and orgies in the basement of Hell, his Oslo record store.

When Mayhem's lead singer blew his own brains out with a shotgun, the guitarist harvested the scattered grey matter from the suicide scene, then gleefully ate it in a stew of ham, vegetables and paprika. The accumulated bad karma finally caught up with Euronymous in 1993, when he was stabbed to death by Count Grishnackh of rival black metal purveyors Burzum.


Link Wray

An intimidating enigma in dark shades, greasy pompadour and a black leather jacket, Link waxed guitar instrumentals so pungently crude, one of 'em (the 1958 hit "Rumble") was even banned on numerous radio station for being "too suggestive."

After losing a lung in his twenties to tuberculosis, Link let his cheap-ass guitars do most of the talking — or swearing, as the case may be. In the Fifties, he freaked out more than a few studio engineers with his primitive fuzz tone, achieved by punching holes in the speaker of his Premier amplifier.


Peter Green

The tastiest guitarist to emerge from the British blues boom of the Sixties, Peter Green was also the most troubled.

Originally a brash and arrogant player, the Fleetwood Mac founder decimated his ego with numerous LSD binges and became deeply uncomfortable with is modicum of fame and fortune. He gave most of his money and belonging away to charity — and unsuccessfully tried to convince his bandmates to do the same — and took to wearing flowing robes and crucifixes.

Green left the band in 1970 and was later institutionalized, where his schizophrenia was only worsened by repeated shock treatments. Although he still records and performs, the psychic scars from his ordeal remain.


Paul Leary

Ever the straight man to Gibby Haynes' psychotic jester, Leary gave up his stockbroker ambitions to wreak sonic vengeance on the world as the Butthole Surfers' lead guitarist.

With his permanently dilated pupils and Rockettes-style leg kicks — and, for a brief period, a hot-pink "sideways Mohawk"— Leary would have been the resident freak in any other band, but he was typically overshadowed by Haynes' lysergic meltdowns and the Buttholes' collection of surgical-training films.

Still, there was no denying the potency of Leary's bad-trip guitar grind, or his propensity for smashing and setting fire to his instruments at the beginning of a show. As he explained to Guitar World in 1991, "Why wait for the end, you know?"


Bryan Gregory

No one who saw Bryan Gregory onstage with the Cramps will forget the arresting spectacle of the stick-thin guitarist coaxing scorching feedback from a polka-dot Flying V (several years before Randy Rhoads wielded one!) while wiggling his ass and flicking lit cigarettes into the crowd.

With his pockmarked skin, viciously pointy fingernails and impossibly long bleached fringe, Gregory looked like a Times Square hooker returned from the dead, thus accomplishing the impressive feat of making bandmates Lux Interior and Poison Ivy seem positively normal.

Gregory allegedly left the band to join a snake-handling cult, though the Cramps have always maintained that his exit was drug related.


Wes Borland

It's one thing to put on a mask or makeup when everybody else in your band is doing it; it's another thing entirely to dress up as a randy satyr or acid-crazed monkey when the rest of your bandmates are all backward-baseball cap-wearin' slobs.

In Limp Bizkit, Borland's individualism extended not just to bizarre getups and mind-bending guitar noise but also to his very public discomfort with the band's dumbed-down shtick. Wes also has channeled his ADD-fueled energy into considerably more twisted projects like Goatslayer, Big Dumb Face and Eat the Day.


Jeff "Skunk" Baxter

Worried about American coming under missile attack from evildoers in faraway lands? No doubt you'll sleep easier knowing Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is counseling our elected officials on missile defense. That's right - he beret-wearing former Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan guitarist currently works for the U.S. Department of Defense as an adviser to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

Baxter apparently immersed himself in defense manuals and technical weapons texts while his bandmates were out partying, and now peppers his interviews with anecdotes that begin, "When I was in Afghanistan — well, I can't tell you why I was in Afghanistan, but when I was in Afghanistan..."


Robert Quine

The unlikeliest guitar hero to emerge from the New York City punk scene, the bald, bearded and bespectacled Quine looked more like a lawyer than a lead guitarist — before joining Richard Hell & the Voidoids, he'd actually spent three years writing tax law for Prentice Hall Publishing.

But Quine's musical presence was commanding as hell, and his ability to whip off the most mind-bendingly surreal solos without breaking a sweat won him work with such notorious hard-to-please figures as John Zorn, Tom Waits and Lou Reed.

And on Reed's The Blue Mask, Quine did something no guitarist has accomplished before or since: get a killer tone out of Peavey Bandit amplifier.


Tawl Ross

A sorely underrated player in the annals of P-Funkdom, rhythm guitarist Lucius "Tawl" Ross turned on George Clinton to the high-energy sounds of fellow Detroiters and the Stooges and the MC5, and his distorted, protopunk riffs perfectly complimented Eddie Hazel's freaky leads on the first three Funkadelic albums.

Tawl's voyage on the Mothership came to an abrupt ending 1971, following a tête-à-tête he'd had with his long-dead mother while tripping on a winning combination of raw speed and at least six hits of pure LSD. Though he briefly resurfaced int he Nineties, Tawl Ross essentially remains the Syd Barrett of funk.


Skip Spence

The West Coast psychedelic scene's answer to Syd Barrett, Alexander "Skip" Spence was a free spirit who took a serious wrong turn in 1968 during the recording of Moby Grape's second album: believing a bandmate to be possessed by Satan, Skip tried to "save" him with a fire ax.

After a stint in New York City's Bellevue Hospital, he wrote and played everything on Oar, a thoroughly deranged amalgam of folk, blues and psychedelia that's since become a cult classic. Unfortunately, Oar marked his last period of prolonged semi-lucidity; doomed to battle schizophrenia and substance abuse issues, Skip was in and out of various institutions until his death from cancer in 1999.


Ricky Wilson

Everyone associates B-52's with Fred Schneider's campy bark and the bewigged antics of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, but these perennial new wave faces wouldn't have gone far without the twangy licks of Cindy's guitarist brother, Ricky.

Heavily influenced by the disparate likes of Captain Beefheart and Joni Mitchell, Ricky (who allegedly learned guitar by playing along to TV commercials) used a variety of weird-ass tunings on his old Mosrite, dispensing with the D and G strings entirely.

At a time when Dire Straits and Van Halen ruled the rock roost, Ricky's thrift shop, surf-meets-spaghetti western sound was a total revelation.


Hound Dog Taylor

Born with six fingers on each hand, Theodore Roosevelt "Hound Dog" Taylor once drunkenly tried to remove his extra digits with a razor blade. Thankfully, he was only partially successful, leaving his left hand intact to execute his wild Elmore James-in-crystal meth slide runs.

Despite his clownish stage persona, Hound Dog loved to fight with his bandmates, and even wounded HouseRockers guitarist Brewer Phillips with a handgun when one dissing session got out of hand. A devotee of $50 pawnshop guitars and busted amps, Hound Dog rarely practiced, and he never performed sober. "When I die," he sagely predicted, "they'll say, 'He couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!'"


Marc Bolan

He claimed to know only five chords, but nobody ever whipped a Les Paul with as much effete elan as the TRex main man. The bisexual elf's Freudian fixation on guitar flagellation began during his stint with mod provocateurs John's Children (wherein he routinely beat his ax with chains during live shows) and continued long after he'd morphed from acoustic folkie to high-heeled glam warrior.

Bolan's weirdo credentials were more confirmed by his impressive string of gibberish-laden hits — songs like "Metal Guru,""Hot Love" and "Telegram Sam" so brilliantly walked the line between genius and idiocy, no one is sure to this day which is which.


Jim Martin

"I'm from outer space and I'm here to kill you all," was a favorite between-song threat of the erstwhile Faith No More guitarist, and frankly it wasn't hard to believe him.

With his Furry Freak Brother beard and man — the latter gradually turning into an unsightly "reverse Mohawk," thanks to pattern baldness — his penchant for wearing several pairs of sunglasses at once and his unapologetic love for classic rock, "Big Sick Ugly Jim" always seemed the odd man out in the groundbreaking funk-metal band.

Since parting ways with FNM in 1994, the reclusive Martin as lent his searing tones to a handful of projects but his main interest seems to be growing giant pumpkins that tip the scales at well over 800 pounds.


Bobby Beausoleil

The pretty boy of the Manson Family (Charles, not Marilyn), Beausoleil was a talented musician who played rhythm guitar in Arthur Lee's Love, back when they were still known as the Grass Roots. In 1967, Beausoleil landed a gig playing guitar and sitar for the Magick Powerhouse of Oz, and 11-piece rock band formed by filmmaker Kenneth Anger to provide soundtrack to his occult film Lucifer Rising.

After a headed argument, Beausoleil stole Anger's car, camera equipment and 1,600 feet of his film — the latter of which he gave to Manson, who buried it in the desert and demanded $10,000 in ransom. While in prison, Beausoleil has built a wide array of electronic instruments, including the Syntar, a stringless, digital, touch-controlled guitar.


Angus Young

Angus is such an established member of the rock pantheon, most of us don't even flinch when AC/DC's diminutive lead axman duck-walks across the stage in full schoolboy drag, despite the fact the dude is several decades past his 16th birthday.

But how's this for a job description: not only do you sport a velvet jacket-shorts-and-cap look on a nightly basis but you do it while playing impossibly loud blues licks, punctuating each performance with a striptease and a full moon of the audience. If that isn't a weird way to make your living for nearly 30 years, we don't know what is.

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How to Buy an Acoustic Guitar: A Guide for the First-Time Buyer

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You've got the bug—you’ve decided to buy an acoustic guitar—and nothing will stop you, not even the haunted, hungry look in your children’s eyes. So you empty your bank account, raid your kids’ college fund and head down to a local house of ill repute: a music store. You’re gonna get that acoustic, practicality and your wife’s entreaties be damned.

You navigate your way through the racks of gear and gaggle of fools trying to play the solo to “Stairway to Heaven” to find the acoustic guitar room in the far reaches of the building.

As you close the glass doors, you take a deep breath and survey the room. Hundreds of acoustics of all sizes, shapes and colors hang, meat-like, from the walls and ceiling. You really want to take one of those lovelies home today, right now, but a sudden thought stays your trembling hands: I don’t have a clue what I’m looking for.

My task here is to give you that clue—to ensure that prior to entering the unfriendly confines of a big, gleaming music store you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’d like in an acoustic guitar.

The Buck Stops Where?

Unless your dying aunt has willed you the vintage six-string that’s been gathering dust and accruing value in her attic all these years, your first question must be: How much do I want to spend?

While there are respectable guitars to be had in any price range, the fact is that you do get what you pay for. And if a wily salesman convinces you that he’s got “just what you’re looking for, and it’s only a tad more expensive,” you need to be able to make an informed decision.

If you’re a beginner or just want something to bang around on in your bedroom or at the beach, you’ll still probably want to spend at least $300 for a guitar. Anything less will almost certainly get you something that not only will be very difficult to play but will sound lousy, besides.

Say you’ve got a spending ceiling of around $700. Guitars at this price range should have a solid spruce stop. Raise that to $1,200 and you’re talking about a solid- wood instrument. The word “laminate” should not appear in descriptions of guitars that cost close to or above four figures.

Guitars in the range of $1,200 and $2,500 must get you nothing less than a pro-level instrument that you will love and never outgrow. Anything above that, and you’re in highly specialized and hand-crafted territory—a danger zone because if you buy a lemon for this kind of money nothing will ever blunt that sour feeling in your stomach.

If you are particularly budget conscious, here are a couple of friendly suggestions. Don’t put your cash into expensive accessories—say, handtooled leather straps, or even more practical items like a high-end tuner. Instead, put all that money into the best guitar you can get. Remember that nobody in his right mind pays list price these days; discounts of ten to thirty (and often forty) percent are standard. Large music stores are no different from cut-rate clothing establishments and audio shops—they’ll use any holiday or other excuse to have a “Blowout Sales Event of the Century” that in truth won’t offer you much of a real savings.

Choosing Your Weapon

There is no such thing as right or wrong when it comes to choosing a guitar. Bigger does not always mean better, and the popularity of a particular guitar does not necessarily mean that it’s for you. Acoustics come in all shapes and sizes, and (this should be your mantra) what someone else finds appealing may not be right for you.

The traditional workhorse of acoustic guitars is the dreadnought, of which the Martin D-28 is the standard bearer. Powerful, versatile and extremely coollooking, this model has graced countless recordings and is the classic rock acoustic guitar. The D-28’s success over the years has spawned countless imitations, good and bad. Pick one out, give it a few good strums and then go on to something with a different look, feel and sound—a small guitar, like a Grand Concert size Taylor, a jumbo Gibson or an Ovation Adamas. Even if you can’t afford any of these instruments, playing them will give you at least an idea of the kind of guitar you’re most comfortable with.

Set Up, Man

Obviously, whatever guitar you ultimately choose must be comfortable to play. If the action is too high—the strings are too far from the fretboard— your fingers will pay a price, and it may be an indication that the neck is bowed. Look for low, even action up and down the fretboard, with the strings slightly higher at the 12th fret. Check for fret buzz by playing chords and single notes at different spots on the neck. Some pro players like their action higher for a clearer, punchier sound, but if you are a beginner or an electric player buying your first acoustic, you will probably find light strings and a low action to be more suited to your needs.

You may have heard players discuss how good or bad the “intonation” is on a particular guitar. This refers to how well a guitar is in tune up and down the neck. The easiest way to check this is to play an open D chord and then play the same D chord at the 14th fret. If the guitar sounds out of tune up there you know it’s got a problem.

Although tuning and other problems like fret buzz can often be alleviated with simple neck adjustments, they sometimes require more involved bridge work. The odds are that this is something you don’t want to get into when buying a brand new guitar. On the other hand, if you’ve really fallen in love with a particular instrument that needs a little work, have the dealer take care of the necessary repairs and then try the guitar again before finalizing your purchase.


Sound Decisions

How does one confidently access something as subjective as sound After all, a guitar whose deep bass knocks me out may strike you as being too boomy. Every guitar style—every individual guitar, really—is unique, and there are no universal guidelines for what constitutes a “good”- or “bad”- sounding guitar. Again, you are the final arbiter—it’s your money, and your ears are the only judge and jury that matter.

The best way to really hear how a guitar sounds is to have someone else strum it as you listen from a distance of a few feet. A guitar heard from this vantage point will sound completely different than it does when you play it.

Lumber Party

The type, quality and combination of woods used in the construction of a guitar all help determine its tone. Entry-level models are typically made of laminated wood, which does not mature as it gets older; what you hear is what you get. Intermediate guitars, on the other hand, generally feature solid wood tops combined with laminated back and sides. And the best instruments are made of solid wood, which produce a richer and more resonant sound.

Guitar tops are most commonly made of spruce or cedar, while standard woods for the back and sides are rosewood, mahogany and maple. Synthetic materials are also used effectively by companies like Ovation and Rainsong.

Spruce - The most common choice for an acoustic guitar top. It has a very good strength-to-weight ratio that makes it possible for the top to be relatively thin yet still be strong and very resonant. Spruce tops can take whatever you dish out and will remain responsive even when played very hard. Spruce is perfect for strumming and flatpicking styles.

Cedar - You will recognize a cedar top because it has a darker color than spruce and has a slight reddish hue. Cedar responds nicely to a light attack, and is an excellent choice for fingerpicking and lowered tension tunings. Because it is softer and not as strong as spruce, cedar can be overdriven if played too hard, causing the sound to compress and lose some integrity.

Rosewood - This darkcolored wood imparts a deep warmth and complex richness to the tone of a guitar. Brazilian rosewood is the holy grail of tone woods and is much prized by luthiers and players alike. The scarcity of Brazilian, however, makes it very expensive. Indian rosewood has similar timbre qualities but is not as striking visually.

Mahogany - This is an excellent wood that falls in the middle of the tonal spectrum, imparting a bright and warm sound with sweet highs.

Maple - A maple body will produce a bright, dry tone with a very clear, well-defined high end. Quilted or tiger maple can be quite dramatic visually.

Synthetics– Although synthetic guitars will never totally replace the wooden variety, they have been around for decades and are quite popular. Ovation uses a fiberglass composite for the body and sides of its rounded body guitars, combined with a solid wood top, while Rainsong produces instruments made mostly of graphite. In general, synthetic guitars are less susceptible than wood to climatic changes and offer distinctive tonal characteristics. On the other hand, they tend not to improve with age.

Beauty Marks

Most acoustic guitars feature clear, natural finishes. Sunbursts and other colors have their unique appeal, but be aware that a heavier finish may hinder the sound. Look for a translucent finish through which you can see the wood grain.

Mother-pearl-inlays, herringbone trim, gold-plated tuners and other decorative options certainly can add to the beauty of a guitar, but they do not necessarily make it a better instrument. On the other hand, if having your name inlaid on the fretboard makes you think you sound better, it might be worth looking into.

Footnote: Some of the best-sounding acoustic guitars I’ve ever played were also the ugliest.

Shop Talk

There are advantages to buying at a large national chain or regional music store. On the one hand, they usually carry a large selection of guitars and are well stocked. On the other hand, they are less likely to carry unusual or so-called “boutique”—extremely high-end—instruments.

Specialty acoustic guitar shops offer very specific advantages, such as knowledgeable sales staffers who are more likely to spend a lot of time with you, as well as a wide selection of guitars with everything from drool-worthy boutique items to tried.

Motionless In White at Mayhem: Three Things Bands Should Never Do While on Tour

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Nothing is worse than going on a business trip and forgetting your laptop charger. Well, maybe remembering it and finding out that your cat chewed a hole through it.

That, and maybe when you realize this fact the next day when your closest Best Buy or Wal-mart is 30 miles away. Regardless, there are (few) things worse than a forgotten laptop charger, especially when it comes to musicians on tour.

In light of our leaving for the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, I thought I'd make a checklist of three important things to remind myself, and other musicians, of what NOT to do on tour. We all make mistakes; lists just happen to help avoid them.

Missing Bus Call

We get it — you want to go have fun with your new friends that only care about the fact that you’re in a band. We’ve all been there: You go to get a couple drinks. “A couple” inevitably turns into “endless,” and by the end of the night, you’re so wasted that you can’t even remember how to answer your phone, let alone remember what the “TM” means after your tour manager’s name pops up as an incoming call. So you do what any normal guy would do. You keep grinding up against some chick in silver booty shorts while some guy does the same to you from behind. Bet you didn’t realize you were at a gay bar. Neither do any of us.

I’m all for fun, and meeting new people, but the last thing a tour manager (and driver) want to deal with is a drunk idiot that can’t remember his ass from his face, and how to get back to his bus. We’re on a timed schedule, and if you’re not back, sucks for you. Worst-case scenario: trying to sleep while listening to an Orc from outer space speak in tongues on Gwar’s bus to the next show because you got left behind.

Losing Your Passport

If you’re like most Americans, your passport is one of the important documents you keep in a safe, along with your Social Security card and birth certificate. If you’re like most seniors with Alzheimer’s, most 3-year-olds or a raging alcoholic, the chances of you losing one of these aforementioned items are pretty high. In fact, if you’re a raging alcoholic you probably shouldn’t even try to go out of the country because a passport isn’t the worst thing you can lose; especially in the blue light district of Amsterdam.

If you’ve ever been overseas or out of the country and lost your passport, you know the feeling of your heart falling into your ass, because there’s no way you’re getting home without sitting in the American Embassy in Denmark for two weeks while they “get your papers together." What they don’t tell you is that they’re secretly waiting for you to crack and tell them that you have 100 grams of cocaine in a condom somewhere in your intestines, like that one girl did, except in the other hole.

Not Sleeping

All of us mess up once or twice on stage. I say “all of us” because, let’s face it: We all miss a note or come in late/early once in a while, even the most on-point professionals. Unless you’re Yngwie Malmsteen, which you aren’t, you are the only exception to this thought and are God’s gift to the guitar community.

Without sleep, however, these slight mishaps turn into entire chunks of a song butchered. Remember back in high school at the battle of the bands when you laughed at that kid who couldn’t play AC/DC’s "Back in Black" to save his life? Well, as sort of a karmic twisting of the knife, you become that kid without sleep. Your reflexes are off, your hearing is dumbed down, and your hands refuse to work together like they’re in some sort of relationship crisis and are avoiding each other until one of them apologizes.

The bottom line is that sleep is just as important for guitar players as it is for singers. Don’t be that kid at the talent show in the wolf shirt who can’t even play the tambourine on tempo.

Ricky "Horror" Olson is a guitarist and backing vocalist in Scranton, Pennsylvania's Motionless In White, who are part of this year's Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. For more about the tour, visit rockstarmayhemfest.com.

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