Blog Archives

A terrific DVD of Rush’s 30th Anniversary Tour, taken from shows at the Frankfurt Festhalle. Top rate sound and video quality!

Organik is the latest release from the virtuoso jazz-rock trio NIACIN, featuring the legendary bassist Billy Sheehan, with John Novello on keyboards and Dennis Chambers on drums.

21st Century Guide To King Crimson – Volume 2 is an amazingly brilliant, flawless compilation of the last 25 years of this avant-garde wall of sound, featuring extraordinary musicians with uncanny artistic ability, known as King Crimson.

Indukti is like taking a trip around the world. It’s a rich wealth of sounds and textures flying at you from every direction. Nice and heavy with plenty of crunch. But it has so much more to offer than just that.

If you like music like good down home rock and roll with a lot of slide guitar, an air about it reminiscent of the late 60′s early 70′s and a strong female voice. Monica Yonge’s Rock On is right up your alley.

The Mother Hips apparently are in tune with the movement to recapture the 60′s. Their sound certainly resonates with the music of the decade. Red Tandy is an EP released at the request of their die-hard fans and it is the perfect appetizer for a full length LP due out sometime in 2006.

In the R&B world Jeffrey Osborne is a household name. In his 35 year career, this legendary singer/songwriter has produced hits with the 70′s R&B outfit L.T.D. and followed that with a successful solo career. On From The Soul, Osborne has recorded all of his favorite R&B numbers but there’s a twist. He has done them in the genre of smooth jazz, and it is a monster.

Ilona Knopfler describes her latest CD, Live The Life, as a tribute to my unconditional love of music. This album comes highly recommended to jazz lovers as well as those who may not listen to jazz but are looking to expand their musical horizons. After listening to Live The Life you will know that Ilona Knopfler is one with the music she sings.

Mag 9′s latest album, while as powerful as Chaos to Control, much more melodic and, on the whole, a lot better for it, showing much more maturity in both music and performance.

Opus 2, by Tom Hess’s band, HESS, is quite an achievement – technically intense guitar interplay, challenging rhythms and tempos and a lot of pure emotion. A terrific instrumental album.

Earlier this year, Neil Young played two concerts at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. The shows, mostly focusing on his upcoming album, Prairie Wind, were filmed by Jonathon Demme, director of the Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense. Karen Barry Schwarz was fortunate enough to be at these shows and we are incredibly fortunate that she wanted to share that experience with us!

A second collaboration of the venerable guitarist Kottke and Phish bassist Gordon finds the pair in fine form, This is a tribute to Caribbean music, but also a fine example of how great musicians expand a genre. A delight from start to finish.

Throughout this very jazzy album, Steve is accompanied by various musicians playing drums, percussion, vibraphone, steel pans and piano. The main focus, though, is Steve playing the stick. You even get to hear Steve and Tony Levin play together on the delightful Woodstick Suite.

Tony Iommi teams up with former Deep Purple frontman Glenn Hughes, drummer Kenny Aronoff and Bob Marlette on keyboards and bass and the result is one great hard rocking album!

Curtis Fornadley’s latest album is simply very cool jazz, with Curtis on guitar and keyboards, Rob Chismar on drums, and Dave Hill playing bass. He’s got some guest musicians, including Homer Simpson!

Inside The Music Series 1970 – 1995 If you’re not familiar with Classic Rock Productions’ Inside the Music series, it consists of a critical look at a band’s career and music. These critiques are done by people in the industry and are not endorsed by the artists themselves. Meaning there is no useless flattery going [...]

The L’il Nipper is a convenient stringing tool, a combination string cutter and pin puller. It’s small (fits in the palm of your hand) and, more important, when winding or unwinding your strings, the movement you make is up and down rather than circular so it puts less stress on your wrist.

Amazon.com Widgets Critical Energy Finally, North Americans get a glimpse of what Threshold look like and sound like live. Critical Energy was filmed following the Critical Mass tour. Their were technical problems that kept them from filming this during the tour, so the held a performance later on just for the purpose of filming the [...]

The D’Angle is a neat little guitar stand. It’s very small and can be easily carried into a gig bag. You place it on a shelf, atop of a counter, or on any stable surface and hang your guitar from it.

In the world of guitar strings, it’s often hard to come to a decision regarding which ones you want to use. Black Diamond Strings may help you with that decision!