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At long last, I reveal my blog’s sleazy ulterior motive: hoodwinking you into buying my crap! Bwa-ha-ha. I exaggerate. But after several years of scheming, I’ve figured out a way to bring my stompbox designs to market that will permit me to keep doing stuff I love, like writing geeky stuff for my blog and […] This photo was originally a line of 137 amps, but I had to crop it to fit this small space. Premier Guitar has just posted a new installment in my Recording Guitarist column. The topic: doubling riffs for fatter sounds. Using a single guitar part (and a great drum performance swiped from Dawn […] Few guitar pedals can rival the cult cachet of the Harmonic Percolator, a singularly ugly distortion stompbox produced in minuscule numbers in the early ’70s by Interfax, a small company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And guess what? They sound ugly too, though they’re ugly in a cool and useful way. They don’t get […] The Cro-Mag Comedy Competition polls have closed. We have a winner and two runners-up tied for second. The gold medalist is wrangle, for his touching coming-of-age tale about the day he learned there’s a reason musicians say “One two three four” before they start playing. Tied for second: Mark Spangler’s harrowing near-death experience […] 
Part of my recent trip to Europe was a scholar-led tour of Late Paleolithic cave art, starting in the Vézère river valley of France’s Dordogne and working west to northern Spain’s Cantabria region. I’m no expert on the era — just an armchair history geek with a lifelong early art fascination. I could bore you […] Hi — I’m back from an amazing vacation, which I’ll tell you about soon. But first, I wanted to make good on my threat/promise of letting you vote on the funniest musician anecdote, a contest outlined here. I couldn’t narrow it down to 10 faves, so I went with 11. (In retrospect, I probably should […] I was just in Europe, but I’m heading right back — this time on vacation. We’re going to spend a few days knocking around some fave cities, then embark on a tour of Paleolithic cave painting sites in France and Spain. Our Cro-Magnon ancestors had to contend with such hardships as poor stage […] I just recorded a solo version of one of my fave film themes: Jerry Goldsmith’s main title to the 1967 spy spoof In Like Flint. I’ve adored the melody since childhood, and I blame it for instilling the love of chromaticism that made possible my extraordinarily uncommercial career. I’d previously posted another version […] No longer ridiculously expensive. Now they’re just very expensive. I spent last week covering the Musikmesse musical instrument trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, for Premier Guitar. I had a blast, and Chris Kies and I posted details and pics of more than 70 new products. (Here’s the short list of our personal faves.) […] Howdy from Frankfurt! I’m here for the week covering Musikmesse for Premier Guitar magazine. Messe is like NAMM, only somewhat larger and way louder. With beer and sausage. And probably lots of accordions, because you can’t have beer, sausage, or music trade shows without accordions. You can check the many daily pics and notes […] |
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