News & Updates — guitar

The original hippy, the mystical eden ahbez wrote a tune called "Nature Boy" and by chance was able to hand it to Nat King Cole who turned it into a mega-hit in 1948. He looked like a hippy long before it was a thing and lived outdoors in Los Angeles. He lived under the "L" of the Hollywood sign and held a job as a piano player in a raw foods store. He was a vegetarian, straight edge and an anti-vaxer and wore a white robe. This lifestyle inspired "Nature Boy", and after the hit by Cole, ahbez became an...

In honor of the birthday of the great psych-funk guitarist Eddie Hazel, he of Funkadelic fame, here's a few assorted renditions of his signature emo-metal tune. It's astounding how many versions there are. While they are all pretty faithful, the range of different types of artists covering it is amazing. As such, I have included everyone from blues icon Buddy Guy to new age piano, famous rock stars to underground psych bands, alt-country to P-Funk related projects. You can decide for yourself which ones are worthy. This one, from the often boring French band AIR, possibly my fave cover of...

Happy birthday to the one-and-only "Maggot Brain", the funk-rock guitar god for Funkadelic, Eddie Hazel! Brooklyn-born, he grew up in Plainfield NJ, learning guitar as a kid and singing in church with future P-Funk bandmate Billy "Bass" Nelson. As teenagers the pair were working on the local Jersey scene. In '67 Nelson hooked up with the still-local group The Parliaments, led by George Clinton, for a tour, with Hazel joining soonafter. After securing drummer Tiki Fullwood from the Philadelphia scene, the group relocated to Detroit and became Parliament. Parliament's classic first album, Osmium, came out in '70 with the Funkadelic...

The King of Rockabilly, Carl Perkins came from a poor sharecropper family in Tennessee. He formed a band with his brothers and played all over the region before Carl got signed to Sun Records. His tune "Blue Suede Shoes" was his huge hit and also became a hit for his friend Elvis Presley. Perkins cut a bunch of rockabilly and country tunes for Sun and Columbia and did some touring with Chuck Berry. He cut some impromptu recordings with Presley, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis which would be released and sold as The Million Dollar Quartet. He and Cash...

McKinley Morganfield's name was awesome enough but he had to go and start being called Muddy Waters, which is like the old bluesman equivilent of a punk rock name. But that is an appropriate analogy since his loud & electrified folk-blues was the punk of its generation. Without Muddy, the path to Chicago blues, rock, metal and punk might've taken other roads. Of questionable birth year, Muddy came from the musically fertile area of Clarksdale, Mississippi. He started playing harmonica but switched to guitar after hearing Son House. Alan Lomax was the first to record him (in '41, right in...