Be A Star Online » documentary

Fricke’s Picks: Roy Buchanan’s Amazing Twang

BASOAdmin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:28:15 +0000

It may seem strange and unfair to describe guitarist Roy Buchanan (1939-1988) as an underachiever. An uncommon master of the Fender Telecaster, Buchanan bonded gospel, blues and country dialects in a lashing-treble lightning-speed attack, with a melodic concentration that almost sounded like wild-animal singing. But Buchanan — a legendary sideman (he played on Dale Hawkins‘ 1958 Chess single “My Babe”) and bar-band star in the Washington, D.C., area before he made his national debut in 1971 on a PBS documentary — was uneasy with fame and never embraced the role of frontman, spreading breathtaking solos across an uneven series of albums. Live: Amazing Grace (Powerhouse) is that career in miniature: snapshots of amazing twang pulled from a decade of gigs with shifting rhythm sections. It is also a blinding catalog of fire and invention — the clucking-chicken sass of 1983’s “Hot Cha,” the breathtaking sorrow of Buchanan’s instrumental prayer “The Messiah Will Come Again” on German TV in 1973, a free-form “Malaguena” from a second PBS show in 1972, an extended orgy of slash-and-curl on “Green Onions” from 1974 — that was never truly fulfilled and demands rediscovery.

Go to Source

MTV’s 2009 VMAs Pull Nine Million Viewers, Best Ratings Since ‘04

BASOAdmin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:51:33 +0000

Photo: Polk/Getty

A shade under nine million viewers tuned into this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, meaning that the VMAs’ largest television audience since 2004 tuned in to see Kanye West steal the spotlight from Taylor Swift. Of course, also helping MTV to their best ratings in years was news that Janet Jackson would star in a tribute to her brother Michael at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, while the trailer for the upcoming documentary for Jackson’s This Is It was also premiered. In addition to the 8.97 million viewers, the VMAs’ also became the Number One cable program this year for the much-desired 12-34 demographic, Variety reports.

Photos: The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards’s Memorable Moments

Viewers were up six percent compared to the VMAs, something that seems even more impressive when you factor in what the 2009 broadcast was up against: The opening Sunday of the NFL season, tennis’ U.S. Open and the season finale of True Blood, which probably sapped some of the audience eagerly awaiting the VMA’s debut of the New Moon trailer. By comparison, the 2006 Video Music Awards, the last time the show was staged at Radio City Music Hall, claimed only 5.76 million viewers.

Weren’t one of the nine million viewers on Sunday night? Rolling Stone has all your essential coverage over at our VMA hub, featuring photos, a live blog, Madonna’s tribute to Michael Jackson and the complete rundown on Kanyegate 2009.

Go to Source

Jack White’s “Fly Farm Blues” From “It Might Get Loud” Arrives

BASOAdmin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:18:32 +0000

Photo:
Strauss/WireImage

Jack White’s “Fly Farm Blues,” his contribution to the upcoming guitar god documentary It Might Get Loud, was released as a download at both iTunes and White’s Third Man Records music store today. As the story goes, White wrote and recorded the song in all of 10 minutes, with the It Might Get Loud film crew witnessing the song’s entire genesis and completion. While the film won’t hit New York and Los Angeles theaters until tomorrow, you can listen to the track below:

As Rolling Stone reported from the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, where the documentary debuted, It Might Get Loud features White, U2’s The Edge and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page discussing the art of being a guitar slinger, culminating in a jam session together that will undoubtedly think you’ve died and gone to “rock heaven,” as Peter Travers wrote in his glowing three-and-a-half star review of the film. One scene finds each member of the trio playing wild bottleneck slide guitar on Zeppelin’s “In My Time of Dying.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a guitar or a sitar or a keyboard or a synthesizer. We’re getting into something better than that, deeper than that,” White told Rolling Stone at the film’s premiere. “I need to feel it. I’ve gone through things where I go onstage and the sound guy at sound check comes over and he’ll hold the decibel meter and show it to me while we’re playing — and it’s 127 decibels.”

Go to Source

Les Paul, Guitar Legend, Dies at 94

BASOAdmin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:48:50 +0000

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Les Paul, one of the most revered guitarists in history and the father of the electric guitar, passed away last night, August 12th at the age of 94. Paul’s manager confirmed to Rolling Stone that cause of death was respiratory failure, and a statement from Gibson indicates Paul was suffering from severe pneumonia and died at a hospital in White Plains, New York.

Read Rolling Stone’s full Les Paul obituary here.

An inductee of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy Hall of Fame, Paul is credited as the inventor of the electric body guitar and the pioneer of recording techniques like electronic echo and multi-tracking. Paul also had a celebrated career as both a solo artist and with singer Mary Ford, his wife until 1964. In 2003, Rolling Stone named Les Paul to our list of the Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and his influence on guitar greats who followed him is undeniable. “He was one of the most stellar human beings I’ve ever known,” Slash posted on his Twitter today, referring to Paul as his “friend and mentor.” Chickenfoot guitarist Joe Satriani released a statement that reads, “Les Paul set a standard for musicianship and innovation that remains unsurpassed. He was the original guitar hero, and the kindest of souls.”

Look back at Paul’s life in photos: Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen and more stars with the father of the electric guitar.

In the early ’50s, Paul and Ford had a string of hits including Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “How High the Moon,” “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” and “Vaya Con Dios.” Paul also began experimenting with the electric guitar, building the Les Paul Recording Guitar, an instrument that allowed for “hot” pickups and “fatter” tone than the Fender on the market. Paul linked up with Gibson Guitars and his six-string became one of the guitar maker’s signatures.

Slash, Tom Morello and more guitarists remember Les Paul.

Around this time, Paul also made the first-ever eight-track recording, as well as the dual-pickup guitar, the 14-fret guitar, and various types of electronic transducers used both in guitars and recording studios. For his achievements as a technician, Paul was also inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005, joining Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.

Read Gibson’s CEO’s memories of Paul’s impact here.

Paul was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1915, a fact noted in the name of the 1980 Les Paul documentary The Wizard of Waukesha. Last November, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame honored Paul with its annual American Music Masters Concert, where Slash, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Richie Sambora and the Patti Smith Group’s Lenny Kaye paid tribute to Paul (watch footage from the event, below). Kaye told the audience, “Before Les, guitars were only amplified. Les made them truly electric.” During his acceptance speech, Paul joked, “Everybody thought I was a guitar until I played here tonight.” One thing is for certain: Les Paul is responsible for changing the way rock & roll sounds and he will be greatly missed.

Go to Source

Pink Floyd’s Gilmour Recalls Jamming to the Moon Landing

BASOAdmin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:35:13 +0000

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. If you were alive on July 20, 1969, you were likely doing one of two things: Watching astronaut Neil Armstrong’s historic giant leap for mankind, or packing for Woodstock. Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour also watched the lunar landing on July 20th, but recently wrote in The Guardian that he and his bandmates were live-soundtracking the event for the BBC. The resulting jam was called “Moonhead,” a song that has frequently popped up on Floyd bootlegs throughout the years but never officially released.

“[Pink Floyd] were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23,” Gilmour writes in the Guardian. “The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I’ve never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube.” (It is in fact on YouTube, as evidenced by the above video, provided by Gilmour’s own blog.)

“It was fantastic to be thinking that we were in there making up a piece of music, while the astronauts were standing on the moon. It doesn’t seem conceivable that that would happen on the BBC nowadays,” Gilmour says in his Guardian piece. “We didn’t make any songs out of the jam session. We did, on occasions, do music live that would be a jam session of some sort… And I’ve heard documentaries where I recognize my music. It’s very odd to be watching a documentary and to hear something that you know is yourself, but you have no recognition of when you did it or how. I’ve never forgotten Moonhead, though. After all, it’s not hard to remember exactly where I was.”

Go to Source