Bombs Over Baghdad: Good Rap Meets Amazing Guitar Solo

I've been a fan of Outkast, mostly because they're great. "The Mighty O" was such a sick song and could have been a huge summer smash if "Soulja Boy" hadn't come out like two weeks afterwards. Hence my hatred for Soulja Boy.

Although I was too young to appreciate it at the time, when Bombs Over Baghdad came out on Stankonia in 2000, it was a monumental moment in history. The song is so fast and amazing, and yet it manages to add in some lighting-fast guitar work towards the end with some major wah. Those youtube SOBs wouldn't let me embed it, so here's the link. Go there. Now.

I Think Gibson Followed My Advice!

Remember when I said Marc Bolan should have his own custom-model guitar? I think we're closer than ever! This Les Paul (April 2008 Gibson-of-the-Month) allows you to mix the pickups easily by having two zebra-pickups in addition to the two regular pickups with the model that are connected by magnets. No longer are the technologically-challenged required to go to the guitar shop to get their pickups switched!

How does this relate to T. Rex? Marc Bolan usually played with a zebra pickup in the neck and a regular one on the bridge of his stripped Les Paul Black Beauty, a cool combo if there ever was one and the standard guitar of the glam rock movement.

Now all I need is to get my red vinyl pants and leopard-print shirt out of the closet, call up my makeup girls and start practicing my glam strut for the inevitable return of the Deadly Toilet Spiders!

It's 4/20

For all you hippies out there, today is 4/20, when all hippies, pot-heads and Nazis come together to smoke weed and celebrate Hitler's birthday, or whatever pot-heads and hippies celebrate these days. Go get high and listen to your Allman Brothers or your Greatful Dead or String Cheese Incident or whatever awful music you listen to when you get high, you Burning-Man loving longhairs!

Note: I'm not endorsing any ingestion of any narcotics. I'm saying that the reason these bands, among others, have such a huge following (hippies, my uncle Ted, people without jobs (all three)) is because allegedly they sound good when you're high. That's wrong. They sound bad all the time, and listening to them sober will kill slightly fewer brain cells than listening to them while stoned.

Good Thing I Stole My Phase 90

Back in my high-school days (this picture was taken during a one-time performance of my band's alter-ego band The Deadly Toilet Spiders), my friends and I had a habit of removing unwanted electronics from my schools backstage area. The argument was that it would allow the school to get rid of equipment they didn't want and let them write off the cost of a replacement on their taxes. So naturally when we won a battle of the bands (it was either us or a bunch of screamo bands), we decided to give ourselves a prize, and what could be better than a pile of old guitar pedals nobody had used in years?

Turns out that was one of the better decisions we ever made. I grabbed me a MXR Phase 90, the phaser that all others have to live up to. My particular one was made in 1979/1980 and needed a bit of fixing up at Action Music. However, it gave me lots of pretty lush phasing before it mysteriously stopped working. But once I finally get my delay pedal working, I might be able to fix this one.

Incidentally, several members of the band I used to be in are forming a new group moving in more of an acid-metal direction. If you know any clubs/friend's basements/empty fields that are friendly to this style of music and don't check IDs, let us know. Also, if you are a big record company that wants to give us lots of money or some weird indie label that wants to record us and give us underground fame, that would be useful to know as well.

DC Earth Day Festival: Rainy and Useless

I went to the Earth Day Festival this afternoon, and I think it's safe to say that it both sucked and blew. After being crammed into the metro with a bunch of obnoxious high-school brats, I basically had to stand in the rain while the atrocious O.A.R. finished their acoustic set (because playing a Bob Dylan song on a Taylor 410ce while looking like a total frat-boy choad will make girls like you).

After that, Umphrey's Mcgee came on and tried to be Phish, but without the humor or musical talent despite the fact that their lead guitarist was pretty good. After a rain delay that wouldn't have not stopped far better bands (read: Slayer, who in fact rained (possibly) fake blood on their stage while playing), I came back out only to sit through Warren Haynes being boring and playing a U2 song. After another rain delay, they canceled the whole thing before any of the bands I wanted to see (The Roots, Talib Kweli, Thievery Corporation) could play.

Combined with the patronizing attitude of the announcers, a lack of scientific facts about global warming, a failure to realize that the solution is not nearly as easy as celebrities say it is and the sheer number of people there made this Earth Day festival suck (note: I do believe that global warming will kill us all, but I also believe that most festivals like this have no real understanding of the problem and what it will take to solve it).

Also, I can't hear Ed Begley Jr. talking without thinking of when he was on the Simpsons and drove a car powered by his own sense of self-satisfaction.

I'm Totally Going As Dr. Rockzo Next Halloween

If you haven't had your fill of 80s Lycra-covered clown singers with concaine addictions, you'd better watch this. If you have coulrophobia, for God's sake don't watch this (warning: possibly NSFW).

M.I.A. is Amazing

This isn't guitar-related, but I just heard the song "paper planes" by M.I.A. and now I can't get it out of my head because it's so good/catchy. It apparently samples some song by the Clash, which is ok because I never really liked them. Enjoy or admit lameness.