Columns

Hello to all and welcome to a column dissecting the day to day life of a working musician from the Portsmouth region of the UK - so if any of you are taking the plunge and 'going pro' read on! As you'll soon see it's not all glamour and partying: in fact you'll need a lot of skills that some of you might more associate with 'real' everyday jobs in order to stand a chance of making a living out of the axe...  

Happy New Year to you all, and a belated welcome to the new and improved Alloutguitar.com! Regular visitors to Alloutguitar.com will notice a whole load of changes - and all of them hopefully for the better... as ever, let us know what you think.

So what's new? Well, we've streamlined the whole magazine to make sure that it's more intuitive, user friendly and over the next few months we will be steadily introducing new levels of interactivity throughout the site.

Quite a busy time musically: this week was interesting as i played a couple of gigs with a completely new oufit, revisited a familiar old haunt and had an offer to join a great band...

Also we were hard at work at AOG Towers getting the new feature 'Elevenses' ready - so make sure you check these great interviews out - we will be publishing at least 5 as week from now on - unbeatable coverage!

One can only imagine the delight I experienced when I received an invitation to attend this special event(many thanks for this to Melissa Dragich of Joe's publicity team!). This was one of only four concerts across the east, center, west of America terminating with a special in studio in San Francisco that Joe was playing to celebrate the anniversary of this groundbreaking release. An album I am sure we can all agree, almost single-handedly saved the art form known as instrumental rock guitar.

I recently posted a bunch of Top 10's and 20's in my AllOutGuitar biog and thought, who's ever going to read these? But these sort of lists are always good for debate and generally bemuse, annoy or please others. Whether these are my favourites or what I perceive to be the best is not certain, but they have featured heavily in my own evolution. So below are my Top 20 albums and Top 20 live gigs - these are straight off the top of my head and therefore not set in stone.

The Problem With So Called ‘Supergroups’ Is That They Are Very Rarely ‘Super’! How many times over the years has there been a press release for a new ‘Supergroup’ and everyone gets all excited and over estimates the reality of the ‘new’ band. Everything is against the new Supergroup...

A bloody busy few days again...this week I have been working with the team on getting the new AOG sorted: we're getting there, but with so many new features and companies/ people involved it will be weeks before we are firing on all cylinders! Then watch out - we'll really have something! However, not all my existence is AOG - I am doing a fair amount of live playing and sessions as well as loads of teaching...so here is the first in a weekly column that will hopefully shed some light on what I actually do!

For some exceptional entertainment, check out these posts on YouTube by some guy from Finland who goes by the name of St. Sanders - they are genius! We applaud the sheer time and effort that he has put into these hugely popular clips - may he continue to amuse us cats in the know...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXbCt_1mrak

(And check out the Iron Man riff at 1:11 and all that follows - stunning work!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCzUMjCykn8

http://www.youtube.com/user/StSanders

Recently I have been downloading lots of my old music collection from vinyl and tape, onto my Apple Mac. Most of the music that ever really meant anything to me, I have already bought on CD or from itunes, but some of it I didn’t as I forgot all about it or it cost over £30 on Ebay. Some of it holds up very well and it’s been great to hear some fine music and ‘songs’ again. Indeed, the art of songwriting is the key to all contemporary music. Twiddle away to your heart’s content, but if there ain’t no song, it’s all for shit.

April 25th 2007

Arrive at Heathrow late evening and pop onto the tube. Big mistake, somewhere around Hammersmith the train gets swamped with blue clad Chelsea supporters all foul of breath.

Many of the buggars drunkenly mistake my luggage for prime seating and I quickly assert my Canadian dominance with a few quick sharp words…