In honor of the new Wolfmother album Cosmic Egg, I’m doing a cover of their song Dimension found on their self titled debut album. I actually saw Wolfmother live this weekend at Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit concert. It was an all acoustic set, which is a bit different than you’d expect from Wolfmother (the entire concert is acoustic). I’m also going to be seeing them next month at the amazing Oakland Fox Theater (if you haven’t been there, its a great venue).
As I learn my scales, chords and try to learn a some easier sounding songs that I like, I start to wonder if you either have it or you don’t when it comes to playing the guitar. Just when I think I’m starting to make some progress I head over to youtube and see a 12 year old belting out some amazing guitar. Clearly, that kid has it. Then I look at my videos and think, clearly I don’t.
As I mentioned in my lesson post last Friday, my instructor gave me Day Tripper by The Beatles as my homework. The song is pretty straight forward, nothing very difficult really. I can play all the bits and pieces, but for some reason, I had the toughest time playing the song straight through without constant screw ups. It took more takes than I’d like to admit to get what’s in the final video.
Ever since I first saw Crossroads when I was a kid, I thought the Pignose 7-100 amplifier was pretty cool and wanted one (along with a Fender Telecaster). I’m not sure why I never bought one since they aren’t exactly cost prohibitive. When I first tried to learn guitar when I was younger we didn’t have the internet (wow, I just felt really old saying that) so it wasn’t like I could go on ebay to find one. My gear selection was limited to the three guitar shops in town and none of them had the Pignose. Well here I am (many) years later and taking up the guitar again and the Pignose 7-100 popped back into my mind and I picked one up.
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I was sitting around reading the latest issue Of Guitar Aficionado and there was an article about the Gibson Sunburst Les Paul from 1958-1960. In it, they write how Eric Clapton was the first to really popularize the guitar for a lot of the 60’s British guitarists. Jimmy Page was quoted as saying “Eric was the first one to evolve the sound with the Les Paul and Marshall amps”. In the article Guitar Aficionado write about how the John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers albums shows off what Clapton was doing with the Les Paul Sunburst, in particular the song Hide Away (a Freddie King remake).
