Construction in the cold, split guitar pinky, coyote at Aldi, and one year without Amy. Also: the Australian Open and ‘Unstoppable’ (2024).
guitar
Another Week: Number 34
More chemo treatments, Jason Isbell’s guitar collection, ‘Justified: City Primeval,’ ‘How To with John Wilson’: Season 3, ‘The Donut King’ (2020), ‘See How They Run’ (2022)
Another Week: Number 20
The robin nesting in our backyard, ‘Clarkson’s Farm,’ Season 2, ‘White House Plumbers,’ debt ceiling, ‘Jimmy O. Yang: Guess How Much?,’ ‘Air’ (2023)
Another Week: Number 19
A week of personal ordeals, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ on ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ ‘Somebody Somewhere: Season 2,’ ‘This Boy’s Life (1993)’
Another Week: Number 18
‘Stutz,’ verification in reverse, ‘Judy Blume Forever,’ ‘In Session: Stevie Ray Vaughan & Albert King.’ And do birds really eat grass seed?
Another Week: Number 13
Looney Tunes: ‘Porky’s Bear Facts,’ ‘Boston Strangler’ on Hulu, ‘Introducing Dorothy Dandridge,’ Jason Isbell in Garden & Gun and on HBO, ’The Sound and the Fury,’ by William Faulkner (Third Norton Critical Edition)
Open G guitar tuning: Keith Richards to Hawaiian Slack Key guitar
Above is a YouTube video Marty Schwartz did for Next Level Guitar demonstrating the Open G guitar tuning. Marty explains how to tune your guitar to Open G, and then shows off some of Open G's advantages. It's an easygoing, relaxed guitar lesson, and he takes his time...
Jackson Browne, ‘The Barricades of Heaven’
Above is a YouTube video of Jackson Browne performing "The Barricades of Heaven" at the Glastonbury Festival in southwest England in June of 2010. The song — originally released on Browne's 1996 album Looking East — has been my constant earworm for several days...
‘Neil Young: Heart of Gold’ (movie, 2006)
Neil Young: Heart of Gold is not Jonathan Demme's first concert documentary. He made the Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense in 1984 and Swimming to Cambodia, which captured a monologue by Spalding Gray, in 1987. As in those two previous films, Demme again imposes a...
Back Door Slam: Young British band’s got the blues guitar
My brother-in-law Wayne, out there in Columbus, Ohio, is something of a music connoisseur. Wayne enjoys finding little-known talent. A couple of weeks ago, he gifted me with Mescalito, the major label debut from Ryan Bingham, a...
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’: Acoustic guitar, a capella, The Muppets
What spawned my Web wandering — and my tenacious earworm — was my friend Duwayne putting this "Bohemian Rhapsody acoustic" video on his MySpace page. It seemed harmless enough when I began to watch it yesterday morning. The guy sits down, reels off a darned skilled...
Erik Mongrain: “AirTap!”
I just stumbled across this clip on YouTube while monkeying with stuff on my Google homepage. It's Erik Mongrain, from Montreal. I've never heard of him before, but I imagine we'll be seeing more of him from now on.
Johnny Cash dollar bill guitar trick at Sun Studio
Memphis, Tennessee — A Sun Studio tour guide demonstrates how Johnny Cash used a dollar bill slipped between his guitar strings to dampen them, producing a soft, rhythmic sound instead of harmonic chords.[includeme...