Vintage

"The guitar is small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice."
- Andrés Segovia

"Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart."
- Andrés Segovia

[That's how I've always played, although I've since learned that if you want volume, you've got to hold your guitar away from your chest otherwise you'll dampen the vibrations of the body of the guitar. I've really noticed that now that I have a true hand-carved archtop. That baby really vibrates!]

"When I began, the guitar was enclosed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, because there were no virtuoso guitarists.
- Andrés Segovia

"I've had three wives and three guitars. I still play the guitars."
- Andrés Segovia

This has been re-posted on other artists' blogs lately, but it's so poignant I feel like I should post it to my own site as well. I found it on Keri Smith's blog.

Here's some interesting music I found. Apparently Sun Ra worked on a children's album that was cashing in on the popular TV show "Batman and Robin" in the 1960s. The album was released under the name "The Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dave," but the band is really a combination of musicians from Sun Ra's Arkestra and Al Kooper's Blues Project

To keep licensing fees to a minimum, all the songs are based on public domain compositions like Chopin's Polonaise Op. 53, the horn theme from Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony and the love theme from Romeo and Juliet.

If you're not familiar with Sun Ra, he was a great pianist and arranger and ran his own band for years, which he called the "Sun Ra Arkestra." The mis-spelling is intentional. Sun Ra used to say he was from another planet. His band, the Arkestra, used to dress up in space suits, including helmets with lights on them. He claimed that he would live forever. Then he died.

Maxim Magazine has admitted to publishing a "review" of the Black Crowes' latest album after having heard only one song. In an open letter to Maxim Magazine, manager of the Black Crowes, Pete Angelus, writes:

"In my thirty years in the music business, I have never once written a letter to any publication to discuss or oppose a "review" of my artist's work.... However, this letter was not written to address a bad "review" but rather a fabricated album review that your magazine published even though your "music critic" had not heard more than one song."

In his letter Angelus says that a fabricated review is a serious concern that may ultimately harm all artists because it calls into question the credibility of the entire review process.

A February 20th e-mail response from Maxim stated:

"On the rare occasion that we are not given music because of our lead time or unavailability of the tunes, we make an educated guess ... Of course, we always prefer to hearing [sic] the music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don't want to ignore that aren't available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It's either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former."