| Paul McCartney's first guitar on sale
For 100,000 The guitar that Paul McCartney learnt how to play his first chords on is being auctioned and is expected to fetch 100,000. The seller of the Rex acoustic guitar is McCartney's friend Ian James from his schooldays at Liverpool Institute High School for Boys. In a signed letter accompanying the item, the former Beatle writes: "The above guitar belonging to my old school pal Ian James was the first guitar I ever held. It was also the guitar on which I learnt my first chords." Ian James taught the 15-year-old McCartney the chords that would later impress John Lennon enough to let him join his band The Quarrymen. "Paul and I hung around together after school," James said. "We both had an interest in rock 'n' roll and I would show him a few chords. I remember one day he told me he'd written a song and I thought 'Blimey, that's hard'." Ian James and McCartney lost touch for 28 years, but were then reunited in 1991 at a Wings concert.
A declaration of independence from San Angelo’s blues-rock trio
Heaven, the brothers have put together an album thats just so bursting with musicianship that the lyrical cliches are excused. Blues rock, after all, is not the forum for budding Baudelaires.
As with gospel songs, the material on Sacred generally starts calm, introspective, then works itself into a fiery jam of emotion. Henry Garzas guitar-playing borders on spectacular, as he steps out of the shadows of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Carlos Santana to rock to his own tone at the end of Living My Life. Besides being a flat-out ripper, the eldest Garza displays a great sense of melody in his solos. His resurrection of the electric blues guitar hero is quite stunning.
The knock on Sacred is that it sounds too much like it was made on purpose. Hitting stores a year later than originally projected, it comes off like a record toiled on and fussed over, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Reverb | concerts in review
Doug Martsch's penetrating voice and squirrely guitar work were on shining display at his band's Monday-night Fox Theatre show, proving why he's influenced at least as many current musicians as such indie-rock icons as Lou Barlow, Bob Pollard and Steve Malkmus. The difference, of course, is that Martsch's main band is still together, and it's producing some of the best music around. Improving on its recent appearances in Colorado, Built to Spill barely stopped between songs to tune its instruments. The sold-out set, the first of a two-night stint, bristled with hipster energy as the band tore through tracks from its recent album, "You in Reverse." Martsch's voice sounded clean and strong, and his Neil Young-style guitar jams on "Goin' Against Your Mind" were part of a hypnotic jam that the band pulled off flawlessly.
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