Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Elvis Presley - May 14, 1956

Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string. In a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer. Full-cut hair tousles over his forehead, and sideburns frame his petulant, full-lipped face. His style is partly hillbilly, partly socking rock 'n' roll. His loud baritone goes raw and whining in the high notes, but down low it is rich and round. As he throws himself into one of his specialties—Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes or Long Tall Sally—his throat seems full of desperate aspirates ("Hi want you, hi need you, hi luh-huh-huh-huv yew-hew") or hiccuping glottis strokes, and his diction is poor. But his movements suggest, in a word, sex.

He is Elvis Aaron Presley, a drape-suited, tight-trousered young man of 21, and the sight and sound of him drive teenage girls wild. All through the South and West, Elvis is packing theaters, fighting off shrieking admirers, disturbing parents, puckering the brows of psychologists, and filling letters-to-the-editor columns with cries of alarm and, from adolescents, counter-cries of adulation.

Item: In Fort Worth 16-year-olds have carved his name into their forearms with clasp knives (one did it four times), and an older woman was heard to plead with him: "I've got my husband's Cadillac outside. Come with me?"

Item: In Oklahoma City he was safely whisked away in a police car after his show, but a reporter who had interviewed him was mobbed by the stage-door Jennies. "Touch him," yelled one. "Maybe he's touched Elvis!"

Item: In Amarillo, when asked if he intended to marry, Elvis answered: "Why buy a cow when you can get milk through the fence?"

Heavy Beat. The perpetrator of all this hoopla was born in Tupelo, Miss, (pop. 11,527). His parents gave him a guitar before he was twelve. "I beat on it for a year or two," he drawls. "Never did learn much about it." He learned to sing church hymns with a heavy beat, as Negro revival singers do, but gave no thought to a musical career. A couple of years ago, Presley, working as a truck driver, was seized with the urge to hear his own voice, took his guitar with him and made a recording in a public studio. "It sounded like somebody beatin' on a bucket lid," Presley recalls. "But the engineer at this studio had a recording company called Sun, and he told me I had an unusual voice, and he might call me up sometime."

When the call came, Presley was overcome by the stiffness that still bothers him when he sings without an audience. The session was about to fizzle when he started fooling around with a rock-'n-roll beat, the same heavily accented style he uses today. Records started to sell, and Elvis set out to get himself a manager. The manager booked Presley with the words, "He may not sound like a hillbilly, but he gets the same response."

It was not long before the response was even better, comparable to Johnnie Ray or Frankie Sinatra, with girls snatching Presley's shirt, belt, shoes, and RCA Victor buying out his recording contract for $35,000. Elvis now nets $7,500 a week for personal appearances, will net more than $100,000 this year; he owns three Cadillacs and a three-wheeled Messerschmitt, plus a dazzling wardrobe.

Dodgem, Too. Last week his Heartbreak Hotel was the nation's No. 1 best-selling record, and Elvis Presley himself was appearing at Las Vegas' New Frontier and getting a taste of more adult audiences. There was little screaming to be heard, but some fully grown female listeners matched the star squirm for squirm. As for Elvis, he spent some of his offstage time amusing local showgirls, but most of it amusing himself in a small amusement park, where, for hours on end, he and his cronies rode the dodgem cars, having a wonderful time.

Shania Twain not only lost husband, but also voice

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110504/en_nm/us_shaniatwain_1

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country singer Shania Twain said on Tuesday that she was so shattered by the collapse of her marriage that she feared she would never sing again.

In her first TV interview in five years, Twain told Oprah Winfrey that she became "an emotional mess" when she found out in 2008 that her best friend and her husband had fallen for each other.

"I figured mentally that I would never sing again," the five-time Grammy Award winner told Winfrey. Twain said she not only lost her husband, but her producer and co-writer when she split with in Robert John "Mutt" Lange.

"I hadn't written a song without this man in 14 years....How do I even get started?," she said in an interview won The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Twain, whose 1997 album "Come on Over" was a huge crossover hit, revealed that she also suffers from dysphonia, an ailment where the muscles squeeze the voice box.

"My fears and anxieties throughout my whole life have been slowly squeezing my voice," Twain told Winfrey. "I was losing it slowly and progressively."

Twain chronicles the demise of her 14-year marriage and her fight to get her voice back in a new book "From This Moment On" and a documentary series "Why Not?" that debuts on Sunday on Winfrey's cable TV network OWN.

She also announced on Tuesday that she would be attending the Country Music Association festival in Nashville in June -- and handed out passes to Winfrey's studio audience.

In her memoir and TV documentary, the Canadian singer recounts how she grew up poor and witnessed her step-father physically abuse her mother on a regular basis only to see them both die in a car accident, leaving Twain to raise her siblings.

Twain called her husband's betrayal "a trigger crisis," and "the straw that broke the camel's back of something that had already been building."

Eventually, Twain found solace with Frederic Thiebaud, the husband of the woman who was once her best friend. The two married on Jan 1.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant)

Metallica / Big Four Announce New York City Show

Big Four Announce New York City Show

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/Big-Four-NY-0502-2011/

Bryan Wawzenek

05.02.2011

After playing their first U.S. show as part of the Big Four in Indio, California, last week, Metallica were suggesting that there could be more American dates for the four metal titans in theworks. Now, they have lived up to their word: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax will take on New York City in September.

Metallica broke the news on their website in a posting labeled “One Show Out West Was Not Enough.” The concert will take place on September 14 at Yankee Stadium. “We can’t wait for a night in the Bronx as our second American show,” the band said in the post.

Ticket sales will go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, May 6, via Ticketmaster. Met Club members and Yankees season ticket holders will have access to a pre-sale on Wednesday.

Taking Care of Your Guitar(s)

From www.gibson.com

http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Blogs/Arlens-Basics-Blog.aspx

By Arlen Roth

As we all know, or as you may just be discovering, guitars can be a bit finicky and can change a lot with the weather, temperatures and other conditions. It’s hard to stay on top of all situations, especially when you have as many instruments such as I have, but I’m sure that if you have an acoustic as well as a solid body electric guitar, you’ve probably noticed that the acoustic may be a bit more touchy than the electric.

Many things can go wrong, and there are many signs to watch for. On an acoustic guitar, it’s very important to watch for the top starting to lift near the bridge, or even for the bridge lifting off itself. It’s actually supposed to do that before it starts lifting the top, as a safety measure! You also always must watch for any neck warpage on any kind of guitar, and this can be done simply by holding the instrument so you can look straight down the edges of the fretboard for any curvature. Most guitars have truss rods that can be cranked to help move the necks the other way, but tis must be done very carefully by a true expert, especially if the guitar is rather old.

A lot of people like to keep humidifiers in their guitar cases to help keep the guitars from drying out, and some use humidifiers actually in the room itself. It’s important though, that the room be small enough so as to be able to have an effective enough humidity change when this is done. If the guitar(s) are in a large and more cavernous room, the humidity will dissipate before it can have any real effect.

Also important is to keep your instruments out of the sun, as the heat will tend to dry them out too quickly, which can lead to cracking. The sad part about this is I feel that dry guitars sound much more open and airy than moist guitars. I guess the old adage that “a guitar sounds best just before it cracks” is sad but true!

Another thing I have really tuned into a habit is keeping my guitars all tuned down at least a half step. This relieves the tension on the neck and on the top of the guitar, especially for the acoustics, and I many cases, I don’t bother even tuning them up to concert pitch anymore! If I do need to, I will quickly re-tune for the job, and then remember to release the tuning back down to the lower one as soon as possible!

So, please always be vigilant in inspecting your guitars periodically, and when playing them so you can watch for any changes that may start to occur. Woods are very temperamental and many types are used in making guitars. These woods each have their own personalities as far as water absorption, sound consistency and other properties are concerned, and as you experience more and more guitars in your life, you’ll see what works best for you in the environment you live in! Take good care of them, and they’ll always take care of you!

How Roy Orbison and His Epiphone 12-String Made Rock ‘n’ Roll History

Ted Drozdowski

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/roy-orbison-0422-2011/

04.24.2011

A problem many exceptional guitar players have with songwriting is choosing chords that are right for the melodic and harmonic path of the appropriate vocal performances.
And then there was Roy Orbison, a master of both picking and structure with a vocal method that was the American roots music equivalent of Caruso’s — literally a voice for the ages.
Although Orbison was most often seen with a Gibson ES-335 on stage, for songwriting he often used a 12-string acoustic Epiphone Bard model. The guitar, with its lush, natural chorusing quality, was the perfect compliment to the heavy purr of his singing. And it’s the instrument that helped him create “Oh, Pretty Woman” with fellow Texas songwriter Bill Dees during a mere 40 minutes in 1963.

The Gibson Company immortalized Orbison’s acoustic with the Ltd Ed Roy Orbison Signature 12-String Acoustic. The guitar is a highly accurate reproduction of Orbison’s 1962 original. It has a solid spruce top, a solid mahogany back, a rosewood 12-string bridge and vintage tuners. For this limited edition release, the back of the guitar’s headstock includes a replica of Roy’s signature and the notation for the first measure of the “Oh, Pretty Woman” intro riff.

A little known aspect of Orbison’s history is that early in his career Sun Records’ boss Sam Phillips — who signed Orbison’s group the Teen Kings in 1956 and made the minor hit “Ooby Dooby” with them — valued him more for his picking than his songwriting, and that Orbison could tear out a rockabilly solo with plenty of fire. In fact, he played guitar on Sun’s singles for Ken Cook and others.

Orbison got his first guitar when he was only six years-old and typically composed the riffs that served as the hooks of his songs himself, including the memorable pattern that opens “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

His first significant commercial success was as a songwriter for others, penning his first big hit, “Claudette,” for the Everly Brothers. In fairness, even Orbison contended that his voice wasn’t fully developed until 1960, when he recorded “Only the Lonely.” At first, he tried pitching the tune to his friend Elvis Presley and to the Everly Brothers. Orbison believed so strongly in the song that after they turned it down he cut it himself, and it reached number two on the Billboard charts to make him a star. At that point Orbison had developed a method of singing that came from his chest and abdomen rather than his throat.

Further hits like “Crying” and “Running Scared,” the latter based on Maurice Ravel’s famous compositionBolero, cemented his reputation and forever insured that Orbison would be remembered for his voice rather than his guitar. He also developed a memorable look to compensate for his lack of movement on stage, dressing head to toe in black.

Unlike most early rock heroes, Orbison was never a slave to the backbeat. His tunes were arranged more to fit the seemingly capricious nature of his vocal lines. They are full of daring chromaticism and defy the variations of the I-IV-V structure of most tunes of the era, in soaring contrast to the works of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, for example. Orbison’s darkly beautiful song “In Dreams,” for example, eschews any verse-chorus-bridge-verse pattern to deliver instead seven distinct verses without a repeated lyric hook or chorus. “Running Scared” repeats its first verse four times before resolving with a chorus and abruptly finishing.

And his themes were often plucked from the troubled corners of romance, where love is eternally insecure, often fleeting and loaded with consequences. That gave his songs a more adult perspective than typical teenage fare, with the notable exception of the blithe “Oh, Pretty Woman.” And yet, that song is also partly a wish, with an edge of quiet desperation in the singer’s hope that the lady in the title will look his way.

Another testament to his vision is that throughout the 1960s Orbison refused to edit takes together or splice performances. He believed in the collective strength of individual performances and that editing diluted that strength. Despite the depth of his musical resolve, Orbison suffered from stage fright regardless of his ability to create silenced awe in his audiences and win such fans and friends as Bob Dylan and George Harrison, with whom he shared the spotlight in the Traveling Wilburys for a short time before his death from a heart attack in 1988.

Orbison left behind an expansive catalog, including 23 authorized solo albums, nearly 100 singles and four live discs. He appears on only the first Traveling Wilbury’s disc and died shortly after it was recorded. But Orbison’s career was once again on an upward arc even before he entered the studio with that supergroup. Director David Lynch used Orbison’s staggeringly powerful song “In Dreams” for a particularly brutal sequence in his surrealist noir revival film Blue Velvet in 1986, which introduced the Other Man in Black to a new generation of hipsters.

The Gibson Interview: Nikki Sixx

Anne Erickson

04.21.2011

Thirty years after Nikki Sixx began his career recording albums and becoming a fixture on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip with Mötley Crüe, his head is still exploding with musical ideas. Sixx’s latest showing, This is Gonna Hurt (out May 3), shows his arena rock style growing more diverse, swelled with strings, epic melodies and his always-fluid, meat-and-potatoes rock bass lines.

Of course, the past few years have proved Sixx is more than a one-talent gent. He’s a Renaissance man who hosts a nationally syndicated rock radio show (Sixx Sense), writes New York Times best-selling books (2007’sThe Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star and the just-released This Is Gonna Hurt), fronts his own hard rock band (Sixx:A.M.), and devotes countless chunks of time to photography.

In this exclusive interview with Gibson.com, Sixx talks about what makes his new book so personal, spills details on the forthcoming album and explains why he “can’t really stand on a stage” without a Thunderbird in his hand.

I read that you put together your new book, This is Gonna Hurt, with the goal to inspire people to do something they’ve never done before. Is that right?

Absolutely. I think as an artist, we all hope, on one level or another, to inspire people with our work. I was inspired by people growing up, whether it was Aerosmith or The Rolling Stones or photographers, and fashion has always been a big inspiration for me as well. In a sense, this is giving back.

This book is filled with photos you took and passages that bleed out your thoughts and experiences. Would you say this is extremely personal?

It’s very personal, but yet I think the social commentary in it doesn’t necessarily speak from my voice. It’s speaking from what I’ve found to be true in the world, which is wonderful. I think a lot of people relate to it.

Where do you get inspiration for your photography?

I’ve always loved different things in life. Whether it was different bands or even architecture, I’ve always had an eye for stuff some would deem odd and some would say is extremely beautiful. For me, that’s where I’ve always been, and the photography that has inspired me is wide – everything from wet plate style photography in the 1800s to early 1900s to beyond. With my photography, I was able to look at what I loved as an artist and start to experiment.

Your forthcoming CD, This is Gonna Hurt, is a companion to the book. How are the emotions of the book and album intertwined?

Well, the book was originally going be a coffee table book with just the art. Having a huge body of work, I was able to look at it and try to find some consistency in it, to bring it together in one collection. I started writing a passage that would accompany the photography book, and it ended up being almost 500 pages. It really turned into a breakdown on social commentary on beauty and those messages that have been downloaded into my head and my life, and I was able to find that thread. In that moment of inspiration, the guys in Sixx:A.M. could see it, too. We had that moment where we sat together as a band and talked and they were like, “Dude, I relate to this,” or “I felt like that, as well.” So we started writing music, and that started to push me more as a photographer. It really became like one in itself.

Tell me about the making of the album documentary, which is on Hulu.com.

Well, I had a documentary crew with me filming me doing my photo sessions, and that was a personal thing for me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with that, and as the band started talking, we started realizing it was a bigger piece. I interviewed the band members, the subjects I photographed, and myself for the documentary. I was able to capture someone like Amy Purdy, who is a double amputee due to Neisseria Meningitis and has gone on to do great things with her life. What was missing was that moment where they get a voice, and that’s where the documentaries come into play.

What are you most proud you were able to accomplish on the album?

I’m proud of the fact we were able to be vulnerable and honest as songwriters and true to what we said we were going to do – to raise the standard of songwriting within the band and really push ourselves musically. That’s a good feeling. That honest punk rock attitude: just doing it because you love it.

You’re a big Gibson player. What make Gibson basses special?

The attention to wood is important. With the Thunderbird, for me, I feel like I can’t stand on a stage and not have a Thunderbird in my hand. It’s like my skin. It completely fits me like a glove. The way it fits in my hand and lays in my hand, the way it leans against my body, everything about it. It’s been amazing to have a relationship with Gibson and have Gibson work with me on certain types of pickups and wiring. These are just very little things that may not mean a lot to someone else, but are very personal to me.

What was important to you when helping to design your signature Blackbird and Thunderbird IV?

One of the things important to me was to be a bit subtle with the signature series. I didn’t want to call it the Nikki Sixx bass. I wanted other bass players to want to play it. That’s why we came up with the name,Blackbird. Gibson Thunderbirds are what I’ve always played, but my signature is the Blackbird. I’ve seen a lot of guys in a lot of bands play the Blackbird, because it doesn’t scream my name all over it. I think musicians want to be individual. They love a certain instrument and want to play it, but they don’t want it to be too gaudy or too much about the other guy. They want to make it their own.

Any plans for the return of Crüe Fest this year?

Well, we’re doing a headline tour with Poison and New York Dolls that will take us through August. At that point, we’re heading towards the end of summer, and I don’t know at that point what we’re going to do or whether we’re going to tour anymore or not. So right now, no plans for Crüe Fest.

On top of writing, performing, and photography, you also host a nationally syndicated rock radio show, Sixx Sense. How do you do it all?

Radio is an opportunity to say something into a microphone, and whether you play a song or say something provocative or funny, it makes people have an emotional reaction. They feel something. They feel good. They feel bad. They feel angry. They feel disappointed. You have an opportunity to change something, and for me, that’s where radio has always been a bit like magic.

When I turn on the radio, it creates a mood, and I really enjoy that. Kerri Kasem, my co-host, and I do seven shows in four days, and it’s very organized. It’s a lot of work, and it’s the most fun I’ve had outside of playing rock and roll. We laugh every day. No matter what you’re going through, you have to deliver. If you’re going through a high, you have to control that, and if you’re going through a low, you have to control that, because that part of your life is personal and you always have a responsibility to entertain them.

Gibson Guitar's Top 50 '90's Album List

Full Top 50 ’90s Albums List, Readers Poll Revealed

04.29.2011

With today’s announcement of the Top 10 Albums of the ’90s, Gibson.com’s list of the greatest albums of that decade is in the books. You can see the entire list, in order, below. For more information on each album, click here for #50-41, #40-31, #30-21, #20-11 and #10-1. We’d like to thank all of the Gibson.com editors, writers and – particularly – the readers for voting.

In fact, if you scroll down, you can see the results of the readers Top 25. Further down, you can check out the list’s “repeat offenders” and see how the albums broke down by year.

1. Nevermind, Nirvana
2. OK Computer, Radiohead
3. Achtung Baby, U2
4. Definitely Maybe, Oasis
5. Automatic for the People, R.E.M.
6. Ten, Pearl Jam
7. Metallica, Metallica
8. Time Out of Mind, Bob Dylan
9. Grace, Jeff Buckley
10. The Bends, Radiohead
11. Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
12. Siamese Dream, The Smashing Pumpkins
13. Odelay, Beck
14. In Utero, Nirvana
15. Live Through This, Hole
16. Bandwagonesque, Teenage Fanclub
17. Parklife, Blur
18. Being There, Wilco
19. Rage Against the Machine, Rage Against the Machine
20. The Chronic, Dr. Dre
21. Dookie, Green Day
22. Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair
23. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis
24. Shake Your Money Maker, The Black Crowes
25. The Soft Bulletin, The Flaming Lips
26. Weezer, Weezer
27. The Downward Spiral, Nine Inch Nails
28. Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy
29. 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields
30. Endtroducing….., DJ Shadow
31. Blue Lines, Massive Attack
32. To Bring You My Love, PJ Harvey
33. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins
34. Check Your Head, Beastie Boys
35. Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters
36. Screamadelica, Primal Scream
37. The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters
38. Rust in Peace, Megadeth
39. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
40. Dirt, Alice in Chains
41. MTV Unplugged in New York, Nirvana
42. Vitalogy, Pearl Jam
43. Ready to Die, The Notorious B.I.G.
44. Unplugged, Eric Clapton
45. Dummy, Portishead
46. Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette
47. Mule Variations, Tom Waits
48. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill
49. Happy Days, Catherine Wheel
50. Ballbreaker, AC/DC

Readers Poll – Top 25 Albums of the ’90s

The final list and the fans’ selection agreed upon the best album of the decade (Nirvana’s Nevermind), and most of the readers poll picks ended up on the overall list. There are a few notable exceptions: two albums by Rammstein, Wilco’s Summerteeth, AC/DC’s The Razors Edge and Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I andII (most fans voted for them together, even though they were released separately).

1. Nevermind, Nirvana
2. Metallica, Metallica
4. Use Your Illusion (I and II), Guns N’ Roses
3. Ten, Pearl Jam
5. Being There, Wilco
6. OK Computer, Radiohead
7. The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters
8. Dookie, Green Day
9. Bandwagonesque, Teenage Fanclub
10. Achtung Baby, U2
11. Shake Your Money Maker, The Black Crowes
12. Ballbreaker, AC/DC
13. Herzeleid, Rammstein
14. Definitely Maybe, Oasis
15. The Razors Edge, AC/DC
16. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?, Oasis
17. Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
18. Rust in Peace, Megadeth
19. Sehnsucht, Rammstein
20. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel
21. Summerteeth, Wilco
22. Dirt, Alice in Chains
23. Siamese Dream, Smashing Pumpkins
24. In Utero, Nirvana
25. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins

Repeat Offenders

It’s not enough for some bands to land only one album on the list, some had to come back for seconds (and thirds!). Here’s a list of the artists that the voters thought released more than one great album in the ’90s.

Nirvana: 3 (Nevermind, In Utero, MTV Unplugged in New York)
Radiohead: 2 (OK Computer, The Bends)
Oasis: 2 (Definitely Maybe, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?)
Pearl Jam: 2 (Ten, Vitalogy)
Smashing Pumpkins: 2 (Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness)
Foo Fighters: 2 (Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape)

Year-by-Year Breakdown

So which was the best individual year for music in the ’90s? According to this list, 1994. Gibson.com’s Top 50 Albums of the ’90s featured 11 albums from that year.

1990: 3
1991: 8
1992: 6
1993: 3
1994: 11
1995: 8
1996: 3
1997: 3
1998: 2
1999: 3