The one truely transcendent moment came not from guitar bustin heroics, but from Girl Talk, whose packed stage errupted in a predictable orgy of party.  Here’s what I mean

What this video doesn’t show is that even though given one of the larger stages the entire area around Girl Talk’s stage was full of sweaty, grinding people, making it the most packed stage of the night.  So overcrowded was the entire area it was disrupting, albeit briefly, the mechanics of Lolla’s organizations.  Standing somewhat in the middle of all the fracas, the guitar dudes saw three ice trolleys desperately trying to make their way through the crowd to some unknown location.  The crowd pounces on the trucks and chaos ensues.  Hoards of people are grabbing packets of ice, throwing chunks of ice at the stage and the audience, boys and girls jump on top of the trucks and start dancing.  Meanwhile the poor ice truck workers still are trying to make their way through the crowd, even with people stealing their ice and dancing on their trucks.  Somehow this geek with a laptop spawned the most rock ‘n roll moment of the night.

For those of you who didn’t sell your soul to rock ‘n roll during its heyday, the devil just upped the ante a bit using the power of cheap Chinese electronics.  Clearly working for the third horseman of the Apocalypse, ZVUE has begun offering a Journey themed Mp3 player that comes preloaded with 22 Journey tracks.  Skeptics among you might balk at the lame 1GB of storage, and the fact these things can only be picked up at Walmart, but for only $40 you’d be hard pressed to find a better way to bust tunes on your your Journey-themed arcade machine.

Pre-loaded on the player are 11 classic tracks (“Don’t Stop Believin’,”Any Way You Want It,” etc.) as well as 11 tracks from Revelation the latest Journey disk.  The Guitar Dudes are somewhat saddened by the fact that the old tunes have been “updated” and include new vocalist Arnel Pineda and not classic vocalist Steve Perry.   Next up for ZVUE–a Steve Perry version of the Journey player.  You know someone will buy it.

What’s this, you say, a new Smashing Pumpkins Remix? Not exactly.  Instead of harking back to an era when the Smashing Pumpkins were gods this song appeared in 1997, when a billion of you bought the Aeroplane flies high and the Smashing Pumpkins really were gods.   The song (aptly titled ‘The Beginning is the End is the Beginning’, god you’re so clever, BC) first appeared as a b-side to the Batman and Robin track ‘The End is the Beginning is the End’.  The Smashing Pumpkins were riding a tidal wave of popularity coming off the success of Mellon Collie and everyone was waiting to hear what they would sound like next.  Of course, 1998 hit and everyone was disappointed by Adore, but for a time we were hopeful.

The video aged better than I thought it would.  At the time, I thought remember thinking how bored James Iha looked, that he’ll never show up playing a normal looking guitar in a video again.  The only real failing of the video is the stupid looking drumkit (which in retrospect, prefigured the entire Adore ablum) that replacement drummer Matt Walker was forced to drum on standing up. Really guys, standing up and drumming is completely blowing it.

Jason Becker could shred your face off. I write that in the past tense, because anyone who knows Jason’s story knows it to be synonymous with rock ‘n roll tragedy.  (Entirely though no fault of his own: world’s greatest shredder at 19, contracted multiple schlerosis at age 20.  There is no god, Motley Crue.)

As if to throw salt on that wound a little more we see a very young Jason Becker at age 16 shredding the tar out of Malmsteen’s Black Star at a high school talent show. Jason’s playing for no one here but himself; the auditorium is nearly empty. We could spend some time critiquing his playing, but we won’t be so judgmental. As Yngwie plays the song there are just way more notes, this blitzkrieg of shred that Becker takes down a notch and manages to play with more vibrato without the help of a scalloped fretboard (at least as I could tell). We resist making the comparison that this shows promise for a 16 year old but lacks technicallity, because as judged by the standards of the time it doesn’t.  Salt –> wound accomplished.

One thing we can laugh at is Becker’s absurd fro.  He’s looking way too Cedric Bixler for comfort.

Listening to this song is as good as watching two girls fight.

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There’s something about a British accent, a reverbed mic and an even more reverb drenched guitar that musical palettes will never tire of. Enter Glasgow-based band Glasvegas. They’ve got the formula down pat, we’re just so lucky that they happen to be able to actually write songs. (Lead singer James Allen has been described as one of the best songwriters of his generation, a judgment we’d like to sit on for a while).

We’re getting a little late to the party on this one, despite the band having yet to release a proper studio album. NME of course is creaming all over the band, again to the puzzlement of old-school type rockers prefer bands to receive laurels after releasing albums. Something tells me this band has more staying power than most pre-album overly hyped groups. Look for their full length coming out on September 1st, but before then whet your appetite with these tracks.

If you say that you’re shocked by this you are not in any way paying attention. Canadian songstress, ipod add sing-song melody, lyrics which continually count up to four Thankfully they alter the song to just count up according to its title, or we might have an entire generation kids that forget entirely about the numbers 7 and 8.

Feist of course joins public television sainthood alongside such musicians as REM and Johnny Cash which have appeared on the show. Let’s take a quick look at some of the more fucked up ones.

Johnny Cash

This is creepy for any number of reasons.

Goo Goo Dolls

Goo Goo Dolls teach the kids its okay to be emo.

Stevie Wonder

A great band.

This is my favourite Spanish band ever. What I “suggest” when I force people to get some Spanish rock music at the store. It is the kind of band where memories (oh girls, girls…) come to mind before the guitar tones (and they allways had beautiful guitar tones). Their music was often slumber and cinematic, somewhere between Calexico and Mogwai. Perhaps, an indie mixtape of the sad 90s sung in spanglish is a better description (they even covered Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” at some point). These guys are dramatic and pretentious as hell: there is dialogue and cars crashing, one of the songs is “co-authored” by Yeats, some members do indie cinema these days; but man, it works like a beauty.

They disbanded recently. You can find some remains here.

(Today, besides cinema they have a bunch of music side projects, and El Hijo and Fantasy Bar are not too bad.)

Can you see the sunset has some great tracks from Jeff Tweedy´s live show at the Vic in Chicago back in 2005. The sound quality will blow your mind and Jeff’s voice will melt your heart, then scoop up the pieces and mold for you an ashtray. If you were wondering, Wilco is the greatest band playing music.

By the way, guitarists, this is how you play the guitar like a real instrument. But even Jeff knows sometimes you need a real shredder to play licks on top.