We’ve just taken delivery of some great new hard guitar cases at Dangleberry HQ. One of the things I hate seeing most is someone spending their ‘hard earned’ on their dream guitar, and then lugging the guitar around in a flimsy gig bag.

Gig bags serve a purpose, mainly protecting lower value instruments, but in my eyes if you’ve spent over £300 on a guitar, its gotta be worth spending a little extra on a case….

They’re all really well made, using thick, hard wearing materials and all in all are probably the best investment, to keep your earlier investment, in 1 piece!

You can see the cases here

Last night we went over to the DrumFest Drum Show 2008 event in Sheffield, and what an array of unbeleiveable drumming!
On the bill were Terry Bozzio, Thomas Lang, John Tempesta (The Cult, White Zombie), Bobby Arichega and Chris Pennie (Dillinger Escape Plan/Coheed and Cambria).

My personal highlight was Chris Pennie, that guy has so much feel in his drumming, yet at the drop of a hat he can unleash pure driven power. Thomas Lang gave a very impressive demo of the power of the Roland V-Drums, with an example of what your 4 limbs should theoretically not be able to do, but can! Bobby Arichega - good fun, actually gave people workable ideas of how to put all your influences into 1 drum beat. John Tempesta was awesome too - Rock on!

If I’m honest, Terry Bozzio was boring. Drums are not for making music, they’re for rhythm. He was better than the last time I saw him, but judging by the people yawning, and some leaving early, I wasn’t the only one not overly impressed. I’d love to see him on a normal drum kit, just drumming….

Last night (10th July 2008) I went to see the Goo Goo Dolls at Newcastle Academy. I saw them twice before and both times were top gigs. Not last night though. John Rzeznik, singer and guitarist, was sporting 24 guitars in 3 racks - Les Pauls, 335’s, Acoustics, all sorts really (bizarre considering they didn’t even play 24 different songs!). Quite impressive to see at the side of the stage though.

However, when they burst onto the stage in the first song, there was a distinct lack of presence and animation from the (usually) excellent frontman. A couple of songs in, Rzeznik announced how they’d had a day off the day before. And he’d really enjoyed it ’so he was told, he couldn’t really remember any of it’. What he was trying to say was that he got leathered and now, when he came to do his job, he was feeling crap and couldn’t be bothered.

His performance was really flat. You could just tell he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t even bother attempting to sing many of the songs how they were sung originally - it was too much effort to make the high notes. It really wound me up because there were 1500 people there, £20 a ticket - you do the maths. Then travelling time on top of that (we had 4 hour round trip, and that would be short compared to others - including one girl who flew from Japan to watch) and he couldn’t be arsed. Sorry John, you should have said if we were inconveniencing you and we would have stayed at home.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against performers getting hammered, so long as they can cope with the outcome and still perform up to scratch for the paying punters the following day. They have weeks & weeks off every year, so its not like a day off is rare, and for a band which have sold millions of albums in the USA I just expected a bit more professionalism than that.

Maybe its a good tip for every band to consider - if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. If it shows in your performances, it’ll dull the night down for everybody. I, for one, won’t be paying to see them again! Rant over. Sorry.

I can remember a few times seeing people have their guitar strap detach itself from the strap button, and its not a pretty sight. Usually the result is a very poorly guitar. And a lot of horrible noise. It happened to me with my guitar, a Gibson Les Paul at a band practice, and took a big chunk out of the front of it. The following day I proceeded directly to buy guitar straplocks.

At least at my practice there were only 4 other people watching, unlike when it happened to Muse’s singer/guitar player during their Rock In Rio (Lisboa) gig in front of 95,000 people!

The moral of the story? Just buy some straplocks for your guitar. You’ll be done and dusted for under £15, which is a damn sight cheaper than a guitar repair/respray! Not to mention if your neck takes a knock, and then the tuning problems start…..

We’re pleased to announce that the all new Pure Vintage Left Handed Guitar pickups from Tonerider have now gone live on our site.

There aren’t too many left-handed pickups floating around at the moment, especially at the great prices which Tonerider Pickups are fast getting a name for.

At only £59.99 for the full Stratocaster Pickup set (Neck, Middle & Bridge) its well worth grabbing some before they disappear!

What a downer - Singer/Songwriter Jack Johnson had his Newquay gig last Saturday night (5th July 08) pulled by safety officials this weekend ‘because of heavy rain and high winds’.

On a statement on his website, JJ had said: Unfortunately the strength of the site was also its weakness. the venue is located on top of hill that overlooks the ocean. but this location also made the stage very exposed to the high winds’.

Now we’ve organised a few gigs (nothing quite that big, admittedly) but the first thing you do is make sure the venue is suitable - surely a hill-top which overlooks the ocean surely must be susceptible to high winds at the best of times? Did JJ’s advisors / management not anticipate this could be an issue? Its Britain! Our weather is always rubbish!

Of course its just a real bummer for all those who spent hours travelling down (many of whom I heard ring into Radio 1 to get a ’shout-out’ from Vernon Kaye, whilst I was on my way to buy a new bathroom suite - how very Rock & Roll!) only to find that someone in the planning dept hadn’t thought it through. At all. They must be seething….

As of today, some new additions to the ever popular range of Tonerider Guitar Pickups have gone live on our site. The new models are the Hybrid P90’s (Neck & Bridge), the humbucker-sized Rebel P90’s (Neck & Bridge),the Precision Plus Bass and Jazz Plus bass sets.

This range of guitar pickups are tearing the market up - offering “boutique” features and tone without the boutique price tags.

One seeker of tonal heaven bought a set of Pure VIntage Strat Pickups to tie him over until his £1500 set of Fender Custom pups arrived. He informed us the following day that having fitted the TR’s, he had cancelled the order with Fender as he didn’t believe that the Fender pups could match the Toneriders, nor could he see why he would spend over £1400 more for the privelige of having the Fender name!

Links:
Hybrid P90’s - click here
Rebel P90’s - click here
Precision Plus - click here
Jazz Plus - click here

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