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New Music Review: Sound City, Boz Scaggs, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix

There’s a lot of great new music hitting the streets this week, and I wanted to take a moment to stop and listen with you.  The first drop is “Sound City” — Dave Grohl’s tribute band to the old sound of rock technology in the pre-digital age.  Dave recorded this odd set of songs using an old engineering board from the former “Sound City” recording studio.  I think the idea to create new from the old is exciting, but the effort feels forced and unfinished, and I have always expected excellence and fulfillment from Dave Grohl.  So, for me, Sound City is a fine idea with middling success.

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Jimi Hendrix and the West Coast Seattle Boy Review

For the past two weeks, I’ve been listening to the massive new Jimi Hendrix anthology called — “West Coast Seattle Boy” — and this four-CD installment brings a whole new era to the Hendrix musical canon:  His early life as a session player.

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The Best Guitarists First Played a Les Paul

If you want to know what guitar a great guitarist really plays — you need to look beyond what they are playing now — and hearken back to what guitar they were playing when they were poor, unknown, and hungering for fame.  I argue today, that the greatest guitarists of our time started off their careers playing the Gibson Les Paul — even though Fender and the Stratocaster and Telecaster were cheaper and beat the Les Paul to market.

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