Neil Young’s upcoming Chrome Dreams II is a masterpiece of epic songs and bracing guitar work-outs that just might prompt listeners to check out another Young release: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.

A scrappy, motormouthed wildman with a low-slung Les Paul Special and equal affinity for Charlie Parker and Link Wray, Simon Chardiet (www.simonchardiet.com) may very well be one of the best guitar players in New York City—and he’s got the decades of paying dues and the late rent to prove it. A longtime fixture on the notoriously fickle and low-paying downtown club scene, Chardiet’s shows fronting the raucous and rowdy Bar Sinisters have provided countless New York rock and roll bands and fans a schooling in an effortless freak out that veers from rockabilly to bebop to swing to hardcore—all at a hundred miles an hour. A firebrand of musical opinions (“Swing is a verb. To swing. It is not a noun!” he says, referring to the swing music revival of the ’90s), backed up with serious musical chops (“Can I read music? I can read mouse crap on a piece of paper from across the room”), and a surprisingly honeyed vocal delivery, Chardiet never lets his musicianship get in the way of the primitive fury of his playing. If you have ever doubted the sonic power of P-90s and a wraparound, a few minutes of Chardiet’s playing will make you a believer. And a few minutes talking to him is a good reminder of the dedication and determination it takes to pursue a life of music.

While his name may not be recognizable to every aficionado of aggressive, experimental rock, Duane Denison’s influence can be heard in dozens of guitarists who’ve followed the paths he blazed while laying the sonic foundations for such bands as the Jesus Lizard and Tomahawk. His lurching, blues-based playing was an obvious inspiration to Kurt Cobain—who wasn’t shy about expressing his admiration for Denison’s work—and countless other denizens of post-hardcore America. Now based in Nashville, Denison and former Ministry mischief-maker Paul Barker have put together a moody quartet called U.S.S.A., which just released a dark and stormy debut entitled The Spoils. Bolstered by Denison’s work on the Les Paul BFG, the album is something of a departure from the sound of his previous bands, but every bit as individualistic and gripping as anything he’s done in the past.

Nearly 40 years since he first caught the ears of blues and rock listeners everywhere, Gibson legend Johnny Winter remains a fixture on the road and a popular draw wherever he goes. After several years of health woes, including carpal tunnel surgery that threatened to permanently derail his career in 2005, Winter has been increasingly visible. He played about 120 shows in 2006 and is looking at 150 or more by the end of 2007. Earlier this month, Johnny hit the highway for a weekend run that preceded a string of European dates. Gibson came along for the ride.

Seven years ago, the Florida-based pop-punk band New Found Glory released From The Screen to Your Stereo, an upbeat adaptation of classic movie soundtracks and themes which included everything from The Neverending Story theme song to Céline Dion’s Titantic-sized hit “My Heart Will Go On.”

It’s been a good couple of weeks for longtime Wilco fans. On Friday, September 7, those who subscribe to the band’s e-mail newsletter were informed of a new development. The pertinent part of the email read as follows:

There’s hardly a more iconic symbol of the early years of MTV than the ZZ Top Eliminator car. A fixture in several videos—including “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs”—the fire-engine red 1933 Ford coupe was the culmination of guitarist Billy Gibbons’ lifelong fascination with hot rods. After being dazzled by the appearance of the same model of car in the 1974 film The California Kid, which starred Martin Sheen, Gibbons tracked down the automobile’s owner, Pete Chapouris, and the long process of creating a similar vehicle for himself soon got underway.

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“Let’s car test it,” says the Whigs’ drummer Julian Dorio to guitarist-singer Parker Gispert. The two walk out of Los Angeles’Sound Factory recording studio and into their rental car, a Chevrolet HHR, parked in the driveway. The temperature outside is hovering in the high 90s, and inside the car it’s absolutely torturous. They crank the latest mix of “Rock the Vibration,” one of roughly ten songs that will comprise their sophomore album and debut for ATO Records.

It was a dark, rainy afternoon in Los Angeles. I was tucked in a modest corner suite at the Sunset Marquis with Foreigner’s Mick Jones, working up historical background material for the liner notes to the band’s multi-disc Anthology. As my tape recorder whirred, Jones recalled that when the Beatles played a stand at the Paris Olympia just before heading off to America, Ed Sullivan, and unparalleled world conquest, he was onstage opening for them as guitarist for French pop chanteuse Sylvie Vartan. His gigs backing Vartan would go on to make a favorable impression on her husband, Johnny Hallyday, better known as the “French Elvis,” and Hallyday soon hired Jones on for his own band. Given Hallyday’s clout and budget, Mick found himself working with many of his idols but feeling very much the foreigner in the midst of it all—a sentiment he would well remember when it came time to form his own band a decade later.