It all started with painting Hot Wheels.
Ray Bishop, current Baldwin Exotic Collection artist extraordinaire, used to steal his mother’s nail polish and give the iconic little cars new paint jobs. If it wasn’t nail polish, it was any other medium he could get his hands on—pencils, crayons, markers, paint, sharpies, etc. And it if wasn’t Hot Wheels, it was model cars or t-shirts.
You get the picture (no pun intended).
“Actually, I used to paint everything I could get my hands on,” Bishop said recently from his home in Grand Bland, Michigan. “I really don’t know where it came from, though my dad used to paint some. But I never dreamed that someday I would be making a decent living from painting.”
Bishop not only does make a decent living at it, he has slowly but surely built an international reputation as one the world’s leading graphic artists.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 5:03 PM
These days, with the advent of user-friendly technology and reasonably priced studio gear, making do-it-yourself recordings is a relatively uncomplicated affair. But playing all the instruments and singing all the vocals on full-band arrangements―over the course of an entire album―requires a set of skills few musicians possess. All of which makes the following one-man-band albums an impressive lot indeed.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 2:55 PM
You've heard it a million times: practice, practice, practice, and more practice. It's the only way to get better, whether you play the standard six-string guitar, a banjo, a mandolin, drums, or the bass. The professional musicians of today didn't achieve their status without sweating through hours and hours of grueling practice time. And you're not going to come close to making a career out of playing music unless you do the same.
Since we promised a week's worth of bass lessons, we're ending this shortened Fourth of July holiday week with a brief—but very important—lesson on how to set up an effective practice schedule to sharpen your bass playing skills.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 2:32 PM
Les Paul is not only one of the world’s greatest guitarists; he’s among its finest storytellers. In an interview in 1992, I asked Les how he got on the road to success. What follows is his verbatim answer, an entertaining trip from his childhood in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to the big time in New York City playing with Fred Waring’s band the Pennsylvanians.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 10:55 AM
An enthusiastic crowd of over 10,000 people beheld Rush under a canopy of stars in Cincinnati on June 30, 2008, in support of their most recent album, Snakes and Arrows—the band's 18th studio release. The Riverbend Music Center was alive with diehard fans, all bearing witness to the giant multimedia show that has been a staple of Rush tours for decades.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 9:51 AM
The best rock singles have it all―a killer riff, indelible hooks, and a potent, enduring message. Here Creedence Clearwater Revival delivers all of the above in just two minutes on a bracing performance of their 1969 single “Fortunate Son” from The Ed Sullivan Show. Ironically, though they were one of the era’s greatest singles bands, Creedence never topped the charts in America with a 45―they had five singles that peaked at No. 2, with “Fortunate Son” reaching only No. 3.
Thursday, July 03, 2008 9:43 AM
Gibson USA’s Guitar of the Month for July 2008, the Longhorn Double-cutaway in Trans Blue, is also Gibson’s newest body design, consisting of slightly extended, asymmetrical cutaways on a solid piece of mahogany topped with a AA figured maple top.
White three-ply binding around the body and a traditional headstock add both beauty and protection to this new model. And the improvements don’t end there.
A special-design L.R. Baggs piezo pickup has been added underneath the Tune-o-matic bridge to deliver outstanding acoustic simulation. A pair of EMG 85 active humbuckers deliver tone, power, and performance for any style of music, while a new two-jack input from L.R. Baggs offers separate outputs for both the piezo and the humbuckers. This gives players the option of either blending the two sounds or playing them individually, thus allowing guitarists all types of sonic possibilities.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 4:26 PM
The questions really began soon after Eric Clapton’s 2007 Crossroads Festival aired on PBS. Emails crisscrossed the world as music fans attempted to identify the impossibly young-looking woman laying down the sinewy bass lines for mercurial English guitar god Jeff Beck. She even took a memorable solo turn on Beck’s Blow by Blow classic, “’Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers”! Some speculated she was Beck’s daughter, while one writer insisted she couldn’t be more than 14―“Who’s that girl?”
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 3:17 PM
Rap and rock collaborations are generally a bad idea. In the ’90s every band on the radio seemed to have a DJ scratching in the background with what amounted to a lot of white noise but very little substance. There are a few notable exceptions. Below is a list of five times when these two forces of musical nature collided … and actually worked.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 2:10 PM
Rock and roll hall of famer Jack Casady knows a thing or two about playing bass. His celebrated bass-playing career began briefly with Little Anthony and the Imperials then Ray Charles before he joined childhood friend and guitarist Jorma Kaukonen in the legendary Jefferson Airplane, playing a vital part of the musical revolution that became known as the "San Francisco" sound of the 1960s.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008 11:46 AM
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