A lot of music lovers have vinyl of some sort. I have a small collection of Vinyl of some reprints of classic metal albums and even some vinyl dating back to the early 70’s. I pick up vinyl every now and then at metal shows and at record stores of modern bands when I like an album even if I already have the cd. It’s the physical aspect and the art of the album that I dig. Sometimes you can find records at thrift shops and pawn shops. My latest acquisition has been Judas Priest’s classic Screaming For Vengeance that I found at a pawn shop still with the plastic wrapping (opened at one end) for $3.00. Some people like the raw sound of vinyl that you don’t get with cd’s. These days there are devices that you can transfer the sound of vinyl to mp3.

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Converse is celebrating 100 years of converse with a new line of the Classic “Chuck Taylor” All Stars. 100 years, really? That’s right. Converse started up 100 years ago in 1908 as Converse Rubber Corporation. Nine years later the Converse All Star basketball shoe was born. Still a timeless classic that has survived through almost a century of changes in footwear fashion and design. Very few things have lasted so long without deviating too far from the original design.

As part of their new designs celebrating their 100th anniversary, Converse started unveiling a line of rock band inspired All Stars sold at Journey’s. Bands featured in this line is The Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, The Doors, The Who, Ozzy Osbourne, and Pink Floyd.

The first line to roll out is the Grateful Dead design. With a white on white look with the classic Grateful Skull and Roses. Also available are low-tops with the classic Dancing Bears.

Shop for the Skull And Roses style at Journey’s

More styles after the fold…

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Ted Nugent has a book that came out last Tuesday. It’s called Ted, White, And Blue. I admire some of the things The ‘Nuge says because he speaks his mind…but this is a crazy man. You can say whatever you feel, just think about what exactly your saying.

Popeater.com (which should be called “poopeater”) posted a few things that Ted said in regards to what he would do if he were in charge. I’ve thrown in my two cents.

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Ultimate Guitar interviewed Def Leppard Guitarist Phil Collen. Here he talks about various things from touring, the record industry and the elements of a good song.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What do you think are the elements that make up a great song?

Phil Collen: It could be many different things. But lyrically if you create an image of some sort of… like for example Hotel California, that song actually puts you in a place every time you hear it, even from the very first time you hear it. You have an image of what it is going to be like, you have a solid picture. And to me that is really good songwriting. And melodically, you have to the hooks as well as it has to sound natural. If you are just doing it gratuitously, then it will tend to sound a little bit fake. But then again, there people who make millions of dollars writing songs in exact that way. For me, I tend to get a lot of inspiration straight off the bat and then from there for the rest of time, it is a lot of hard work. That is how the songwriting process usually works for me.

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Where would rock be without The Beatles? Would there be Rock N Roll? I imagine there would be, but maybe it would be a bit different from what it is today? This past week The Beatles released the Hey Jude single on a 45 rpm with Revolution. The original single wasn’t released with the album cover to the right. It was released on Apple Records in a plain black sleeve. This was yet another great step in the success of The Beatles. So what inspired this song? Let’s Find out…

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ZZ Top has one of those classic vintage guitar sounds that can be very hard to emulate. You can play with your knobs and try to tweak your gain, but it almost seems impossible to capture Billy Gibbons’ tone. Luckily Gibson.com is kind enough to show us how to do it.

When it comes to guitar tone, Gibbons uses what you would expect any rockin’ blues man to have in his arsenal, including Gibson guitars and Marshall amps. He has also been known to use a Fuzz pedal and a couple of other devices too.

For our purposes, in building Gibbons’ ZZ Top guitar tone at a home computer, I am going to go very simple and let the amp do the talking. I’ve said before if you start off with the right amp, you won’t need a bunch of pedals to make your tone sound like you want it to.

Read the rest How To Capture Billy Gibbons’ ZZ Top Guitar Tone

Image Used with permission from Newscom.com

Just like that. Sounds just like Randy Rhoads. Well it’s not that simple. Remember last week when I talked about Gibson.com teaching you how to capture Joe Perry’s tone? Well this weeks it’s good old (R.I.P.) Randy Rhoads. I can play the beginning of Crazy Train, but I don’t quite have that tone down. Playing the beginning of Crazy Train is actually pretty easy for a novice player. It’s the rest of the song that’s a bit tough. Click the link below to learn how you can capture Randy’s tone.

Capture Randy Rhoads Tone

I have had a Myspace account for The Rock Dose for awhile now, since I took it over but It’s been kind of stagnant up until yesterday. So I did some work on it and now it looks much better and will help out with some networking and news.

The Rock Dose On Myspace

MSN music recently published an editorial entitled 10 Artists Who Should Stop Making Records. While there is ten of them, I’m going to weed out the Rock relevant ones and a snip of their article with my views on it at the end.

The Black Crowes
MSN Said:

”Remember the recent controversy in which Maxim magazine reviewed the new Black Crowes album before the writer had even heard it? Well, that is obviously inexcusable, but here’s the thing no one seems willing to say: He was right. (They must not have read my post at Metalmartyr)

You don’t really need to hear a Crowes record to know what you’re going to get, because you always get the same thing: roots rock with an overstated, Southern hippie twang.

The Who
MSN Said:

””Endless Wire,” the putative Who album from 2006 was one of the most painful listening experiences I can remember — not one good song, not one good part. How was this the Who? Well, it wasn’t. And now they’re working on a new one. Here’s hoping they never finish.”

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Have you ever tried finding tickets on Livenation.com? Have you ever tried redeeming a code for tickets you got from a cd purchase like perhaps the ticket code from the new Judas Priest Album? I tried for over an hour last night to find where I can try to enter the code to get my “Free General Admission Ticket” while supplies last of course. I know it’s 3 days after the cd was released and a crapload of people have probably tried. Perhaps if the tickets are gone you would think they would post something on the page about it being over and tickets being gone…there isn’t. Instead I registered for about three things and still couldn’t find where I was supposed to redeem my code. I followed the instructions on the redemption code ticket, but it is very vague.

Idolator.com also ran a story about the BS that Livenation.com puts their loyal subjects to when they buy tickets. More on this story here.