Festival Fun 2005

Went to see my last show of the Festival last night. Feeling lazy so here’s a short and fast review for each show I attended this year:

Omid Djalili: Many laughs. Sadly some old material. Great Dancing.***

Chris Addison: Very funny. Good July 7 gags. Nice suit. ****

Danny Bhoy: Extremely Funny. Plenty of Scots humour. Girls fancy him. *****

Jason Byrne: Hilarious. A Festival favourite of mine. Mad crowd. *****

Jimmy Carr: Very Funny. Smartly dressed. Plenty of daring material. Many one liners. ****

Guitarshredshow

http://www.guitarshredshow.com/

Genius.

Paul Gilbert Clinic in Glasgow

Last night, myself and Mr McCrone met up in Glasgow to attend an Ibanez and Laney sponsored guitar clinic with none other than Paul Gilbert.

Having just flown in from somewhere afar, Mr Gilbert started off with a gentle warmup using the crowd as inspiration for some bluesy runs but it wasn’t long until he’d fully warmed up and those boggling picking licks of his were being rattled out to the amazement of the crowd.

Once warmed up things were kicked off in style with a few RacerX songs as PG played through, ‘Superheroes’, ‘Viking Kong’, ‘Scarified’ and ‘Technical Difficulties’ to prepared backing tracks.

I, like quite alot of like minded guitar players, am of that generation that studied the classic Paul Gilbert instructional videos Intense Rock and Intense Rock II. Spending hours and hours trying out those picking exercises with a hope one day to actually be able to bang out those breathtaking machinegun licks. Actually seeing the man himself flying through these licks with consumate ease, especially in such close proximity, was unbelievable.

PG was gracious and patient with questions from members of the audience. As well as having a great sense of humour, he played a sweep lick with his…ass! ;), he appeared to me to be quite humble, seeming generally quite surprised with the high turnout and the appreciation for his music. One audience member asked him if he would be back for a UK tour to which PG replied he would love to. This was, of course, greeted with a huge cheer from the crowd.

After the Q&A PG played a few faves from his solo material, namely ‘I’m Not Afraid Of The Police’, ‘I am Satan’, Bliss’ and a medley built around his infamous cover of the Spice Girl’s ‘2 become 1′ featuring the solo from Zep’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ending with the riff from Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’.

He also played through a piece by Bach that even he found tricky, as he said ‘the rhythm is fine, it’s just getting the notes right’ :D.

With a running time just over 2 1/2 hours we were gifted with a stunning display of musicality, technique, humour and insight into a World class player. Another unforgettable night \m/.

markmcguigan.com is two years old

Today, markmcguigan.com is two years old!

So time to reflect on the past year and then make promises about future content that won’t be fulfilled ;).

The redesign of the site in May stripped off alot of content that I felt was not needed for the new drive of the site, e.g a blog/here’s my music type thing.

So now things are really kept simple with this blog, a Recordings section for musical output, the Videos section for…err well… Videos and the spin off site for my Recording Journal.

Plans for future content?

At the moment things will pretty much stand as they are, there is work in the pipeline for another site which will concentrate on the educational side of music and playing the guitar so none of that sort of content will be added here. I do intend to capture more performances on video for the videos section, but other than that it’s….as you were.

Half Life 2: Aftermath

Half Life 2:Aftermath

Audioscrobbler becomes last.fm

So it appears the funky audio habits aggregator Audioscrobbler has been morphed/absorbed to become last.fm

I signed up with Audioscrobbler last October as I was curious about my listening habits seeing that I listen to music almost all the time, particularly whilst at work.

Looking at my profile I suppose no surprises who is my #1 listened to Artist and I imagine the same for my #2 but it’s interesting to see the spread for the rest. Evidence of iTunes shuffle methinks.

Like many others I sometimes fall into a listening frenzy for a particular artist, listening to them everyday. For example, recently I have fallen in love with Mourning Widows’, featuring the amazing Nuno Betterncourt, fantastic album ‘Furnished Souls For Rent‘ as well as enjoying Eminem’s ‘Encore‘.

Also nice to see that, in my top tracks listing, my own song is at #1, that’ll teach me to listen to mixes in iTunes with the Audioscrobbler plugin activated. Then again, no bad thing being my own biggest fan ;).

More New Music!?

I have created yet more music.

Recorded the following for the August task of the Guitarist Home Recording Collective.

Bliss

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