August 13, 2010

The latest ‘Shred This’ competition, with Brett Garsed and DiMarzio, closes this Sunday so I’ve been going through some of the fantastic entries and have compiled a favourites playlist.

Check out some of these awesome solos:

I’ve not watched all the vids yet ( there’s 218 responses so far! ) but I’m sure I’ll come across some more top playing and be adding to the playlist

April 10, 2010

Congratulations to Silvio!

Many thanks to Valvette and of course Adam and < a href="http://www.truthinshredding.com/">Laurie for giving up their time and for hosting and judging such a great competition!

Great to hear that there are more to come!

June 18, 2009

Had a great time down in London over the weekend, meeting up with some mates, attending the London International Music Show and of course getting to see the Guitar Idol 2009 Finals.

We arrived a little late on the Saturday morning, gotta love London Transport! As a result we sadly missed Silvio Gazquez and Alexandros Tefarikis’s performances and arrived halfway through George Marios’s set. Considering how early it was ( the finals started at 10:00! ) there was already a moderately sized crowd assembled.

All twelve finalists put on a great show and let’s face it, it takes some guts to get out there and perform in front of your typical ‘arms folded guitar type’ crowd. My faves, Muris Varajic, Daniele Gottardo, Hedras Ramos and Jack Thammarat, stood out from the crowd with their technique, overall performance and most importantly their songs.

You can see each finalist’s performance ( and the winners ) here in this playlist, see if you agree:

The actual announcement of the winners wasn’t until much later in the day so after the performances we headed out for a nosy around the main exhibition floor. Was nice to see Blackhawk music there with a bunch of Mayones guitars, yeah the guitars from that competition. I had a little feel of the necks ( spot the guitar player ) and they felt very nice indeed!

Barring some amusing Spongebob Pants Ukeleles and a cool Jazz Cafe stand with a live band, there wasn’t much there that grabbed my interest to be honest. There wasn’t even a single stand with Suhr Moderns!

Of course there was something I was really looking forward too, and that was Mr Guthrie Govan and Mr Alex Hutchings.

( Bad Angle Fuzzy phone pics only I’m afraid, as my digital camera died just before the Guitar Idol finals )

I had been really, like really, looking forward to seeing Guthrie Govan and Alex Hutchings playing. Thankfully I had some ‘insider info’ and knew when they were going to play . I was glad I didn’t miss anything!

Guthrie first played through ‘Wonderful Slippery Thing’ and ‘Waves’, fantastic as usual and his new Suhr sounded awesome. A little later on we finally got to see Alex Hutchings and Guthrie Govan jam. At that time the drummers were going for it over in the drum area of the hall so it was hard to hear exactly what was going on, but what we could hear was, as you’d expect, awesome. It was great to see them having a good time and the fact that Alex Hutchings wasn’t phased in the slightest.

Hanging around the Rotosound stand it was funny to see alot of familiar faces from the land of Youtube milling around Guthrie. At various points in the day Jack Thammarat, Silvio Gazquez, Hedras Ramos and Daniele Gottardo could be seen chatting away with him and checking out those Govan licks.

We stayed for the announcement of the Guitar Idol winners and I was delighted when Jack Thammarat was crowned Guitar Idol 2009. A good haul for Jack who ended up with a PRS a Rob Williams guitar *and* the Marshall JVM stack they had all played through!

Daniele Gottardo, Hedras Ramos and Muris Varajic all came away with prizes and I have to agree with the judges, they were the best on the day.

We left slightly after, not staying for the Steve Vai, Phil Hilborne and Nicko McBrain concert. We had been up 22 hours the day previously and we felt it!

All in all a great day out that seemed to fly past too quickly. Looking forward to next year and Guitar Idol 2010!

June 6, 2009

One week to go til we find out who will be crowned Guitar Idol 2009!

Our twelve finalists are:

Laurie over on truthinshredding has been running a poll on who people think will win and currently the stats show:

Which ties in nicely with my thoughts. I think it will be close run thing between Muris Varajic, Jack Thammarat and Daniele Gottardo. I do think though that Jack Thammarat’s more widespread appeal will land him the prize, though you never know what could happen on the day at the live show!

The guys at Guitar Idol have also just published a Best Of The Rest listing the entrants who didn’t quite make it and why.

Don’t forget you can register with Lick Library and watch the final live and vote for your favourite, thankfully I’ll be there to check out the guitar slingin’ in person!

Looking forward to it

May 12, 2009

We’ve reached the half-way point and now have six confirmed finalists for the Guitar Idol live Final!

So far we have:

András Pálfi

Alexandros Tefarikis



Daniel Realpe



Hedras Ramos



Muris Varajic



Silvio Gazquez

Great to see three of my faves there! Wonder who will make the last six?

Final is going to be a cracker this year.