Electric Guitar

The electric guitar made a clumsy twang when Bill Lawrence let it fall to the ground. He then gave it the ultimate test. He placed one cowboy boot, and then the other, on the neck, letting the neck support all of his weight. "If you can't stand on a neck, it's a piece of garbage," Lawrence said. While there's much more to a good electric guitar than a strong neck, Lawrence uses this exercise as an example of the attention to detail he puts into his Wilde USA guitars. Depending on the design, most guitar necks would have snapped under Lawrence's weight.

Don't freak out, man, over the scoring in Allen Krantz's new work. Small symphony for strings and electric guitar is as friendly as friendly gets, maybe even to hard-core classical ears. "Eric Clapton meets Mozart" is what Krantz calls the work, which was premiered Monday night at the Academy of Vocal Arts by the Wister Quartet at the last 1807 & Friends concert of the season. True, I suppose. The four-movement work adheres to strict classical form, and the lyricism of Krantz's style - American, tonal, solicitous - is purely classical.

It won't be the same when they're gone. The polished wood, steel strings, amplifiers and recorders had been his life for more than 60 years. Now they were lined up in his sprawling Mahwah mansion, like old friends waiting to say goodbye. In a corner of one room, Les Paul picked up what may be the first electric guitar, then one of the first electric solid-body guitars. And in another room was the first multi-track synchronized tape recorder and eight-track recording machine. The legendary musician-inventor, renowned for the countless guitars that bear his name, could track the history of the music recording industry in his home - history that he helped make with a little late-night tinkering and ingenuity.

VINELAND, N.J. - Police in South Jersey believe a homeowner's watchdog might have fallen for a bribe from a burglar bearing treats. Vineland police say the evidence came in the form of a scrap of beef jerky the homeowner found on the kitchen floor. He said no one in the house normally eats it. The break-in occurred during the day Sunday, apparently undeterred by the resident pit bull, the Atlantic City Press reported. Police say the burglar got away with more than $200 in cash, a $400 electric guitar, and a necklace worth about $350.

It's great to see another woman enter the punk/pop arena with a guitar in hand and something to get off her chest. It's equally heartening when that woman has the mature perspective of a 31-year-old. But concerts aren't built on good intentions. Jennifer Trynin and her band just didn't measure up at J.C. Dobbs on Thursday night. High expectations for the show were largely due to Trynin's debut, Cockamamie (Warner), on which the Bostonian spares us none of her hurt feelings and plays some rugged electric guitar.

Two brothers, former employees of a Philadelphia-based company, were charged Monday with stealing about $60,000 in equipment from a Runnemede office, authorities said. Walter Crumb Jr., 40, and Michael Crumb, 36, allegedly stole 16 computer servers valued at $2,200 apiece, 100 Windows 7 software licenses, an electric guitar, and a digital camera from TelAmerica Media, in the 100 block of Rose Avenue, said Runnemede Police Lt. Paul Dailey. The brothers, who allegedly pawned the items in Philadelphia, were released Monday on their own recognizance, Dailey said.

The new-music establishment sounded dated at Speculum Musicae's concert Monday night at the Settlement Music School. Works by Jacob Druckman and Charles Wuorinen, written in styles that only 10 years ago were fresh and new, seemed to have aged noticeably - and not too gracefully - next to the works of two more progressive composers. Not only was the musical material that made up Steve Mackey's Troubador Songs (1991) novel; so was the combination of string quartet and electric guitar that performed it. There was nothing inherently unnatural about the tonal effect created by the refined sound of the string quartet and the crudeness of the electric guitar.

As a duo, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale may have released only one record, the appropriately titled Buddy and Jim , but their 30-plus years of friendship made their show at World Cafe Live on Friday night feel like a long-awaited reunion. Complementing each other sartorially as well as musically - Lauderdale wore a pale-blue suit with embroidered lapels, Miller a paisley sport coat over a patterned shirt - the veteran comrades meshed seamlessly with their three-piece band. Between songs, they reminisced about old times, including a joint gig at the North Star not quite two decades ago, and tossed gags back and forth like a vaudeville double act. "We finish each other's senten-" Lauderdale began, raising an eyebrow at his partner.

The theme for the Who's 25th anniversary reunion tour is "The Kids Are All Right. " Last night, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle and company proved the point with a vengeance, in a no-holds-barred, 40-song music marathon at the Glens Falls Civic Center. It was their first full-fledged show together since Dec. 17, 1982. A long time between gigs. The Who steamed up this dinky Adirondack hockey rink for more than three hours and took no prisoners. In other words, they slew all 5,000 souls in attendance - old fans and younger "classic rock " converts alike.

You can call Erin McKeown a lot of things - singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, musical storyteller, even a social activist on some level - but don't call her a folksinger. She doesn't have a problem with folkies, mind you; she just doesn't think she is one, despite how she's often billed as such. "I did a TV show recently where they announced my name, called me a folksinger, and then I walked onstage holding an electric guitar," the 27-year-old Virginia-bred, Massachusetts-based musician recalls.

As a duo, Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale may have released only one record, the appropriately titled Buddy and Jim , but their 30-plus years of friendship made their show at World Cafe Live on Friday night feel like a long-awaited reunion. Complementing each other sartorially as well as musically - Lauderdale wore a pale-blue suit with embroidered lapels, Miller a paisley sport coat over a patterned shirt - the veteran comrades meshed seamlessly with their three-piece band. Between songs, they reminisced about old times, including a joint gig at the North Star not quite two decades ago, and tossed gags back and forth like a vaudeville double act. "We finish each other's senten-" Lauderdale began, raising an eyebrow at his partner.

The news, more than a year ago, that the 56-year-old musician Danny DeGennaro was murdered in his mother's home in Levittown caused little stir beyond the Bucks County area. Various websites and blogs noted that he had been a member of the Grateful Dead-inspired band Kingfish, and that he had played with the also recently deceased Clarence Clemons. But that was it. There was so much more to it. To him. I heard Danny for the first time nearly 20 years ago, in the spring of 1993.

A few songs into her set at World Cafe Live on Tuesday night, North Carolina singer-songwriter Tift Merritt paused to address the crew. "Can we get some rock and roll sex lighting up here?" It's not the kind of request you'd expect from Merritt, whose songs tend toward the melancholy, introspective end of the scale, and, indeed, it was prefaced by a pledge to make no further demands for the next several weeks (including, of course, the remainder of the show). But it's of a piece with the assertiveness and sense of self present on her fifth album, Traveling Alone , released last week.

Neil Halstead spent his early 20s at the helm of Slowdive, one of the U.K.'s signature shoegaze bands and a touchstone for current young groups such as Wild Nothing, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and Beach Fossils (who recently released a cover of Slowdive's "Alison"). According to Halstead, Slowdive "was more about the atmosphere and playing loud guitars," and it wasn't until after Slowdive disbanded in 1995 that he became interested in traditional songwriting as opposed to My Bloody Valentine-inspired waves of sound.

On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan stepped onstage at the Newport Folk Festival, plugged in an electric guitar, and changed the course of pop music history. The performance caused a furious reaction. The crowd booed loudly, and folk icon Pete Seeger tried to stop the show. Dylan and his band retreated after three songs, coming back to play an acoustic set. Still, Dylan's provocative move has long been pointed to as a key moment when electric rock music eclipsed folk as the sound of the '60s generation.

As the grandson of country's founding father, Hank Williams III - currently billing himself as Hank 3 - is a direct heir to the music's roots. But rather than fall back on his lineage, Williams offers himself as a musical mongrel, continuing some traditions and establishing a few of his own. The supreme statement of Williams' divergent desires arrived last fall, when at the end of an oft-acrimonious relationship with Nashville's Curb Records, he...

PRINCETON - Though his rock-star charisma and Grammy nominations suggest that composer Steve Mackey should be packing his bags for the West Coast, this Princeton University professor is keeping it local. He didn't even agonize about whether to attend Sunday's Grammy Award ceremony in Los Angeles, where his disc Lonely Motel is contending for best new classical composition, rather than the premiere of his orchestral work Tonic , for which he has waited six years. The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia will perform it Sunday and Monday at the Kimmel Center and Tuesday at Temple Performing Arts Center.

VIDEO GAME systems are generating remarkable sales this holiday season. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is leading the pack (a million units sold just over the Black Friday weekend), while Sony and Nintendo also report higher than expected figures. Clearly driving the boom? A terrific bunch of new software titles for hard-core gamers and casuals alike. BLOWS UP REAL GOOD: Fresh first-person shooters are proving especially hot, selling staggering numbers (8 million to 10 million) in little more than a month.

Travis Bean, 63, who reinvented the electric guitar in a California shop in the 1970s, died Sunday in Burbank after a long battle with cancer. To enhance string vibration, he suggested making the instrument's neck and headstock out of solid aluminum instead of wood. The resulting guitars, manufactured for only five years, remain prized for their tone and durability. Among the famous who have strummed them are Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead - whose Travis Bean guitar was auctioned for $312,000 in 2007 - and many of the Rolling Stones.

Dylan Andre hasn't spent his whole life yearning for stardom. He started singing and playing guitar at 18 - spring of last year. And forget about reading music or any formal training. "Even to this day, some of the chords I'm playing I have no idea," said the 19-year-old Perkiomen Valley High grad, who lives in Zieglersville. Yet he's one of the 48 finalists on TV's top-rated summer show, America's Got Talent , which begins its Hollywood showdowns - and cut-downs - at 9 Tuesday night on NBC10.