Guitar

Mark Shark strolls up South Street yesterday with the guitar he redeemed from a pawn shop recently. Shark said he had to borrow money on the instrument four months ago. He's been playing about nine years.

These days, most popular "alternative" guitar-rock gets in your face with blasts of grungy distortion or walls of fluttering white noise. The Sundays and Luna2, however, have precise, formal sonic agendas. The Sundays - perhaps the most delicate and tame of the plethora of new British female-fronted guitar bands - rely on Harriet Wheeler's girlish vocals, and Dave Gavurin's Smiths-style ambient guitar jangle. And Luna2 is based on Dean Wareham's exacting guitar, which concocts a shimmering, tensile Velvet Underground sound that is somnambulant and driving at the same time.

Sharon Isbin is hardly passive when it comes to getting new concertos written for her somewhat overlooked instrument. She once buttonholed a composer in line at her New York City post office. "I said, 'Hey, would you like to write a guitar concerto?' He said, 'Call me back next year.' That went on for eight years. " Isbin even came up with a compositional scheme for the composer in question, John Corigliano - she suggested a tale of French troubadours - and eventually got her concerto.

Andres Segovia, the guitar virtuoso who died Tuesday at 94 in his Madrid apartment, was recognized as the man who restored the guitar to its place in classical music. Segovia's burning missionary zeal had raised the guitar from its tawdry associations with Spanish Gypsy caves to place it in concert halls around the world. In a career spanning more than 70 years, Segovia unswervingly devoted himself to proving the guitar equal to the violin, piano or cello as a solo instrument and to reviving old music and commissioning new works for the instrument.

One of the nice things about auctions, particularly those held in the suburbs when the summer lull begins, is that they offer items you are unlikely to encounter at conventional retail outlets. Two sales this weekend will offer examples of such unconventional items, including folk art and tramp art, Navajo crafts, and a classic Les Paul electric guitar signed (and played) by Paul himself. The Les Paul guitar will be among the more than 700 lots offered by Briggs Auction at its special estate antique sale beginning at 5 p.m. today at the gallery, 1347 Naamans Creek Rd., Garnet Valley.

Harvey Lee "Hiamsiam" Nelson, who played guitar at area clubs and lounges for more than 30 years, died Sunday. He was 77 and lived in North Philadelphia. Nelson, who also was known as "Colonel Lee" or "Doc" or "The Old Man," picked up a guitar at age 16 and taught himself to play. He attended auto mechanic school, and for most of his life filled in between gigs fixing cars. In later years he gave up working on cars because the automakers started making it "complicated" under the hood.

Earnest American guitar-rock bands promoting strong musical values are due for a comeback. Today, we're offering some primo candidates. For those who adore the rootsy, understated, country-tinged rock popularized by the Band, the Byrds, Little Feat and Graham Parsons, get to your music emporium and pick up "Continental Drifters" (Monkey Hill/Ichiban, . ). At turns earthy and whimsical while always tuneful, the Drifters will get your body swaying to the romantic trials of "Mixed Messages" and the (aching waltz time)

It was fitting that two songs into his performance at the Theatre of Living Arts on Tuesday night, Michael Hedges chose the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" as his first in a series of classic-rock covers. The timeless Beatles tune could be a theme song for this experimental guitar virtuoso - famous for making his guitar sing, cry, scream, and yes, even weep. For more than 15 years, Hedges has been pushing the boundaries of modern guitar. His sound is distinct - ringing with bright harmonics, deep sonic textures, and an ever-present driving bass line.

Michael Hedges, rock guitar wizard, is a new breed. The post-punk movement, which cheers rhythmic emphasis and leers at stylized melody and harmony, has left few guitar virtuosos in its wake. During Saturday night's sold-out show at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Hedges - who developed as an artist during punk's reign - demonstrated that rock virtuosity has not been sneered out of existence, but has been handed a new set of rhythmically urgent priorities. And he did it on acoustic guitar.

Here's the Cliffs Notes version of Dave Navarro's career: Played the role of the swarthy guitar hero with the Rasputin-style good looks in Jane's Addiction, a once-important alt-rock outfit whose relevance continues to diminish in direct proportion to the number of times the band re-forms for lucrative nostalgia tours. Rarely wore a shirt. Was a hired gun for the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a few albums, filling the hole left by a succession of guitar slingers who overdosed, went insane, or both.

AUSTIN, Texas - On a sunny afternoon at her first South by Southwest music festival, Lianne La Havas is singing about the used guitar she's accompanying herself on at that very moment. "Found myself in a second," sings the 23-year-old songwriter, fresh off the plane from the Tooting section of southwest London. "Found myself in a secondhand guitar. " The song is "Is Your Love Big Enough?", the title track to the debut album by La Havas, who plays World Cafe Live on Sunday. It's also the tune Stevie Wonder sang to her when he left her a voicemail message.

One day in 2003, Mike "Slo-Mo" Brenner walked into a music store in Cambridge, Mass., and happened upon a VHS tape offering to teach him "How to Play Hindustani Slide Guitar. " "It had a picture of an Indian gentleman playing this way-out-looking thing," says the Philadelphia guitarist and bandleader, who was then on tour with the roots-rock band Marah. "I asked the guys in the store, 'What is this?' They had no idea. " When he got home and popped it in his VCR, Brenner recalled over lunch at a University City Indian restaurant this week, he heard "the most amazing sound.

When Jim James comes to town, it's usually as the front man for My Morning Jacket, the adventurous jam band that has made a habit over the last few years of entertaining 7,000 or so souls at the Mann Center in Fairmount Park on steamy summer nights. It was a little different Monday night at Johnny Brenda's, the cozy Fishtown club. The singer with the haunting, luminous voice launched a tour for his debut solo album, Regions of Light and Sound of God , in front of a packed house of about 200, who snapped up tickets in a matter of seconds when they went on sale last month.

The "Jersey girl" who paid $250,000 after Bruce Springsteen sweetened a deal at a Grammy charity auction reportedly is Tracy Powell, sister of Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene. "It turns out that Laurene was at the MusiCares dinner on Friday with Tracy, and - according to people at their table – she egged her sister on to bid the big money," according to Showbiz411.com. Springsteen put on quite a performance at the event - after all sorts of singing was done by the likes of John Legend, Elton John, Neil Young, and Mumford & Sons.

A man with a "South Philadelphia accent" was able to slip a Les Paul guitar down his pants at a Sam Ash store in Cherry Hill as a female accomplice distracted employees, police say. According to Cherry Hill Police, the man and woman entered the store on Dec. 19 and Jan. 8. Each time, police said, the woman distracted employees at the Route 38 store as the red top, distracted Sam Ash employees, while the male subject shoved a Les Paul Slim Neck...

BEHIND every good TV broadcast is a dedicated technician who helps to make it happen. In the case of Comcast SportsNet, the man behind the scenes was Victor L. Hamrick, a bearded free spirit who might just as easily have been found playing a guitar, camping in the wilds or wandering the earth. He died Dec. 28 of smoke inhalation from a fire the previous day at his home in Claymont, Del. He was 57. "He was a good friend and mentor to many, had a great sense of humor and was always willing to lend a hand," said Dave Finocchiaro, senior director of engineering for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.

"Have I ever really helped anybody but myself / To believe in the power of songs?" Emily Haines sang in "Dreams So Real" during Metric's performance at the Tower Theater on Saturday night. Such self-doubt and existential questioning are typical of the Canadian quartet's songs, whether asking "Is this my life?" in "Breathing Underwater" or pleading, "Fate don't fail me now" in "Artificial Nocturne. " But those sentiments are at odds with the confidence and exuberance of Metric's music and stage presence.

In the six years between Comfort of Strangers and the new Sugaring Season , Beth Orton had two children, married fellow singer-songwriter Sam Amidon, and thought about making lots of albums. But she had become disenchanted with the recording process. Although she often worked early in her career with electronic artists such as William Orbit and the Chemical Brothers and her debut album, 1996's stellar Trailer Park , rewardingly merged synthetic textures with acoustic melodies, Orton became more interested in the unvarnished immediacy of a well-crafted song.

"They say you don't miss your water until your well runs dry. " These words, spoken softly and without sentiment, could describe many of the themes in People's Light and Theatre Company's monumental production of August Wilson's Seven Guitars : the melancholy mood of its blues music, the funeral that opens and closes the play, the revolving door of the boarding house where this story takes place, and the promise and eventual burnout of northern cities...