Guitar Hero

With the exception of latter-day Eric Clapton, the guitar hero-soft rocker suitable for mass consumption is a rare commodity. Enter, then, unassuming, puppy-dog-cute John Mayer, who comes bearing expressive guitar licks that make him more smooth talker than fiery gunslinger, and hopelessly romantic pop songs that set the lovesick feeling of every unrequited crush you ever endured to smart chord progressions a la Dave Matthews. Touring behind his million-selling major-label debut, Room for Squares, Mayer (who was backed by a three-piece band)

Charlie Sexton is the guitar prodigy who hit the road with Joe Ely when he was 13 and got signed to a major label deal when he was 16. He's the hotshot with the high cheekbones who returned to Austin, Texas, after a failed bout with pop-stardom in Los Angeles, and became a six-string sensation redux with the Arc Angels, which featured the rhythm section from Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble. So how come Under the Wishing Tree (MCA), the Malcolm Burn-produced new album mischievously credited to the four-man Charlie Sexton Sextet, is filled with atmospheric soundscapes and searching, rootsy songwriting, and doesn't sound like the work of a guitar hero at all?

Todd Rundgren is fuming mad. And for fans of the 60-year-old rocker, that's reason to celebrate. Rundgren has spent much of the last two decades dabbling in multimedia experiments, techno, and soundtracks. Do we need to mention the bizarro exercise where he retooled his biggest hits - "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" - into out-of-tune bossa novas? But his anger at eight years of the Bush administration has pushed Rundgren to return to classic form. Classic rock, that is. He's picked up his guitar and is wielding it with a revitalized sense of mission.

WE WERE instructed by his people not to ask any questions about the Rolling Stones or Sally Humphreys, his new, younger-by-three-decades girlfriend. But hey, those subjects were not why Ronnie Wood agreed to chat up the Daily News in the first place. Instead, the veteran guitarist, who just last weekend was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the British rock band Faces, called to gab about his Saturday-night set at Golden Nugget Atlantic City. The show is notable for a couple of reasons: It is not part of a tour, but a one-off performance by a guy who seldom goes out on his own. In fact, the Nugget show is his first solo gig in the U.S. And considering his 37-year tenure as a member of the Rolling Stones (thereby making him the royalist of rock royalty)

That annual Black Friday dilemma is here - what to buy for the gamer in your life. With so many video games and systems, it's never an easy choice. But this year, I'm going to make your holiday shopping a bit easier with these gift suggestions. Music games are incredibly hot right now, and the biggest name in the genre is Guitar Hero. The new Guitar Hero: World Tour (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PS2) is available (disc only) for $50-$60, depending upon your gaming system. This will suffice if the gamer in your life already has a guitar controller from a previous edition.

Owen Schmitt played tuba as a boy in small-town Wisconsin and loved it. But he also happened to be a football star. He couldn't score touchdowns and march with the band at halftime. So he chose touchdowns over tuba. He went to the West Virginia University, where he became a football superstar. In his last year, he didn't have many classes and began to skip the ones he had because he discovered Guitar Hero. He loved Guitar Hero. He thought to himself it would be really, really cool if he could actually play guitar.

Rockers out there, it's time to turn off Guitar Hero and turn on to the heroes of guitar in It Might Get Loud , a six-string "summit" featuring virtuosos of the '60s, '80s, and aughts. They are: Jimmy Page, silver-maned lion of licks, guitar supremo of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; the Edge, wool-capped wizard of reverb for U2; and Jack White, pork-pie-hatted plucker of the Raconteurs and White Stripes. In this electrifying triptych from Davis Guggenheim ( An Inconvenient Truth )

  The reaction It's been the question of the week: Do Eagles fans cheer the man who led them to five conference title games or boo the Redskin who never brought them a Super Bowl title? And how will McNabb react to whatever reaction he receives?   McNabb on the move The Redskins love to roll out McNabb or use bootlegs to get him outside the pocket. The misdirection buys him time, and his big arm lets him throw to any part of the field. Both of the Redskins' passing touchdowns have come on plays like this.

With nearly two decades' worth of hits under his belt, Tom Petty has earned his place as the most prominent veteran male American rocker around. Compared to Bruce Springsteen or even John Mellencamp, Petty's work has often seemed slight and unwilling to risk seriousness. But while his contemporaries have dawdled, Petty keeps building rootsy, chiming tunes around sturdy choruses that are easy to sing along with, and scoring one MTV hit after the next. At the Spectrum on Friday night, Petty pulled top-shelf hits off his current album, Wildflowers (American)

WE WERE instructed by his people not to ask any questions about the Rolling Stones or Sally Humphreys, his new, younger-by-three-decades girlfriend. But hey, those subjects were not why Ronnie Wood agreed to chat up the Daily News in the first place. Instead, the veteran guitarist, who just last weekend was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the British rock band Faces, called to gab about his Saturday-night set at Golden Nugget Atlantic City. The show is notable for a couple of reasons: It is not part of a tour, but a one-off performance by a guy who seldom goes out on his own. In fact, the Nugget show is his first solo gig in the U.S. And considering his 37-year tenure as a member of the Rolling Stones (thereby making him the royalist of rock royalty)

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.

Owen Schmitt played tuba as a boy in small-town Wisconsin and loved it. But he also happened to be a football star. He couldn't score touchdowns and march with the band at halftime. So he chose touchdowns over tuba. He went to the West Virginia University, where he became a football superstar. In his last year, he didn't have many classes and began to skip the ones he had because he discovered Guitar Hero. He loved Guitar Hero. He thought to himself it would be really, really cool if he could actually play guitar.

IF YOUR FAMILY is anything like mine, they could be found the day after Christmas working their thumbs. That is, they probably spent the day hunched over a five-inch screen on the latest electronic game or gadget in their collection of virtual realities. I almost sat on my youngest granddaughter, who was on the sofa curled up under a blanket. She was blotting out the light around her to create a sharper contrast for her digital screen. Fortunately, her parents insist that she spend an hour or so reading every day. So she keeps her e-reader just outside the blanket in case her mother or father get medieval on her and enforce their reading rule.

  The reaction It's been the question of the week: Do Eagles fans cheer the man who led them to five conference title games or boo the Redskin who never brought them a Super Bowl title? And how will McNabb react to whatever reaction he receives?   McNabb on the move The Redskins love to roll out McNabb or use bootlegs to get him outside the pocket. The misdirection buys him time, and his big arm lets him throw to any part of the field. Both of the Redskins' passing touchdowns have come on plays like this.

They say no good deed goes unpunished. My deed must have been better than most, because I'm still fairly sore. A friend recently held a charity fund-raiser for children who want to run marathons or something. At least I think that's what it was for - to be honest, the whole thing sounded suspicious. An event for children who want to eat ice cream all day or play Xbox 360 until their wee hands lock up from carpal tunnel, that would make sense. Kids who want to run marathons? I don't know any of those and I'm not sure they exist.

Rockers out there, it's time to turn off Guitar Hero and turn on to the heroes of guitar in It Might Get Loud, a six-string "summit" featuring virtuosos of the '60s, '80s, and aughts. They are: Jimmy Page, silver-maned lion of licks, guitar supremo of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; the Edge, wool-capped wizard of reverb for U2; and Jack White, pork-pie-hatted plucker of the Raconteurs and White Stripes. In this electrifying triptych from Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth)

The music business has been shrinking for a decade, and now the economy has followed it into the tank. So why were the streets here filled last week with thousands of music fans and industry types hustling from one club to the next in pursuit of more than 1,900 acts - including a couple of dozen from the Philadelphia area? They had come to hear and be heard at South by Southwest's 23d annual music festival and conference, the industry's largest, because tough times make it more essential than ever for aspiring acts and industry survivors to strategize about the future (while, of course, noshing on barbecue)

Todd Rundgren is fuming mad. And for fans of the 60-year-old rocker, that's reason to celebrate. Rundgren has spent much of the last two decades dabbling in multimedia experiments, techno, and soundtracks. Do we need to mention the bizarro exercise where he retooled his biggest hits - "Hello It's Me" and "I Saw the Light" - into out-of-tune bossa novas? But his anger at eight years of the Bush administration has pushed Rundgren to return to classic form. Classic rock, that is. He's picked up his guitar and is wielding it with a revitalized sense of mission.