rock

Want to know what the top 40 rocks songs in June 2013 are? We’ve got your top rock playlist here.  

Playing the song "From Can to Can't", reminded me that I was watching the making of the song video on YouTube this morning, and if you haven't seen it, check it out! It's from the Sound City Soundtrack, Dave Grohl's documentary about the legendary recording studio called Sound City. There's a DVD you can get, of course, and here's some cool behind the scenes footage from the making of th

The new Megadeth album Super Collider comes out on Tuesday! I've heard two songs from the album so far. The first one, "Super Collider", I wasn't over the moon about. It's a straight-forward rock song, something you might find on Risk-era Megadeth. Not horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but probably not a song that will be high on my playlist. But the second song they even let o

You know by now that I'm a huge music fan, and I love original music from local guys. As long as you're doing what you love to do, I'm down. Even if it's not something I'm really interested in, I still respect and dig that you're doing your thing. Keep at it! We need more people creating and doing new stuff. Some of the people around town that I really like are all different, and range from jazz t

I've been looking forward to Balloonfest Saturday ever since I found out about Tremonti being signed to play. I think he's an underrated guitar player, and a fantastic songwriter. Mark and his band didn't disappoint, either! They hit the stage with some serious chops, and ferocity that I love to see a heavy band have. They really enjoy playing these song, have a lot of skill on their instruments,

Tony MacAlpine is our guitar shredder for the week, and we've seen some old songs, new songs, collaborations and learned a little about one of the premier guitar players out there. If you haven't been aware of him before now, hopefully you've found a cool new guitar player to share with your friends! Maybe you've also found some cool new ideas and licks you can learn from one of his early instruct

What's T-Mac been up to recently? He's stayed really busy musically, and has even toured quite a bit with Billy Sheehan, Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian, playing some serious music for the people. Check out Thursday's shred song for today, Billy Sheehan's "Shy Boy", originally written for Billy's band Talas, and then re-recorded with Van Halen maniac David Lee Roth!

Wednesday on the Shredder of the Week brings us a trip back to big hair and lots of reverb. Guitar master Tony MacAlpine plays one of the songs that he released on his 1987 album Maximum Security on PolyGram...whoa, there's a name from the past, PolyGram. They died a horrible label death...eventually being absorbed into Universal Music Group.

At first glance, an acoustic day at Balloonfest 2013 seems kind of weird. But the more you think about it, the better the idea gets! It's something we haven't done since Zakk Wylde came down and performed songs from his then new album Book of Shadows. (Anyone else remember that?) That was a really cool show, and something people really didn't expect from Zakk at the time...heck, it's still odd to

Day two of Tony MacAlpine week features a song from Tony's album Premonition, called "The Violin Song". This is one of the tracks from the album that features keyboard master Jens Johansson. The melody on this one is really good, and grabs you right away. Tony began his classical training at five years old, and trained on classical piano and violin at the Springfield Conservatory of Musi

Some of you might remember this guy's name from the 80's, when the guitar shred boom really began in a big way. Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen really opened the door for a lot of guys to get known widely for instrumental music.

In case you'd need another reason to sign up for the Orion VIP trip package we're giving away, here's something I'd love to check out at the festival this year. Last year, each band member had his own "tent" with things that reflect that guy's hobbies or interests. James had cars and bikes, Lars had movies, Robert had skating stuff, and the whole band had their museum. The part I really