We meet again! If this is the first blog of mine that you’re reading, let me bring you up to speed: Every year Music Connection brings together, through the power of technology and editing, a fresh group of axe-slingers. This feature comes out next month, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT! I’m giving you a tease of what’s in store, in hopes that you’ll come back for more in a few weeks. Plus, there’s extras here that are won’t and can’t make it into the final print.We include guitarist and bassists of all types and all genres, and we try to make sure to mix it up from year to year, always hooking you up with a legend and someone to look out for. As introduced two posts ago, Orianthi Panagaris ripped it up for Carrie Underwood’s Grammy performance, and if Santana and Steve Vai are betting on this girl’s future, who are we to disagree? So she’s definitely one to keep an eye on.

  
On the old-school legend front, we bagged a player for the ages, the one and only YNGWIE MALMSTEEN. His virtuoso ability and classical-meets-metal repertoire (introducing most of us to the wonders of Paganini) inspired a score of imitators in the 80s, and though that style of shredding was considered obsolete and ancient in the 90s, today’s Rock Band and Guitar Hero-youth have no hesitations glorifying the original over-the-top axe-gods. And so, YNGWIE is finding that he’s inspiring a new generation by participating in the video game thing, and his last album Perpetual Flame is an instant classic. By the time our feature runs he will have another release out called ANGELS OF LOVE, which centers more around classical and romantic instrumentals. He’s also hyping his recently issued signature Fender Stratocaster that you really have to see to believe. It’s got that prefab-beat-up look.

Anyway, plugs aside, I’m giving you a little over six minutes of YNGWIE, where he talks about weathering the Seattle storm until the Guitar Hero days came back. The audio may sound like we’re yelling at one another, but that’s because I’m on a speakerphone and speaking up near the microphone of my digital recorder, and he was speaking up into a speakerphone as well…except when he’s accidentally hitting the buttons. Yngwie is a blast to listen to once you get him going, which wasn’t hard to do.

Tags: Guitar Confab, Guitar Jam, Guitar Roundtable, Music Connection, Perpetual Flame, Yngwie Malmsteen

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 6:15 pm and is filed under Daniel Siwek's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.