Matthew Iovane

Created in 1903, after the death of Casagemas, Pablo Picasso's 'The Old Guitarist' is one of the best representations of the 'Blue' period for Picasso. Pablo Picasso was one the founding fathers of cubism, and definitely wore his heart on his sleeve. After the suicide and subsequent death of his closest friend, Casagemas, in a Parisian café where they had spent so much time, Pablo Picasso shifted his palette of rainbow-colors to a more depressed hue. 'The Old Guitarist' was painted in a series of solemn colorful efforts, all circled around musical instruments and the color, blue. Named appropriately as the blue period, this was the point in Pablo Picasso's life, where he demonstrated how much pain and beauty is wrapped up in artistic work. The tortured artist came out during this period and was in no way shape or form ashamed of that emotion. "Pain and death are integral parts of life", Pablo Picasso would be heard saying, so many times,...

It seems that rock guitar players have always been a crowd pleaser, even going back to the days of Les Paul. He may not qualify as a rock guitarist in the sense that we understand it today, but Les Paul certainly made people sit up and take notice whenever he played. Of course, Les was in at the very beginning of the solid body electric guitar's entry onto the stage, so at that time there were very few guitarists who were even interested enough to get the technique to become a great rock guitarist. The foundation of the concept of the rock guitarist lay in the consolidation of the small group with drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitars, plus, maybe a keyboard. Groups like The Shadows, The Ventures and Dick Dale's Dell Tones made young men go out and buy guitars and sit in their rooms for hours practicing. When The Beatles became the first small group to gain international attention from people of all ages, the guitar reached the height of its popularity. The era of the g...

With a dime a dozen of guitarists out there today, picking out who's hot and who's not can be a bitter-sweet challenge. One way to overcome this challenge is to use, what I call, the Guitar Hero Effect Test. Basically... what you do is... compare the elements of the new rock guitarist to those of the legendary guitarists... and then... note where there is a similarity... something that matches... a common ground... The best way to do this is to create and follow a simple method... for instance... you can... 1) Determine who the new rock guitarist's biggest influences are 2) Find what they share in common with legendary guitarists 3) Then create a list that states the following... Like... name of legendary guitarist(s)... name of new rock guitarist... list what they have in common The best way to illustrate this is using an example. Let's take the new classic rock guitarist LYONS is r.s.p. - rock sensory perception... You read up on Lyons is r.s.p. and ...