Latest Guitar World

     So I just got the latest Guitar World at before I left work. It's pretty sick! It features Eddie Van Halen on the cover and focuses on his gear but the issue also focuses on John Mclaughlin, probably my favorite guitarist of all time! The issue is already gold to me because its the first issue in 2016 but because they had people vote and rank guitarists, albums, best live acts, and most anticipated albums and stuff. It was interesting to see who's who and who won all the rewards and stuff. I'm really not surprised by anything there but I was surprised to see that Marty Friedman wasn't on the best shredders list. Marty is a true master 'shredder' guitar player and although he didn't put out any new albums I think he should've been on there. Instead, Joe Satriani got best metal album and best shred guitar player. He deserves it I guess because his new album Shockwave Supernova is a beast of an instrumental guitar album.
     Anyways, the meat and potatoes of this magazine was reading all about Eddie Van Halen's guitar gear and John Mclaughlin. Eddie is.....well Eddie. He's still alive and kicking and he's playing his ass off playing with David Lee Roth, his son on bass, and his brother on drums. He's had a reawakening in the music scene becoming more popular than ever recently. His playing has only gotten better with time and everything he's been through.
     The part about John Mclaughlin was all great stuff. Nothing new to me that I didn't know but it was cool reading quotes from John about Miles, Paco De Lucia, and Carlos Santana. The thing about John is that he's probably the greatest and most talented guitarist on the planet. He was around when all the musical greats were still among us. Now he's part of what we have left from that time. This guy's jammed with Hendrix, played on tons of Miles Davis records, and jammed with the speed and ferocity with the likes of Paco and Al Di Meola. I hope to hear his new album sometime soon. I might just buy it when I can. His latest record is called Black Light and its him with his band the Fourth Dimension. I like how Guitar World described the music-as cubist bebop, which to me sounds like a really scientific form of jazz. I've heard two tracks so far and I didn't really like what I heard. It sounded to me too much like pre-recorded kind of stuff, basically it sounds like smooth jazz to me. Its crazy because I know John detests smooth jazz. Maybe the whole record isn't like these two songs I heard. Another cool highlight on John Mclaughlin was that they labeled, described, and had pictures of every single guitar that John used during all his infamous musical periods. Way cool!