Post Archive by Year

It’s always fun to get fan mail, especially from somewhere far away. I received the following email this morning, from a guitarist in Wales, that really sparked my imagination. Thanks for writing, Chris! Hi Rob, My name is Christopher Wood, 57yrs and live in Wales, in the Uk. Just come across your site and wanted to congratulate you on the …

For the past two months, I’ve been meeting with six students every Thursday night for Jam Workshop, the first group lesson I’ve offered as a guitar teacher. Jam Workshop is a chance for guitarists who know basic open chords to venture up the guitar neck, learning how to play solos, riffs, and alternate chord voicings to such tunes as “Friend …

From the Feb. 6, 2006 New Yorker: I asked people to post caption ideas—here’s my favorite, from Al Scott: “The rest of my band has complaints, too, but their car wouldn’t start.”

Some people like lyrics, some like a good melody, and some just like the cars, the cars that go boom. I love songs that are poetic. Unusual images startle me, strange phrases or ideas help me see different perspectives, and musical language can move me as much as a beautiful melody. What songs do you think have the best lyrics? …

I saw G. Love & Special Sauce tonight at the Showbox. I used to groove to G. Love in college—his funky blues guitar and marblemouthed vocals got me through many a chore-filled Sunday, and I performed a rap about Herbert Hoover over the song “Garbageman” for my portfolio presentation at Stanford’s School of Education. So I was psyched when my …

The webmaster community has been in a froth over the past few days in anticipation of Google’s latest update of every website’s PageRank, which is a number between 1 and 10 displayed on the Google toolbar. It’s a gross rating of how popular your site is, based on the number of links to your site from other sites, the quality …