This past week, I was doing some spring cleaning, and I came upon some notes given to me from a few lessons I took from a famous jazz teacher in the late 1980s in NYC. I took only three lessons from this gentleman, mostly due to the fact that during every lesson he was under the influence of certain mind-altering substances, which I found really unprofessional considering the amount he was charging me.

The dreadful “must use provided backline” or “the mysterious amp at the drummer’s house” are circumstances where we hope for the best, yet fear the worst. Backline gear is usually decent, but your biggest setback is time. The band before you swore, the crowd wanted more, and now the stage director is just swearing at everyone for going overtime!

Musicians and capitalism have a very unique relationship. Obviously, everybody needs money to live, but when an artist does anything besides play music for money, they're seen as "selling out" or suddenly losing all built-up credibility. As odd as it seems, most artists are willing to give up a few minutes of their time to shell a product for literally bags of money, much to their fans' chagrin.

Many guitarists may never know the crunchy overdrive and sweet compression of a vintage 1968 Marshall JMP50 “Plexi” amplifier driven through a 4x12 Marshall cabinet loaded with Celestion Greenback speakers, much less the grinding, high-gain distortion of a Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet. And isn’t that shame?