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Gary Moore - The Official Biography

Gary Moore - The Official Biography

 

For a guy who is one of my favorite guitarists and biggest influences on guitar, I felt I knew a lot about Gary Moore (before reading this book). I was wrong! This book showed me that while I knew plenty about Gary's music and guitar work, I knew scant little about his personal life. I always read or watched every Gary Moore interview I came across where he's talking about his music. From these, you can glean bits of his personality, but they hardly paint a full picture.

Biographies on Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott, and players Gary worked with, such as Ozzy and Glenn Hughes, all filled in more of the blanks. They all paint a picture of a supremely-talented, all-or-nothing musician. And when these musical relationships reached critical mass, they usually ended badly. But those are only slices of Gary's life, told in the context of stories that weren't about Gary. 

Kramer Nightswan (reissue)

Summary

Full disclosure… I’ve only had the guitar a week, but I have no reason to believe opinions about it will change. Guitars with similar features, coming from Indonesia, are going for as much as $400 more, hell Ibanez Premiums go for as much as nearly $1000 more, so there is some good features for a $900 guitar in 2022. The most impressive thing about this guitar is the fret work, super smooth edges, no dead spots.

Kiesel Vader 6x Headless

Summary

I’ve owned 2 Carvins, a PRS style CT4 and a Strat style Bolt, both, while solid guitars, were not as good as the PRS or Strat that I owned that they were copying… This Kiesel Vader is quite possibly the best playing guitar I have ever put my hands on. The satin neck, ebony board, and stainless fret all make for a very smooth feel across the neck. The Hipshot designed tremolo feels more like a Floyd Rose than it does a typical non locking tremolo unit, like Fender or Gotoh traditional tremolos, you can basically do all your Floyd acrobatics on this tremolo…. And it stays in tune.

JHS Bonsai Screamer

This is an absolutely excellent pedal, built the way you would expect a JHS pedal would be built. It might seem a bit pricey, but a TS808 goes for $180 alone. This pedal covers your TS needs, but also provides quality high gain overdrive.

Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography

Summary

I have read many books on Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin. Jimmy has always been my biggest musical influence (if I had to pick just one), as a guitarist, songwriter, and producer. When I think about what I want to achieve as a musician, Jimmy Page is the first image that comes to my mind. To have artistic vision, write great songs, play them well on my guitar, record them myself, and retain total creative control over every aspect of my art