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Culture Club is a very successful British band that had immense popularity around the world, selling over fifty million records. They were formed in 1981 and were led by vocalist Boy George (George O’Dowd) whose flamboyant androgynous style and sharp tongue attracted huge media interest. The band was considered to be part of the British “New Romantic” movement of the...

The Specials were perhaps the defining band of the late 70s British Ska movement, and they had a run of hit singles and albums between 1979 and 1984. Their band leader and principal songwriter Jerry Dammers was also the founder of Two-Tone Records, an independent label that helped to push the genre into the mainstream. The Specials were a multi-racial...

Our fourth installment on Bob Mintzer’s “I Start With The Blues” solo is a discussion of the crucial chord on bar 8 of a typical jazz blues. Almost always this is a vi chord – so in an F Blues like this one, it’s a D7 ( D dominant 7). In Letter A Bar 8 finds a D7 #9 chord...

Free was formed in 1968 in London, and they followed in the footsteps of bands such as Cream and Fleetwood Mac, who grew out of the British Blues Explosion of the mid-sixties. By moving away from some of the restrictions of the genre, Free (alongside Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple), helped to define British heavy rock music of...

Once The Jackson 5 had been signed by Motown in March 1969, they were very quickly put to work in the label’s legendary “Hitsville” studios in Detroit. However, label owner Berry Gordy was only happy with a few of the recordings, and he decided to relocate the band to work out of their Los Angeles headquarters. The new Jackson 5...

Ronnie Lane was born in Plaistow in East London on April 1st 1946. As a teenager, his father had encouraged him to play the guitar as “he’d always have a friend”. At first, he played skiffle, a type of rough country blues popular in the UK in the early 1960s, but he was also influenced by The Shadows and The...

Joe Jackson has had a similar career to that of Elvis Costello, first coming to prominence in the “New Wave” era in the late 1970s, and then diversifying into a broader variety of musical styles as he became more established. The initial success of singles such as “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” (1978) and “Different for Girls” (1979)...

I was sad to learn of the news of Allan Holdsworth’s passing. He left a great legacy to all guitarists and musicians in general, and his playing in the 70’s had a great impact on guitarists such as Frank Gambale, Bill Connors, Scott Henderson and even Eddie Van Halen. His way of playing the guitar was revolutionary, his legato style,...

British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello has had a long and varied career, and although his early hits were in the new wave era, with songs such as “Watching the Detectives” and “Pump it Up”, he could also create subtle ballads (“Alison”), cover jazz standards (“I Don’t know What to do With Myself”) and would later release an album of country standards...

As musicians, wouldn’t it make sense to focus exclusively on musical applications and learn by practicing mainly songs? Why isolate technique drills and put so much focus on the mechanics, seemingly devoid of any musical context? Why waste an opportunity to build ears and creative skills at the same time and instead reduce practice to apparently mindless, non-creative and non-musical...

Let’s start with a simple exercise. I say, go ahead, get your bass and just do it – that way you get the full benefit from this article. To start, let’s play a simple shift, such as C to D on the A string with the first finger on both notes (this is not the fingering I’d usually recommend, but...

More memory tools for bass players! This is part two in my mini series on Bass Mnemonics. Mnemonic – hard to say the word – but endlessly useful! You can take a look at part 1. Here is more… and a time-limited bonus for you at the end! Eartraining: Song beginnings are a great way to remember intervals. Maybe you...