The January-February issue of Frugalguitarist.com has just been published. Thanks for all your continued support. Please remember to support our advertisers and affiliates as they make FrugalGuitarist.com possible.

FrugalGuitarist.com received 7000+ visitors in the month of December, which is nearly a 35% increase over November.  Here’s a big welcome to all our new visitors and subscribers!

Inside the January Issue:

Lace Cybercaster

Hohner OSC Standard

Fender Showdown: Cyber Champ vs Super Champ XD

Spice up Your Turnaround Part II

Year In Review – Lessons Learned

Third Hand Capo

Planet Waves Lock Strap

IMV- Behind The Player Video Series

So I was riffling though a bunch of old demos from my old band Floodwaters for tracks to add to an archival MySpace page and came across a link to my bands original website. This was largely pre MySpace so we choose Tripod as our free host. Man did that bring back some memories. In combination with listening to a bunch of my bands old tracks 2009 has started with a huge dose of nostalgia. Check out the Floodwaters MySpace page to hear some classic tracks from the defunct Denton, TX southern rock band. Happy New Year!

I remember seeing the “Power Ballad” collections of 80’s hair metal love songs years ago and for the first time realizing my perspective had changed from “I love that song” to “I remember that song”. It was a subtle wakeup call (one of many) that my teenage idols had fallen and life had moved on.

While flipping through the channels the other night, I saw a commercial which made me feel way that way all over again.  It was a commercial for a “Buzz Ballads” collection.  Again, I found myself saying “I remember that song” to many college anthems like Tonic's If You Could Only See, Stone Temple Pilots' Plush, and Clumsy by Our Lady Peace which I cranked on the long road trips from Denton to Houston and back during breaks from the University of North Texas. 

This time around, I must admit I saw it coming from a mile away as the older I get the more accepting I am that my wild days are behind me.  However, it did get me thinking. There was a big shift in rock music from the glam of the 80’s through the short lived grudge phase and into “alternative” rock (I still don’t understand how the word alternative can be used for mainstream music, but whatever).  The next wave of rock seems to have stalled out perhaps waiting for the next young gun to flagrantly rock with the careless youthful attitude so missing from the prefabricated angst and angry posturing which has dominated so much alternative rock.

Oh well, maybe I’m just too old to get it. Oh…gotta go AC/DC’s on the radio…

The tradition of best albums of the year lists has already begun, sure to bring a smile to those whose favorite acts have been included and frowns to those who feel their favorite artists have been overlooked. We're sure to be bombarded with a plethora of additional lists as we travel into the New Year but below are some highlights thus far:

Jim Farber's (New York Daily News) list was heavy with UK acts including Portishead's Third,  Diamond Hoo Ha by Supergrass, and Uk-convert Madonna's Hard Candy. Also making the list was Only by the Night by King's of Leon. 

The Chicago Sun Time's Jim DeRogratis' list was more domestic in nature including Erykah Badu's New AmErykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War, Remind Me in 3 Days by the Knux, David Byrne and Brian Eno's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, and Local H's 12 Angry Months.

In Christian music, Rich Copley from Kentucky.com posted a list including Fireflight's Unbreakable and Underoath's Lost in the Sound of Separation.

Mark Stryker's list of the Best Jazz albums from the Detroit Free Press was topped by Sonny Rollins' Road Shows, Vol. 1 while The Seatlle Times' Andrew Gilbert choose Charles Lloyd's Rabo de Nube. Both lists included Our Delight by the James Moody and Hank Jones Quartet.

The past couple years, the Mae version of Carol of the Bells has been in the Christmas rotation on one of my favorite radio stations. In my opinion, a new classic.  Their jazz meets rock interpretation spinkled with avant garde atmospherics perfectly captures the haunting vibe of the song adding their cool sonic signature to the tune.  Check it out over at last.fm.

http://www.last.fm/music/Mae/_/Carol+of+the+Bells

The Wall Street journal reported Dec 22, 2008 that due to frustration over the lack of media revenue generated by their licensing deal, Warner Music Group began removing its songs and videos from Google Inc’s YouTube video service. Warner, Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group and Sony Corp.'s Sony BMG Music Entertainment are all in the process of renegotiating the renewal of licenses initially agreed to prior to the Google's acquisition of the video sharing site. Apparently, a big point in the failure to meet an agreement is YouTube's payment levels falling short of competitors AOL and MySpace.

Finally, the RIAA is looking into alternative methods to enforcing the illegal downloads of copyrighted material. Multiple media outputs reported on December 19th that the RIAA would be shifting the enforcement to internet service providers providing lists of minor infractors to the ISP who would send an warning e-mail to the infringer.  If the illegal downloads continue, the ISP would proceed to slow down or cancel their service.  The RIAA would continue to chase down the biggest offenders who average 5,000 to 6,000 illegal downloads a month.

This is a positive move in my opinion which still enforces the copyright law without stiffly penalizing minor offenders. However, there are two big flaws in the policy. The first being the inability to isolate and penalize individual users on public computers such as libraries and the second being the likely inability to unify all the ISP companies to prevent someone canceled from one service from simply opening a new account with another for a given period of time. Time will tell if this new direction is successful.

For more detail on the RIAA policy shift, check out the following links:

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20081219/tc_pcworld/riaa...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/155861/riaa_piracy_lawsuits.html?tk=rss_news 

Planned content for the January/February Anniversary issue of FrugalGuitarist.com is as follows, but may be subject to change:

• Lace Cybercaster
• Hohner OSC Standard
• Fender Showdown: Cyber Champ vs Super Champ XD
• Spice up Your Turnaround Part II
• Year In Review – Lessons Learned
• Third Hand Capo
• Planet Waves Lock Strap
• IMV- Behind The Player Video Series

A new "table of contents" style navigation engine will be deployed as well.

Recently, Metallica was the talk of the boards as many found the Guitar Hero version of their latest release Death Magnetic to be aurally superior to the full release which has been criticized as being abusively over compressed. The band also received a fair amount of internet publicity regarding the "And Justice for Jason" guitar hero remixes which included the missing bass tracks from the tracks Blackened and ...And Justice for All. Come first quarter 2009, fans will have a shot at a large portion of the band's catalog as Activision releases Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Activision initially confirmed the release in an SEC filing in late May and today USA Today published exclusive photos from the new title along with an interview with lead designer Alan Flores, Lars Ulrich, and Kirk Hammett which confirms the release date is drawing near.

I typically don’t blog about other blogs. However, I found a site which I found extremely cool yesterday. Anthony Stauffer has created a site called oldtonezone with an incredible distortion/overdrive pedal shootout. Using a unique control he wrote he named The Comparinator, you can listen to an A/B comparison of 2 different pedals which toggles in real time. To ensure the tones are evaluated on an even playing field, a Fender Blues Junior was used with consistent microphone placement for all the clips.  The results?  Well, if you’re looking for some bluesy grind and unsure of what pedal is for you this site is an excellent starting point.