Guitars

I've Updated My RSS

Rob Foster — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 03:19:17 GMT

Please subscribe to my new feed here:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/lespaulrob

TechEd 2008 Jam Sessions

Rob Foster — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 03:12:25 GMT

Just in case you missed it, Jam Sessions rocked for a bit this year. The band started out by playing some classic rock (Skynyrd, Creedence, etc.) when I got there with some of my SharePoint Nation brothers. Jeff Julian pointed out to me that Denny Boynton was a great drummer (Denny and I had previously had a phone interview where I was the interviewee a year or so ago). With this in mind (and knowing that Denny had NO idea who I was or that he had interviewed me) I told him to jump on drums and we were going to rock something.

Knowing that I wanted to play something from the classic rock era, I brought my TS-808 overdrive pedal, plugged in and grabbed something with a fixed bridge (this time it was a black Telecaster with CRAPPY strings). The band went into "Sweet Home Alabama", which gave me time to warm up the fingers a bit. After "SHA", everyone looked at each other like "what do we play next". There was some discussion and I just walked over to my amp, kicked in the TS-808 and started the intro to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell".

At this point, I immediately felt an electricity in the air...Denny kicked in with a heavy riff on drums and the bass player jumped in as well. After a few times through the intro, literally out of nowhere a guy jumped on stage who had a real look of a true rocker. He looked at me (who was getting nervous that no one was going to be able to sing) and said "we've got this!". After that, it was all gravy. He layed into the intro vocals and literally blew the roof off of The Groove in Orlando. I've played with a lot of people before, but have never played with someone who had the Brian Johnson vocals down so well.

After Highway to Hell, we stopped for a few seconds to take in the crowd as they were going nuts at this point (before we started playing, they were mostly just standing there doing nothing). While they were still cheering and screaming, I couldn't let it stop, so I immediately started AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long". Again, the vocals were spot on. Again, the crowd went nuts.

We finished up with "Little Wing" by Hendrix which was OK, but I really got to be somewhat artistic with the lead guitar and have a good musical conversation with the lead singer during one of the verses. What was cool was all of us have never played together, and mostly never met! Music is such a great language in that you can always seem to talk to each other, no matter your background.

The next day when I was working the OBA booth at TechEd, I saw the lead singer walk by and we introduced ourselves. His name is Allan Pedersen from Denmark and his band's web site is located here and they ROCK!

Denny you rocked it, man! Great chops!

Allan...Jeez, you should bring your band to Nashville to launch your career. I've never had the honor of playing with such a great vocalist. Great job, mate!

If you have any pictures or videos from the show, post 'em up and let me know where to find them! I'd love to see it again!

Led Zeppelin's first US show since 1977!

Rob Foster — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:23:48 GMT

According to this article, they are coming to the Bonnaroo festival, which is right outside of Nashville! I WILL be there!

ROCKING kid drummer!

Rob Foster — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:08:47 GMT

Check this out....This kid's dad documented him learning how to play drums from age 2 to 11. Watch how good he gets!

A Drumming Legend In The Making - Watch more free videos

This social networking thing...

Rob Foster — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:44:06 GMT

I'm a huge social networking guy, especially when it comes to enterprise implementations of this technology. Also, I am a big fan of Gibson guitars and just wanted to highlight the fact that Gibson.com has launched a wiki so that you can provide information about their products in Wiki format. Check it out here.

One of the biggest concerns that I have is that companies have to protect their brand, so I'm not so sure that this format will take of in this exact scenario. For example, I will almost bet that this wiki (or any wiki in this format) is heavily moderated, which poses yet another question: Will social network work if it is deployed to a moderated environment?

Personally, I believe that in the underground movement of social networking. Over the next couple of years, "Gen Y" employees will come to expect that you provide social networking, just as we have no doubt that when changing companies that we will have a company email address.

As enterprises start adopting this technology, my current thinking is that moderation will become an issue that could kill social networking in the enterprise. To some extent, especially in a blog or a wiki, we have to be socially responsible when posting anything online, but what does this mean in the enterprise? (Again...my opinion) It's simple...Take notes. If someone posts something that raises eyebrows, take notes...Often, employees that are "in the weeds" aren't able to express how they really feel about most situations. I think that if you consider that everyone in an organization matters and should be able to contribute to the better of the company. With this in mind, if you see something off color show up in an intranet blog or wiki entry, do the following:

Take notes
Assess the situation
Take action to adjust or correct the situation, if needed (and i'm not talking about firing anyone)

</myOpinion>

40 years since Sgt. Peppers!

Rob Foster — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 04:02:29 GMT

40 years ago today, June 1, 1967, the world changed as The Beatles Sgt. Peppers album was released.