I have not written a music review in quite a long time, but the events of the past weekend in western Pennsylvania have made me consider coming out of blogging retirement. So there goes my extensive review of the first edition of the Three Rivers Progressive Rock Festival (a.k.a 3RP) which was held near Pittsburgh, PA on August 23 and 24, 2008.

August 23-24, 2008 – 3 Rivers Prog (3RP) Festival

While I have attended many prog festivals in California, mostly CalProg down in Whittier, I had never really considered flying out to one of the bigger prog fests on…

To celebrate the release of the latest version of my Guitar Trainer software for mobile phones (now at version 1.0.9) as well as the updated mobiletutor.org Web site, I am making available a special discount for my last.fm friends!

If you choose to buy a full copy of my guitar training software, just use Google Checkout to pay with your credit card and use coupon code LASTFM to get 20% off!

Of course the demo is still available for free. Enjoy!

Sat 19 May – CalProg 2007

Still catching up on my reviews… That fourth edition of the Southern California progressive rock festival featured four really varied bands this year: Puppet Show, Spiraling, Frogg Cafe and the Rudess Morgenstein Project.

I have been to every single event since the first CalProg 3 years ago, and in many ways this festival feels like a family affair. This year seemed on a smaller scale than previous years, with no extra act on the patio and a much smaller merchant area (which was rather disappointing). But on to the show, or…

Fri 18 May – The Red Elvises

About time I catch up on my reviews, so I'll keep it short… Almost a month ago I went to my second The Red Elvises show at Rusty's Surf Ranch on the Santa Monica Pier.

I had seen that band for the first time at that same location for New Year's Eve and they put up a fantastic show. So naturally we went to see them again.

This time around they had another female member added to their previous lineup, featured on guitar and banjo. This considerably increased the sexiness of the band,…

I am proud to announce the final release of my Java application for cell phones, Guitar Trainer !

It took me quite some time to complete the mobiletutor.org Web site on which it is hosted, but everything is now online and open for business.

Feel free to try out the free demo (that includes unlimited usage of the built-in instrument tuner!), or even purchase the full version.

http://www.mobiletutor.org/guitar/img/GTTrainer.jpg

This small application for mobile devices is an educational tool for musicians to help deepen their knowledge of the fretboard of their instrument. Here's a quick recap of the features :

• Learn…

Sat 12 May – Porcupine Tree, 3

I went to see Porcupine Tree once more, this time at Hollywood's Avalon Theater. I've been several times to this theater, and I quite like it, as opposed to the weird dinner-theater setup at the Grove of Anaheim where the band was going to play the next day. So for once I opted to go see them on one of their local dates, instead of both.

I didn't expect the 7pm posted time to be realistic so we took our time to get there - arriving there after 8pm. Unfortunately, it turned out…

Tue 8 May – Abe Lincoln Story CD Release Party

I went to see The Abe Lincoln Story again for the release party of their new CD, Kings Of the Soul Punk Swing, at the Spaceland club in Silverlake.

The parking situation around the club was pretty terrible, so I was only able to stick around for their set, although I did catch a glimpse of the previous band.

I could go into more details but the band has just released their first video podcast detailing the entire night. Go check it out! :)

I also snapped quite a…

Fri 4 May – BAR Fest

It's about time I wrote about my trip up to the first annual edition of the Bay Area Rock Fest a couple of weeks ago, which ran a couple of evenings up in San Francisco at the Independent, a fairly small club. This new festival seems to focus on progressive music, mostly on the metal side.

The announced line-up for the festival was rather impressive, and featured my favorite band Spock's Beard, in what appeared to be the only California date on this first leg of their tour. It's always a pleasure to…

Thu 19 Apr – Nu Alliance

I went back to the Baked Potato on Thursday, for a show by Steve Weingart's band, Nu Alliance, featuring the great Frank Gambale on guitar.

I went in not really knowing what to expect, having heard very little about this band except for the fact that Frank would be playing in it. I got to the venue more than an hour before the start of the show, managing to be the first one in and thus getting to pick the best seat in the house.

http://megastep.org/lj/gambale/nualliance.jpg

The other featured musicians were Tom…

Sat 31 Mar – The Tomorrow Show

I should mention that I went to the Steve Allen theater last Saturday night, where guitar hero and Frank Zappa alumnus Mike Keneally made an appearance on the Tomorrow Show, a weekly comedy show.

The Steve Allen theater is a small seated theater hosted inside the CFI West building on the east side of Hollywood Blvd.

Mike had announced on his blog that he would be performing at this show, so having nothing else planned for that day I opted to go check it out. The show starts at midnight (thus technically on…