Strumming, Picking, and Shredding:

An Oral History of Guitar Player Part 7: James Rotondi

By Steven Ward

James Rotondi was the Features Editor of Guitar Player from 1991 to 1997, and was later Senior Editor at Remix magazine, and more recently Editor-in-Chief of both Guitar World’s Bass Guitar and Future Music magazine. His writing has appeared in Spin, Rolling Stone, The Wire, Mojo, Pulse, and the Boston Phoenix. As a musician, Rotondi’s resumé includes tours and recordings with Mike Patton’s Mr. Bungle, French electro stars Air, trip-hop pioneers the Grassy Knoll, as well as collaborations, sessions and gigs with Santana’s Michael Shrieve, horn gods Tower of Power, and pop legend Jason Falkner. An accomplished singer, guitarist and keyboardist, Roto has also played, sang and co-composed on over 200 TV commercials, from Olympus to Lexus to Quaker Oats. His new solo album will be released digitally and on CD this Fall (myspace.com/rotovybe) and he continues to work on film music with his instrumental project, Jettatura (myspace.com/jettaturatheband).

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“A serious background in metalloid shredding…”

“During the hot Boston summer of 1991, I’d been supporting my efforts as a struggling songwriter and musician by writing reviews for local free press publications like the Boston Phoenix and The Beat, and taking various temp jobs around town: filing, typing, moving boxes, making cold calls, you name it. One of the companies I got along well with was a firm called Miller-Freeman Expositions, which had a big publishing arm on the West Coast. One day while strolling past reception, I noticed that one of the mags on the little in-house news rack was none other than Guitar Player, which I’d read religiously from about age 13 to 19, but which I’d stopped reading during my college years.

“Well, as good as the old GP was, this wasn’t the old school GP I remembered; it was fresh and ferocious, with Metallica’s James and Kirk beaming from the cover and a big Richard Thompson Lesson across the banner. There could not have been a better representation of my own across-the-board tastes; a strong love of acoustic fingerstyle and pop songwriting, and a serious background in metalloid shredding. I devoured the issue, and Xeroxed the lessons to stick in my gigbag.

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Strumming, Picking, and Shredding:

An Oral History of Guitar Player Part 6: Joe Gore

By Steven Ward

Joe Gore always seems to make half his living playing music and half writing about it. His studio and touring credits include Tom Waits, Tracy Chapman, PJ Harvey, Courtney Love, Aimee Mann, DJ Shadow, John Cale, the Eels, plus many movie and TV soundtracks. He has also composed music for such clients as VH1, HBO, Intel, Universal, and the American Museum of Natural History. For better or worse, his music writing work has drifted from consumer magazines to corporate clients, though he still pounds out a guitar story once in a while. He’s deeply involved in music software, particularly Digidesign’s Pro Tools and Apple’s Logic platforms. He does editorial and audio work for both companies, and he created the hundreds of guitar tones that ship with Apple’s recently released Logic 8. His fave project is Clubbo, a megalomaniacal music-fiction experiment he’s developed with composer/producer Elise Malmberg (AKA “wife”). It’s a mammoth web hoax that alleges to depict a legendary indie label with a checkered 45-year history, complete with downloadable music, album covers, photos, bios, and miscellaneous cultural debris. It’s all fake, down to the copyright info and “external” links. He recently completed a Clubbo novel, and he and his wife are currently planning more and better fakery for 2008. There’s additional info at joegore.com.

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“I regret being too self-serious more than I regret goofing off…”

“I was about to turn 30. My almost-was band had tanked. I was sick of teaching guitar, which I’d been doing professionally since my early teens. I pitched Tom Wheeler on a world music guitar column for Guitar Player. He declined, but offered me an assistant editor gig at the mag. I filled out my first W2 and joined the staff in the summer of ’88. Later I became an associate editor, then senior editor. During the latter period, the mag had no actual editor. I reported to Dominic Milano of Keyboard, who managed corporate affairs, salaries, personnel reviews, and the like, leaving me and my colleagues to screw up the editorial all by ourselves.

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