Are there songs that still give you those "chills" when you hear them? Maybe it's just a single note or a lick here or there. There are dozens of songs that still invoke that feeling in me. Songs I've listened to hundreds—maybe even thousands of times.

I was just listening to "No One Like You" by the Scorpions. Even though I've heard that song countless times, the open guitar harmonies still make the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I love it! I can't help but listen to that intro a couple of times whenever it comes on my mp3 player.

Well, this isn't exactly news, but it's news to me. Extreme has wrapped up a new album and is planning a Summer Tour (rumored to be with King's X and possibly Living Color.) The album is scheduled to be released "Spring 2008."

Now this news really excites me. I thought III Sides to Every Story and Waiting for the Punchline were two of the best albums in the 1990s and was extremely sadden when they decided to part ways. If you listen to Extreme's albums from their first album to their last, they just kept getting better and better. So I'm really excited to see what the new album we be like.

Being a big fan of Extreme, I followed Gary and Nuno's post-Extreme careers pretty closely. While I've always loved Nuno's guitar work, I was never a big fan of his post Extreme work. I thought Schizophonic was a decent album. I've listen to all his other projects (Population One, Mourning Windows, Dramagods,) but nothing really hooked me like his work with Extreme.

Gary Cherone on the other hand has done several things I've really loved. I thought Tribe of Judah's Exit Elvis was a great album. I also really dig the EP he put out titled Need I Say More—which is sort of an adult contemporary, funk, pop thing. The song Love Got Left Behind's got this really cool funk/Sade vibe to it. I actually really love all the songs on that EP (which you can buy/download from either iTunes or Amazon,) but don't expect anything that really resembles Extreme (except for maybe the title track, Need I Say More which definitely has a When I First Kissed You/More Than Words vibe to it.)

Anyway, here's to hoping the new Extreme album continues the excellent trend that Pornograffiti, III Sides and Punchline all set.

CNET is giving away downloads to two Flight of the Concord tunes—Ladies of the World and Business Time. If you're unfamiliar with this band, the best way I can describe it funny funky melodic music.

The word.

Almost 40 years later and Abbey Road is still one of the best albums of all time. My father was a huge Beatles fan and many of my earliest memories are of sitting in my car seat and singing Beatles tunes with my parents. I've been heard Abbey Road countless times, yet it still gives me the same thrill every time I listen to the record. I might go months between listens, then I'll pull it out again and amazed at the greatness of the album all over again.

This is an album that should absolutely be on everyone's mp3 player. If you don't own Abbey Road go buy it right now; if it's not on your mp3 player, go load it.

For your listening pleasure, here's I Want You:

For extra bonus coverage, here's a rehearsal of I Want You with Billy Preston and the guys going through a run through:

If you can find it, Eric Gales does a great cover of I Want You on his Picture of a Thousand Faces album.

I found this clip on VanHalen.com. It's basically an audio clip of what it might sound like if David Lee Roth tried out for American Idol.

I was checking out the official Dream Theater site the other day and saw the following tidbit that Dream Theater is Xbox LIVE Artist of the Month.

• Dream Theater will be featured as the Xbox LIVE Artist of the Month for the month of December
• LIVE members on Xbox 360 will have access to exclusive performance, interview, and behind the scenes footage from Dream Theater's recent tour
• On top of that Dream Theater are participating in the Game with Fame portion of the promotion this Wednesday, December 5th from 5 - 8 PM EST.
• They will be playing several video games through Xbox Live with fans including "Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge."
• Click here for more details.

The Xbox LIVE site has a nice brief article which gives a little insight on the band. I'll have to check out to check out Xbox LIVE tomorrow!

Probably my favorite Yahoo! Widget is the SIRIUS Satellite Tuner by Tanner Jepsen. He does a really good job keeping it up-to-date and fixing problems that crop up when Sirius changes their online streaming code—which seems to be too often.

Using this widget, I don't need to worry about loading up Sirius' online streaming site and using their clunky interface. The widget behaves just like the actual radio units. Since it's right on my desktop, it's always just a click away. I'm able to quickly fire up Sirius radio in the morning when I start working.

One of the many features it offers is custom skinning. My favorite skin is the Sirius Black skin:

The problem with this skin is that the target area for each "button" was limited to just the visual blue element. This is because the skin only uses the non-transparent portion of the skin images to calculate the clickable areas. This makes clicking some of the buttons like the "1" channel or the "-" (decrease volume) button very difficult to click.

To fix the problem I modded the skin and added a colored background to each button image to increase the target click space. Feel free to download my modification of the Sirius Black skin.

It was fourty years ago today,
Sgt. Pepper was first aired and played.
While its never really gone out of style,
and its always guaranteed to raise a smile.
So may I introduce to you
The album you've known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Happy Birthday Sgt. Pepper!

Dream Theater's released a bootleg "video" for The Dark Eternal Night, a new song off their soon to be released album Systematic Chaos. Everything I've heard off this album rocks. It's their best album since Six Degrees or Scenes From A Memory. Anyway, here's the video courtesy of Dream Theater and You Tube...

Spinal Tap has decided to re-unite for Live Earth Concert. Marty DeBergi is back with a new online documentary which is approximately 15 minutes long.

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

- The Associated Press

This is a pretty cool video using album art from the past. It's amazing how many of these albums I own.

Well, Sunday night I went to see Journey and Def Leppard with Jenn and a group of friends (Todd, Monica, Eric, Krista and some neighbors of Todd & Monica.) Jeff Scott Soto was singing for Journey in replacement for Steve Augeri (the current lead singer), as Steve is suffering from a throat infection. If you've never heard Augeri sing, if you close your eyes, you would indeed think it was Steve Perry singing. Augeri was an excellent choice to take over the reigns.

Anyway, I was pretty excited to hear Soto sing for Journey. I've been a fan of Soto's since his early work with Yngwie Malmsteen (I love his vocals on I'll See The Light Tonight.) Overall Jeff did an excellent job, but they definitely seem to alter the set to match his vocals. My only disappointment was that he didn't even try to sing any of the songs Steve Perry sang in falsetto (Open Arms, Faithfully, Who's Crying Now.) Those were the songs that I thought might bring Jeff some trouble, but I wanted to hear him sing them, as I've never really heard Jeff attempt to sing anything in that style (not saying he hasn't done it, I've just never heard it if he has.)

To my surprise Deen Castronovo (the drummer) sang those three songs. While he doesn't have the impact of either Steve (but who really does,) I was really shocked out how well he sang those songs. I never had any idea Deen had those kind of pipes. I've always considered him a kick ass drummer, just never knew he could sing like that.

I was talking w/someone recently about guitar work and he brought about Flamenco style music. This immeditately made me remember Steve Stevens excellent Flamenco/Rock album called Flamenco A Go-Go.

This album is a really great intrumental album with lots of influences from around the world. A did a quick You Tube search and came across the video for Dementia. While this song is probably the most traditional sounding songs on the album, it's still a very tasteful piece.

Steve Stevens - Dementia (Live)

For some reason I was in the mood to listen to the first Liquid Tension Experiment album today. Tony Levin is such a fabulous bass player. He really has such a unique and distinct sound—I just love the way he approaches the bass. The LTE albums are both great, but I prefer the first album.

Anyway, for those of you who don't know much about Tony, he's played with just about everyone under the sun—from John Lennon to King Crimson. He appeared on a majority of Peter Gabriel's albums as well.

Some of my work favorite by Levin is on the Bozzio Levin Stevens albums—which consist of Terry Bozzio, Steve Stevens and of course Tony Levin. I highly recommend getting these two albums: