Q: What was your weirdest Craigslist/online gear purchase experience?
Danny Lee Blackwell [Night Beats]
Danny Lee Blackwell
Photo by Hamilton Boyce
A: One time I replied to an ad for a keyboard (Vox Continental) on Craigslist in Fort Worth, Texas. He wanted to meet in the parking lot of a Whataburger, which sounded strange but I agreed. I didn't know how we were going to test out the keyboard, because how were we going to plug it in, right? Either way, I meet up with him and he has a van with a built-in power supply and full moving workshop.
Vox Continental
He ended up being awesome and invited me back to his place to check out more of his gear. After a little deliberation, I said, "Why not?" We ended up playing music in his home for a few hours. I got on drums and played simple kraut-style beats on his drum kit while he tinkered around with organs and keys. Nice guy.
Current Obsession:
I've been a fan of Mdou Moctar since we opened for him in New Orleans a couple years ago. There's something about the inclusivity of his music that's so refreshing. I'm always coming back to my favorites though ... Smokey Robinson, Barbara Lynn, Selda Bağcan, Bill Withers. Lee Moses' Time and Place might never leave my head. He was the guitarist for the legendary Atlanta R&B artist, the Mighty Hannibal. That solo on Lee Moses' "Adorable One" is one of my favorite guitar phrases of all time: It's so simple and powerful, but ties the rest of the guitar work of the song together so beautifully.
Tyler Wells [Reader of the Month]
Tyler Wells
A: This happened last week ... I traded a Fender reissue '62 Strat for a fake John Mayer Stratocaster. The guy wouldn't trade back after I figured it out. It ended up costing me around $2K in value. On a happier note, I ended up trading the fake guitar for a Mexico-made Tele, which I traded my way up to an American Deluxe Strat. Almost back to where I started!
Current Obsession:
Spotify playlists! I'm loving how new music is curated to fit your musical taste while throwing old favorites into the mix. If you haven't experimented on Spotify playlists, you're missing out on some amazing music that you normally wouldn't listen to. I've been loving "Dionne" by Bon Iver/Japanese House, "Anyone" by Justin Bieber, and doing a throwback to some of the Black Keys' earlier albums.
Shawn Hammond [Chief Content Officer]
A: I've got two. #1: The weirdest was in a dream I had just last night. I lived in the same place I lived 25 years ago and I was using my 2021 iPhone to navigate my long-gone '93 Nissan Pathfinder to meet some Craigslist guy and sell him my Deluxe Reverb. My dream self was very dumb and agreed to meet him out in the boonies at the foot of massive, very ominous-looking mountains. Suddenly my GPS stopped working, I was badly lost, night was falling, and my phone wouldn't exit out of the current app to the home screen. I was so mad I bent the phone in half—and then immediately freaked out about it.
#2: In real life, a guy wanted to meet me at Wendy's and buy all three pedals in my ad. Once we were at the late Dave Thomas' place, the buyer just handed me the money without even opening the boxes. The next week, all of the pedals were for sale again on Craisglist, and from then on I periodically noticed ads for entire batches of pedals for sale from the same guy.
Shawn Hammond
Chief Content OfficerCurrent Obsession:
Current Obsession:
I'm still obsessed with recording!
Tessa Jeffers [Managing Editor]
A: I only have one Craigslist story because of what happened to me in 2011. I'd just moved to Iowa to start an exciting new job at PG. I needed a couch, so my brother, who helped me move, suggested I grab a cheap one off Craigslist. We found one quickly for $50 and picked it up. That evening, I saw a bug crawling on the arm of the couch, a curious type of insect I'd never seen before. I captured the bug in a Ziploc, Google ID'd it, and then immediately shoved the couch off my apartment balcony to the dumpster below. It was a bed bug. The couch was definitely the source because I called an exterminator ASAP and no other bugs were found. NEVER again!!!
Current Obsession:
Tame Impala at Nashville Ascend Amphitheater
Photo by Tessa Jeffers
Live concerts, because it's been two years, summer of 2019, since we enjoyed a full concert season. Reminiscing about special ones I saw during that time: Anderson .Paak, Raconteurs, Lana Del Rey, Tame Impala, the 1975, and Foo Fighters.
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The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah taps into the vibrant, melodic character of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most gifted songwriters. Few guitar players have been able to combine a keen musical instinct with a profound grasp of how to bring a composition together like Mick Ronson. Laden with expressive resonance, his arrangements layered deliberately chosen tones and textures to build exquisite melodies and powerful riffs. The Cry Baby Wah, set in a fixed position to serve as a filter, was key to the tone-shaping vision that Ronson used to transform the face of popular music through his work with David Bowie and many others as both an artist and a producer.
We wanted to make that incredible Cry Baby Wah sound available to all players, and legendary producer Bob Rock—a friend and collaborator of Ronson’s—was there to help. He generously loaned us Ronson’s own Cry Baby Wah pedal, an early Italian-made model whose vintage components imbue it with a truly singular sound. Ronson recorded many tracks with this pedal, and Rock would go on to use it when recording numerous other artists. With matched specs, tightened tolerances, and a custom inductor, our engineers have recreated this truly special sound.
“You place the wah, and leave it there, and that's the tone,” Rock says. “It's all over every record he ever made, and I’ve used it on every record since I got it. Dunlop’s engineers spent the time and sent me the prototypes, and we nailed that sound.”
Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah highlights:
- Tailor-made for Ronson’s signature fixed-wah tones• Carefully spec’d from his own wah pedal
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- Special finish inspired by Ronson’s monumental work
The Mick Ronson Cry Baby Wah is available now at $249.99 street from your favorite retailer.
For more information, please visit jimdunlop.com.
The concert will be hosted by WWE Superstar Damian Priest, a well-known “metalhead” and a long-time Slayer fan. Priest's signature “finisher” is Slayer’s “South of Heaven,”and Slayer’s Kerry King provided guitar for Priest’s “Rise For The Night” Theme.
This exclusive concert brings together a multi-generation, powerhouse line up:
Slayer
Knocked Loose
Suicidal Tendencies
Power Trip
Cavalera (performing Chaos A.D. - exclusive)
Exodus (performing Bonded by Blood)
All confirmed Slayer 2025 concert dates are as follows:
JULY
3 Blackweir Fields, Cardiff, Wales, UK
Line-Up: Slayer, with Special Guests Amon Amarth , Anthrax, Mastodon, Hatebreed and Neckbreakker
5 Villa Park, Birmingham, UK • Black Sabbath • Back to the Beginning
6 Finsbury Park, London
Line Up: Slayer, with Special Guests Amon Amarth , Anthrax, Mastodon, Anthrax, and Neckbreakker
11 Quebec Festival d'été de Québec City, Quebec
Direct Support: Mastodon
SEPTEMBER
18 Louder Than Life @ Highland Festival Grounds, Louisville, KY
20 Hersheypark Stadium, Hershey, PA
Over the decades with Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and solo, Bob Mould has earned a reputation for visceral performances.
Mould’s album landed in a world of cloistered listeners, so he never knew how it impacted people. For a musician from punk and hardcore scenes, it was a disquieting experience. So when he got back out on the road in 2023 and 2024, playing solo electric sets, the former Hüsker Dü and Sugar frontman was determined to reconnect with his listeners. After each show, he’d hang out at the merch table and talk. Some people wanted their records or shirts signed, some wanted a picture. Others shared dark stories and secret experiences connected to Mould’s work. It humbled and moved him. “I’m grateful for all of it,” he says.
These are the in-person viscera of a group of people connecting on shared interests, versus, says Mould, “‘I gotta clean the house today, so I’m going to put on my clean the house playlist that a computer designed for me.” “Everything has become so digitized,” he laments. “I grew up where music was religion, it was life, it was essential. When people come to shows, and there’s an atmosphere, there’s volume, there’s spilled drinks and sweat–that’s what music ritual is supposed to be.”
His experiences on tour after the pandemic heartened Mould, but they also gave him traction on new ideas and direction for a new record. He returned to the simple, dirty guitar-pop music that spiked his heart rate when he was young: the Ramones’ stupid-simple pop-punk ecstasy, New York Dolls’ sharp-edged playfulness, Pete Townshend’s epic, chest-rattling guitar theatrics. In other words, the sort of snotty, poppy, wide-open rock we heard and loved on Hüsker Dü’s Flip Your Wig and Candy Apple Grey.
Mould’s time on the road playing solo in 2023 sparked the idea for Here We Go Crazy.
Photo by Ryan Bakerink
Mould started writing new songs in the vein of his original childhood heroes, working them into those electric solo sets in 2023 and 2024. Working with those restraints—guitar chords and vocal melodies—put Mould on track to make Here We Go Crazy, his new, 15th solo record.
Lead single and opener “Here We Go Crazy” is a scene-setting piece of fuzzy ’90s alt-rock, bookended by the fierce pounding of “Neanderthal.” “When Your Heart is Broken” is a standout, with its bubblegum chorus melody and rumbling, tense, Who-style holding pattern before one of the album’s only solos. Ditto “Sharp Little Pieces,” with perhaps the record’s chewiest, darkest guitar sounds.
“It’s a very familiar-sounding record,” he continues. “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould,’ and a lot of that was [influenced by] spending time with the audience again, putting new stuff into the set alongside the songbook material, going out to the table after the show and getting reactions from people. That sort of steered me towards a very simple, energetic, guitar-driven pop record.”
Of his new album, Mould says, “I think when people hear it, they will go, ‘Oh my god, this is so Bob Mould.’”
Mould recorded the LP in Chicago with longtime bandmates Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster at the late, great Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Then Mould retreated to San Francisco to finish the record, chipping away at vocals and extra guitar pieces. He mostly resisted the pull of “non-guitar ornamentation”: “It’s a rhythm guitar record with a couple leads and a Minimoog,” he says. “It’s sort of cool to not have a 64-crayon set every time.”
Mould relied on his favorite, now-signature late-’80s Fender Strat Plus, which sat out on a runway at O’Hare in 20-below cold for three hours and needed a few days to get back in fighting shape. In the studio, he ran the Strat into his signature Tym Guitars Sky Patch, a take on the MXR Distortion+, then onto a Radial JD7. The Radial split his signal and sent it to three combo amps: a Fender Hot Rod DeVille, a Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb reissue, and a Blackstar Artisan 30, each with a mic on it. The result is a brighter record that Mould says leaves more room for the bass and kick drum. “If you listen to this record against Patch the Sky, for instance, it’s night and day,” he says. “It’s snug.”
Mould explains that the record unfolds over three acts. Tracks one through five comprise the first episode, crackling with uncertainty and conflict. The second, spread over songs six to eight, contrasts feelings of openness with tight, claustrophobic tension. Here, there are dead ends, addictions, and frigid realities. But after “Sharp Little Pieces,” the album turns its corner, barreling toward the home stretch in a fury of optimism and determination. “These last three [songs] should give us more hope,” says Mould. “They should talk about unconditional love.”
The record closes on the ballad “Your Side,” which starts gentle and ends in a rush of smashed chords and cymbals, undoubtedly one of the most invigorating segments. “The world is going down in flames, I wanna be by your side/We can find a quiet place, it doesn’t need to be the Albert Hall,” Mould starts. It’s a beautiful portrait of love, aging, and the passage of time.
Bob Mould's Gear
Mould paired his trusty Fender Strat Plus with a trio of smaller combo amps to carve out a more mid-focused rhythm-guitar sound in the studio.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Late 1980s Fender American Standard Strat Plus (multiple)
Amps
- Fender Hot Rod DeVille
- Blackstar Artisan Series amps
- Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb
Effects
- Tym Guitars Sky Patch
- TC Electronic Flashback
- Electro-Harmonix Freeze
- Wampler Ego
- Universal Audio 1176
- Radial JD7
Strings, Picks, & Power Supply
- D'Addario NYXLs (.011-.046)
- Dunlop .46 mm and .60 mm picks
- Voodoo Labs power supply
And though the record ends on this palette of tenderness and connection, the cycle is likely to start all over again. Mould understands this; even though he knows he’s basking in act three at the moment, acts one and two will come along again, and again. Thankfully, he’s figured out how to weather the changes.
“When things are good, enjoy them,” he says. “When things are tough, do the work and get out of it, somehow.”
- YouTube
Many of the tracks on Here We Go Crazy were road-tested by Mould during solo sets. Here, accompanied only by his trusty Fender Strat, he belts “Breathing Room.”
