On May 1st in Poland, a musical world record of sorts which will gain entry in the Guinness Book of World Records was broken as more than 7,000 guitarists gathered at the Thanks Jimi Festival with a performance of Jimi Hendrix’s version of “Hey Joe,” reports Guitar World.

Every form of guitarist style, ranging from classical to acoustic and electric, performed the Hendrix cut, which has been one of the more high profile songs associated with the late guitarist, but was one of the few songs that he performed throughout his short career that he didn’t write. Billy Roberts penned the song in the mid 1960s and it passed through renditions by groups like The Leaves and The Standells before it found its way into Hendrix’s repertoire [...]

All this week, in honor of the upcoming release of Marvel’s The Avengers, Amazon is offering up the album Avengers Assemble (Music from the Motion Picture) as an MP3 Download for only $5.

The 13-song tie-in album contains songs from artists like Bush, Evanescence, Papa Roach, Scott Weiland, and includes a brand new single from the reunited Soundgarden called “Live to Rise.”

The CD version of the album is also available for the low price of $9.99 [...]

I don’t happen to be very knowledgeable in the worlds of heavy metal music and geek favorite Doctor Who, but it has to be assumed that when those two worlds collide, someone who’s very much into both—like our own Empress Eve and Dave3, perhaps—would become quite happy.

Enter a new video from one such fan in YouTube user 331Erock, who has a knack for fusing together metal and geek culture and has offered to the masses his new Doctor Who performance.

You can check out the video below. [...]

Marilyn Manson‘s new album, Born Villain was released today, May 1, 2012, and now it’s streaming online for FREE right now.

Head over to AOL Music to give Born Villain a listen – it’s 14 tracks and it sounds pretty f’n awesome.

There’s listings for the album for MP3 Download and vinyl, but neither formats appear to be available at this time [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deal for April 2012, Playlist: The Very Best Of Elvis Presley is on sale for only $5.

The saga and adoration of Elvis Presley brings on a division among people that gives new meaning to the word love/hate. But make no mistake about a few points here, Elvis Presley may not have invented rock and roll and he may not invented rockabilly, but what he almost singlehandedly DID invent was how to project a certain attitude and style to it, infusing a danger and an edge. Nobody, no front man in music history who has followed him, does not owe at least something to the unpredictability of the swagger and charisma that was the early Elvis Presley, from Iggy Pop, to John Lennon, to Jim Morrison, to Robert Plant and up and down the musical ladder [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deals for April 2012, Cake’s Fashion Nugget explicit version is on sale for only $5. The edited version without the parental advisory is also available for $5.

Cake is the quirky band that had us singing about going “The Distance” and nodding in time with their rockin’ remake of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” (both on this album!) in the mid-1990s. Fashion Nugget was their second album, but thankfully not their last. Formed in Sacramento, CA in 1991, Cake is still active today. Their seventh album was released in 2011 and the band is currently touring the USA [...]

Every so often Amazon’s 100 MP3 Albums For $5 monthly deal throws up a great live album. This time Festivals Of The Wicked by heavy metal bruisers Iced Earth is the one.

Festivals Of The Wicked covers the best of three Iced Earth shows recorded in 2007 and 2008 and features the band’s two greatest lead singers. All 2008 shows have Matt Barlow’s signature tones and you can hear Barlow belt out the likes of “Dracula,” “Vengeance Is Mine,” and “Burning Times.” The Wacken Open Air festival tracks such as “The Coming Curse” and “Birth Of The Wicked” are performed by one-time Judas Priest singer Tim “Ripper” Owens [...]

Amazon is at it again. They have another batch of 100 MP3 albums for $5 and this month it includes Slash’s 2010 solo album, Slash.

Nearly every track has a different lead singer. Current Slash band lead singer, the phenomenal talent of Myles Kennedy adds his vocal presence to “Back From Cali” and “Starlight.” There are some of Slash’s greatest songs on here: the Lemmy-growled “Doctor Alibi”, “I Hold On” with Kid Rock on fine don’t-even-want-to-punch-him form, and “We’re All Gonna Die” with the irrepressible Lord Iggy Pop [...]

Amazingly English hard rock band UFO formed 43 years ago. UFO – The Best Of ’74-’83 covers the band’s greatest albums during its most popular period. This means songs from every album of the 9 recorded from 1974’s Phenomenon to Making Contact in 1983, via Force It and Lights Out (which featured what many fans believe to have the band’s ‘classic line-up’ of Michael Schenker, Phil Mogg, Pete Way, Paul Raymond, and Andy Parker) can be heard.

All 5 albums from Michael Schenker’s incredible first run with the band have tracks on here including “Shoot Shoot,” “Lights Out,” and “Only You Can Rock Me.” Right now you can pick this up at Amazon.com’s April MP3 Deals for only $5!

This and the 99 other $5 MP3 Deals run out at the end of the month so be sure to order before April 30, 2012 [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deal for April 2012, Janis Joplin’s Greatest Hits is on sale for only $5.

One of American music’s most tragic, flawed singers, Janis Joplin came out of the Billie Holiday/Big Mama Thornton school of hard knocks in the late 1960s to carve her own niche as one of the most influential singers of all time. First doing her musical turns with Big Brother and the Holding Company and then on her own with some stellar backing bands and finally stripped down, Joplin took every drop of the 1960s excess and devoured it for all it was worth [...]

I Told You I Was Freaky, the second album from New Zealand comedy/folk/… group Flight of the Conchords, nearly defies categorization, but it’s worth a listen for it’s all-over-the-place sound and smirk inducing lyrics from Oscar winner Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement.

You can buy I Told You I Was Freaky for just $5 as one of the 100 notable albums on sale as a part of Amazon’s $5 MP3 Album Deal that runs through the end of April [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deal for April 2012, Queen‘s The Works is on sale for only $5.

Released in 1984 and during what would have to be categorized as their “lean years” in this country, The Works by the British group Queen, remains a mildly unknown yet still pretty decent record in their long history of making music. Coming off the heels of the album Hot Space, which was a commercial flop in America, and ending a stretch of long successes for the band which started in the mid 1970s with A Night at the Opera and peaked with The Game (which spawned the number one smash “Another One Bites the Dust”), The Works finds Queen in an adventurous mode and slightly stripped down [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 Album Deals for April 2012, Boston is on sale for only $5.

Originally released a few weeks after America celebrated its 200th birthday all in the Summer of 1976, eponymous debut album by the band Boston has become one of the more memorable classic rock albums of all time. Every song by this Beantown group has gotten radio play thousands of times, the opening track “More Than A Feeling” spawned would-be and successful guitar heroes all across the continent, it’s definitely one of those dividedly “feel good” rock and roll albums of the 1970s [...]

In the summer of 2004 Patton Oswalt‘s career in comedy went supernova almost overnight when his first stand-up CD Feelin’ Kinda Patton was released. In that instant he evolved from a moderately well-known comedian and King of Queens co-star to one of the universe’s funniest and imaginative personalities. Three years after the release of his first CD, Oswalt made a blazing return to record stores with his brilliantly titled follow-up album Werewolves and Lollipops; its unheralded genius, coupled with the successful theatrical release that summer of the Pixar animated delight Ratatouille, confirmed Oswalt as a force to be reckoned with in the world of comedy.

This month, Patton Oswalt’s epic second comedy album is on sale at Amazon as part of their monthly $5 MP3 deal. You can also check out more of these deals at the main sale page and order Werewolves and Lollipops on CD here.

Happy Birthday today to the “Spaceman” – one Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist for the rock and roll all night group KISS, whose frantic, spacial guitar work made him one of the most influential guitar players of the 1970s, when KISS was at its highest powers as a powerhouse, superstar hard rock and roll quartet.

Frehley, who was with KISS from 1973 until he left in 1982 and then from 1996 to 2002 when they embarked on their successful “reunion” and “farewell” tours, humbly downplayed his success, even telling Rock and Roll Experience Magazine in 2009 that “I’m an Anomaly, I’m an unschooled musician, I don’t know how to read music, but I’m one of the most famous guitar players in the world, so go figure.” Everything he said in that one statement pretty much encapsulates the career of Ace Frehley [...]

A stylistic left turn away from the more pop-friendly tracks of The Bends and Pablo Honey, Radiohead‘s OK Computer may not be the best of the band’s albums, but it may well be their most important. The album can be had right now on Amazon for just $5 as one of the 100 notable albums on sale during their $5 MP3 Album Deals for the month of April 2012.

Widely acclaimed and sonically diverse (though not as diverse or experimental as later works), OK Computer offers stand-out singles like the slow building “Lucky” and “Karma Police,” as well as several other expressive tracks that impress on first listen but make their full impact felt over time [...]

The MP3 album deal of the day over at Amazon today is Queen‘s Greatest Hits for only $4.99.

This hits album contains 17 awesome tunes from the classic rock band’s extensive back catalog, making this sale a steal! This is the first greatest hits volume and contains the most popular songs like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You,” and “Another One Bites The Dust.”

If you’d like a physical copy of Greatest Hits, the CD is available for only $9.99. There’s also a 2-CD set, Queen: Greatest Hits I & II, that’s $15.52.

For the band’s 40 anniversary, they released Queen 40 Limited Edition Collector’s Box Set, which is a 10-disc set that contains the band’s first five studio albums remastered in deluxe reissue editions with rare bonus material all in one collectible box with a 24 panel poster. Albums included are Queen, Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night At the Opera, and A Day At the Races. There’s also the Queen 40 Limited Edition Collector’s Box Set Volume 2, which is available exclusively through Amazon that contains deluxe remastered editions of the albums News of the World, Jazz, The Game, Flash Gordon, and Hot Space [...]

For the best part of the last decade Phil Lewis has been fighting to keep his version of LA Guns as the one true band. It is clear from this interview the lead singer is not amused by his ex-bandmate guitarist Tracii Guns launching his own band under the same name with, it has to be said, often disastrous results.

But Phil Lewis is not a man who dwells on what’s passed. With new album Hollywood Forever due for release in early June in the U.S, he is excited to show the world once again that his is the only LA Guns worth listening to. With the first single from the album, “You Better Not Love Me,” it is immediately clear that Lewis and his merry band of rockers will smash any obstacles placed in front them.

The band will release Hollywood Forever on CD, but in the age where download is king, they have also taken the step of releasing the album on vinyl.

Geeks of Doom: What made you go for a vinyl release?

Phil Lewis: Well we’re influenced heavily, well certainly me and Steve [Riley, drums] anyway, very influenced by the ‘70s. When we grew up the format the music we were listening to was on vinyl. Actually sounds better than CDs and infinitely better than MP3s…with the vinyl you get the nice big artwork and the fold gatesleeve and all the sleeve notes and so it looks really, really good on a 12-inch frame. It looks awesome and it will sound good. Unfortunately you can’t put as much music on vinyl as you can on CD, so it’s gonna be like side A and side B. Think it’s like 20 minutes each side so we had to cull a few of the songs for the vinyl. But yeah, turned out great [...]

As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 album deals for April 2012, Patton Oswalt’s Finest Hour is on sale for only $5.

Finest Hour is the fourth and latest comedy album released in 2011 by stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and all-around funnyman, Patton Oswalt. Some may recognize his voice from his starring role as Remy, the lead character in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille, and his face from the Showtime original hit TV series, The United States of Tara and also from Everybody Loves Raymond. Oswalt has also written comic book stories, as well as a novel entitled Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, which was released in 2011.

If you’d like a physical copy of Finest Hour, the CD is available for only $9.27 [...]

Trent Reznor and Jonny Greenwood have been known to dabble in conducting a few notable soundtracks. Renzor, whose most recent work can be heard on David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, earned himself an Academy Award for his work on Fincher’s The Social Network. Though Greenwood’s work for There Will be Blood was deemed ineligible for an Academy Award – due to use of pre-existing material – the soundtrack did earn itself a Grammy nomination for Best Score Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media.

Now its time for former White Stripes lead Jack White to step up and conduct the score for major a movie soundtrack. Disney Studios announced today that White will be making his first score conduction with the Gore Verbinski-directed The Lone Ranger [...]