Danica does it for the ladies.

You go girlfriend.

Danica Patrick races her way into the record books snaring pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500. She says she isn’t particularly a 'car person' and would prefer a day of shopping with her girlfriends to sitting on the couch watching a race on television. She plays a mean game of cards and she’s never been able to talk her way out of a speeding ticket, loves to cook lavish meals and collects fine wine.
We're with you Danica, on the lavish meals.

It's roundy roundy time again

Love the race-face.

The 12/13 speedway season is in full swing again and in the big-gun sprintcar division our very own James McFadden is out there creaming it for Electric Guitars and Racing Cars. James (or J-Mac to the speedway dags) cleaned up at this years Aussie title and earned himself the coveted #1 for a second time. We're proud of you James here at EG&RC. As with most Australian speedway titles, this year also carried with it the usual controversy. Promoters of the event held this year at the SuperCheap Autos Archerfield Speedway - where the stars fly, decided to run the show over three nights instead of the usual two nighter. There were some rather grumpy race fans due to the additional entry fee and three nights of racing (24 heats) I thought was a bit unnecessary and tough on machinary for just 50 entries.
Being a bit of a race format buff, for a title race the format that was run this year did seem a little unfair in my eyes. The field was seeded into two groups. I believe this was decided by 'someones' idea of drivers being of "similar rating" (or so it said in the race rules). This simply meant that the suckers that paid for night one only got to see half the contenders, the slow guys. From there it seemed to be just a complicated mess. The couple of titles I've made it to were as simple as drawing your heats from the barrel, gather some points and run the mains. No BS, no reversing the top six, no pole shuffle, no time trials, just a straight forward race. Our James had accumulated enough points from his time trial and heats to see him straight into the A main out of 2 alongside another old EG&RC friend David Murcott (or Murcy to the speedway dags) on pole. It wasn't until lap 34 of 40 that our James made his move and took the lead.
Be sure to stay tuned for my opinion piece on the speedway state of play coming up soon.

The NAMM 2013 report.

Show us your wares.

The National Association of Music Merchants, known by the more friendly acronym of NAMM has two trade shows each year with the biggy being their (US) summer show. This is when we get to see what will be in store for the coming year. It is 'the' show for manufactures to display their wares resulting from all that hard work they have put into new product design and what hopefully us, the end user, will be wanting to buy. With tongue firmly in cheek, I could do with a few new Les Paul's.

Elvis has entered the building

[L-R] Nick, Don, Brian, Richard, Jeff and Simon

After a short hiatus from blogging I'm back for 2013 with all the goss and garbage '13 will be throwing at us. With NAMM behind us and the release of many many exciting new products in the guitar world (plus) we're in the height of the downunder speedway season with F1, V8 Supercars and Nascar all due to take the green there will be lots to gas about. To all you Electric Guitars and Racing Cars fans out there in the blogosphere, all the best for the new year.

PS: hope you enjoy this holiday shot I pilfered from tutor Richard Perkins 'Complete Electric Guitarist' blog here!! Oh, and none of these fine looking twangers is me. I just liked the picture and thought I'd share it.