TOMORROW ON OUT: FACE-MELTING GUITAR

For those of you who are new to No Expiration, every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET I go on the SIRIUS XM channel OutQ. I am a weekly contributor to The Morning Jolt with Larry Flick. This week, I'll be talking about some of the greatest guitarists of rock and roll, including the man who may just be the best. But their music isn't about guitar wankery, it's about great songs that feature amazing guitar. This isn't music (just) for musos. 

First up is Jimi Hendrix, who I meant to talk about weeks ago, and then I missed a day at work due to snow. I'll be talking about Jimi's catalog, which has recently been relaunched by Sony Legacy, and a new collection that they put out called Valleys Of Neptune. I think lawsuits between opposing forces laying claim to Jimi's legacy have, sadly, lowered his "stock." I'm not talking about his influence, I'm talking about, when a "new" Jimi release comes out, people don't care as much: they have the real albums, and there's been so many crappy other releases. But I've been listening to the new Axis: Bold As Love and it sounds great. As for Valleys Of Neptune, it's cool and the title track is awesome.

Sony Legacy also recently put out a tenth (!) anniversary edition of Santana's Supernatural. People rip on that album, but it brought Carlos back to the limelight, which was a beautiful thing. There was some great collabs - as I've said before, I ain't mad about "Smooth" featuring Rob Thomas - but there were great classic songs that weren't collabs, like "Da Le Yaleo." The bonus disc has a bunch of cool songs, but the original album really holds up in my opinion.

Influenced by Jimi and also the Santana Supernatural approach is Slash's new self-titled album, which I wrote about a while back. Slash with an all-star cast of guests: Iggy, Alice, Lemmy and Ozzy. And Fergie. As these "all-star" type albums usually are, it's a bit uneven. My favorite song features Lemmy: "Doctor Alibi." I also liked "Promise" featuring Chris Cornell, "Gotten" featuring Adam Levine of Maroon 5 (for real) and "We're All Gonna Die" (featuring Iggy Pop even though the lyrics aren't great). There's a goofy new version of Guns N Roses' "Paradise City" featuing Fergie and Cypress Hill that kind of made me laugh a bit.

Finally, I'll try to get to the new live Ben Harper & Relentless 7 album, Live From The Montreal International Jazz Festival, which contains a great cover of Jimi's "Red House." Call in and tell us about your favorite guitar heroes!