Last Friday, ABC News 20/20 aired an interesting report about questionable methods used by memorabilia dealers pitching autographed guitars.

The story centered around the practice of stealing photos, doctoring them and using the “enhanced” pictures to authenticate the otherwise phony signatures. Don’s, Robert Plant’s, Don Henley’s, Bono’s and Miley Cyrus’ are among some of the dubiously obtained autographs mentioned.

Article and video on the 20/20 site.

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If you’re like us and sometimes find yourself falling prey to worshipping false gods, well, we’re not alone. The organizers of the Musikmesse understand.

The Musikmesse, the world’s largest music trade fair taking place March 24-26, 2010 in Frankfurt, Germany, has announced that next year’s fair will include a vintage instrument and memorabilia exhibit. Among the “toys” they plan to have on display are both Clapton’s “Blackie” and Stevie Ray Vaughans’ “Lenny,” axes worth an estimated $1.8 million.

For more information consult the special International Vintage Show page. The page hasn’t been translated (yet anyway) so you might want to check out the links to the videos and photos which are actually spoken and captioned in English.

You’ll find the latest about the Musikmesse 2010 up on the official website, which has a new, cool animated splash intro. We think it could use different background music, though, sorta like this  

In case you dozed off in front of your monitor and somehow missed it, this week Google quietly launched its music search application. Basically, you can search Google for any song, either by typing in the title, artist, or even snippet of lyric in the regular Google search bar. It should cough up information about the song and a choice of online sales outlets, all nicely sorted. Now being the geeks we are and always game to stuff like this, we thought we’d test it to see how well Google knows Don.

Litmus test number one. We typed in the lyric, “you can hedge your bet on a clean Corvette,” and bingo, Heavy Metal Takin’ a Ride appeared at the top of the page. So far, so good.

Then we fed it, “never surrender” knowing there’s gonna be a million different matches. On the first try, we got a movie and pages of Corey Hart but no Don. After we typed in “let out a roar it’ll be good for you. Never surrender,” presto, up popped Don and a reference to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Not bad.

We knew it’d have to fail sometime. So we entered “if I can’t have it all, just a taste will do,” looking for Visions by the Eagles. Ah ha! Man over machine. That search query didn’t return any songs on the first page but the results did educate us as to whether or not dogs have taste buds.

Bottom line? We usually find what we’re looking for by digging through YouTube, without the links to phony sites, spyware and spambots on Google. And YouTube is still, amazingly, ad free.

Don will be headlining the final night bash at this year’s International Entertainment Buyers Association Conference in Nashville on Tuesday, October 13th, along with the Wailers (of Bob Marley fame). Other artists scheduled to appear at the conference include Boyz II Men and Chubby Checker, who will also be honored at the event. More entertainment and special guests will be announced in the coming weeks.

It’s winter NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) time again beginning on Thursday, Jan 15, at the convention center in Anaheim.

If you’re going to be there, you might want to cruise by the Ernie Ball booth and meet Don, who’s scheduled for an appearance and/or signing. Exact dates and times for each visiting artist are pending so check the daily listings at the booth. The fair runs through January 18th. Source:ernieball.com/forums