Shrapnel Records

A guitar-oriented music label formed out of Mike Varney's 'Guitar Spotlight' column in the back of Guitar Player magazine, which featured a photograph and a little paragraph write-up of various guitarists who've sent in snippets of their playing. One young guitarist by the name of Yngwie Malmsteen sent in a blistering tape of his playing. Varney had him fly out to California to join a band he had been producing by the name of Steeler, thereby launching Yngwie's career as one of the most influential and innovative guitarists in the world, next to Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen.

Varney's label and Yngwie's popularity launched the careers of dozens of other technically adept guitarists, such as Tony MacAlpine, Joey Taffola, Vinnie Moore, Greg Howe, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Racer X, Ravage and many others. Few, if any, captured both the technical prowess, musical sensibilities, and the energetic stage charisma of Yngwie and the 90's saw a bit of a backlash against technical oriented playing. Shrapnel Records closed shop, though it's rumored to have reformed into a new label that deals primarily with instrumental jazz fusion.