Hope everyone had a great weekend. My Giants actually won a game! Good because I want Coughlin to stay, not so good for our draft next year. Hosted Jake E Lee and Red Dragon Cartel in NJ Friday night. As someone who hosted this bands first ever show in LA (which was a well documented disaster) it’s great to see how far they have come. I am sad to see Ron Mancuso out of the band but Greg Chaison does a great job and obviously has some history with Jake going back to the Badlands days. Mancuso played a huge role in bringing Jake back and getting an album out (and connecting me with him for radio and TMS) so his role in the existence of this band can not be overlooked. But shit happens in every band and Jake seems very engaged with Greg back as a band member. If you didn’t hear my recent interview with Jake we get into a TON of stuff. Podcast is coming soon too. A lot of things are explained about RDC as well as Badlands, Ozzy and more. The thing I really want to point out of singer Darren Smith. This guy was CRUCIFIED on social media after his debut with the band with everyone screaming for him to be canned. Granted it was not a good moment by any stretch as he will be the first to tell you. But I was vocal about not letting him go. The guy could always sing, but was never a front man (he’s a drummer in his past band). So the performance stuff could be fixed and the nerves were understandable. And it has been fixed big time. Darren has really grown into his role fronting this band and does a great job covering so many singers live. I’m glad for him. Nice to see someone hang in there and turn it around. Funny how quiet it is when someone is doing a great job huh? That’s social media for you and the world we are in today. We’ll see where this all goes but there were some cool song additions to the set (Dreams In the Dark, Now You See Me No You Don’t) and Jake is playing way better with the rust knocked off. Positive signs for this band going forward, we’ll see what the next moves are after these final few live dates for 2014.
Thanks to everyone who came out to Dingbatz Saturday night in NJ for the Karl Cochran benefit. Was great to see Karl who is making progress after a very serious stroke. Joe Lynn Turner, Pat Travers, Carmine Appice, Steve Brown and many more rocked for over 3 hours and it was a blast for a great cause. JLT can still sing and Carmine even at this age is one of the most powerful drummers you will ever see. Steve and Travers ripped as well. Ears still very much ringing!
Austin & Houston TX I am coming to you this Friday and Saturday! Friday I’m at The Original Emo’s (new location) in Austin. Broken Teeth with Jason McMaster and more are playing. Saturday I’m at Concert Pub North in Houston. A UFO and Thin Lizzy tribute will play. Had a blast with these guys about a year ago! Come out for some drinks, music, Q&A, rock stories and more.
First of the year end special edition shows this coming weekend. The all Iron Maiden special!
Many more appearances about to be announced. Keep an eye on the home page for the dates and info as always.
8 Responses
I was at Mexacali for them in April and caught 2 shows this week Webster hall & fri Mexacali all I can say is holy shit they killed it. I have seen a lot of shows this year (not as much as Ed ) but the show friday night @ mexacali musically goes down as the best show I have seen this year out of anyone.
The band is tight and Jake is playing as well as I can remember from 30 years ago. Jake is truly a guitar hero and definitely still has it.
Darren has the pipes without question ..he did a great job and hit all those high notes for Badlands songs.
Drummer is solid and Greg on bass definitely is an improvement big time you can hear the connection brought me right back to the badlands days.
If you get a chance go see them live you will not be disappointed !
(And I don’t mean watch them on YouTube from someone’s shitty cell phone)
Ed, all bias aside…why is Steel Panther only played on Sirius when Jim Florentine plays them on his show? They’re a fairly big band and Sirius has no censorship issues. Death to All But Metal is even played on local radio in Chicagoland.
Perhaps because it’s a comedy act? That’s not a diss, just the truth. Their albums chart on the comedy charts. Since Jim is a comic makes sense he would get it and think it’s funny. No band that has ever done a spoof outside of Weird Al has ever had major airplay, Spinal Tap, etc. I have nothing to do with Sirius programming but when a band is a good on all the other stuff the channels plays it’s not something that anyone is going to jump on to air in general.
Tenacious D is on all the time. It’s disappointing…when I was in London in March, I heard Steel Panther quite a bit, as well as seeing their advertisements on city buses. But people get it, and they play arenas over there.
Unfortunately, the Jake E. Lee show I was set to see in RI on 12/7 was cancelled with less than 24 hours notice due to a venue issue. Not casting blame, just extremely bummed. I hope this doesn’t leave a bad taste in Jake’s mouth and he reschedules in the Boston area. I was looking forward to seeing him play for the first time since 1986!
Eddie, can’t wait to listen to the interview later today on Sirius ID. One of the things that really struck me when you talked to Jake earlier this year was that he said (a few times) that he didn’t think anyone missed him when he was essentially gone the past 15-20 years. He’s nuts. And I hope he’s starting to realize that. WE MISSED YOU, JAKE!
Super bummed I wasn’t able to go to his live shows in the NY area this year. Hopefully, next time around.
Eddie,
Jake was just in Dallas at Trees on Nov. 15th, I think it was the second show on this current tour. I saw him at the same venue about 8 months ago and this time around it was a much better show then the first, however the first one really kicked ass too, only difference I noticed this time was Darren was way more relaxed as well as Jake. I was even able to shake Jakes hand twice and get a guitar pick from him. That was very cool.
Last Monday when he was in your studio I enjoyed every minute of that interview. Especially the part when you said “lets get to some live phone calls, Jake responds, Live? Wait, what do you mean live?”. That was too crazy, did he really not know it was live? I’m glad he didn’t if that really was the case, I felt like he really shared a lot more information with us. I was even surprised to hear him say Ron wasn’t that good of a bass player, I almost felt bad for Ron, especially if he was listening.
I hope you are live tonight and have more guest in studio, I will be listening and tweeting as alway.
Bryan