Faster Pussycat has just announced a spring tour which will begin in Las Vegas on April 9th at Count’s Vamp’d and wind down on May 15th at AVA Amphitheater in Tucson, AZ.
The first portion of the tour will take the band to the east coast and back, including performing on the main stage at the M3 Festival in Columbia, MD on April 30th along with Tesla, Night Ranger, Quiet Riot, Queensryche and many more.
Confirmed dates are as follows:
4/9 – Vamp’d – Las Vegas, NV
4/10 – TBA – Phoenix, AZ
4/12 – The Rock Box – San Antonio, TX
4/13 – The Rail Club – Dallas, TX –
4/14- Houston Fountains Concert Series – Houston, TX
4/15 – Oklahoma City Limits – Oklahoma City, OK
4/16 – The Hideaway – Jackson, MS
4/17 – 120 Music Hall – Atlanta, GA
4/18 – Basement East – Nashville, TN
4/20 – The Orchards – Chambersburg, PA
4/21 – Sports Page – Lebanon, PA
4/22 – Palace Theater – Stafford, CT
4/23 – Revolution – Amityville, NY
4/24 – Dingbatz – Clifton NJ
4/26 – 1150 OAK – Cranston, RI
4/27 – Blackthorne 51 – Queens, NY
4/28 – Bullshooters – Philadelphia, PA
4/29 – Tally Ho Theater – Leeseburg, VA
4/30 – M3 Festival – Columbia, MD (Day)
4/30 – Hard Rock Live – Pittsburgh, PA (Night)
5/1 – The Firehouse – Richmond, IN
5/4 – O’shecky’s – Columbus, OH
5/5 – SouthPort Music Hall – Indianapolis, IN
5/6 – Tailgaters – Bolingbrook, IL –
5/7 – Phat Headz – Green Bay, WI –
5/8 – Luciana’s Rural Oaks – Ottawa, IL
5/9 – The Scene – Kansas City, MO
5/11 – Mesa Theater – Grand Junction, CO –
5/12- Buffalo Rose, Denver CO
5/13 – TBA Albuquerque, NM
5/14 – Tucson, AZ – AVA Amphitheater
6/10 – Whisky A Go Go – West Hollywood, CA.
Along with touring, the band is currently working on a new EP.
Faster Pussycat’s current line-up is:
Taime Downe
Danny Nordahl
Xristian Simon
Chad Stewart
Ace Von Johnson
Ruben Mosqueda of Sleaze Roxx spoke with former Scorpions guitarist Uli Jon Roth. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
Sleaze Roxx: It was a little over a year ago when you released Scorpions Revisited which is nod to your history and your work with Scorpions. You treated the fans to not only one disc but two discs of reinterpreted Scorpions classics. How did you select which songs would make the cut for that release?
Uli Jon Roth: That was quite easy actually. I looked at the album sleeves. I looked at the albums and looked at the track listings and said “Yeah, those are the ones.” I had a selection of about 25 songs and 18-19 ended up on the album. These were my favorites — most which I had written. There were a few that were written by Rudolf (Schenker) and Klaus (Meine) with my input being me providing guitar lines.
It was unusual for me to relive my past. I see it as a reinterpretation like you said of my past. I left Scorpions when I was 24 years old. There had been a lot of water under the bridge. As you can probably imagine, I’m a much different person now. It was an interesting project for me. I was not prepared to find what I did in this project. It was enjoyable and refreshing. I must confess a lot of the songs that we recorded, I wasn’t completely satisfied with how we recorded them in the ’70s. I wanted to make sure that I was happy with the new versions of the songs.
Sleaze Roxx: There’s a number of parallels between you and Michael Schenker — both former Scorpions guitarists, both went on to solo careers and both have entered a “celebration” phase of your careers where you’re embracing your musical histories.
Uli Jon Roth: [Laughs] It’s quite eerie, isn’t it? [Laughs] Michael and I have touched on this in our conversations in the past but it’s purely coincidental, of course. There are a lot of parallels. We both started off in Hanover about one month apart. We both embraced guitar playing at a very young age. We both made it out Hanover at the same time roughly. We both left the Scorpions out of our own accord. Michael actually left them twice [laughs]!
Sleaze Roxx: I imagine since you’ve been touring relentlessly behind Scorpions Revisited — you must have recorded a number of live performances, no?
Uli Jon Roth: Well, we have recorded a lot of shows but I just want to release the very best. There will be be a counterpart to Scorpions Revisited and it will be called Tokyo Tapes Revisited. It’s a DVD recording of a 2.5 hour show that I did in the same hall where we recorded Tokyo Tapes. That video looks and sounds really great. We just finished editing it in Japan last week. It will be out later this year. We originally wanted to issue another live performance that we had recorded and I wanted to issue it after the studio album but I wasn’t too happy with that and we decided against that. Then, there was talk about recording the show in Japan where Scorpions recorded Tokyo Tapes and that turned out wonderfully.
Uli Jon Roth is currently on the road with guitarists Jennifer Batten and Andy Timmons (Danger Danger) on his Ultimate Guitar Experience tour, see the remaining dates below.
Mar 3: New Orleans House Of Blues, LA
Mar 4: San Antonio The Korova, TX
Mar 5: Houston Concert Pub North, TX
Mar 8: Phoenix Joe’s Gotto, AZ
Mar 9: Las Vegas Country Saloon, NV
Mar 10: Ventura Theater, CA
Mar 11: Ramona Main Stage, CA
Mar 12: Los Angeles Whisky A GoGo, CA
Mar 13: San Jose Rock Bar Theater, CA
Mar 14: Concord Vinnie’s, CA
Mar 15: Reno PB&JJs, NV
Mar 16: Redding The Dip, CA
Mar 17: Portland Dantes, OR
Mar 18: Seattle Studio Seven, WA
Mar 19: Vancouver BC Venue, BC
Mar 22: Denver Oriental Theater, CO
Mar 24: Moorehead The Garage, MN
Mar 25: Savage Neisens, MN
Mar 26: St Charles Arcade Theater, IL
Mar 27: Chicago Reggie’s, IL
Mar 28: Detroit Token Lounge, MI
Mar 29: Toronto Mod Club Theater, ON
Mar 30: Montreal Katacombes, QC
Mar 31: Londonderry Tupelo Music Hall, NH
Apr 1: Ottawa Brass Monkey, ON
Apr 2: Poughkeepsie The Chance, NY
Apr 4: New York B.B. King’s, NY
Apr 5: Sellersville Theater, PN
Apr 6: Pittsburgh Rex Theater, PN
Apr 8: Melbourne Black Box Theater, FL
Alice In Chains will open for Guns N’ Roses at their sold-out Las Vegas dates on April 8th and 9th.
In January it was announced that Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan would appear together onstage again at the Las Vegas dates and a pair of Mexico City concerts in-between headline appearances at Coachella later in the month. It was also recently revealed that Izzy Stradlin wouldn’t be joining his former bandmates in the original lineup.
The former guitarist said, “At this point in time, I will not be playing at any of the April 2016 GNR shows. I’ve also not been in the studio recording or writing with any of the others recently. There is so much speculation, but so very little info, that I thought I should reach out.”
From late 1992 and throughout the remainder of the decade, if you spent any amount of time watching MTV or listening to rock radio, you were bound to come in contact with a tune by Stone Temple Pilots. With such classic releases as Core, Purple, and Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop selling millions and spawning countless hits (Sex Type Thing, Plush, Creep, Vasoline, Interstate Love Song, Big Empty, Big Bang Baby, etc.), STP is now widely considered one of rock’s all-time great acts.
And during this time, there were few rock frontmen who commanded an audience and generated as many headlines as Scott Weiland. Despite fronting another successful band, Velvet Revolver, and issuing his own critically acclaimed solo albums, Weiland could not overcome his demons – passing away in 2015 (at the age of 48).
Scott Weiland: Memories of a Rock Star features nearly 30 all-new interviews conducted exclusively for this book, including members of bands that toured with STP (Megadeth, Meat Puppets, Blind Melon, etc.), worked with Scott (Scott’s autobiography co-author David Ritz, video directors Kevin Kerslake and Josh Taft, producer/engineer Chris Goss, etc.), or were friends and/or admirers of Scott’s music (Richard Patrick, Bob Forrest, Matt Pinfield, Eddie Trunk, etc.). Get ready for an honest and accurate portrayal of Scott Weiland.
David Lee Roth says that his new song, in which he offers a sad goodbye against a low-key guitar accompaniment, could be about Van Halen reports blabbermouth.net.
Lyrically, Ain’t No Christmas sounds like Roth is closing the door on the current Van Halen reunion, with lines that include, “Sure looked good on paper, once upon a lie. Happily never after, and I’m not okay to drive.
Let’s put the pin back in this one, and say we both survived. Last blank space on the map I think we’ve arrived…
“Quittin’ while you’re ahead ain’t quittin’, and I’m quittin’.”
After initially denying that the song was about Van Halen — telling the Van Halen News Desk that “It’s poetry. It has nothing to do with Van Halen.” Roth has since released a follow-up message, saying, “On second thought, if all work is autobiographic, maybe this song is about Van Halen…”
Greg Renoff, author of the new book Van Halen Rising, was one of many fans who thought Ain’t No Christmas was the singer’s goodbye message to Van Halen. Renoff said, “Roth’s vocal performance here is mournful and somber. His lyrics express feelings of bitterness and regret. My take is that the lyrics provide a commentary on Roth’s recent months with Van Halen and perhaps a window into the future of Van Halen.”
Former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony was joined by several musicians, including Warrant singer Robert Mason, to perform three Van Halen songs — Panama, I’m The One and their cover of The Kinks’ You Really Got Me — during the Mark In The Morning first-anniversary show on February 26th at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills, California. Watch video footage, filmed by fans, of the concert can be seen below.