Author Archives : Dana

CINDERELLA FRONTMAN REMINISCES ABOUT SHOOTING THE COVER FOR “NIGHT SONGS” AND DISCUSSES THE ROCK SCENE

On August 2nd, 1986 Cinderella released their debut album, Night Songs. Tom Keifer remembers when he shot the cover with photographer Mark Weiss. As Tom recalls, “It was shot in the historic district of Philadelphia … but the most interesting thing that I remember about that shoot was that the album was called Night Songs and Mark scheduled the shoot for day time.. and I kept saying to him..that’s not going to look right and he said I shoot day for night and I didn’t know what the f–k that meant…and I just trusted him because I kind of liked this guy right off the bat.. I thought he was a straight-up cat. And sure enough, when we got the pictures back it looked like it was nighttime.. So Mark Weiss is a f–king genius.”

Tom talks about the rock scene growing up as a young kid– and first time he saw the Beatles and then The Monkees on TV and then… “I started hearing a different sound than the Beatles or the Monkees… and it was like Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith and once I heard that… and the Rolling Stones…you know I remember hearing Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Brown Sugar…and from that point on all through like my high school years that’s all I wanted to do.”

He remembers his start in the South Jersey rock scene–“It was all cover clubs.. there was a cover club on every corner because the drinking age was 18 so they were packed nightly. I’d get tired of that scene and I started to wonder why Led Zeppelin and the Stones and Rod Stewart got to make records and obviously it’s because they had their own songs. That’s when I wanted to get out of the club scene and the cover scene and started writing songs…and that’s what I did for a number of years and eventually it lead to putting Cinderella together.”

Tom talks about MTV and the image of Rock & Roll– “You know I grew up on the music of the late 60s and the 70s and you’re talking Janis Joplin and Rod Stewart and Bad Company, Free and Joe Walsh and the James Gang… and I could go on and on …from the Eagles to Fleetwood Mac to Heart to the Rolling Stones…it was an incredibly creative time for music and not only did those artists influence you in the musical way, but they influenced you image wise. You wanted to be like them so you started to emulate them…and you know all my heroes were pretty flashy… I loved Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. They were cool and had a touch of glam vibe to them… and Janis Joplin did, Aerosmith did.. so you learned in the same way in your fashion sense as you did in your music sense…and I think when Cinderella came around and we were in the part of the decade in the 80s where so much importance was placed on the visual because of MTV. I think the over the top look that developed in the 80s was as a result of us taking our heroes to a whole other f–kin’ level. The 80s was all about excess and I think that’s what it was about. And I think that most of my buddies from the other bands would tell you the same thing. It came from that glam, hard rock…you know, imagery of the 60s and the 70s and trying to take it somewhere new because all of a sudden there was this new visual thing called MTV where it was as much about the visual as it was about the music. Everything in the 80s was f–king over the top! And it was cool.. It was a great decade.”

Watch Keifer’s interview below.

Tom Keifer released his solo album, The Way Life Goes on April 30th, 2013.

KING DIAMOND ANNOUNCES “ABIGAIL IN CONCERT 2015” TOUR, WITH SPECIAL GUESTS, EXODUS

King Diamond will be back on tour soon for an extra special event for fans – one not to be missed. As part of the set, the band will be performing the classic 1987 album Abigail in its entirety. The tour will begin on October 29th and runs through December 5th with legendary bay area thrash metal band Exodus as the opening act. The full list of confirmed dates is below. The general on sale for tickets begins Friday, August 7th at 10am ET.

King Diamond tour dates w/ Exodus:

10/29 Denver, CO The Fillmore
10/31 Salt Lake City, UT The Complex
11/2 San Francisco, CA The Warfield
11/5 Los Angeles, CA The Wiltern
11/8 Tucson, AZ The Rialto Theatre
11/9 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues
11/13 San Antonio, TX The Aztec Theatre
11/15 New Orleans, LA The Civic Auditorium
11/16 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
11/21 New York, NY Best Buy Theatre
11/24 Boston, MA Orpheum
11/25 Philadelphia, PA The Fillmore
11/27 Chicago, IL Aragon Ballroom
11/28 Detroit, MI The Fillmore
11/30 Minneapolis, MN Myth
12/2 Tulsa, OK Club Brady
12/4 Houston, TX House of Blues
12/5 Dallas, TX House of Blues

Upon its release in November 2014, King Diamond’s Dreams of Horror reached #28 on the Billboard Hard Music charts. This is the ONLY “best of” album covering the band’s entire career. King Diamond and Andy La Rocque meticulously mastered and enhanced these 23 songs into the ultimate editions, chosen by the band from both the Roadrunner and Metal Blade catalogs. Listen to The Puppet Master from disc 2 of Dreams of Horror and order a copy now at metalblade.com/kingdiamond.

King Diamond on web:

kingdiamondcoven.com
twitter.com/realkingdiamond
facebook.com/kingdiamondofficial
facebook.com/kingdiamondmercyfulfateofficial

QUEENSRYCHE RELEASE TRACK LISTING AND COVER ART FOR “CONDITION HUMAN”

As previously reported, Queensryche will be releasing their second album with frontman Todd La Torre, entitled Condition Human, on October 2nd through Century Media Records.

The band has released a picture of the cover, which can be seen below, the track list.

Condition Human track listing:

1. Arrow Of Time
2. Guardian
3. Hellfire
4. Toxic Remedy
5. Selfish Lives
6. Eye9
7. Bulletproof
8. Hourglass
9. Just Us
10. All There Was
11. The Aftermath
12. Condition Human

To pre-order the album, and to listen to the song, Arrow Of Time, please visit, pledgemusic.com/projects/queensryche.

AC/DC DRUMMER PHIL RUDD PLEADS “NOT GUILTY” TO CHARGES THAT HE BREACHED HIS HOME CONFINEMENT SENTENCE BY DRINKING ALCOHOL

Page Six of The New York Post reports:

AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd pleaded not guilty on Monday to breaching the rules of his home detention sentence by drinking alcohol.

A New Zealand judge allowed Rudd to remain in home confinement on bail pending a November hearing on the possible breach.

The 61-year-old Australian-born drummer could face further sanctions, including jail time, if the judge concludes Rudd was in breach of his conditions. However, drinking alcohol would likely be considered on the lower end of potential breaches.

Asked by reporters after the hearing if he was nervous about what lay ahead in the case, Rudd replied, “No, the only thing I’m nervous about is I don’t, I don’t actually know what’s going on.”

Asked how he would be spending time on bail, he responded with a lopsided grin. “Self-improvement,” he said before his lawyer hustled him into a waiting car.

Rudd’s erratic behavior outside the courthouse has become a feature of his recent appearances. At one hearing, he clowned around by jumping on the back of a security guard; at another, he raised his middle fingers to journalists. He typically doesn’t wear dentures, sometimes making his soft-spoken answers difficult to understand.

Rudd was sentenced to eight months of home confinement on July 9th after pleading guilty to threatening to kill a former employee and possessing methamphetamine and marijuana.

Rudd acknowledged in a court summary of facts that he’d offered cash, vehicles and a house to an associate after asking him to have the victim “taken out.” He also acknowledged that he’d directly said to the victim he was going to kill him.

Police then arrested Rudd at his home on July 18th, accusing him of possessing and drinking alcohol. He was subsequently given a new bail condition: that he undergo drug and alcohol testing whenever police request it.

Rudd’s lawyer Craig Tuck said Monday he is appealing Rudd’s convictions and sentence.

AC/DC is currently on tour with Welsh drummer Chris Slade.

source: pagesix.com

MOTLEY CRUE FRONTMAN VINCE NEIL SAYS “THE BAND’S NOT BREAKING UP, WE’RE JUST NOT GOING TO TOUR ANYMORE”

Greg Prato has interviewed Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil for the Long Island Pulse. Highlights from the Q&A appear below.

Discussing whether the band is really breaking up:

“The band’s not breaking up. We’re just not going to tour anymore. We’ll probably come out with some music for different projects and things like that, but we just won’t be together on stage performing the songs.”

Discussing some his favorite Crue songs:

“That’s a tough one, because they’re like little kids—they all have their different styles and attitudes. I like Girls, Girls, Girls a lot—I think there are some really good, gritty songs. Then I also like Saints of Los Angeles—I think it’s one of my favorites.”

Speaking about how, despite being from the West Coast, he appreciates East Coast audiences:

“It’s always been a blast, because we’ll play the Garden, then we’ll play Nassau Coliseum. Jones Beach I always loved, because I love it outside right on the water like that. But Nassau Coliseum was a blast—one of my favorite places, because back then they didn’t have seats [probably in reference to general admission seating on the floor]. You’d just go, run in, and where you stand, that’s where you are. So that was always a plus for us.”

Read more at the Long Island Pulse.

source: lipulse.com

SAXON TO RELEASE “BATTERING RAM” ON OCTOBER 16TH, VIDEO FOR THE TITLE TRACK POSTED ONLINE

Saxon will be releasing a new album in called, Battering Ram, on October 16th in North America through UDR Music. Watch a video for the title track below.

On Battering Ram — with Biff Byford singing as well as he ever has, Paul Quinn and Doug Scarratt making full use of the term “shredding” with their guitars and the lock-steady rhythm of Nibbs Carter’s bass and Nigel Glockler’s drums — the future and the past crash together in an ear-scintillatingly engaging, raucous, melodic-yet-classically heavy ten-song collection which will instantly be hailed as a Saxon classic. The title track, with its delectable twin guitar assault heralding the album’s commencement, gives the listener an instant crack around the chops, whilst traditionalists will be delighted to hear such a perfect marriage of old, classic Saxon with the newer, fresher invective in such riff-fronted fare as “Destroyer” and “Stand Your Ground”, but there are still moments of space and exploration which fans will love.

“This one’s a natural progression from Sacrifice,” says Byford, “There’s a bit less rock ‘n’ roll and a bit more ‘heavy’ on it. We wanted to keep focused on a style rather than moving around too much.”

Lyrically, Battering Ram covers a variety of social situations, like the screaming fans who rage at the gig barriers (Battering Ram) or engaging in some good old fashioned myth (“The Devil’s Footprint” — a 200-year-old tale of people waking up in winter snowfall to see unexplained hoof prints which they followed, looking for an answer in vain).

“When I’m writing lyrics I like to switch back and forth between complex things, reality and rock’n’roll,” says Byford, “I thought the whole folklore behind ‘The Devil’s Footprint’ made it great material for a metal song, being that it’s both historic and mythical.

“With Queen of Hearts, I wanted to write something around Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, and it’s about the chess game that happens in the story. I wanted it to have prog-feeling in the way of its ambiance and mood. Then you have songs like Destroyer and Hard And Fast which are ’80s-inspired songs with that modern slant on it. I’m a big fan of Marvel comics, and I wanted to write a song around the character Destroyer, and with Hard and Fast, it’s, as the title suggests, about driving fast! I do like to tie the lyric into the song, so if it’s going to be a song about driving fast, well, it has to be a fast, hard song!”

There is also the album’s closing cut, haunting, gripping, melancholic tale of the First World War, The Kingdom Of The Cross, where a poem unfurls the feelings and horrors which comprised this most brutal of global conflicts. “This year is the centenary of the end of the First World War. Nigel had a piece of music which he played on a synthesizer for a couple of years that I really liked. We had an actor (and singer), David Bower from the band HELL, read the poem and I sang the choruses. I didn’t want it to be typical SAXON, so it is just keyboards, bass, me and Dave.”

Battering Ram is available for pre-order now via iTunes, with Battering Ram as the instant great track.

Coming soon, Battering Ram will be available for pre-order via Amazon and various formats will include CD in ecolbook, 180 gram vinyl, limited edition boxset (containing CD, vinyl and a bonus CD with the band performance of their Denim & Leather tour Saxon Over Sweden 2011, featuring 18 tracks).

Battering Ram track listing:

1. Battering Ram
2. The Devil’s Footprint
3. Queen Of Hearts
4. Destroyer
5. Hard And Fast
6. Eye Of The Storm
7. Stand Your Ground
8. Top Of The World
9. To The End
10. Kingdom Of The Cross