Live SiriusXM show tonight. Guests include Jason Bonham, Mark Tremonti, and in studio former Angel guitarist Punky Meadows. Plus my TMS partner Don Jamieson drops by. Should be a good one. Live 6-10P ET/3-7 PT on SiriusXM channel 39 TRUNKNation (Hair Nation). I’ll also talk more about the R&R HOF broadcast.
Thanks to those that made me aware of the drop out in my latest podcast. It has now been fixed if you’d like to re download. Sorry for the mess up. Apparently some of my commentary was cut off.
The Hair Nation Festival VIP packages that include my meet & greet have sold out! Thank you! Look forward to seeing everyone at Irvine Meadows in September. Tickets start at just $20 so come join us if you can.
Hope everyone had a chance to see the R&R HOF induction over the weekend. As someone who has hammered the Hall for decades now I also must acknowledge some progress is finally being made. In the last few years alone we have seen the LONG overdue inductions of Kiss, Rush, Alice Cooper, and this weekend Deep Purple and Cheap Trick. Better late than never, but to me this will always be tainted some because they were snubbed and disrespected for so long. And one of the tragic things about snubbing Deep Purple (who should have been in over 30 years ago!) is that one of their founding members has passed away. I couldn’t help but to get angry seeing photos of Jon Lord, instead of him standing on that stage like he would have been, if the Hall didn’t ignore Purple for decades. I thought it was absurd Blackmore wasn’t there. I don’t know what the reasons are or who’s fault it is, but it just sucked. We are losing legends it seems monthly, so it was really bizarre to see someone talked about like they were not among the living when they are! He didn’t have to play with them, but he couldn’t have stood there?! Weak and selfish considering what a moment it would have been for the fans. Again, I truly don’t know who’s fault it is, but work it out somehow! I did like that all members of Purple were at least mentioned. I also thought it was ridiculous Steve Morse was not inducted. But good to see they are finally in and I am very happy for good friends David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes as well! Also GREAT speech by Lars. You could not have found a better person to induct them. I have hung with Lars when he has preached the gospel of Purple, he is a MASSIVE fan and they were the most important band to him as a kid.
Cheap Trick was an example of exactly the RIGHT way to go into the HOF. They have been at odds with original drummer Bun E Carlos for years. He has not been a member of the band touring or recording and there was even a law suit. But guess what? Cheap Trick, who truly are a peoples/fans band, sucked it up and not only had him on stage with them, but played with him! So many bands talk about how they do it for and love their fans, Cheap Trick talks to talk and walks the walk. No greater example than how they handled the HOF. They are still great live and just made a really good new album as well. Very happy for the guys and did right by their history and their fans the way they handled it. Solid job by Kid Rock on the induction, some funny moments there.
As for the rest of the show Chicago was well overdue to go in. This was the first year I have a vote for the HOF and I voted Chicago, CT and DT, so three of my five made it. And although I’m not a hip hop guy by any stretch if they are going to include this genre NWA certainly is worthy. I found the Steve Miller induction a bit strange in the sense that it seemed like The Black Keys were really mailing it in. Did they even know who they were inducting? I don’t know those guys personally but it seemed as if they were just reading what someone else wrote. When all the presenters had so much passion for who they were inducting, this fell really flat and felt weird.. But Steve certainly deserves being in. Also very cool move to show that Prince clip at the very end.
Although progress is being made much still to be done. My current snubs list includes; Journey, Foreigner, Yes, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Scorpions, and probably a ton more I’m forgetting. Feel free to post your list in comments. This show repeats often now on HBO if you missed it.
Motley Crue: Live Wire
Queensryche: Queen Of The Ryche
Pantera: Mouth For War
Rob Zombie: Dragula
Anthrax: Breathing Lightning
Rainbow: All Night Long
David Lee Roth: A Lil Ain’t Enough
Van Halen: Fools
Ace Frehley & Paul Stanley: Fire & Water
Aerosmith: Sick As A Dog
Iron Maiden: Wasted Years
Avenged Sevenfold: Hail To The King
BLS: Fire It Up
Badlands: Winters Call
Punky Meadows: The Price You Pay
Angel: Rock n Rollers
Def Leppard: Stagefright
Enuff z Nuff: New Thing
LA Guns: Electric Gypsy
Lamb Of God: Overlord
Metallica: Fight Fire With Fire
Motorhead: Overkill
Delta Deep: Mistreated
Rock drummer Carmine Appice co-wrote a No. 1 song, Rod Stewart’s Da Ya Think I’m Sexy; played with everyone from Jeff Beck to Pink Floyd; befriended his idol, drum legend Buddy Rich; and even, to hear him tell it, influenced Led Zeppelin.
But one of his stranger achievements was patrolling hotel hallways as a member of the “Sex Police.”
The group — consisting of Appice, Stewart and other members of Stewart’s band — would listen for anyone in the band or crew having sex and sabotage these encounters any way they could.
…[When] Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge toured in 1969, in Seattle, that both would participate in the most notorious groupie incident in rock history.
Appice was there, and gives a full, disgustingly detailed recounting of the infamous Led Zeppelin mud-shark story, wherein Bonham and/or Zeppelin’s tour manager, Richard Cole, have long been said to have pleasured a young woman with a shark.
According to Appice, the story is not only true but much more intricate and debauched than most tellings have conveyed.
As Appice tells it, he, his bandmate Tim Bogert, Jones and Plant and Plant’s wife, Maureen, were getting high in Jones’ room when there was a knock at the door. Scrambling to hide their pot, it turned out to be a girl Appice had had a series of dalliances with (described in minute detail in the book) the day before…
…Appice, too high to deal with her, went next door to hang out with Bonham and his wife, Pat, Cole and two crew members, several of whom were fishing out the window. They had a “mini-aquarium” in their bathtub, including “a 2-foot-long, dead-eyed, ferocious-looking mud shark.” He told them about the girl, then later returned to the first room.
There, Appice and the rest listened to music as again, there was a knock at the door. When they opened it, Bonham, Cole, and the two crew members barged in, with Appice’s bandmate, Mark Stein, “holding a Super 8 camera and lights.”
From here, Appice writes, it was “carnage,” as Bonham and Cole went right for the girl.
“ ‘You want to make a f—ing movie?’ they asked her. ‘OK, let’s do it right now! Take your clothes off!’ ”
As she did so, Appice realized that the camera and lights weren’t all they had brought from the other room. They also brought the shark.
Cole and a crew member threw the girl on the bed. With Stein filming, Cole took the shark by the tail and “started whipping the girl with it, beating her again and again as she writhed around the bed.”
Each time the shark made contact, Appice writes, “its teeth ripped her skin and left tiny blood-red scars all over her back.” Throughout, the girl “was bucking and screaming with pleasure,” as if in the throes of orgasm.
Soon, the shark was being used differently, having sex with the girl as Appice and the others “were all doubled up with laughter as the insane scene developed.”
The noise attracted the attention of the hotel manager, who burst into the room, saw the scene, and demanded they stop at once. Appice, Jones and Bogert scrambled out of the room in hysterics.
This is only the first part of the story. The second part is even more depraved, as roadies used the woman and humiliated her further. Jones finally had to leave in disgust, and Appice says he would have done the same had it not been taking place in his room.
The next day, Appice saw Frank Zappa at the airport and shared the story with him, and Zappa immortalized the tale in a 1971 song called The Mud Shark. (In the song, Zappa says the story was told to his keyboardist, Don Preston.)
Appice played in many bands over the years, both his own and others. Vanilla Fudge was followed by Cactus, then by Beck, Bogert and Appice, in which he had many disputes with guitar icon and on-again/off-again friend Jeff Beck.
He played in Ozzy Osbourne’s band for a time but writes that Osbourne’s manager/wife Sharon was angered by increasing attention he received for his special-effects-laden drum solo on the tour.
Previously told he could sell his own merchandise, he arrived for one show to find that his face had been cut out of his T-shirts — on every single shirt. When he asked who had done this, the answer was, “Ask Sharon.” That night, as he began his solo, his special effects failed. He was fired from the tour soon after…
…Appice was married, to five different women, for much of his groupie-loving existence. Now, he has been in a relationship with a New York rock DJ named Leslie Gold — known as the “Radiochick” — for 13 years. At one point, Gold insisted on figuring out how many people he’d had sex with in his life. Her own total was seven.
Using a spreadsheet, she arrived at the number 4,500.
Now 69, Appice insists he has always been faithful to Gold.
“Leslie asked me a loaded question, and the shocking answer was 4,500,” he writes. “But number 4,501 was the one that mattered most.”
Carmine Appice will be releasing a memoir called Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock ‘n’ Roll on May 1st through Chicago Review Press that contain the stories referenced above and many more. The book is available for purchase at Amazon.
Rob Zombie [has released a new album on April 29th], and it has a psychedelic, eye-popping title, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser. “To me, that [title] is what the record sounded like,” he tells magazine.
…When asked about how he challenges himself while making LPs some 30 years into his career, counting White Zombie, he says his main goal is to make something interesting. It’s an objective that applies to his whole outlook on life. “I live in such a fear of being boring,” he says.
It seems the only thing he has time for is song and album titles. “With this record, one thing I tried to do is keep it short. It’s a short record, and the songs are short,” he continues. “Whenever I go through records that I love and I listen to over and over and over, I go, ‘Man, this record is short. That’s why I loved it so much. It’s 30 minutes, so I’ve listened to it 9,000 times.’ … I go back and look at Beatles records, the songs are a minute-and-a-half long. … I love long songs, but if you’re going to write a song that long, it better be Freebird or Stairway to Heaven.”
Watch a clip of In the Age of the Consecrated Vampire We All Get High and lyric video for Well,Everybody’s F–king In A U.F.O, below.
Rob Zombie will be touring with KORN this summer, see dates below.
To read more, and to watch a brief interview with Zombie, go to Rolling Stone
Rob Zombie/Korn Tour Dates:
July 19 – Englewood, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
July 20 – Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheater
July 22 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater
July 23 – Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion
July 24 – Irvine, CA @ Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre
July 26 – Nampa (Boise), ID @ Idaho Center Amphitheater
July 27 – Auburn, WA @ White River Amphitheatre
July 29 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
July 30 – Las Vegas, NV @ Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino
August 2 – Austin, TX @ Austin 360 Amphitheater
August 3 – The Woodlands, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
August 4 – Dallas TX @ Gexa Energy Pavilion
August 6 – Noblesville, IN @ Klipsch Music Center
August 7 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
August 9 – Maryland Heights, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
August 10 – Kansas City, MO @ Sandstone
August 21 – Clarkston, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theatre
August 23 – West Toronto, ON @ Molson Canadian Amphitheatre
August 24 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH @ Blossom Music Center
August 25 – Burgettstown, PA @ First Niagara Pavilion
August 27 – Syracuse, NY @ Lakeview Amphitheater
August 28 – Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center
August 30 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
September 1 – Hartford, CT @ Xfinity Theatre
September 2 – Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
September 3 – Bristow, VA @ Jiffy Lube Live
Mark Tremonti’s latest album Dust is now available worldwide.
The album is the third full-length offering from the band comprised of Mark Tremonti on vocals/guitars, Eric Friedman on guitars, Wolfgang Van Halen on bass and Garrett Whitlock on drums. The newest album comes just 10 months after the sophomore release Cauterize.
The first single from the album is the title track Dust. A lyric video was released last month and it has been viewed over 288,000 times since it was release. The song itself is moving up the hard rock charts and getting new station support weekly. The lyric video can be seen here.
Tremonti has also released a retrospective video chronicling the band through the years from the first album to present day. That video is now live and can be seen below.
The band will be heading out on a European tour next month. The tour begins May 27th in Germany and lasts four weeks before wrapping up in Denmark on June 24th. The band will be playing Sonispehere, Download, Hellfest and Graspop as well as headline shows overseas. They have also been tapped to open for Iron Maiden on some of their European dates.
