According to their official website, the Atlanta KISS Expo has announced that former KISS guitarist, Vinnie Vincent, will be their special guest, next year.
Vincent will be signing autographs and taking photos during the special VIP Meet & Greet on Friday, January 19th, 2018, as well as all day long at the Atlanta Kiss Expo on Saturday, January 20th, 2018.
The organizers state this will be Vincent’s first public appearance in almost twenty years, “We have worked long and hard to secure the legendary Ankh Warrior for the show, and he’s been absolutely awesome and is looking forward to meeting all of his fans.”
Vincent replaced lead guitarist Ace Frehley in 1982 and played with KISS for two years.
For the past eight years, Alice In Chains vocalist/guitarist Jerry Cantrell and bassist Mike Inez have hosted the Alice In Chains & Friends Fantasy Football League & Auction, donating a spectacular collection of signed musical instruments, memorabilia and experiences for an online auction to benefit organizations like Music For Relief and MusiCares. In recent years, they’ve donated proceeds from the auction to provide protective gear and training for workers assisting with the Ebola Prevention Initiative and contributed funds to MusiCares’ health and human services programs.
Each year’s charity initiatives are determined by the League’s reigning champion. This year’s champion is Jerry Cantrell and he’s announced that proceeds from this year’s auction will be split between a donation to MusiCares in Chris Cornell’s name and a donation to Music For Relief in Chester Bennington’s name. The auction will run from August 14th through August 24th – for info, please visit ebay.com/aliceinchains.
League participants include Cantrell, Inez, Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, TV sports host Rich Eisen, actor Michael Rapaport, Pantera’s Vinnie Paul, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, NFL.com’s fantasy football columnist Michael Fabiano, former NFL running back Maurice Jones-Drew and Gaslight Anthem’s Benny Horowitz. The 2017 season draft will broadcast live on September 5th on Sirius XM’s Fantasy Sports Radio, hosted by John Hansen and Bob Harris.
Among the items up for auction is a guitar lesson with Jerry Cantrell, a bass guitar signed by the members of Guns N’ Roses, a guitar signed by Deftones, a pinstripe Viking guitar signed by Zakk Wylde, a football signed by members of the NFL Hall of Fame, a football signed by 2017 Hall of Fame inductee Kurt Warner and more.
Scotti Hill of Skid Row joined the August 7th episode of Another FN Podcast to tell stories about his youth, learning to play guitar, how Skid Row got together, Dimebag Darrell, the KISS Farewell Tour, and more, but eventually the elephant in the room made itself known, and the topic of Sebastian Bach, came up.
It had been rumored for years that the reason Bach was relieved of his duties fronting the band had to do with the fact that Skid Row turned down the KISS Reunion Tour in 1996. Hill confirmed this with a story that he doesn’t think had ever been told.
“That caused a giant uproar is what it did, and he did something to Snake Sabo, that was unacceptable. He called Snake on Thanksgiving and said some horrible things into his answering machine and Snake said ‘you know what? I’m not going to be in a band with you anymore.’ It’s as simple as that.”
Replacing a guy with the talents of Sebastian Bach was not easy. He remembers, when that came up after a long vacation from Skid Row, and remembers thinking about how the fans would freak out. Additionally, the road back, would not be an easy one.
“We did that KISS (Farewell) tour and that was a 140 something shows, of all of which I watched, and after that, it was a battle to get to where we’re at now” he said.
For the past couple of years rumors have been circulating of a possible reunion with their former front man, but once and for all, any chance of that happening has been laid to rest.
“That door is closed. There was talk about it, the two camps went back and forth, and it was not to happen. So, that door is now shut” Hill said.
When asked if that meant forever, and that was the last nail in the coffin of any Skid Row/Sebastian Bach reunion? He responded, “Yeah. I believe so. I tell you what, our singer, ZP Theart…just call him ZP. He’s a brother. He’s a great f–king singer, he’s a great front man, he’s a guy I look forward to seeing, a guy I look forward to hanging out with. We trust him with the band that we’ve been in all this time and that is precious to us. We can go out and play and enjoy ourselves.”
Of course it is something the fans want to see? Fans wax nostalgic about the originals that created the magic being on stage together, but as we all know in this crazy rock n’ roll world isn’t always the fairy tale that we wish it could be. How did Hill respond about doing it for the fans?
“Not at the expense of my happiness, no. I’m sorry. It ain’t fucking happening.
We appreciate fans, we do. We’re probably the most fan friendly band you will every meet. We will go out in the cold, we’ll hang out with them, but what we won’t do is put ourselves in a volatile situation and be unhappy and destroy what we have now.”
While shutting down any hope the fans may have of a reunion ever happening, he did have this to say about Bach, “He’s not a rockstar, he’s a superstar. He’s great. I’ll speak for myself. He is a guy who will cut his own throat to do a good show. He puts it all out there. He’s a great singer and a great front man; one of the all time greats, but we’re not working together. To replace a guy like that? You realize what you’re up against. The records he did with Skid Row were great and he was a huge part of that.
Everybody is like ‘Oh, we’re on Skid Row’s side’ or ‘we’re on Sebastian’s side.’ No, you gotta be on the side of rock n’ roll. When Sebastian plays in your town, go see him, because he’s great. When Skid Row plays in your town, go see em, because I’m great (laughs), no because we will f–king blow your ass away”.
Skid Row are currently in the process of writing and demoing new songs for an upcoming record featuring ZP Theart on vocals. No time frame has been given for the release.
Last week saw the announcement of Sons Of Apollo, the highly anticipated new band featuring former Dream Theater members Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (ex-Guns N’ Roses), Billy Sheehan (The Winery Dogs, Mr. Big, David Lee Roth) and Jeff Scott Soto (ex-Journey, ex-Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force). Their debut album, Psychotic Symphony, is due for release on October 20th through InsideOutMusic/Sony, and now they are pleased to reveal their first track titled Signs of the Time. Listen to it below.
Mike comments: “Signs Of The Time was the very first thing myself, Derek & Bumblefoot wrote when we got together to begin writing for Sons Of Apollo in March of this year.
It starts with this heavy, brutal Bumbleriff (initially coined ‘Korntera’), then goes into a cool verse with a two-part vocal melody that I wrote sung by Jeff and myself, which eventually opens up to a HUGE vocal hook in the chorus that Jeff wrote (sung in three-part harmony by Jeff, myself and Bumblefoot).
The middle section riffs are a few things that Derek brought in and show why he is the most BADASS keyboard player in the biz (playing the keys like a guitar player on fire!) and then we have the long extended breakdown and guitar solo which shows why Bumblefoot is one of today’s greatest GUITAR HEROES. This album is going to get him the recognition he truly deserves and this particular guitar solo is one of the tastiest, most insane solos I’ve EVER heard.
So all in all, this song has a little bit of everything that makes Sons Of Apollo so special…great heavy riffs, amazing solos with individual instrumental virtuosity and a big, catchy chorus with more hooks than a tackle box.
I figured this would be a great ‘first taste’ to introduce the world to this amazing new supergroup…and there’s a whole lot more of different musical styles and twist & turns still to come all throughout the album.”
The debut album, Psychotic Symphony, is now available to pre-order on 2CD Mediabook (featuring a second disc of instrumental mixes), Gatefold 2LP vinyl + CD, Standard Jewelcase CD & digital download. Pre-order here now.
The full track-listing of Psychotic Symphony is as follows:
1. God of The Sun
2. Coming Home
3. Signs of the Time
4. Labyrinth
5. Alive
6. Lost In Oblivion
7. Figaro’s Whore
8. Divine Addiction
9. Opus Maximus
Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott spoke with Steve Baltin of Forbes. Excerpts from the interview appear below.
Baltic: …For me, I got into Def Leppard during Pyromania, so that will always be the seminal album for me.
Elliott: I got into David Bowie during Ziggy Stardust and then backtracked to Hunky Dory, which I adore, but I still can’t get past the fact that I discovered Hunky Dory because of Ziggy Stardust. I discovered Man Who Sold The World because of Ziggy Stardust, then I bought Aladdin Sane, which I loved to death, but I only bought it because I got into Bowie on Ziggy Stardust. So everybody has got their anchor to whatever artist you love. When I look at a band like the Who, I don’t have a specific record because the Who were a band that was already there and then I started to buy their records, so it’s a toss-up between Who’s Next, Quadrophenia, Tommy and all that kind of stuff. It all depends who you’re talking to, I speak to worlds of musicians in band[s] who prefer High N’ Dry to anything we’ve ever done before. It just depends when you catch people. From a commercial point of view, from an artistic point of view, from a pushing the envelope point of view I think Hysteria trumps all of them up to that point.
Baltin: Do you feel more attached to that album because it was just so hard to make it?
Elliott: It just took a long time to make it, so it was drilled into our DNA. I made a couple of albums for my side band, the Down N Outz…It was painless, it was easy…But Hysteria we were on it every day for two years, longer even. So it becomes way more engrained in your DNA than say even Pyromania. The first album took three weeks, High N’ Dry took about three months, Pyromania took about nine, Hysteria took two and a half years. Adrenalize probably took two. Those records, because you are on them day in, day out, stick with you, they give you more stories, they give you more things to talk about. If somebody said to me we’re gonna spend half an hour talking about High N’ Dry I would run out of things to say because I don’t remember. With Hysteria it’s all those things because of the time factor involved in recording it and because of what it became. I’m not musically comparing it to Hotel California or Rumours, but, to our audience, it’s that kind of record that has lasted the test of time.
Baltin: Def Leppard went through so much and came out the other side. After seeing what happened to Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell is there any advice you have for artists on how to deal with the music industry and fame?
Elliott: Musicians face pressure from outside of your own brain to deliver all through your career. It’s hard for kids and then it gets harder in your thirties because you have a legacy to follow and then it gets harder in your forties when you have family commitments or whatever. I don’t give advice because what works for me wouldn’t work for you, wouldn’t work for Chris Cornell, wouldn’t work for Chester Bennington, wouldn’t have worked for Mama Cass, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, nor anybody else who died by the age of 27. It’s nothing new. It didn’t work for Steve Clarke. The path to Rock N’ Roll glory is littered with casualties, absolutely. It’s not like the great Joe Elliott speaks and everybody goes, “I want to stop taking drugs now.” When you look at our band we’ve got two casualties, we lost Pete Willis to alcohol, but he didn’t die. We lost Steve Clarke to alcohol and he did. Then you look at somebody like Phil Colleen who’s 30 years sober, 26 years a vegetarian or the other way around, now a vegan, he’s like the fittest almost 60-year-old man you’ll ever meet. We’ve conquered a lot of negativity in our career to keep going, having watched some people, including our own, fall by the wayside. So advice, to me, is a minefield of a word. And it’s not something I readily throw out there because it doesn’t always work with whoever’s reading or listening to what I’ve got to say.
Def Leppard released their special 30th anniversary editions of Hysteria on August 4th. Additionally, guitarist Phil Collen recently told Jones’s Jukebox, on Los Angeles radio station KLOS, that the band will probably hit the road in 2018 for a special tour that will include entire performances of Hysteria every night.
A “scholar of metal and all that rocks!”, Eddie Trunk got his first taste of “heavy music” around the age of ten. A band called the Raspberries was playing on A.M. radio. Eddie was immediately hooked and had his parents buy him all four of their records. It was all Raspberries all the time for him until a year later. Eddie was walking home from Junior high school with a friend. As they passed the local record store, Scotty’s Records, his friend asked if he wanted to go in while he bought a record, to which his friend replied, “I’m going in to buy a record by this band called KISS.” Until this point, Eddie had never heard of KISS. He was intrigued. He asked his friend, “which one are you going to buy?” His friend said, “I’m going to buy the new one, Rock & Roll Over.” He proceeded to give Eddie a little “coaching.” He told him to buy another one since Rock & Roll Over had just come out & he wasn’t sure how “it was.” Eddie took his friend’s advice and bought Destroyer.
Eddie reminisces, “The first concert I went to was KISS Dec 16, 1977 at Madison Square Garden. I remember the guys outside selling the t-shirts and the whole scene walking in. Inside, there was this weird smell in the air. I didn’t know what it was, everyone getting high.” Eddie just turned 13 and didn’t understand the concept of amplification. “Here I was at the top level of the Garden; with 15 – 20,000 people and the band is looking this big to me, but it was loud as hell. I couldn’t understand how a bunch of guys playing guitars that far away, that small, being that loud where I was sitting. It took me a while to realize it about the power of amplification.”
Eddie tried his hand at playing drums. However, he didn’t have the patience or self-discipline, so he gave up on the idea of being a musician and began to think how he could work in the music industry to connect and help the bands he loved. In high school, Eddie was ridiculed for the music he liked. He was determined to turn people on to the music he liked and help the bands by bringing them a bigger audience. He just had to figure out how to get the message out. So, he started writing the music column in his high school newspaper. In his senior year, Drew University came to his high school, asking the students if they were interested in learning radio. Of course, Eddie applied and did his first gig DJ-ing that summer. Right out of high school, he got a job at a record store. He made a lot of connections while working there. One, being someone who had a pirate radio station in their basement. There, he made a demo and started sending it to WDHA relentlessly until they gave him a show, where he could play the music he loved. That show was one of the first radio shows in America to focus on Heavy Metal music.
In 1982, Jonny Zazula and wife Marsha founded Megaforce records to publish the first works of Metallica. Jonny also owned Rock N Roll Heaven record store. That’s where Eddie Trunk got to know Jonny Z. Eddie would go there to buy records and magazines that he couldn’t find anywhere else. In 1983, when Eddie got his first radio show on WDHA, he would buy records from Jonny and play them on his show. Before long, when Eddie went to pay for his albums, Jonny would decline taking his money. Jonny realized that he would sell more albums if Eddie would play them on his show. A friendship was formed.
Eddie was doing his show for about six-months. One day; while he was broadcasting, a knock came on the studio door. It was Jonny Z. He said that he wouldn’t leave until Eddie played a song from the new album from an up and coming band that was on his Megaforce label. Eddie knew Jonny wouldn’t leave until he got his way, so Eddie agreed to play a song. The band turned out to be Metallica and the album was Kill ‘Em All.
Jonny was grateful. He told Eddie that if he could ever afford to hire someone to really get Megaforce going, he would hire Eddie. A couple of years later, Jonny Z. called Eddie. True to his word, he offered Eddie a job. Megaforce had mostly “heavy” music on their roster. Bands such as Anthrax, Overkill, Man O War, and Raven were all selling albums and concert tickets, but were not getting air-play on any major radio stations. Eddie approached Jonny with the idea to sign a few acts that were more “radio friendly” – stuff that could get air-play and help bring the label to a new level. Eddie suggested tracking down Ace Frehley to see if he would be interested in signing with Megaforce. Eddie Kramer put together a lunch meeting with Ace, Jonny and Eddie. Ace signed with Megaforce and in 1987 released Frehley’s Comet, the first solo album Ace released after leaving KISS. Eddie continues to carry the rock n’ roll torch, and is truly an ambassador of rock.
