Category : LATEST NEWS

BASSIST JASON NEWSTED SWITCHES FROM METAL TO ACOUSTIC, SAYS “I CAN’T PLAY LIKE SLIPKNOT NOW”

Jason Newsted says one of the reasons he’s pursuing his acoustic project is because he achieved everything he could in heavy music while he was with Metallica.

He’s happy for bands like Slipknot to take up the mantle – and admits he can’t play “heavier and faster” the way he used to.

He last week unveiled Would And Steal, a duo featuring Rob Tucker, which focuses on classic Americana.

Newsted says in a video, “After 30 years of playing heavy music, I’ve been around the globe about five times. I’ve already climbed that mountain. We got Grammy awards, the Hall Of Fame and all those different things. That’s as far as you can go in that kind of music. It’s someone else’s turn to have fun in that music now.”

He adds, “I can’t play like Slipknot now. Those guys are heavier and faster than I could ever dream of playing now. This is how I can play, and this is what I’ll do for the rest of time.”

Newsted – who’s also worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Voivod, Flotsam And Jetsam, Echobrain and the recent self-titled solo project he shut down in 2014 – says he still plays metal “all the time.”

He adds, “This project happens to be the thing that I want to share with everybody. There’s not a big deal about making money, or competing with anybody else. Whatever happens in our studio now is what we’re trying to share with anybody that gives a crap. If they want to share it, that’s cool. If they don’t, and they only like metal, then peace and more power to you. I’m doing this and that’s what’s good for me. I hope everybody else decides what’s good for them.”

Reflecting on his chosen genre of music, he says, “As I play this, I find myself being able to expose myself to more people. I’d say age four to 94 can listen to this music and enjoy it. How can’t you like Johnny Cash? You have to like those songs, American music like that.”

Newsted will front two acoustic benefit shows for the Little Kids Rock music education charity on August 5th and 6th at Mighty Fine Guitars in California.

additional source: Metal Hammer via teamrock.com

GUITARIST JOE PERRY RETURNS TO LIVE PERFORMANCES, AFTER COLLAPSING TWO WEEKS PRIOR ONSTAGE

After missing nearly two weeks worth of shows due to “a combination of dehydration and exhaustion,” Aerosmith guitarist, Joe Perry, returned to the stage with Hollywood Vampires on July 22nd. The concert took place at Weill Hall in Rohnert Park, California.

Perry collapsed after walking backstage only one song into the Hollywood Vampires’ concert at the Coney Island Amphitheater in Brooklyn, N.Y. The band, which also includes Robert DiLeo (Stone Temple Pilots) and Matt Sorum (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver), decided to continue with their tour as Perry recovered, although they did cancel an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

The Hollywood Vampires have shows booked every night between now and the closing night on July 25th at the Mid-State Fair in Paso Robles, California. From there, Perry will have a bit more time to recuperate before Aerosmith begin their South American and Mexico tour starting on September 29th.

The group have talked about doing a farewell tour, with Steven Tyler suggesting it may happen next year, but Perry isn’t so sure.

“It’s one of many things we’ve talked about as a band, but I don’t know if it’s the end,” Perry said. “We take it from album to tour and day to day. It’s the same philosophy we’ve always had.”

additional source: ultimateclassicrock.com

TESLA STREAM NEW SINGLE “SAVE THAT GOODNESS”

More than 30 years after sharing the stage with Def Leppard in the late ‘80s, Tesla hit the road again last summer with the British hard rock group, a move that provided the spark for a new collaboration.

Ultimate Classic Rock presents the exclusive premiere of Save That Goodness, a brand new song by Tesla that was written by Leppard guitarist Phil Collen. The studio track appears as a bonus cut on the band’s upcoming Mechanical Resonance Live! album, which will be released on August 26th. You can listen to the song by clicking here

“I first met the Tesla boys when [we] jammed with the band onstage at the infamous Paradiso Theater in Amsterdam 30 years ago,” Collen tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “From then on we’ve been connected in one way or another.”

According to Collen, Tesla bassist Brian Wheat heard “Save That Goodness” and told the veteran guitarist, “We should record this song and you should produce it.”

“We listened to it and immediately loved it,” Tesla singer Jeff Keith says. “He completely wrote it, but when we went in to record it, he let us put our own Tesla stamp on it, which was very nice. It’s not a cover song, but you know, [similarly], we’ve played lots of cover songs that work well for us, that we just kind of put our little Tesla stamp on it.”

“From that moment, we’ve been writing, recording and getting totally inspired about making new Tesla music,” Collen adds, calling Save That Goodness “an explosive precursor to the dynamic new Tesla studio album due out in 2017.”

Tesla are back on the road this summer with Def Leppard, but they plan to use that time to complete their next album. A half-dozen songs are already in various forms of progress; they hope to add six more over the next couple of months. Throughout summer, they’re recording those songs with a plan to wind up the tour in October with a completed album.

source: teslatheband.com

ON THE EVE OF MIKE PIAZZA’S INDUCTION INTO THE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME, EDDIE TRUNK REFLECTS ON THE PAIR’S FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF HEAVY METAL

Evan Grossman of the New York Daily News wrote a feature article on Eddie’s friendship with baseball player, and soon to be Hall of Famer, Mike Piazza. Excerpts from the story appear below.

The night of the legendary 9/11 home run, when Mike Piazza lifted the Mets to victory and a city in mourning with a towering blast to center field, he left Shea Stadium and made the familiar trip into the city to sit in on radio host Eddie Trunk’s late-night heavy metal music show on WNEW. It’s something he did often when he played for the Mets, and that night was no different.

“That’s never going to be forgotten, man,” Trunk said when Piazza walked in the door the evening of September 21st, 2001. “That’s as big as it gets.”

Piazza made semi-regular appearances on Trunk’s shows on WNEW and Q104.3 during his eight years with the Mets. Even after some of the biggest moments of his Mets career, like that home run against the Braves that allowed the city to breathe again, he made it a point to hang with Trunk and spin records on the air.

“I knew it was a massive moment in the history of sports and New York and all of that. But we didn’t really talk too much about that,” Trunk told the Daily News of the 9/11 homer. “We certainly acknowledged it, but he came to do my show very much as an escape from baseball.”

“This was his way to blow off some steam and have some fun. So the last thing he wanted was to come on a radio show and do a dissection of that night’s game. He’d just play music with me and we’d talk…”

…What other athletes can you name who would regularly leave the ballpark and play co-host of a heavy metal show late into the night, sometimes before a day game, just because he liked the music so much?

“My Yankees fans would always complain we didn’t have any Yankees and I said any time Derek Jeter wants to come in at midnight and play Metallica records with me, the door’s wide open,” Trunk said.

Like a Cameron Crowe movie, Trunk, a heavy metal institution, formed a fast friendship with Piazza over the music. They connected through a mutual friend and “a year or two into his Mets run,” Trunk said, Piazza asked if he could come in and check out Trunk’s radio show. Piazza was a fan.

“He said he would come in and hang out, but he wanted to keep it low key,” Trunk said. “He wanted to come in, be a fly on the wall and didn’t want a lot of fanfare about it…”

“…He came in and said he was only going to stay for a few minutes and say hello and we ended up leaving the studio at like 4 o’clock in the morning. We just had the best time…”

…In his life, [Piazza] had two loves: baseball and music. As far back as high school, former teammates recall Piazza only tearing himself away from the batting cage to attend local rock concerts.

“He’d walk into my studio and here would be sitting someone from AC/DC or somebody from Iron Maiden and he’d turn into the fan,” Trunk said. “It was complete role reversal…”

“…Hard rock and metal music is fairly marginalized and people think that only a small amount of people like it and it’s niche and not mainstream.”

“We’d play requests, we’d take calls and it went on through his entire time with the Mets and I’m proud to say all these years later, we’re best friends.”

Read more at the New York Daily News.

all photos used in this story, courtesy of Ron Akiyama

source: nydailynews.com

THE CULT ANNOUNCE DATES WITH GUNS ‘N ROSES, ADDITIONAL HEADLINING SHOWS

The Cult have announced a wide array of summer tour dates including four upcoming stadium shows with Guns N’ Roses, as well as festivals and their own headlining concerts. The iconic band–founding singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy along with bassist Grant Fitzpatrick, drummer John Tempesta and keyboardist/rhythm guitarist Damon Fox–is on the road now in support of this year’s Hidden City album.

Hidden City is their 10th studio album and the final chapter of the band’s trilogy of releases which began with 2007’s Born Into This then 2012’s Choice of Weapon. The album has already produced three singles: Hinterland, Dark Energy and Deeply Ordered Chaos.

Of the album and its first single, Astbury told Billboard.com, “Hinterland is a place both real and imagined, a hidden city symbolic of a new Rome. Through the eyes of several witnesses we observe a young woman as she realizes her enlightened self in a dystopian dream world. Hinterland is filled with symbolism, reflecting a new aeon in the shift of human consciousness as we realign with our planet’s natural rhythms.”

The Cult continue to evolve and do things in their own style. Not tethered to the latest hit single or trend. They are a way of life, an ethos. Adventurers more than careerists. As Astbury eloquently puts it, “Our post-modern roots have kept the creative process vibrant, and we continue to evolve.”

Duffy says, “Like all Cult albums–since Ian and I began writing together–we try our best to honestly reflect what we are feeling, doing and listening to. Hidden City is no exception and I’m thrilled to have had a creative part in such a critically acclaimed–but, more importantly–Cult-fan-acclaimed album. The dialogue between us all continues…”

Of the new album, Mojo said it’s “Some of the fiercest, nastiest, most powerful – and also starkly beautiful – music of their career…The album’s extraordinary howls of pain and anger, its dramatic apocalyptic visions and quiet interrogations of the meaning of life and death, align perfectly with the times.”

Watch videos for Hinterland, G.O.A.T and Deeply Ordered Chaos below the tour date list.

The Cult with Guns N’ Roses:

7/27 Atlanta, GA Georgia Dome
7/29 Orlando, FL Camping World Stadium
7/31 New Orleans, LA Mercedes-Benz Superdome

8/3 Arlington, TX AT&T Stadium

The Cult headlining dates:

8/2 San Antonio, TX Aztec Theater

9/16 Hampton Beach, NH Casino Ballroom
9/17 Chester, PA Talen Energy Stadium
9/18 Norfolk, VA Norva
9/20 Raleigh, NC The Ritz
9/21 Charlotte, NC Fillmore Charlotte
9/24 Houston, TX Houston Open Air
9/27 Wichita, KS Cotillion Ballroom
9/29 Kansas City, MO Harrah’s/Voodoo Lounge
9/30 Memphis, TN Minglewood Hall

10/1 Louisville, KY Louder Than Life Festival
10/4 Denver, CO Ogden Theatre
10/5 Salt Lake City, UT The Depot
10/7 Fresno, AZ Paul Paul Theater at Fresno Fair
10/8 Primm, NV Star of the Desert Arena

The Cult online:

Official website
Facebook/a>
Twitter
Instagram
Youtube Channel

TEMPLE OF THE DOG REUNITE TO PERFORM A FEW SELECT SHOWS, SPECIAL 25TH ANNIVERSARY REISSUE COLLECTION TO BE RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 30TH

Temple of the Dog — the Seattle supergroup featuring Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, and Mike McCready, and drummer Matt Cameron (who plays drums with both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam) — has reunited and will tour for the first time ever since forming in 1990. The band will play five cities, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, in November. A special ticket pre-sale for fans signed up to the Ten Club, Soundgarden, and Chris Cornell email lists begins immediately and runs through July 27th. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on Friday, July 29th, at 12:00 PM local time. $1.50 from each ticket sold will benefit the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation and an additional $1.50 will benefit Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation.

The tour marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Temple of the Dog’s first and only album, a self-titled set that was released by A&M Records on April 16th, 1991. “We wanted to do the one thing we never got to do … play shows and see what it feels like to be the band that we walked away from 25 years ago,” Cornell says of the 2016 tour.

On September 30th UMe will release a special Temple of the Dog 25th anniversary reissue collection of their landmark album, newly mixed by Brendan O’Brien. The collection will be available in four configurations, including a four disc Super Deluxe, a double LP, a two CD Deluxe, and a single CD. Physical pre-orders are available today along with a detailed list of the contents of each configuration here.

Temple of the Dog came together from the ashes of Mother Love Bone following the death from a drug overdose of its frontman Andrew Wood, Cornell’s close friend and roommate. Cornell wrote future TOTD songs Say Hello 2 Heaven and Reach Down to help process his grief, “but the songs didn’t have any destination,” he says. “I was compelled to write them and there they were – written in a vacuum as a tribute to Andy. My thought was that maybe I could record these songs with the remaining members of Mother Love Bone and that maybe we could release them as a tribute.”

Mother Love Bone’s Gossard and Ament began playing with McCready, and they brought in Soundgarden’s Cameron to drum on demos. Because this was a collaboration, and a tribute, there was no commercial expectation for the Temple of the Dog album. It would be, Gossard would later observe, “the easiest and most beautiful record that we’ve ever been involved with.” Adds Cornell, “Temple was about making an album simply for the joy of doing it. We weren’t concerned what anyone outside of our group of friends would think of it. It was the first and maybe only stress-free album that we all made.”

Gossard, Ament, and McCready were also simultaneously forming a new band, which more than six months later would be known as Pearl Jam. A singer from San Diego named Eddie Vedder, who was vying to lead the project, came into the studio to sing background vocals on three of the Temple songs. When Cornell thought another song, Hunger Strike, needed a duet, Vedder was enlisted. Hunger Strike became a hit single, peaking at No. 4 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

Temple of the Dog performed live only a handful of times, most notably in Seattle, in November and December of 1990. Those shows have become some of the most legendary Seattle concerts of all-time. Their 2016 shows mark the first time the band has ever toured. (Cornell joined Pearl Jam in 2014 at the Bridge School show and for two nights at PJ20 in Alpine Valley, WI, and the Temple line-up played Reach Down and Call Me a Dog at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall in January 2015.)

“This is something no one has ever seen,” Cornell says of the official reunion. “We wanted to stop and recognize that we did this and pay homage.”

Temple of the Dog’s upcoming tour dates are as follows:

11/04 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theater
11/07 New York, NY Madison Square Garden
11/11 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Center
11/14 Los Angeles, CA The Forum
11/20 Seattle, WA Paramount Theater