Happy Labor Day, y’all! The official sign of the end of summer. Sigh.
Well, they’ve done it again! No, I’m not talking about Prince Charles and Kate‘s 3rd baby, I am talking about Foo Fighters! According to The PRP and The Pulse Of Radio, Foo Fighters have had a sizable number of past releases certified platinum for sales of more than one million copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), just two weeks before the band is slated to unveil its ninth studio album, Concrete And Gold, on Sep 15th.
The band’s 2011 album, Wasting Light, and its 2007 effort, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, have both gone platinum, having been certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies apiece on May 18th, 2011 and Dec 13th, 2007 respectively.
Main man Dave Grohl told us a while back he was grateful for all the good luck Foo Fighters have had since he launched the band in 1994: “I don’t know what it is, but it just keeps on getting better, you know. And as it all sort of grows and changes, we look at each other every time something happens, like a Grammy nomination or a big show selling out, we look at each other and we’re like, ‘Can you believe that? Isn’t that nuts?’ ‘Cause we don’t feel any different, you know.”
Other certifications include the single “Learn To Fly” going platinum, having gone gold on Jun 12th, 2006, while the 2007 single “The Pretender” has gone double platinum after being certified gold on Feb 13th, 2008. Other singles deemed double platinum included 1997’s “Everlong” and 2005’s “Best Of You.” All of the newly awarded certifications were given out on Aug 23rd, 2017.
Dave’s good pals, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has been using a cane recently and told England’s NME he aggravated a longstanding knee injury while filming the band’s video for its current single, “The Way You Used To Do.” Homme had what was supposed to be routine surgery on the knee back in 2010, but was stricken with an antibiotics-resistant staph infection after the procedure that almost claimed his life and left him bedridden for several months.
He described working through the pain during the 18-hour video shoot, explaining, “I tore my leg up in the morning (but) I didn’t want anyone to know because then they would, like, try to baby me. I can bite my lip, so I just did that a lot. We had to cancel a show which I really don’t like doing, you know, everyone cancels if their finger hurts.”
He recently underwent another surgical procedure for the injury, which forced the band to cancel their appearance at the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. The singer and guitarist used to fall ill frequently while touring, telling us a while back that he tries to stay healthy on tour even though that lifestyle isn’t conducive to it: “I just try to do my thing and try to hope that it is something that will encourage good health, although I know I’m totally bulls***ting myself.”
Queens Of The Stone Age just issued its seventh studio album, Villains, two weeks ago. The band will begin a lengthy North American tour with Royal Blood on Wednesday (Sep 6th) in Port Chester, NY, wrapping up on Oct 24th in New York City. (Thanks The PRP and The Pulse Of Radio.)
In related news, Josh Homme will appear on an upcoming episode of Bedtime Stories, a program on the BBC children’s network CBeebies. The singer recorded his installment one day before the band’s recent surprise set at the Reading & Leeds Festival. Bedtime Stories features celebrities reading different stories each night, with recent guests including actors Tom Hardy and Chris Evans. Homme has three children with his wife, Distillers singer-guitarist Brody Dalle. (Rolling Stone)
See? Just another reason why we love Corey Taylor! The Stone Sour singer stopped the band’s performance in Sydney, Australia on Aug 26th after noticing an audience member was having a medical emergency during the song “Gone Sovereign.” It’s unclear whether the person lost consciousness due to illness or was injured by another audience member.
The band was already into its encores when Taylor stopped singing and said, “Hold on, hold on, stop.” After signaling to the band to halt the song, he said, “Okay, everybody back up, there seems to be a medical issue. Make some room so the professionals can get in there, guys.” Taylor checked in with the young fan as he was being helped by medical workers.
Taylor asked the crowd multiple times if everyone else was all right before resuming the show and finishing the might with “Absolute Zero” and “Fabuless.” Stone Sour plays in Japan all this week before heading back to the U.S. to start a tour on September 23rd in Englewood, Colorado.
The band’s latest album, Hydrograd, debuted at Number Eight on the Billboard 200 album chart earlier this summer. It features the chart-topping single “Song #3.”
Alternative Nation reports Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready took part in a live discussion last month with filmmaker Cameron Crowe and addressed the question of whether or not the band will continue to make new studio albums in the future. McCready remarked, “I think so . . . I feel like we can go out and tour even if we don’t have a record out, and that is a huge luxury, thank you for that, seriously, thank you for that. That’s a huge luxury, we’re very aware of that, but at the same time to keep it interesting for us as artists and musicians, we need to keep creating.”
McCready continued, “A lot of that is (bassist) Jeff Ament’s brain, he will go, ‘Let’s try to do it this completely different other way.’ (He can) look at it from another angle . . . He will say, ‘Let’s try something that is more Peter Gabriel-ish with a twist of Venom.’ I’m serious, that keeps it interesting. On that line, that gets us excited to kind of go, ‘Let’s try to do that.’ Our band is in a situation where we all write songs, and edit each other’s songs. That keeps it interesting.”
Ament told us a while back that the band is still eager to explore new sounds: “We wanted to be a band that could really dip our toes into a lot of different styles. And I think we’re there and we still know that there’s more that we could do. There’s still some areas that we can get into.”
Pearl Jam has recorded 10 studio albums. The most recent was 2013’s Lightning Bolt. The group has not indicated when or if it will return to the studio. The band has taken most of 2017 off, getting together only to perform at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last April. A new documentary chronicling the group’s two-night August 2016 stand at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, titled Let’s Play Two, comes out on Sep 29th.
Even though Pearl Jam may be dormant for the moment, McCready has got some music to showcase. McCready has posted three songs online from the movie The Glamour & The Squalor, for which he composed the original soundtrack. The film traces the life and career of influential Seattle DJ Marco Collins, who helped break artists like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters, Beck and others. The soundtrack is available here
What whoa. Vulture and The Pulse Of Radio reporting Kid Rock might be in some lukewarm water. After hinting earlier this summer that he may run for a U.S. Senate seat in the 2018 midterm elections, Kid Rock has now been accused of violating federal election laws. Although Rock has not officially come out as a candidate, he launched a merchandise website at the address KidRockForSenate.com and claimed that he was seriously weighing a bid as a Republican for the Michigan seat now held by Democrat Debbie Stabenow.
However, non-partisan watchdog organization Common Cause has filed a case with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice against Rock. They claim that by launching his site and selling campaign products, he has become an official candidate and is violating election laws by not registering as one nor disclosing that profits from sales of his merchandise are going toward his campaign.
Rock’s longtime record label, Warner Bros. Music, is named in the case, too, for “facilitating and acting as a conduit for contributions to the Kid Rock campaign.” Rock responded in a note on his website, “I am starting to see reports from the misinformed press and the fake news on how I am in violation of breaking campaign law. 1: I have still not officially announced my candidacy. 2: See #1 and go f**k yourselves.”
A possible run by Rock was floated earlier this year by a local Republican activist named Wes Nakagiri, who suggested that Rock would make a good candidate because he “has name I.D., is an out-of-the-box idea, and would kind of get rid of that stodgy Republican image.” Rock plans to tour in 2018 — the same time he’d have to be out campaigning if he does run for the Senate.
See Common Cause‘s statement here and Rock’s response here.
According to Blabbermouth, former band mates of Chester Bennington‘s from Grey Daze and Dead By Sunrise played a three-song acoustic set on Saturday, Sep 2 at Saxe Theater in Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas during a memorial event for the late Linkin Park singer, who passed away in July.
Amir Derakh, Mace Beyers and Ryan Shuck performed the songs “Morning After,” “Let Down” (Dead By Sunrise) and “The Down Syndrome” (Grey Daze)at the complimentary memorial fundraising event, which was organized by Club Tattoo (a tattoo salon Chester founded with some friends) and hosted by KYFI 550 radio personality Gregg Paul. Bennington and his partners opened the first Club Tattoo in Phoenix more than two decades years ago and expanded with at least three more in Arizona. They also opened a Club Tattoo location in Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile in Las Vegas.
Video footage of the performance can be seen above. Check out photos at Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Celebrating birthdays today: Lacey Mosley Sturm is 36 and Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil is 57.