Hard to believe May is nearly over!? Ah…..3 day weekend is on the horizon!
The Pulse of Radio reporting this morning Red Hot Chili Peppers returned to the live stage for the first time since singer Anthony Kiedis was hospitalized last week for an intestinal ailment, closing out the Rock On The Range festival in Columbus, Ohio on Sunday night (May 22nd). The band delivered a 15-song set that featured the first live performance of the new Chili Peppers single, “Dark Necessities,” as well as a slew of hits like “Can’t Stop,” “Under The Bridge,” “Higher Ground,” “Californication,” “By The Way” and the show-ending “Give It Away.”
According to reports, Kiedis was his “normal, energetic self” and showed no signs of the illness that forced the band to cancel two shows in California last week. Kiedis told ET Canada earlier this week he was felled by a combination of a virus, inflammation in his digestive system and old scar tissue from a hernia operation.
Kiedis is actually the second band member to face a health issue surrounding the making of their new album, The Getaway. Flea sustained a broken arm last year while snowboarding and told us at Rock On The Range how it set the recording process back: “I busted my arm in five places — my elbow, my nerves — like I really busted it up. It was bad. And I thought I might never play again and, you know, anyways I had a big surgery and it was like six months until I could play bass again, or play bass well enough again to like go in and rock with the band. And even that, I wasn’t quite all the way there, but now I’m totally back.”
The Getaway, the Chili Peppers’ 11th studio album, arrives on Jun 17th. The band’s next scheduled live appearance will be at the BottleRock Festival in Napa, CA on May 29th. Now THAT’S a festival I want to go to. Napa, wine, rock? Yes please!
Hey, that Wes Styles from WQLZ is at it again! Not only did he jump on stage at Rock On The Range with Pennywise, he also made news with his backstage interview with Hellyeah’s Tom Maxwell!
If you listened to hardDrive over the weekend, you know we played Saint Asonia‘s cover of Phil Collins‘ 1982 tune, “I Don’t Care Anymore.” Well, Tom told Wes Hellyeah also has a cover of that song on their forthcoming Unden!able album, but their version contains unreleased tracks recorded by brothers Dimebag Darrell (RIP) and Vinnie Paul (current Hellyeah drummer.) We won’t be able to hear it until the album drops on Jun 3, but how crazy that two bands have recorded the same cover tune!????? Of ALL the songs to cover in this world…..it’s nutty, I tell ya!
Maxwell explained, “Dime and Vinnie (Paul Abbott, former Pantera drummer) recorded that track years ago and we went in and dug up his tracks and put it on the record, man. So we’ve got a little Dime . . . Dime’s on our album.“
Unden!able follows up 2014’s Blood For Blood. The disc marks the first time that Hellyeah’s current lineup — which includes Vinnie, Tom Maxwell, singer Chad Gray, guitarist Christian Brady and bassist Kyle Sanders — has recorded together as a unit. Hellyeah recorded Unden!able at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, where it was produced by Kevin Churko, who co-wrote all the songs.
Hellyeah is currently on the road with Escape The Fate, New Years Day and From Ashes To New. That trek stops tonight (May 24th) in Louisville, KY and ends on Jun 5th in Las Vegas. Hellyeah will then venture out on the Hell Pop Tour with In This Moment, beginning on Jun 18th in Des Moines, IA.
Rob Zombie and Lou Brutus ROTR2016
According to The Pulse Of Radio, Rob Zombie told Loudwire in a new interview he’s been struggling to get the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) ratings board to give his new movie 31 an R rating. Zombie explained, “You’re editing content for adults. One adult is telling another adult, ‘I think that’s a little too much for you. We’re gonna have to tone it down.’ It’s always ruining the movie at the same time. Horror movies get it the worst, usually, or action movies or any kind of violent movie. Nobody goes, ‘Your comedy is too funny, we’d better cut it down. People might laugh too hard.’”
Zombie has run into trouble with the MPAA before, when they refused to give his second film, 2005’s The Devil’s Rejects, an R rating until he made certain cuts in the film for violence.
Zombie recently struck a deal for Saban Films to distribute 31, in North America. The company will release the movie on September 16th, 2016. Zombie told us he’s proud of the picture: “I feel like it’s the best film I’ve done and most people that have seen it seem to think that way. It feels like it’s the best of everything. There’s sort of a nastiness to it, like Devil’s Rejects, but then there’s also sort of a grandness to it that I had started playing around with in Lords Of Salem. It’s sort of a little bit of everything.“
31 follows five carnival workers who are kidnapped and held hostage in an abandoned, hellish compound where they are forced to survive twelve hours against a gang of sadistic clowns in a violent game. The cast includes Sheri Moon Zombie, Malcolm McDowell, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Meg Foster, Judy Geeson, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and more.
Zombie’s new album, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, arrived in late April. He’ll begin a co-headlining tour with Korn on Jul 19th in Englewood, CO.
The Pulse Of Radio also says Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready welcomed his recent Mad Season collaborators, Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, to his 14th annual “Flight To Mars” benefit concerts over the weekend, held at the Showbox in Seattle. Proceeds from the shows benefited the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America’s Camp Oasis program. McCready has suffered from Crohn’s disease for more than 20 years but only began discussing it publicly in the last five years.
McCready has also suffered from addiction and other issues in the past, but said a while back that his bandmates in Pearl Jam have helped him through his struggles: “The band has stuck by me in those situations a hundred times. Stone (Gossard, guitarist) specifically has definitely kind of got me…I’m glad that I’m still in the band, I’m glad that I’m still alive in all these kind of situations, and Stone has been integral in keeping me in this thing, and as I think everybody else has been that way too, so I feel very positive to be in it. It is a close, cohesive unit when it comes to that.”
Blabbermouth reports Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan will release a documentary about his life, “It’s So Easy And Other Lies: Live At The Moore,” this summer. The film, which was directed by filmmaker Christopher Duddy, who previously worked on visual effects for “Terminator 2”, “Total Recall” and “Titanic,” captures a special performance Duff held in Seattle in 2013 when he was promoting his memoir.
A new preview clip from “It’s So Easy And Other Lies: Live At The Moore” in which Slash and Nikki Sixx look back at GN’R‘s big break, opening for Motley Crue in 1987, can be seen below (courtesy of RollingStone.com).
“It’s So Easy And Other Lies: Live At The Moore” bases its name on the title of Duff McKagan’s best-selling autobiography and documents the remarkable life of one of the founding members of both Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver. It is the story of his rise to the pinnacle of fame and fortune, his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction, his personal crash and burn, and his phoenix-like transformation via a unique path to sobriety and eventual redemption. The book was a best seller in 2011. Combined, these bands have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, McKagan stated about the “It’s So Easy” book, “It’s not really my story, it’s really not even my autobiography or memoir. I think that term is overused. It is a story of some shit that happened to me, but probably not the typical [things] what people might expect. It’s not my story of GUNS N’ ROSES or VELVET REVOLVER. All of those things are sort of in it, because they’re things I bounced through as I was getting deeper and deeper into addiction and finding my way out. It was challenging going through some of these things that I hadn’t thought about for a long time. And writing forces you to take your own part of your life, of what role you actually played — as opposed to the one you make up later on.”
Duff’s bandmate Slash has published his own book, as has ex-Guns drummer Steven Adler, who released his life story, “My Appetite For Destruction: Sex And Drugs And Guns N’ Roses”, in July 2010.
In other news:
Slipknot is taking Knotfest to Japan again this year, with the event scheduled for Nov 5th and 6th in Tokyo. So far Deftones,Marilyn Manson, Disturbed and Lamb Of God will join the headliners, who will close the show both days. More acts will be announced soon. Here in the U.S., Knotfest is combining with Ozzfest for a late September blowout in California. (The PRP)
Meanwhile, check out Chino Moreno of the Deftones with his new blond do!
Chino Moreno of Deftones at Rock on the Range 2016 (photo credit: Suzy Cole)
Of Mice & Men have wrapped the recording sessions for their fourth full-length album. Frontman Austin Carlile confirmed the news via Instagram. The follow-up to 2014’s Restoring Force comes after a hiatus during which Carlile underwent multiple surgeries on his ribs, hip and back. Look for them later this year on tour with Slipknot starting Jun 9th. Today they head over to England to start a tour which includes stops at ROCK IM PARK in Nurnberg, Germany! Meanwhile, Happy Belated Birthday to the band’s guitarist Alan Ashby!