William DuVall of Alice In Chains and Giraffe Tongue Orchestra (photo credit: You Know Who!)
Good morning. Today, William DuVall is flying solo as he enters the hardDriveRadio studios. Looking forward to speaking with him about his new band, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra and his touring now with Alice In Chains. More tomorrow!
Holy moly! This is H U G E ! Metallica and Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder are among the artists who will perform at this year’s Global Citizen festival at Central Park in right here in New York City on Sep 24th. Free tickets to the event can be earned by “completing actions to help promote and ensure that equitable and quality education is available to all, particularly refugee children and access for girls and women,” according to a press release. The festival has teamed again this year with Gucci’s Chime For Change campaign.
Other acts appearing at the event include Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Selena Gomez, Major Lazer, Usher, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Ellie Goulding. Among the event’s hosts are Chelsea Handler, Hugh Jackman, Seth Meyers, Neil Patrick Harris and Salma Hayek.
Festival CEO Hugh Evans said, “Over the last five years, Global Citizens around the world have taken more than 6 million actions in the fight against extreme poverty,” adding that this year’s festival “is an annual touch point to hold our world leaders to account on their commitments to solve the world’s biggest problems.”
Can’t get to NYC? The 2016 Global Citizen festival will broadcast live on MSNBC and stream on MSNBC.com as well as YouTube.
Metallica has one other current live date on its schedule, at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Aug 20th with Avenged Sevenfold and Volbeat. The band’s 10th studio album is due out this fall.
The Global Citizen Festival is unique in that most of the tickets are given away for free. Fans are instead asked to participate in progressive activism to earn points and qualify for a ticket draw, which will happen every two weeks. After each draw, a new group of challenges will appear for potential concertgoers. Currently, fans can earn points by tweeting at worldwide government leaders demanding change in policy, signing petitions, referring friends to Global Citizen and more.
Corey Taylor and Lou Brutus at RockFest Cadott
Stone Sour and Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has told Billboard.com Stone Sour has written and demoed 18 songs for its sixth studio album, with the band intending to begin recording in January and release the disc by mid-2017. Taylor said about the new material: “It is the best stuff that we’ve ever written, and I’m chomping at the bit to record it and get it ready to go. It’s got a lot of different directions, but at its core it’s very hard rock, almost in a modern/classic sense. There are some hints of punk in there. There’s some cool hard rock/heavy metal. There’s just all of these really cool elements that we’ve never maybe allowed ourselves to kind of go to.“
The new Stone Sour disc will follow up the band’s last effort, a two-part concept album called House Of Gold And Bones that was released in 2012 and 2013. In the interim, Stone Sour issued two EPs of cover songs called Meanwhile In Burbank…. and Straight Out Of Burbank, but a third titled No Sleep ‘Till Burbank was scrapped, for now anyhow.
Corey Taylor has been on tour with Slipknot since late 2014 in support of its most recent album, .5: The Gray Chapter. The singer has been wearing a neck brace onstage since having emergency neck/spinal surgery last month.
Well shut my mouth! I was surprised to see an email from The Offspring on the ole iPhone this morning! “Sharknado!” Their message said “We love Sharknado. We love The Dickies. So we thought it would be fun to record our own version of The Dickies’ Gigantor for the new movie, Sharknado The 4th Awakens.”
The Pulse Of Radio reports production manager for the current Guns N’ Roses reunion tour shed some light on the trek’s future and inner workings in a new interview with local Atlanta TV station WXIA. Speaking one day before the group’s Wednesday night (July 27th) concert there, Dale “Opie” Skjerseth said the “Not In This Lifetime” tour has “no end date,” and that shows are already booked “far into next year.”
Skjerseth said that all members of the band are “getting along just fine” and shot down speculation that they have separate dressing rooms due to tension within the ranks, Skjerseth said, “Just because everybody’s older, they carry their families with them. They all have to have their space.Everybody meets before we go on stage. It’s a meeting point and that’s where the chemistry happens.”
The tour features original members Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan on stage together for the first time in more than 20 years.
Asked if it was money or music that brought the core members back together, Skjerseth said: “I believe it starts with the love of the band . . . And then of course we all want money.”
Regarding the future of the tour, Skjerseth said, “I’ve been told there’s no end date, and I’ve seen plenty of dates going into next year, far into next year. Everybody’s working together to keep a common goal and common direction: keep the machine going.”
Skjerseth also discussed how Axl Rose is managing to get onstage on time, as opposed to previous tours when he was notorious for starting shows sometimes hours behind schedule. Skjerseth said, “We’re all older and want to get to bed now . . . It’s his maturity and business and how it should be. Everybody feels good about it.”
This is a cool story from The Pulse Of Radio. Jack White (White Stripes) wants to celebrate both the seventh anniversary of his record label, Third Man Records, and the three millionth album pressed by the company by sending up the first phonograph record to be played in space. According to Gigwise, Third Man has teamed up with scientists to create the Icarus Craft, a custom-built “space proof” turntable theoretically able to spin vinyl from a spaceship. The device will be tested on a high altitude balloon on July 30th.
The record that will be spinning is a gold-plated 12-inch master of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos speech “A Glorious Dawn,” which the label originally reissued in 2009.
Third Man will host “launch parties” at its Nashville and Detroit locations to celebrate the mission, with live bands, DJs, and commemorative merchandise, including limited edition gold vinyl copies of “A Glorious Dream.”
Disturbed with an old lady
The members of Disturbed met up with representatives from the Mansfield, Massachusetts Police Department before a recent show there and were given hats, patches and gifts from the department for the band’s support of police officers both in the past and during the last weeks following the sniper attack in Dallas that left five officers there dead.
In a video posted online, the two Mansfield officers share how the band’s cover of “The Sound of Silence” has made an impact on them and the members of the department, while singer David Draiman responds, “It’s a crying shame what has happened in this country. You guys give everything for us, so it’s the least we could do.”
At the show in Mansfield later that night, Draiman told the audience, “Earlier today we were honored with some gifts from the Mansfield Police Department here. Our boys in blue put their lives on the line for us every single day. We shouldn’t forget that.”
Draiman added, “There’s too many people in this world who are pitting us against each other and I’m sick and f**king tired of seeing it . . . if we only spread a little bit more love, care and understanding for each other, maybe we wouldn’t be in this f**king mess in the first place.”
Disturbed is currently on the road with Breaking Benjamin through mid-August, with the tour pulling into Cincinnati on tonight (Jul 27th).
Happy 43rd to Abe Cunningham of The Deftones and Happy 47th to Triple H!