Closing in on the Memorial Day weekend! Did the month of May whiz by or is it me? Geez! And don’t forget, Memorial Day weekend means a new Cover It Up special edition of hardDrive! All cover songs, and many are brand new or EXCLUSIVE like Breaking Benjamin covering Tool and Starset covering David Bowie! Don’t miss a minute! And if you do, you can always download the new FREE hardDriveRadio APP and stream the show there on Monday!
Five Finger Death Punch has announced its sixth studio album, Got Your Six, will arrive on August 28th. The first single, “Jekyll And Hyde,” will surface at radio in the next few weeks. Guitarist Zoltan Bathory gave us a few hints of what the new disc sounds like: “It’s kind of like a little bit more uptempo. You know, when we started to do this, we all came into it excited, like everybody’s writing, everybody has something to say, so we came into it with that energy. So that shows, you know, it’s kind of a more high-energy record. Everybody wanted a little bit of an uptempo record, so it’s more of our energetic, uptempo side.” Yesterday, the band also annnounced their tour with Papa Roach, In This Moment and From Ashes To New. See Road Rage for all the details. Tickets on sale Friday.
Pulse Of Radio says with David Letterman‘s epic 22-year run as the host of CBS-TV’s Late Show coming to a close tonight (May 20th), one of the final musical guests to appear on the program was Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder. The singer delivered a powerful version of the band’s “Better Man” on Monday night (May 18th) in tribute to the legendary late night host, who is retiring and letting Stephen Colbert take over the program. A photo later surfaced on Twitter of Vedder backstage at the show with actor Tom Hanks, Hank’s wife Rita Wilson and director Cameron Crowe, who gave Vedder and other members of Pearl Jam small roles as a fictional band in 1992’s Singles and who directed the Pearl Jam Twenty documentary. Vedder recently showed up in Chicago to sing “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch at Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. He was also in Chicago to perform at a benefit show paying tribute to The Who, with the aim of raising money for Teen Cancer America, a charity that was started by The Who’s Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. Pearl Jam doesn’t have any activities on its calendar until November, when it heads to South America. As host of both NBC’s Late Night and CBS’ Late Showfor more than 30 years, Letterman surpassed Johnny Carson as the longest running late-night talk show host in 2013.
Pulse also printed a story that Duff McKagan told Fox 5 New York he thinks the recently released Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, a documentary about the late Nirvana frontman told through his art, music and home movies, is “brilliantly done,” adding, “It’s extremely sad at the end, but it depicts what it was like — not just with them, but with the whole — like, everybody I knew. And that’s what it was like (in Seattle around that time). And seeing that scene — those scenes at the end — kind of upset my stomach.” McKagan, who grew up in Seattle and knew many of the musicians there, added, “I watched it with my 17-year-old daughter. And to think Frances (Bean Cobain, Kurt’s daughter) produced (the film), and that was the footage she chose to be shown was really heavy.” Some of the final scenes in the film depict a clearly high Cobain trying to interact with his daughter, including a scene where he is nodding off as she sits on his lap. McKagan gave up drinking and drugs in 1994 after an attack of acute alcohol-induced pancreatitis. He mentioned discussing drugs with his own daughters, 17-year-old Grace and 14-year-old Mae, saying, “I’m honest. ‘You might try some drugs. And you might actually like something. Here’s the deal, though: I was your age, and that’s when I was doing that. And I chased that first good high for thirteen years until my pancreas blew up. So you might have that same thing, and it’s not cool. So just watch it.’” Another musician, Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich, said in a recent radio interview that he thought Montage Of Heck was “a great piece of filmmaking,” but added, “It was almost too much, it was almost too close.” Watch the interview here.
Foo Fighters have posted a pro-shot mini-documentary online about the band’s Record Store Day (April 18th) performance in front of 100 people at the tiny Record Connection in Niles, OH. In the video, store owner Jeff Burke recalls how he got the money to originally open the store and then discusses with customers how important the Foos performance was, saying, “What a statement that really makes, by the Foo Fighters coming here and wanting to play for you guys. It’s mind-blowing.” (Diffuser).
AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson returns in a new second season episode as host of the series Cars That Rock. In a clip posted online, Johnson visits the iconic MG factory in Longbridge, England to gain an insight into the beloved British make. A six-part series, Cars That Rock features Johnson meeting designers, engineers and car fans from around the world and visiting car plants and race tracks. It airs on the Quest channel in the U.K. (Blabbermouth).
Did not know there was a press conference in Chicago on Monday with Billy Corgan and Marilyn Manson discussing their upcoming End Times tour. They were asked about a band they were once rumored to be forming in 1997 called Fruity. Manson said the name came about “because we thought that the pills made us feel fruity, that was it. I don’t really know what that meant, at the time.” Corgan added, “Everyone we would meet would be in the band. Like (Public Enemy‘s) Flavor Flav was in the band, (porn star) Jenna Jameson was in the band, but then it never happened.” (Alternative Nation).
Among many having a birthday today: Cher is 69 and Calico Cooper is 34.