Sorry I missed ya yesterday. Urgent care visit = pneumonia diagnosis. On too many drugs and so many steroids, I will NEVER be able to play professional sports!
Bust out the Foos cake! Their album only came out on Friday, but according to Billboard and The Pulse Of Radio, the new Foo Fighters album Concrete And Gold is headed for a Number One debut on this weekend’s Billboard 200 album chart when the final figures are released on Sunday night (Sep 24th). According to the trade outlet, the band’s ninth studio LP looks likely to move more than 120,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release after arriving in both physical and digital formats last Friday (Sep 15th).
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multiple formats, including traditional album sales, track equivalent albums via individual song downloads and streaming equivalent albums.
Foo Fighters previously topped the chart in 2011 with Wasting Light. Seven of the band’s albums have landed in the Top 10, including 2014’s Sonic Highways, which debuted and peaked at Number Two.
Longtime bassist Nate Mendel told us a while back that the Foos have never had to worry that much about commercial success: “Well, one of the things, I think, that’s made the band work so well is how we kind of structured it in the beginning and the opportunity we had, because Dave had been in Nirvana, to do things the way we wanted to do it. We didn’t have the pressure that a lot of bands do of having to write the hit song. I mean, thankfully Dave’s a good songwriter and able to write catchy songs, but we don’t have that pressure where you have somebody breathing over your shoulder, and I think that really is something that destroys a lot of bands.”
Foo Fighters have lined up a fall North American tour that kicks off on Oct 7th in San Bernardino, CA with Cal Jam 17, featuring the Foos, Queens Of The Stone Age, Cage The Elephant, Liam Gallagher, Royal Blood, The Struts and more. The rest of the tour begins on Oct 12th in Washington, D.C.
Two more high-profile rock releases are aiming for high debuts on next week’s Billboard 200 chart. Prophets of Rage’s self-titled debut album and Nothing More’s The Stories We Tell Ourselves are both looking at sales of around 20,000 copies each, which could get them into the bottom half of the Top 10.
Also from The Pulse Of Radio, Linkin Park vocalist Mike Shinoda spoke publicly for the first time about the death of singer Chester Bennington and the band’s future in an interview on Monday (Sep 18th) with Los Angeles radio station KROQ. Discussing the group’s just announced Bennington tribute concert, scheduled for Oct 27th at the Hollywood Bowl, Shinoda said, “I had gone to (producer) Rick Rubin as a source of guidance. He had said, ‘I think you guys need to get on stage. I think that’ll be the thing that’ll feel good. It’ll be super, super hard.’”
Shinoda continued, “We haven’t gone out together in public, we haven’t played — we haven’t gone on stage . . . I know that for some of the guys in the band, getting on stage is more scary than (for) other guys in the band, but I will say that for all of us, it’s definitely the thing that we want to do. It feels like the right way to celebrate Chester.”
Shinoda said about his late friend and bandmate, “I know that the circumstances of his passing were really dark, and as we said at the time, the darkness that he had was always there and was kind of part of the package, but what was so unique and special about this guy is that he used it as fuel to do so many positive things . . . he was such a happy guy, he was such a fun guy. When he’d walk in the room, there was such a positive, funny, upbeat energy, and that’s what we wanna get out of this show.”
Shinoda admitted that the show will be a “roller coaster of emotion” and added that plans for it are still coming together. Proceeds from the show will go to Music For Relief’s One More Light Fund in memory of Bennington.
Oh yeah! Halestorm has entered Dark Horse Recording Studios just outside Nashville to begin recording its fourth album for an early 2018 release. The band has posted a brief teaser video and some photos from the sessions online. Helming the LP is Nick Raskulinecz, an acclaimed producer who has previously worked with Rush, Korn, Alice In Chains, Stone Sour and Deftones, in addition to having produced Halestorm’s third and latest covers EP, ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP.
Halestorm singer Lzzy Hale and host of hardDriveRadio’s ASK LZZY recently told our Green Bay radio station Razor 94.7, “We started literally from scratch — like (with) no real ideas — and ended up doing a bunch of instrumentals with (Raskulinecz), and then I’d take it home and write over them . . . it’s been a lot of fun.”
The band’s last effort, 2015’s Into The Wild Life, was criticized by some fans for veering too far into pop music territory. Hale said she wasn’t worried about the new album being “rock” enough, explaining, “We worked with a couple of producers in the past that are obsessed with ‘You have to cross over to Top 40,’ or we’re, like, their guinea pig, first time doing a rock band, so you have that stress in the back of your mind, like, ‘No, we have to make sure this rocks.’ And this time, we have no stress like that at all.”
Halestorm will hit the road over the next few weeks for a combination of headlining shows and festivals, starting on Friday (Sep 22nd) at the High Elevation fest in Englewood, CO outside Denver.
Late Soundgarden, Audioslave and Temple Of The Dog frontman Chris Cornell will be honored posthumously for his original song “The Promise,” which Cornell wrote and recorded for the film of the same name about the Armenian Genocide. He’ll also be honored for his philanthropic and humanitarian efforts on behalf of vulnerable children around the world, with his widow Vicky Cornell accepting the award on behalf of her late husband.
The award will be given to Cornell by Cassia co-owners Kim Luu-Ng and chef Bryant Ng at the second LA Chefs for Human Rights (LACHR) fundraising dinner, benefiting Program for Torture Victims (PTV). The event will take place at Luu-Ng and Ng’s acclaimed Southeast Asian brasserie in Santa Monica on Sep 25th.
The slaughter of the Armenians by the Turks claimed more than 1.5 million lives over a century ago. Cornell told us not long before his untimely death that the events of the movie were still relevant now: “That was one of the things that was important to me, was not just telling a century-old story, but telling that story because it’s happening today. We need to be aware that these things happen now. We need to kind of be slapped in the face with the fact that, as horrendous as this was a century ago, in many parts of the world we haven’t gotten anywhere.”
Kim Luu-Ng said, “We’re deeply honored to celebrate the life-changing work Vicky and Chris have accomplished, and which she continues to carry on. Their support of and dedication to Syrian refugee children languishing in refugee camps raises awareness for this ongoing, six-year crisis and provides hope to so many who have lost it.”
The film The Promise, which starred Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, came out last April. Sadly, Cornell hanged himself in a Detroit hotel room a month later, on May 18th, following a show with Soundgarden. (Thanks The Pulse Of Radio)
Speaking of Soundgarden, Happy 49th to bassist Ben Shepherd!