Photo credit: Lou Brutus
Rock On The Range! What can I say? Another successful, yet rainy, magnificent festival from the great crew at Danny Wimmer Presents and AEG Live. Probably my last ride there, too, and I had a blast! I only did three interviews and the rest my amazing team of Lou Brutus and Paulie Walnuts killed it out there!!! It was challenging to say the least, what with the weather, the Code Yellows and Code Reds, which forced the promoters to stop the show on Friday and Saturday, and Sunday. (I left yesterday since it was the BF’s birthday and I came home a day early.) Code Red meant dangerous storms were in the area, ones that produce lightning and winds with the rain. When that happens, the show must evacuate. And in an amazing manner, they got 35,000 people to leave, get to their cars and wait out (for several hours) til the weather passed through. The “Rangers,” as they are called, were great and complied.
It caused a great crowd backstage to huddle under the stadium and hang out and chat and catch up with one another. Many of the bands were also told to leave their buses. Friday night, we left, since they had stopped the show at 3:30, before Of Mice & Men’s set on the main stage. Earlier in the day, we did get to watch Beartooth and Thrice, who both put on excellent sets for the early afternoon audience. I also watched Bleeker that day, who also had a killer show over on the Bud Light Stage. But then when it got to be 6 PM and no word on when the show would resume (and none of us had had lunch) so we left. Sadly.
As a result, we missed Live, Chevelle, and the surprise Chris Cornell acoustic tribute from Stone Sour’s Corey Taylor and Christian Martucci who did Pink Floyd‘s “Wish You Were Here” and Temple Of A Dog‘s “Hunger Strike.” along with acoustic music from Chris Cornell and Soundgarden, with video images on the jumbo screens along the main stage.
Corey got a little emotional (everyone was over the weekend when we spoke of the tragic untimely death of Chris Cornell) during some of his interviews he was doing that day, including the one above with Sirius XM.
We had a feeling after seeing Stone Sour perform “Outshined” as a tribute on Thursday night at their show at Express Live in Columbus, the night before the kick off of Rock On The Range, that at least Corey would be doing something in place of Soundgarden’s slot on Friday night. The band was set to leave Friday to head to St Louis for Pointfest, but that was cancelled since Soundgarden was headlining. But that was good news for Rock On The Range, who quickly worked to put together the fantastic tribute.
But I must say, the passing of Chris Cornell loomed large over every single person at Rock On The Range. It was actually cathartic that we all were together over the weekend to try to make sense of what happened and to support one another. I was in the Zippo Sessions tent when Kyng did their acoustic version of “Hunger Strike.” Overall the experiences we shared with so many great bands we play on hardDriveRadio were wonderful. I got to see the best sets from Papa Roach, The Offspring, Korn, Skillet, Alter Bridge, Kyng, saw friends from Of Mice & Men, I Prevail, Cover Your Tracks, In Flames, got to hang with my boys Korn and their crew most of the day on Saturday, while Lou and Paulie worked the buses, dressing rooms, VIP Lounge and trailers talking to nearly everyone. For me, this was the first time at Rock On The Range where I got to hang out and watch some shows. (It was always me and Lou running around for 10 hours talking to everyone and hardly having a moment to see anyone perform. So for my last appearance as hardDrive‘s producer, I got to play “Queen” and do what I wanted to do and let me tell you, it was a BLAST!)
Be listening for Lou on the air talking about all the great things he got to do and bands he sat down with in the coming days on hardDrive and hardDrive XL. Here are some other initial photos he’s sent to us so far today:
Lou with The Offspring’s Dexter Holland (call him Dr) and Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman
There were other tributes to Chris Cornell both on and off the Rock On The Range stage:
(Bush in Toronto May 18th)
(Red Hot Chili Peppers in Indianapolis)
Meanwhile, The Pulse Of Radio reporting:
- Papa Roach released its ninth studio album, Crooked Teeth, on Friday (May 19th) in both standard and deluxe editions. The latter features three bonus studio tracks and a second disc containing a complete 15-song live show recorded in Detroit. The new set was written and recorded in North Hollywood and features the single “Help,” which recently hit Number One on the rock radio chart. Also issued on Friday was Linkin Park‘s seventh studio effort, One More Light, and a deluxe reissue of Blink-182‘s 2016 album California.
- Tool‘s official website, toolband.com, has been fully redesigned for the first time since roughly 2002. The redesign lands just as the band is gearing up to head out on their spring North American tour, which begins on Wednesday (May 24th) in Fairfax, VA. It also comes as the band continues to work on its long-awaited new album, which is not expected out until 2018. It looks pretty cool. Although I preferred the old one, frankly! LOL (The PRP)
- Five Finger Death Punch and Rob Zombie will lead the lineup of the third annual Rock Allegiance festival, set to take place Saturday, Oct 7th at the festival’s new location at BB&T Pavilion and Wiggins Waterfront Park in Camden, NJ. Among the rest of the more than 20 bands playing on three stages are Marilyn Manson, Halestorm, Mastodon, In This Moment, Beartooth, Starset, Bleeker and others. Tickets will go on sale Wednesday, (May 24th) at noon ET at RockAllegiance.com and LiveNation.com. (Blabbermouth)
- Beartooth has released a free download of a live performance of the band’s current single, “Sick Of Me.” The track comes from the the bonus “Beartooth: Live In Columbus” DVD included with the deluxe edition of the band’s latest album, Aggressive, due out Friday (May 26th). You can find the free download over at Beartoothband.com.Have a great day!