How horrific to wake up to the news of the tragedy at the outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas last night. I know that open area in front of the Mandalay Bay. I have attended rock concerts there before. It is on the Las Vegas strip not too far from the airport. A 64-year old man opened fire from the 32nd floor of the hotel across the street from the festival, reigning bullets down onto a crowd of about 23,000. I can only imagine the terror. 50 killed, 400 injured. What is happening to us, America?
Another horrific event for concert goers happened in NYC on Saturday night in NYC. According to my friend Katherine Turman, who was at the show, she reported to Variety that Marilyn Manson was injured onstage at the Hammerstein Ballroom when a stage prop either fell on him or caused him to fall backward.
@marilynmanson f-ed himself up bad! Show was cancelled. pic.twitter.com/dAUOtR4dH5
— Matthew Pruno (@MattPruno) October 1, 2017
On a brighter note, many of you got to see our own Lou Brutus in action this weekend at JJO’s Sonic Boom in Janesville, WI, as evidenced in the following pictures. More to come later this week when he uploads more shots for us and you will be hearing many of his interviews backstage on hardDriveRadio in the coming days and weeks!
Speaking of Nothing More, they just premiered the new video for “Don’t Stop” off their great new album, The Stories We Tell Ourselves.
Speaking of Halestorm, Meltdown of WRIF in Detroit interviewed the band at their first annual RIFF FEST on Friday night. Listen as they reveal new info about their next album!
The Pulse Of Radio says the Los Angeles Times interviewed Dave Grohl and Josh Homme recently. The Foo Fighters frontman and Queens Of The Stone Age singer/guitarist gave a rare joint interview to the Los Angeles newspaper in which they discussed making their new albums almost next door to each other. Grohl said, “I was excited to go down to the studio every day to make my record, but I was also excited to go down and steal Josh’s doughnuts and hang for the first three hours of every day. It was like ‘Hill Street Blues’.“
Grohl added, “Rock bands making vital records, trying to push boundaries — these days it’s few and far between. Having Josh so close made me feel like we weren’t alone.”
Grohl played drums on the Queens’ 2002 album Songs For The Deaf and was part of the touring band for a while, while the two men also later teamed with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones in Them Crooked Vultures, which made one LP.
Homme told us at the time that the musical chemistry in Them Crooked Vultures was apparent from the start: “You know, (in) Queens we have a great communication, and this is a communication unlike anything I’ve ever had, because there’s less people and a really tight communication that existed right away. Trying to explain what you wanna do is missing from the equation. You’re just doing it, and I love that musical shorthand, you know, like that. It’s really good.”
Grohl hinted he would always be open to playing with Homme again, saying, “Honestly, as a drummer, he’s the only person I want to play with. I go and I play with other people. But Josh makes me feel like I can be the drummer I want to be.”
During their recent separate recording sessions, Grohl and Homme would sometimes meet for lunch and afterwards sit in one of their cars and play each other new music they were working on. Both the new Foo Fighters album, Concrete And Gold, and the latest Queens effort, Villains, came out within the last month. The two bands will perform on the same bill at Cal Jam, a one-day music festival scheduled for this Saturday (October 7th) in San Bernardino, California. Also on the bill are Cage The Elephant, Liam Gallagher, the Kills, Babes In Toyland and more.
The Pulse Of Radio reporting Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron has offered his first public comment on the passing of his bandmate, Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, who was found dead on May 18th in his Detroit hotel room of an apparent suicide. The drummer told Billboard, “I don’t think we’re ready to say anything other than . . . Kim (Thayil, guitar) and Ben (Shepherd, bass) and I are certainly aware of how much our fans are hurting, and we’re certainly hurting right there along with them. But we’re extremely private people, and we’re all still processing our grief in our own way and on our own time. But we definitely are thinking of our fans and love them very much.”
Cameron’s new solo album, titled Cavedweller, was released on Sep 22nd. The disc, which was completed before Cornell’s death, features Cameron on vocals and guitar, with drums by Mark Guiliana and bass by Tim Lefebvre, both of whom played on the late David Bowie‘s final album, Blackstar. Cameron also plays drums in Pearl Jam and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year with the group.
In another crazy event on stage this weekend, The Pulse Of Radio and RockFeed are saying Ghost frontman Papa Emeritus III has apparently been removed from the band. During a performance on Saturday night (Sep 30th) in Sweden, Papa was forcibly removed from the stage by two men during the band’s closing number, “Monstrance Clock.” A short time later, a very elderly man wearing a white and gold version of Papa’s robes and his signature make-up took the stage and addressed the crowd, saying in Swedish, “I am Papa Emeritus Zero. The party is over and now a new era begins. The Middle Ages begin now.”
The band has posted footage of the incident to its official Instagram account but has yet to comment on the matter. It appears, however, that the reign of Papa III has ended.
Of course, all this is part of a big inside joke: the band supposedly dismisses the old Papa and recruits a new one on every LP, but they are all the same person — founder Tobias Forge, who will no doubt perform as a new Papa Emeritus on the next album cycle.
Forge recently revealed he’s been working on the group’s fourth studio album for an early 2018 release. The new disc will follow up 2015’s Meliora, which featured the Grammy-winning hit “Cirice,” and last year’s Popestar EP, which included the chart-topping “Square Hammer.”
After several years of not revealing his or the rest of the band’s identities, Forge recently confirmed his own while responding to a lawsuit filed by four former members of Ghost, who accused him of cheating them out of their rightful share of the group’s profits. Forge hired an all-new lineup of the group for touring purposes in the first half of 2017, with the musicians all anonymously performing as Nameless Ghouls.