Man, I, for one, am glad to hear Chase Utley of the LA Dodgers gets a 2-game suspension for intentionally harming Ruben Tejada of the NY Mets on Saturday. I mean, he’s actually getting off easy. And on top of that, Utley never apologized! Imagine what these next two games in NYC at Citifield in front of 45,000 really angrys Mets’ fans would’ve been like? Like sending the guy into an arena with lions! Thank you, Joe Torre, for making a smart move! (Although he should’ve also been fined!) Poor Ruben. Hope that wasn’t a career-ending injury!
Speaking of baseball, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder attended last Wednesday night’s (Oct 7th) Chicago Cubs wild card playoff against against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Cubs beat the hometown Pirates 4-0, and after the game Vedder joined his beloved Cubs in the clubhouse to party and celebrate their first playoff victory since 2003. I know Tom Morello is another huge Cubs fan. Loving the playoffs!
Starting Monday out with an item from The Pulse Of Radio on my boys, Foo Fighters. Frontman Dave Grohl finally got his revenge last Wednesday (Oct 7th) for losing the “Battle Of The Bands” contest in ninth grade, according to Spin. During the Foos’ show that night at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Grohl invited a man named Chet Lott onstage. Lott and Grohl went to high school together in Virginia and it was Lott’s band that defeated Grohl’s group at that musical showdown 32 years ago. When Grohl found out Lott was at Wednesday night’s concert, he had him come up onstage while he told the story of the Battle Of The Bands. Grohl recalled, “It was the greatest day of my life. If my band can go on to win the Battle of the Bands, I would surely go on to become the greatest living rock star of all time. We knew there were other bands, but we knew they couldn’t compete with us.”
He continued, “We f**king lost the Battle Of The Bands. Tonight, the man that beat me in the high school Battle of the Bands — don’t boo him, he’s a good man, evidently a better f**king musician than I am — if you’re around here somewhere, get your ass up here!” Lott came onstage and the two bantered for a bit, with Lott saying, “We may have won the battle, but you won the war.” Grohl and Lott then joined drummer Taylor Hawkins in singing the Queen/David Bowie classic, “Under Pressure.” Lott is still a working, professional musician and the son of former Republican Senate majority leader Trent Lott. Foo Fighters will wrap up their North American tour this weekend with shows in Anaheim, CA on Saturday (Oct 17th) and the “Love Ride” benefit in Castaic Lake, CA on Sunday (Oct 18th).
Pulse also reporting Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oliver Sykes explained on Instagram on Friday (Oct 9th) the Greek animal rescue facility where he got his dog Luna, is “under attack” and facing a potential closure for seemingly unfair reasons stated by the area’s government. This closure will result in several animals being forced onto the streets, many of which have already been adopted and are just waiting to be flown off the island to their new homes. The rescue facility is on the island of Santorini, where Bring Me The Horizon recorded its new album, That’s The Spirit, earlier this year.
Sykes wrote in part that SAWA (Santorini Animal Welfare Association) was “summoned to court accused of being an illegal activity. And now the Mayor of Santorini has decided to close down the shelter all together because they don’t give a single f**k about the lives of animals and feel that SAWA is a ‘sore sight’ for Santorini. Even though it’s on a very remote location and really difficult to get to.” The singer continued, “There are 38 dogs on site who have been adopted already and are awaiting to fly to their new homes in Europe, and these dogs are now being forced onto the streets again.” Sykes urged fans to email or call the local government in protest, as well as alert “bigger animal organizations” and “celebrities who also fight for animal rights.” Bring Me The Horizon is on a North American headlining tour that stops in St. Louis on Monday (Oct 12th).
Godsmack singer Sully Erna told Gibson.com in a new interview the plan for the group’s next album is to take its music even further away from the signature sound of older hits like “Whatever,” “I Stand Alone” and “Straight Out of Line.” Erna explained, “We feel that on this new record we’re going to write next year, we may just completely take a drastic turn in what kind of style we want to pull out.” He continued, “I think we want to get away from being lumped into the metal crowd. I think we’re coming a lot more back to our roots now, so on the new record, I think we’re going to try to mix things up and get to a place where we’re not going to hurt the integrity of the band but maybe go in a more rock ‘n’ roll direction.” I know from an interview he did with Lou Brutus back in August he is feeling like there are factions in the radio industry who try to prevent certain bands from thriving by removing their songs from playlists before they get a chance to be in the Top 10 or even Number 1 on the airplay charts. He is wondering what the state of the rock album will be in the future as well, as we all do.
Erna told us a while back that he’s always been proud that Godsmack doesn’t fit neatly into one musical genre: “You know, it is nice to know that we’re creating stuff that’s just kind of living on and that does really well in the active rock stations and the hard rock world and that kind of stuff. So we’re in that middle ground. We’re not quite as poppy as like Aerosmith, but yet we’re not as dark and metal as, you know, the Slipknots or the Metallicas or whatever. So we’re kind of like that in-between band.“
On a timetable for its seventh studio album, Erna told Gibson, “The band is writing, and I think we’ll probably start really getting together to arrange everything and start recording by early next year — maybe spring.” Erna, who also plans to do some solo touring next year, said that the band hopes to have the new album “recorded and ready by the end of the year. If not, definitely by the very top of 2017.”
Pulse also says Green Day has announced that its upcoming documentary, Heart Like A Hand Grenade, will be released through a special collaboration with Abramorama, Reprise Records and Vimeo that will open the movie theatrically in the U.S. on over 135 screens on Thursday (Oct 15th). The movie made its world premiere last Thursday (Oct 8th) at the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said, “We can’t believe this was shot over a decade ago. Little did we know that this was only the beginning of the adventure this record would go on to be. We are stoked for our fans to see this footage for the first time and watch us try and figure it all out.” There will also be an exclusive Vimeo On Demand release on Friday, Oct 16th, while on Nov 13th, Reprise Records will make Heart Like a Hand Grenade available for purchase digitally and on DVD.
Heart Like A Hand Grenade was shot in 2004 and chronicled the making of Green Day’s massively successful 2004 rock opera,American Idiot. The film marked the first time that the punk trio had ever allowed cameras into the studio but has only shown once before to a small gathering of fans in 2009. American Idiot was a massive success for the trio and Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt told us at the time the group deliberately set a higher standard for the project: “We started off this record by coming together and saying, ‘You know what? We really wanna grow older with some sort of grace and do it well, and just, without being, you know, snotty s**theads for the rest of our lives, you know, or necessarily saying the same bad jokes for the rest of our lives.“
Heart Like A Hand Grenade was shot over a period of nine months by filmmaker John Roecker, who recently wrote about the film, “It shows a band on top of their game creating incredible music . . . It was also a risk for the band because this album was either going to take them to a higher level or sink them. Either way I was going to document it.”
Stereogum reporting Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is reportedly considering relocating to Crimea to “produce film and TV content there.” Crimea is the region that was recently violently annexed from Ukraine, and which Russia now hopes to turn into a celebrity enclave. Durst reportedly “uses every chance he can get to visit Moscow” and has expressed interest in getting a Russian passport. The singer’s wife, Kseniya Beryazina, is a native Crimean, and according to Billboard, she’s currently teaching Durst how to speak Russian.