I got to view a screening copy of a documentary on the pioneering 24-hour music video channel I once worked for in Boston in 1985. “Life On The V: The Story of V66” brought back great memories of a time when, as I still do in my career today, music was king and my role was to bring the best new music to the people. It was like a science lab where we were experimenting with new technology of television and building our own little world. It was a channel back when there was hardly any cable coverage in the Boston metro market, so you could only watch tv with an antenna. Over the air and free. And we helped forge careers of so many bands at the time from ‘Til Tuesday to Extreme to the Del Fuegos. Aerosmith had just reformed and were clean and sober. And we played countless local unsigned bands. And it was a very sad day when we were sold to the Home Shopping Channel and went off the air. The music community was devastated. Anyhow, I can’t wait til everyone can see it to show you the power of what can happen when passionate music people are on board. It’s pretty cool and I feel extremely proud!….Pulse of Radio reports on my friend Slash, who has confirmed his third solo album with his band Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators will be released this September. No title has been revealed yet for the disc, which the group completed recording earlier this week. Slash told us leading his own solo outfit continues to be a great experience: “One of the great things about working with these guys is there’s no issues. All they want to do is play, and they love rock ‘n’ roll and they’re just — they’re fully into it and it’s sort of like when you’re working with people that don’t have any other baggage that they’re concerned about.” Slash announced the September release while also confirming his summer tour dates with Aerosmith, which will begin on July 10th in Wantagh, NY and wind down on September 12th in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Slash said about the tour, “Aerosmith is one of my all-time favorite bands, and one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. It’s an honor for me to go out and tour with them and keep the rock and roll banner flying high.” Slash and Aerosmith played a brief set together last night (April 8th) at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles to mark the announcement of the tour. Watch it here. Ticket pre-sales go on sale at (April 10th) at 10:00 a.m. local time….Man, it reminds me that hardDrive will be 20 years old in 2 years. When I think of things that happened 20 years ago, it really doesn’t seem that long ago, but it is! Here’s another example: Tuesday (April 8th) was the 20th anniversary of the release of Smash, the third studio album from punk legends The Offspring and the band’s commercial breakthrough. To celebrate, the Offspring will begin playing the record in its entirety on tour in Europe this May, June and early July before finishing out the summer with soon-to-be-announced U.S. dates, many of which will also be Smash shows. A 20th anniversary remastered edition of the album will be released this August by Epitaph Records on both CD and 180-gram vinyl, with new artwork and a 24-page booklet featuring never-before-seen photos plus an oral history of the record. A special “collector’s box” will feature both the CD and vinyl, art and photo prints, a pin, a patch, a replica tour pass and guitar pick all in a custom wooden box. Although Smash was the first of many commercial successes for the Offspring, singer Dexter Holland told us a while back that he still considers the band to be punk rock: “You know, it’s definitely where we started, it’s what I’m proud of, it’s what inspired us, so I thought, ‘Yeah,’ and then after a while, people are saying, ‘Well, you can’t be punk, because you sold too many records, or you sound like this, or you don’t sound like that,’ or whatever. And we definitely have other influences. So, after a while, I kind of started saying, ‘Yeah, you know what, we’re a rock band.’ But, you know, lately, the more I’ve been thinking about it, I’m like, ‘F**k it, we’re a punk band.’ That’s what we are, that’s where we came from, I think yeah.” Smash has sold more than six million copies in the U.S. alone and 11 million worldwide. It remains the best-selling independent label album of all time. The disc’s first single, “Come Out And Play,” hit Number One on the Modern Rock chart in 1994 and was followed by two more Top 10 hits in “Self-Esteem” and “Gotta Get Away.”….Rolling Stone reports Incubus frontman Brandon Boyd has hinted that the band’s current three-year-old hiatus may be coming to an end. Boyd said, “(The band has) been hanging out, and we’ve all been at home and talking about making some new music together at the beginning of 2015. I’m really excited about it because it’s been a long time now. We just needed a little break.”….I was emailing with a friend of Dave Grohl‘s yesterday. I said, “Dave Grohl’s in town, I can smell him!” I am so hoping I can run into him. Not going to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (no ticket, they cost like $1500) but I may have to track him down wherever he might be hanging out. Don’t forget Dave and Krist Novoselic will be on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon tonight with Stevie Nicks and Jennifer Garner. And Friday night, Kiss will perform….And finally, also from Pulse of Radio, contrary to the fact that there is really no solid evidence to support this, a new documentary dredging up the baseless and completely discredited theory Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was murdered and did not commit suicide is tentatively slated for release this year. Titled Soaked In Bleach, the film recreates events in Cobain’s life with actors playing the troubled musician and his wife, Courtney Love, while also featuring interviews with forensic experts, investigative journalists and law enforcement officials. The film has been spearheaded by Tom Grant, a private investigator who was hired by Love “to find her missing husband” during the last days of his life. Grant has been pushing — for 20 years — his theory that it was in fact Love who was somehow behind Cobain’s death. Cobain’s body was found on April 8th, 1994, three days after he gave himself a massive dose of heroin and killed himself with a shotgun in a room above his garage. The police have never found any evidence to suggest that Cobain’s death was anything but a suicide. But there is something to the fact that if you took a massive amount of heroine, why would you take up a shotgun as well. You can find the trailer on the Soaked In Bleach Facebook page….Happy 45th today to Kevin Martin of Candlebox and The Gracious Few.