Man, Justin Bieber has found God and cancelled his tour? Is this a sign of the apocalypse?
Well, I’ve been a little melancholy working on my editing of interviews with Chester Bennington. I can not believe some of the things Chester is saying so many years ago and how relevant they were to what has happened. I shared some of it with our sister Pulse Of Radio, too. I mean, there are things that never really dawned on me til now. I just wish we could rewind time and make all these recent events go away.
Pulse is reporting today that Linkin Park filmed a Carpool Karaoke episode for the new online series six days before lead singer Chester committed suicide by hanging himself in his Los Angeles-area home last Thursday (Jul 20th). The segment is still expected to air sometime this fall, although an exact premiere date has yet to be determined.
Actor Ken Jeong, who participated in the episode with the members of Linkin Park, paid tribute to the singer on Twitter after his death, writing, “I am in shock and heartbroken. All my thoughts and prayers go out to Chester and his family and friends at this time.” The band had shared a photo online of them posing with Jeong on July 14th. Carpool Karaoke: The Series — a 16-episode standalone spinoff of the popular segment that originated on James Corden‘s Late Late Show — is set to premiere on August 8th on Apple Music.
In a 2013 interview with hardDriveRadio, Bennington, who was doing tour promo with Stone Temple Pilots at a stop in Huntington, NY at the time, I asked Chester if he’d ever been bullied and what he’d tell someone who was being bullied. He advised kids who are having a tough time with life to avoid taking such a drastic step: “The thing about life is like, you can’t predict the future but the future’s there. You just have to wait out. Life gets better, so don’t make those in-the-moment rash choices like suicide. Talk to your parents, you know, talk to the counselor at school. They’re there for you. They’re the people that are gonna care about you and they are gonna care about your feelings.”
Sadly, Chester decided he had had enough and had no where to turn. He drank a half a bottle of alcohol and hung himself in his home. According to TMZ, Bennington bought the home just two months before he committed suicide there. The singer paid $2.4 million for the five-bedroom, four-bathroom resident in June and moved into the two-story, 3,956-square-foot house about seven weeks ago.
Linkin Park has canceled plans for a North American tour, with the future of the group unclear at this point. Meanwhile, hardDrive will pay tribute to Chester the weekend of Aug 5th & 6th and hardDrive XL‘s Featured Artist of the Week will be Chester the week of Aug 14-18. Please join us.
I love Lzzy Hale! She recently was at the APMA’s in Cleveland. Check out the brief interview above with AMBY (A Music Blog, Yea?). Excited to hear Halestorm is getting closer to getting down with the final steps to recording the next album. They are recording in Nashville with Nick Raskulineczand it should be AWESOME! Can’t wait to get a peek at the new tunage! The band recently announced a North American headlining tour dubbed “Halestorm’s Halloween Scream.” The trek kicks off on Sep 22nd in Denver at the High Elevation Rock festival and wraps up in late October at the Aftershock Festival in Sacramento, CA.
Motionless In White have announced a tour with The Amity Affliction and Miss May I starting in Sep. See the Road Rage page for complete details! (Love this shot of Chris!) The band also performed “One Step Closer” in honor of Chester Bennington. Check it out.
Whoa. Trent is mad. And who can blame him? Nine Inch Nails main man Trent Reznor has blasted Donald Trump as a “complete f**king moron” who lies and doesn’t believe in science. Reznor made his remarks during an interview with the Village Voice in which he described the current political climate as “disheartening.” Reznor also shared his view that Trump’s victory in the last election represented the revenge of the white working class over coastal elites, explaining, “When you’re not in an urban environment, you often feel left out of the conversation, and I get that. I grew up in that.”
In the same interview, Reznor said he spoke honestly to his son about the former reality TV star when the six-year-old recently asked him, “Donald Trump is a bad guy, isn’t he?” Reznor told his son, “Look, I don’t think he’s a good guy. Some people do. I don’t think he believes in science and I don’t think he believes people should be treated decently and I don’t think he tells the truth. That’s why I don’t like him.”
Reznor admitted he’s found it difficult to be optimistic about the country’s future, saying, “It’s tough, because the president of the United States is a complete f**king moron. That’s what gets me the most — that he’s this vulgar, grotesque dope, everything I hate in people.”
Reznor told the Daily Beast last year that he understood the desire of some Americans to upset the status quo. Citing his own youth in rural Pennsylvania, he said, “When I’ve gone back there to visit — I still have family back there — I have seen what the housing crisis has done to the small town I grew up in . . . living in California or on the coasts, it’s easy to lose touch with what a lot of the country is.”
Nine Inch Nails released an EP titled Add Violence last Friday (Jul 21st). The five-track project was the second installment in the band’s three-part EP series. The first, Not The Actual Events, arrived last Dec. The third is yet to be titled but is expected to arrive by the end of the year.
Alternative Nation is reporting Stone Temple Pilots may be planning to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut album, 1992’s Core. The group has posted two videos online that list handwritten band name ideas from the early days, including Mighty Joe Young, which was their name from 1989 until 1992. STP have not confirmed a deluxe 25th anniversary reissue of Core yet, but rarities from the band’s early days exist and could be included on such a set. Meanwhile, the band — whose two singers to date, Scott Weiland and Chester Bennington, are now both deceased — has yet to announce a new vocalist. Above check out one of the rarities possible on the new set.
Meanwhile, I just got this press release on the new release! Check it out in full!
Stone Temple Pilots roared on to the scene 25 years ago with their raucous debut Core. A breakout success, the album peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts, dominated radio waves with hits like “Sex Type Thing” and “Wicked Garden,” and has been certified 8x Platinum by the RIAA. The band also took home the 1994 Grammy® Award for Best Hard Rock Performance for their smash single “Plush.”
To mark the legendary album’s silver anniversary, Rhino will release two versions on Sep 29, which is 25 years to the day of the album’s original debut. The first is the CORE: SUPER DELUXE EDITION ($79.98), which includes four CDs featuring a newly remastered version of the original album, plus more than two hours of unreleased demos and live performances, including the band’s performance on MTV Unplugged. Also included is the original album on vinyl and a DVD that contains a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix of the album along with videos for the album’s four singles. The set, limited to 15,000 copies worldwide, comes packaged in a richly detailed hardcover book (12 x 12) with rare and unseen photographs. The music from the Super Deluxe version will also be available via digital download and streaming services.
Fans can pre-order a limited edition bundle of the CORE: SUPER DELUXE EDITON at www.stonetemplepilots.com which includes a bonus replica 7-inch vinyl single of “Plush” that was originally released in the UK in 1993. This exclusive bundle is limited to 1,000 copies.
Also available on the same day is a 2-CD CORE: DELUXE VERSION ($19.98) containing a newly remastered version of the original album expanded with rare b-sides and previously unreleased demos. A single disc remaster of the original album will be available as well.
Stone Temple Pilots (guitarist Dean DeLeo, bassist Robert DeLeo, drummer Eric Kretz, and vocalist Scott Weiland) debuted with Core in the fall of 1992 and by the following summer were one of the biggest rock bands on the scene, powered by exhilarating live shows and a string of now-classic songs from the album, remastered here for the very first time.
Nearly all of the music on the second disc of both versions is making its commercial debut. Of the nine demos included, four were recorded between 1987 and 1990 when the band was known as Mighty Joe Young. One of those, “Only Dying,” is an unheard song the band had planned to re-record in 1994 for The Crow Soundtrack. The idea was later scrapped after the star of the film, Brandon Lee, was killed during production. The disc continues with five unreleased demos from their original Atlantic sessions and concludes with four b-sides, including the jazzy Swing Type Version of “Sex Type Thing,” as well as two acoustic versions of “Plush”-the “Acoustic Type Version” recorded with the full band and the rarely heard “first take” that was recorded by Weiland and Dean DeLeo for MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball in 1993.
The third disc contains two fiery live recordings from the summer of 1993, the first an unreleased performance at Castaic Lake Natural Amphitheater near Los Angeles and the second from the Reading Festival, making its U.S. debut here. These high-energy shows feature performances of all but two songs from Core as well as an early live version of “Lounge Fly,” a song the band has just written a month earlier that would appear the following year on the band’s second album Purple.
The band’s iconic appearance on MTV Unplugged, recorded in Nov 1993, gets its first official release on the final CD in the set. This would be their last performance in support of Core and includes reworked, acoustic versions of “Wicked Garden” and “Sex Type Thing,” the debut performance of “Big Empty,” which would later appear on Purple, and a cover of David Bowie’s “Andy Warhol.”
CORE: SUPER DELUXE EDITION also features the original album pressed on vinyl, and a DVD that presents a 5.1 Surround Sound Mix of Core together will all four of the videos made for the album: “Sex Type Thing,” “Plush,” “Wicked Garden,” and “Creep.”
Celebrating life today: Taylor Momsen of The Pretty Reckless is 24. Mick Jagger is 74, Roger Taylor of Queen is 68, and my idol Helen Mirren is 72!