Good morning America and points unknown! Sitting on the back porch this morning doing Dirt is a big change from my apartment! Alas, I must board an Amtrak train later this lovely summer day to head back to the Big Apple after a few days in the mountains. I feel like I am stuck on a piece of velcro! LOL….Anywho, as we had heard, it is now official: Slipknot has announced that the second edition of its Knotfest event will take place on October 24th, 25th and 26th in San Bernardino, CA and your favorite DJ and his lovely producer will also be on hand and we can’t wait! The Iowa-based band will headline two of the three days, Friday and Saturday, playing a completely different set on each night. More than two dozen other acts are scheduled to appear, including Five Finger Death Punch, Volbeat, Of Mice And Men, Danzig, Anthrax, Killswitch Engage, In This Moment, Hellyeah, Atreyu, Suicide Silence, Miss May I, Testament and many others. Friday night’s show will be exclusively for fans who buy VIP or camping packages. With the long-awaited new Slipknot album nearing completion, singer Corey Taylor told us the band did not want to announce any new live dates until the record was almost done: “After everything that happened last year, you know, we just basically said okay, what are we gonna do? And everybody wanted to make an album. So we basically just cleared the slate and started looking at touring after we’ve got the album done. It’s gonna be with new content, with new music, with new everything, basically.” Fans who purchase tickets to Knotfest will receive a digital copy of Slipknot’s new album when it’s eventually released. The band will also unveil Knotfest Japan on November 15th and 16th in Tokyo. Tickets for the U.S. Knotfest, which will be held at the San Manuel Amphitheater & Campgrounds, go on sale Monday (July 7th) at 8:00 a.m. PT/11:00 a.m. ET. Taylor said that the new Slipknot album is “98 percent done.” Taylor revealed, “It is very close. The next step is the mix, and we’re going to try to get it out very soon. There will be big announcements soon.” I hear a single will launch in August. The band’s first all-new album since 2008’s All Hope Is Gone will be its first since the 2010 death of bassist Paul Gray and the late 2013 dismissal of drummer Joey Jordison, both founding members and primary songwriters in the group. It has been heavily rumored Jay Weinberg will be named the band’s new drummer. Jay is the son of Bruce Springsteen‘s drummer, Max….Avenged Sevenfold has issued a music video for “This Means War,” the latest single from the band’s 2013 album Hail To The King. The clip has been described as a “grisly street fight on the dark streets of an urban metropolis. Haunted by dark creatures and lost souls.” As for the song itself, Avenged singer M. Shadows has admitted in interviews it bears a strong resemblance to Metallica‘s “Sad But True.” Shadows told us that the song’s title leaves it open to a lot of different interpretations: “‘This Means War’ is really, it’s more about a, you know, personal struggle, you know, mental struggle. But we knew that the line ‘this means war,’ when we said it, we knew it was gonna be something that would, you know, stick in your mind. You could use it for so many different, you know, uses.”….Pulse Of Radioalso is reporting this morning Foo Fighters are playing a crowdfunded and fan-organized show in Richmond, Virginia sometime in the near future and frontman Dave Grohl thinks these kinds of gigs could be how touring is done in years to come. Grohl told a South African radio station, “It could become the way that bands decide where they want to play. It’s a fun thing; it sort of changes the game. For the past 20 years we always decided who we’re going to play with and where we’re going to play. But now, if we hear that people want us to come somewhere, maybe we’ll come there.” The campaign was launched by Andrew Goldin, a Foo Fighters fan who wanted the band to play their first show there since 1998. Goldin and several collaborators set a goal of selling 1,400 tickets at $50 each, promising donors they would only be charged if the concert sold out, and that their money would be returned if the band didn’t agree to play. A couple of local businesses also got involved, donating $5,000 each and giving away all their tickets for free. Word of the campaign eventually got to the Foos, who agreed to play the show. A date and venue have yet to be announced. Foo Fighters will release their new album in November, timed to the premiere of a new HBO documentary series called Sonic Highways. The series, directed by Grohl, followed the band as they recorded their new album in eight historic studios around the United States. Grohl told Rolling Stone in South Africa — where the band will play for the first time in December — that making the series was a “complicated process.” He added that he wanted to record in international studios as well, but that it would have been “financially impossible….Korn just returned to the road on Saturday as it was the kick-off of the Rockstar Energy Mayhem tour. Guitarist Brian “Head” Welch and bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu are featured in a new trailer for an upcoming movie called Holy Ghost, which aims to prove the Holy Spirit is real. According to Blabbermouth, the film is a project of Wanderlust Productions, an independent company committed to “advancing the kingdom of God through the creative use of media and storytelling.” The company website says the film “will take (director Darren Wilson) and his team around the world as they go in search of the nature and evidence of the Holy Spirit. They will explore the role of the Holy Spirit in the arts, ministry, and the Christian life. But as with all of Darren’s films, it will be the encounters of ordinary people with the God of the Bible that will take center stage.” Holy Ghost is set to premiere via digital platforms on Aug 09th…Pulse also reports a new Bush album may be imminent, according to two tweets posted by frontman Gavin Rossdale. In the first, he wrote, “One minute it’s an idea. Some time later you finish your record,” while in the second he stated, “Now we do all the set up. So totally extremely definitively on our way.” The new disc will follow up 2011’s The Sea Of Memories, which ended a 10-year recording hiatus for the group. Title and release date info are yet to arrive….Happy 33 to Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates (aka Brian Haner) and very Happy 74th (!!!???) to Ringo Starr. Hard to believe The Beatles‘ “mockumentary” A Hard Day’s Night is 50 years old! I remember getting to The Glove Theater in my hometown with my gal pals armed with two bagged lunches each because we got there for the first showing and stayed there til the last one ended for the few days it played in town. I was in HEAVEN!