I can not believe Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning. Blah! It’s raining on top of the snow we got. Bletch! Six more weeks of winter regardless. Did you know last year, Staten Island Chuck, the groundhog they have out in our outer borough, died last year a week after our bumbling mayor accidently DROPPED him! Yeah, great! Leave the poor animals alone!…Starting tonight, the new hardDriveRadio APP will stream hardDrive XL! So you can listen not only to the weekend edition of the country’s longest running new rock radio show, but you can also hear the weekend hardDrive hosted by the best DJ in all the land, LOU BRUTUS! Find the app now on Google Play or in the app store! Last weekend’s RadioContraband Convention in Las Vegas was awesome! Not only did Lou Brutus get to interview The Offpsring in front of an audience, where they debuted their new single “Coming For You” and introduced Dexter’s line of hot sauce, Gringo Bandito, he also hosted the 2014 Awards ceremony, which began with a killer song he wrote accompanied by Dameon Aranda! Lou won the Syndicated DJ of the Year award for the second year in a row, and yours truly is now a 4 time recipient of the Non-Traditional Programmer of the Year! Very stoked! So happy for all the winners in both the radio and records categories! I am sure there are tons of pictures posted at www.radiocontraband.com!…..Pulse Of Radio reports Slipknot has released a live video for the band’s song “Custer,” shot at last year’s Knotfest in Devore, CA. The band shared the clip on Facebook and included a link for their fans to purchase tickets for their 2015 tour. “Custer” is the latest single from Slipknot’s 2014 album, .5: The Gray Chapter, which came out Oct 24. Singer Corey Taylor told us about the song and who it’s aimed at: “‘Custer”s kind of our dedication to everyone trying to tell us or make suggestions about how we should go about making new music, doing new things, how we should feel about Paul’s (Gray, bassist) death . . . there was a lot of people just kind of coming out of the woodwork that thought that they understood where we were coming from. So that’s kind of our way of just being like, ‘You don’t get to get in. We will tell you exactly how we feel.’” Taylor told Kerrang! magazine “Custer” is “basically saying, ‘You know what? Just when you think you’ve written our history, we’re going to rewrite it again, and basically show you that we can take all the abuse that you put out there, and we’re not going to lose a step, we’re not going to lose an inch, we’re not going to lose any ground — we’re going to keep coming.” Slipknot recently unveiled the details of a massive summer headlining tour dubbed Summer’s Last Stand. The trek kicks off on July 24th in West Palm Beach, FL, wrapping up six weeks later on Sep 5th in Dallas. Joining Slipknot on the road trip will be Lamb Of God, Bullet For My Valentine and Motionless In White. The summer jaunt follows a brief spring run that Slipknot will launch on April 25th at the Fort Rock festival in Fort Myers, FL, ending on May 16th in Grand Rapids, MI….Speaking of Bullet, they’ve entered the studio to begin recording their fifth album for a tentative summer release. They’ve chosen Colin Richardson and Carl Bown to produce. The band said in a statement, “We’ve been working hard on this record for over a year now, writing and demoing a ton of material in that time . . . now begins the difficult process of choosing the best of the best of them to make the cut for #BFMV5.” Although the group is working with the same producer they used for their first two albums, they added that the new disc is “not about going backwards.” Bullet’s last effort, Temper Temper, came out in March of 2013. Their manager told me the band will be doing a headlining run in January 2015. (thanks Blabbermouth.) And speaking of Motionless In White, hung out a bit with Chris Motionless from the band in Las Vegas. Not a nicer dude you could ever meet!….Diffuser reports The Black Keys performed on an episode of the acclaimed PBS music series Austin City Limits that premiered this past weekend. The band’s six-song set opened with “Your Touch” from the 2006 album Magic Potion before breaking into the hits “Lonely Boy,” “Weight Of Love,” “Fever,” “Gotta Get Away” and “Little Black Submarines.” The full performance is now online. The duo are currently off the road while drummer Patrick Carney recovers from a dislocated shoulder suffered in a recent swimming accident….Happy 49th today to Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots!