Rent is due, rent is due. Ugh, again?
The Pulse Of Radio reporting today our friend Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell played a three-hour, 30-song set that spanned his entire career at a hometown show in Seattle on Tuesday night (Sep 29th). According to Consequence Of Sound, Cornell got a standing ovation before even saying a word or singing a note. Sitting down with seven acoustic guitars, Cornell opened with “Before We Disappear” from his new Higher Truth solo album and continued through a personal history of tracks from his previous solo outings, Soundgarden, Audioslave and Temple Of The Dog, with covers from Bob Dylan, Prince, Led Zeppelin and others. Cornell was joined on the Mad Season song “River Of Deceit” by Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, who co-founded Mad Season and co-wrote that song. McCready also performed on the Temple Of The Dog hit “Hunger Strike.” Cornell was also joined on a few songs by Brian Gibson playing cello or mandolin. Before playing the Soundgarden classic “Fell on Black Days,” Cornell joked that there were three other guys in the building who knew how to play the song, before revealing that Soundgarden members Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd were all in attendance.
Cornell told us he booked his first solo acoustic tour a few years ago just to see if he could pull it off: “I’d done a few one-offs and I wasn’t, you know, couple of them were great, couple of them weren’t so great. And I decided that the only way I was gonna learn how to do it was if I booked a 30-date tour, and by the end of it, maybe I’ll have it worked out (laughs). So I did that, and by about the fifth show, I kind of had it worked out.” Chris continues his solo tour tomorrow (Oct 2nd) in Denver, CO.
Lou Brutus sat down with Zoltan Bathory over the weekend in Madison, WI. Five Finger Death Punch will be our Featured Artist of the Week Oct 12-16 on hardDrive XL. You can also be listening for their new single, “Wash It All Away.” In other 5FDP news, Zoltan explained in a new interview with a satellite radio service the band’s onstage meltdown on May 1st during performance at the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, TN “had to happen” in order to avert “a bigger catastrophe.”
According to multiple reports, the group performed half a dozen songs the night before the entire band, except vocalist Ivan Moody, walked off stage, leaving the singer seemingly confused and talking to fans in rambling fashion. Eyewitnesses also reported some sort of verbal altercation between Moody and drummer Jeremy Spencer. Bathory explained, “(Moody) used to have problems with alcohol . . . and Ivan was pretty much down on that slope at the time, and I saw that happening. Add a little alcohol, add a little bit of technical difficulties — which happens all the time, in festival settings especially — and things were going sideways.” The guitarist added, “I could have stepped in to say, ‘Guys, stop the crazy stuff.’ But I kind of just wanted to see the slow-motion car crash myself. I just stood on the side of the stage and [was] like, ‘Okay, let’s see where this is going.’ And I think it had to happen. I think he had to sort of wake up, sort of hit the wall . . . It had to happen in order to avoid a bigger catastrophe later.”
More recently, Bathory said about Moody in a French interview, “He’s Jekyll and Hyde. He’s that guy. One day he’s your best friend, another day he’s Hurricane Ivan, Category Five. He’s a hand grenade with a loose pin. So he creates his own hell, so to speak.” Five Finger Death Punch’s new album, Got Your Six, arrived on Sep 4th and debuted at Number Two on the Billboard 200 album chart. The band’s current co-headlining tour with Papa Roach, In This Moment and From Ashes To New stops in Cedar Rapids, IA tomorrow (Oct 2nd).
Korn kicks off its fall North American tour tonight (Oct 1st) in Chicago, with the trek scheduled to last through Oct 30th when it closes in Oakland. The band will perform its self-titled 1994 debut album in its entirety at every stop to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its release. Guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer says they’ll have a crew along to film the trek as well: “Yeah, we’re gonna be recording each show, and then we might figure out how to edit that together and put out some sort of documentary about the tour.” Can’t wait to see the show Monday night here in NYC! Meanwhile, check out their full set filmed in England at Brixton Academy earlier this year here. And look for Korn’s next album, out in 2016. I just heard the band is no longer on Prospect Park Records and have signed with a new recording “partner.”
This will be interesting. The organizers of Coachella are in the process of signing a deal to bring the big alternative leaning rock festival to NYC’s Flushing Meadows, the site of the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens near LaGuardia Airport, Citifield and the Arthur Ashe Tennis Stadium. The site was used for the recent Governor’s Ball in early June. The east coast version will be called Panorama. The festival is tentatively set for June 2016.
End of an era. Moog Music is discontinuing the production of the Minimoog Voyager, which was launched in 2002 as a continuation of the original Minimoog synthesizer. Moog will produce 600 more units before the line comes to an end. The company has enlisted Nine Inch Nails‘Trent Reznor for a video in which he discusses his relationship with the synthesizer, saying that the day he bought his first Moog was “the greatest day of my life.” (Rolling Stone)
And let’s leave you with this clip featuring Shawn Crahan of Slipknot. It’s a video interview from PureGrainAudio I found over on Blabbermouth. You’re welcome!