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A MESSAGE TO YOU, AMERICA
The Specials came swaggering across the cracked concrete of Coventry’s inner-city despair to spark a musical and cultural revolution in late ’70s London. From the start, their style, attitude, and sound were superbly cool and extremely original. The band lasted 4 years, but still managed to churn out seven consecutive top 10 UK hits before busting up in 1981.
Specials lead singer Terry Hall says he had “years of reservations” about reforming, but since long-held tensions between various members have been resolved, the original interracial gangsters from Ghost Town are planning its first shows in more than 25 years for this fall, possibly as early as October.
Take a look at one of their greatest, “Too Much Too Young,” and then click through to find out more about the upcoming tour and the new Best of CD/DVD.
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“INSIDE THE FIRE” SCORCHES
This Nathan Cox-directed video (Cox was also behind the camera for Disburbed’s “Stupify”) impacts with the subtlety of an imploding stomach grenade. It’s a somber visual realization of the song, but then again the music, the lyrics, the meaning…everything about “Inside the Fire” is dark. It’s probably the darkest stuff lead singer David Draiman has ever written about. The storyline concerns a girl Draiman was in a relationship with (in real life). In the song, she’s committed suicide and he’s left to deal with the devil’s voice over his shoulder provoking him to take his own life so he might join her. Doesn’t get much darker than that.
The band wants to make absolutely clear they are not condoning or glamorizing suicide in any way. In fact, the video starts out with a brief statement from David. Take a look.
BUTTHOLE SURFERS GET LIVE 
Ladies and germaphobes…pay close attention, por favor, as we offer you newly-announced tour dates for what many consider the ballsiest-named band in all of rock and roll: Butthole Surfers.
If you dig black humor, vicious psychedelic punk/metal sound manipulation, chaotic avant-garde live shows (from 1986 through 1989, a stripper from New York City toured with the band as their “naked dancer”) and kick-back-feeling-groovy songs like “The Revenge of Anus Presley,” “Bar-B-Q Pope,” and “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey Oswald’s Grave,” then the surf is up! Click through for more. Read More »
POST-HARDCORE CRASHES TOP 20
The April ‘08 release of the second installment in Thrice’s double EP concept disc, The Alchemy Index Vol. III & IV (Vol. I&II was released in October, ‘07) has officially stomped its way into the top 20. The good news for the band that was founded in 1998 by guitarist/vocalist Dustin Kensrue and guitarist Teppei Teranishi while they were in high school, not to mention all their sweaty, scenester
-followers with their sleeve tattoos and ear plugs, is that Thrice just might be the band to thrust the fast-paced, high-decibel post-hardcore sound to a mainstream level. The band’s original idea was to let all four discs go at once, with each disc offering six tracks representing one of the four classical elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Churning out a 4-disc concept project proved to be something of a challenge as detailed in the band’s blog they wrote detailing the process.
http://www.alchemyindex.com/
Stemming from bands like Fugazi, Rites of Spring, and even early emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate, post hardcore bands like Thrice have mostly enjoyed something of a cult following for the last two decades. If you can handle the thrash, here’s the latest from Thrice.
SUPER-DREAD SAVES THE DAY
Okay, here’s the shot:
You walk into the manager’s office. The band is sitting on a black leather couch against the wall, staring down at a fruit tray. The manager rises from his desk and offers you coffee. You say no because you’ve already had enough of the liquid fuel to power a steam ship to China. The manager cocks his head like a dog who’s heard a sound inaudible to the human ear and lifts his eyebrows high up on his forehead
Then the band lean in, looking at you, waiting for you to blow their collective mind.
You are the video director and it’s up to you, in one sentence, to sell the band on the video concept that turns out to be this visually stunning, grippingly cinematic 3 Doors Down video premiere, “It’s Not My Time.”
Here’s ours:.
It’s the gripping drama of Sixth Sense with the hyperkinetic action of Casino Royale backed by the thunderous rock song by a band that shoots straight for your bloody, pulsing heart and pulls absolutely no punches.
ZIGGY IN ‘72! LIVE!
Ambisexually enigmatic, flamboyantly fearless, outrageously otherworldly…Ziggy Stardust dropped out of the sky and fell to American soil circa 1972 accompanied by a band called Spiders from Mars and armed with a spaceship full of the most brain-crackling songs on the planet.
Listening to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was like pouring a bag of Pop Rocks into your ear canal.
Ziggy’s Spiders — guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, pianist Mike Garson and drummer Michael “Woody” Woodmansey — backed the alien rock star (a.k.a. earthling David Bowie) during a theatrical tour de force of inter-planetary proportions that followed the release of the album.
But, from early 1972 until the fateful July 3, 1973 “retirement” gig, Ziggy’s life flashed across us like lightening; brilliant, wondrous, heart-rattling, shocking, then gone. To hear the music is one thing, but to experience that galactic glory live and on stage? Man, that must have been a wham-bam thank you ma’am to the main frame. Bassist Bolder’s green sideburns, Ziggy/Bowie’s unremitting costume changes and guitar wizard Ronson’s magical mojo and tight silver sequined knickers took glam rock to another dimension, a supersonic, visceral extravaganza that raised the bar for rock performance to outer space and influenced countless artists to come. Read More »
U.S. DATES TO FOLLOW…?
European tour dates were recently announced for Chad Kroeger and the boys from north of the border.
Cologne, Germany — Sep 8 2008
Stuttgart, Germany — Sep 9 2008
Belfast, Ireland — Sep 12 2008
Dublin, Ireland — Sep 13 2008
Manchester, England — Sep 15 2008
Sheffield, England — Sep 16 2008
Birmingham, England — Sep 18 2008
London, England — Sep 19 2008
London, England — Sep 21 2008
Could this mean American dates will follow? Only time will tell, my friends, time will tell. But the band recently redesigned their website and there’s plenty of room for feedback and fan interaction so if you want the band to visit your town, let them know. In the Interact section, there’s also a contest to find the biggest Nickelback fan in the world. Not exactly sure if the grand prize is anything more than the opportunity to be featured on the website, but hey, to some that’s all they need. Read More »
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE…
No way in hell Steve Hackett was gonna take part. We’d already accepted that, but we were crossing fingers for a four-man Genesis reunion.
At first, the major variable in the equation said such a thing was not out of the question, but when it came down to it, Peter Gabriel was apparently too busy being one of the smartest people in the world to put a huge flower back on his head and play some classic tunes with his old buds. Fine. Be that way. What came down the pike was the three-man, Phil Collins-fronted version, and that announcement initially met with some groans because the band’s really watered-down, adult contemporary final years were, for many, not yet far enough in the rear-view mirror.
But then came the surprise. Collins and his mates, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford (he of equally treacly Mike + The Mechanics fame) were willing to swim further back in the sea of time than We Can’t Dance, or the dismal post-Collins set Calling All Stations.
Read More »
JOEY RAMONE B-DAY BASH
Others may have cracked open the door, but it wasn’t until Joey Ramone lifted his black, snorkel flipper-sized Converse high-top and kicked the thing wide open that it became an undisputed fact: you don’t have to be a pretty boy to be a rock star.
Tonight is Joey’s birthday, so let us honor of the man, the myth, the urban legend, the six-foot-six, skinny outcast from Forest Hills, Queens with a subway tan who spun the notion of what a rock and roll frontman could be on its ear, and celebrate some other “offbeat” characters who’ve hijacked the stage:
Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) Read More »
