Happy Halloween, Witches and Warlocks!
Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters guest hosts Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight (Oct 31st). He will be filling in for Kimmel, who is taking time off while he prepares for his son’s second heart surgery. Grohl’s episode will feature Kristen Bell and Alice Cooper as guests, with Cooper also slated to perform on the show. Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum and Shaquille O’Neal will also step in for Kimmel this week.
Back in 2013, Grohl filled in for Chelsea Handler and guest-hosted Chelsea Lately for an entire week. But he told me a while back that the job didn’t hold any interest for him: “It’s funny because a lot of people ask, like, ‘Wow, you’re kind of a natural at that, you should do that.’ I’m like, ‘Why? I can fill a stadium in Australia — that’s fun!’“
A rep for Kimmel said, “As a precautionary measure, the scheduled second heart surgery for Jimmy Kimmel’s son Billy had to be postponed this week due to the common cold. Jimmy is very grateful to Shaquille O’Neal, Dave Grohl, Channing Tatum and Jennifer Lawrence for filling his very small shoes as guest host this week while he, his wife and children sneeze on each other.”
The Foos resumed their North American tour last Thursday night (Oct 26th) in Birmingham, Alabama, after postponing three shows earlier in the week — in Lexington, Kentucky, Nashville and Memphis — due to an unspecified “family emergency.” They next play Madison, WI on Nov 7th. Foo Fighters are touring in support of their ninth studio album, Concrete And Gold, which debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 album chart last month. (Thanks The Pulse Of Radio and The PRP for the report.)
On Saturday I went down to Cape Coral, FL to hang out with Pop Evil and interview Leigh Kakaty and Hayley Cramer. The band is psyched their new single, “Waking Lions” off their self-titled album 5th studio album, which is due Feb 16th.
Singer Kakaty said about the new LP, “This is a dawn of a new day for Pop Evil. The new lineup feels like a whole new chapter for us. We could not be more proud to lead off this new album cycle with ‘Waking Lions,’ sending a positive message to our fans.”
Kakaty told us that Pop Evil wants to stretch out every time it makes a new studio album: “It goes back to taking risks and not standing still, you know. We don’t want to just regurgitate past success and sell out to ourselves in a way, you know. We want to keep making different music that still is unique to our identity. But I think that just gives people something they’re not expecting with us.”
He told me the band wanted to explore more of the “evil” part of their name on the new record. Pop Evil was produced by Kato Khandwalla (The Pretty Reckless.)
The band has been working on the new disc since April, starting with writing up in Union, MI in a rented house on a lake, with bassist Matt DiRito telling Detroit’s WRIF (and hardDrive weekend affiliate) the sessions were the band’s “longest time in the studio ever.” The new disc marks the recording debut with the band of British drummer Hayley Cramer, who joined Pop Evil in 2016 following the departure of Josh “Chachi” Marunde. Be listening for Pop Evil as our Featured Artist of the Week on hardDrive XL with Lou Brutus week Nov 13-17.
Hmmm, I found this on Blabbermouth. Some would say this is a dis, but he might have a point. Dunno if Metallica would agree, though! M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold says the majority of the people who came to see Metallica during the two bands’ joint summer 2017 stadium tour are “casual fans” who only have a copy of the San Francisco heavy metal legends’ multi-platinum 1991 album.
Metallica‘s first North American trek in eight years, which was seen by hundreds of thousands people, was also the band’s first stadium run in almost two decades. It kicked off in May in Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium.
During an Oct 19 event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Shadows and his bandmates spoke about the experience of supporting Metallica on this year’s tour. The singer said: “What you learn is that all the complaining and all the [negativity] online, or in this world, when you actually go to a stadium show, to sell out stadiums, it’s required that you have The Black Album. You can play deep cuts all you want — you can play ‘Master Of Puppets’, this and that, but when they’re playing The Black Album songs, every single person there is going crazy. And it’s like sixty percent of their audience are casual fans that only have The Black Album, and that’s one thing that’s never gets reflected by their hardcore fans.”
He continued: “To go do stadiums, you have to have a record that’s worked at radio, or crossed over at some point into the consciousness of the human collective, and they had that with The Black Album. As much as we heard this and that, people complaining that they want deeper cuts from them — which I get — but when they play The Black Album, they play ‘Sad But True’, ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘Unforgiven’, it’s just a different vibe, and you can tell that a lot of their audience are casual fans, which is something they’ve done and nurtured really well throughout their career.
“A lot of the metal bands that were around when Metallica put out ‘The Black Album,’ now they’re playing clubs, and Metallica is playing stadiums,” he added.
Metallica‘s self-titled LP in 2014 became the first album to sell sixteen million copies since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking sales in 1991.
Meanwhile, Avenged Sevenfold will release a “deluxe edition” of The Stage on Dec 15. It will contain 7 cover tunes and live recordings. The album was originally released in October 2016 with almost no promotion beforehand.
Avenged Sevenfold s 2018 North American arena headlining tour will kick off January 12 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville with special guests Breaking Benjamin and Bullet For My Valentine. The trek will be North America’s introduction to the electrifying “Stage” spectacle which drew rave reviews in Europe.The stage production was done with experts from Cirque Du Soleil.
I love this feature Amoeba Music in Los Angeles films with rock stars who continue to shop in the store for cds and vinyl. Blabbermouth reporting Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor is featured in Amoeba Music‘s “What’s In My Bag?” segment in which he talks about some of the records, books and movies he is into.
In the clip, Taylor can be seen shopping at Amoeba in Hollywood, where he talks about various records from Electric Light Orchestra, Frank Zappa, The Clash and Wu Tang Clan, among others.
Corey is continuing to tour with Stone Sour in support of the band’s latest album, Hydrograd, which came out at the end of June. He is also promoting his new book, “America 51”, which was released on Aug 8 via Da Capo Press. Subtitled “A Probe Into The Realities That Are Hiding Inside ‘The Greatest Country In The World’”, it was described by its publisher as a reflection of how touring with bands has taught Corey “what it means to be an American in an increasingly unstable world.” Taylor is also Lou Brutus‘ guest tonight on hardDrive XL!
Celebrating their birthdays on Halloween, King Ad-Rock, aka Adam Horowitz of The Beastie Boys is 51 and Vanilla Ice is 50.
