Good morning Radicals!
Pearl Jam has announced that it will play two concerts in the band’s hometown of Seattle this summer to help the city’s homeless. Called “The Home Shows,” the gigs will be the group’s first in Seattle in five years and will take place at Safeco Field, the baseball stadium that’s home to the Mariners, on August 8th and 10th.
Pearl Jam has pledged at least $1 million from the concerts to addressing the area’s homelessness issues, with the band hoping to raise $10 million in 2018 in collaboration with area businesses, government agencies and nonprofits to alleviate the problem. Partners already on board include Amazon, the Mariners, Starbucks, the Port of Seattle, the City of Seattle and others.
Guitarist Stone Gossard said in a statement, “Seattle is our hometown. When there are challenges here, we want to be part of the solution. It’s heartening so many organizations and individuals coming together to do the same. It’s going to take all of us.”
To commemorate the announcement of the shows, guitarist Mike McCready raised the Pearl Jam flag atop the city’s iconic Space Needle on Monday. The concerts, which are expected to draw 100,000 fans over two nights, will be the largest in Seattle since the Rolling Stones played two nights at the long-demolished Kingdome in 1981.
Foo Fighters have added seven new dates to the next North American leg of the band’s Concrete And Gold world tour due to popular demand. The new shows begin on October 8th at Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix will hit Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Detroit and Milwaukee before finishing up on October 18th at the XCel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Tickets for the new dates go on sale to the public at 9:00 a.m. local time on Friday, January 26th, with the exception of Detroit, which goes on sale at at 11 a.m. local time on Thursday, January 25th. The tour itself starts on April 18th in Austin, Texas, with dates throughout the spring, summer and fall. You can see all the stops, plus the new dates, on the Road Rage page.
Founding Smashing Pumpkins bassist D’Arcy Wretzky told Blast Echo on Sunday that she would not be part of a long-rumored and apparently upcoming reunion of the original Pumpkins lineup. Speaking to the site via text, Wretzky wrote, “My apologies to all of the Smashing Pumpkins fans out there who are excited about this oncoming reunion tour of the original members of the band. I know this is a huge disappointment for me, as well, but it’s not going to happen (with me).” She added, “I only just found about yesterday that the band has decided to go with a different bass player.”
According to Wretzky, the band is planning to launch a summer tour in July featuring frontman Billy Corgan, original guitarist James Iha, original drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and a yet-to-be-determined bassist. It’s unclear whether the bassist could be ex-Hole member Melissa Auf der Maur, who replaced Wretzky in the Pumpkins for its 2000 tour. The band went on hiatus for seven years after that, although only Chamberlin has remained intermittently part of the lineup since Corgan reactivated it in 2007.
While Corgan has mended fences with both Iha and Wretzky in the past couple of years and spoken in positive terms about the chances of a reunion, it has yet to be officially announced by the band. Corgan, Chamberlin and Iha were all recently photographed in a recording studio together, although it was not revealed if they were working on new music.
Blink-182 will headline the 11th annual MusInk Festival, which will take place the weekend of March 16th through the 18th at the OC Fair and Events Center in Costa Mesa, California. The event, which is organized by Blink drummer Travis Barker, celebrates tattoo culture, cars and music. In addition to Blink, this year’s other two headliners will be theDescendents and Lil Yachty.
Barker said in a statement, “Every year we have more and more fun and this year I am excited to announce Blink-182, The Descendents, Lil Yachty, MGK and more. Super stoked for all the fans to come out for a great time of music, cars, and tattoos.”
Blink issued a statement of its own, saying that the band was “excited to come back and play the festival that brought us together.” It was back in 2015 that Blink-182 was set to headline MusInk, only for singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge to back out of the show. Barker and bassist Mark Hoppus recruited Alkaline Trio‘s Matt Skiba to fill in for DeLonge. Skiba has remained with Blink ever since, recording 2016’s successful California album and touring extensively with the group.
Blink will headline the festival on Saturday, March 17th, with support from Good Charlotte and others. Tickets for the 2018 MusInk Festival will go on sale this Friday, January 26th, at 10:00 a.m. PT. Single-day, three-day and VIP tickets are all available.
Lou Brutus with Dexter and Noodles of the Offspring
In other punk-oriented festival news, The Offspring and Pennywise will serve as headliners for the fifth annual Sabroso Festival, a seven-city trek that will focus on music, craft beer and tacos. Along with the two headliners, who will play all the shows, fellow punk vets Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, The Vandals, Against Me!, Lit, Unwritten Law and others will appear on select dates during the run.
The tour starts on April 7th in Dana Point, California and will head up and down the West Coast before ending on May 13th in Portland, Oregon. Wrestling events, lawn games, taco contests and much more will all be part of the festivities.
The Offspring’s Dexter Holland said, “Tacos and craft beer are two of the Offspring’s favorite things! We’re excited to be bringing Sabroso to new cities in 2018! See you at the shows!” Tickets for all of the Sabroso Festival dates will also go on sale this Friday at 10:00 a.m. local time.
Rob Zombie with Lou Brutus
Rob Zombie is rumored to be aiming for a March production start on his next movie, a sequel to his 2005 horror hit The Devil’s Rejects. Allegedly titled The Devil’s Rejects 2: Three From Hell, the film is said to continue the story of the Firefly clan — Sid Haig as Captain Spaulding, Bill Moseley as Otis and Sheri Moon Zombie as Baby — who we saw go down in a torrent of bullets at the end of the first film.
It’s not clear whether Zombie plans to resurrect the Firefly trio from the dead in some kind of supernatural fashion in the new film or has found a way to explain that they survived the original movie’s climactic shootout.
The Devil’s Rejects is widely considered Zombie’s best film. It’s a semi-sequel to his directorial debut, 2003’s House Of 1,000 Corpses, which introduced the Firefly family.
Zombie told us a while back that he was approached by the studio in record time about making a sequel to House Of 1,000 Corpses: “I went away for the weekend (the film opened), so they couldn’t find me ’til Monday. So it was basically Monday. I think the film opened, like, on Thursday and I was gone, and they couldn’t find me, so by Monday they were already talking about it. Depending upon what you spent and what you made, I mean, that movie was profitable after one day. Whereas you get these other movies where they’re like, ‘Oh my God, it made $100 million!’ and it’s still $100 million in the hole because they just spent so much.”
According to Bloody Disgusting, Zombie is in negotiations with Saban Films and Lionsgate to release The Devil’s Rejects 2 in theaters, VOD, and home video. Zombie distributed his last movie, the partially crowdfunded 31, through both companies.
Have a lovely day everyone!
