Good morning Radicals! Hope you’ve got a short work-week. Here’s what’s up in music news today:
Art of Anarchy has sued singer Scott Stapp for allegedly refusing to tour with the band and participate in promotional events.
Stapp only performed at 18 concerts with Art of Anarchy last year and did not appear at a scheduled video shoot last fall. The $1.2 million lawsuit claims Stapp failed to live up to his contract which led to the cancelation of the group’s recording contact.
The complaint alleges that “If Stapp had dedicated himself to Art of Anarchy with the same fervor that he dedicated to his solo career, Art of Anarchy would have had a successful concert tour and its record contract would not have been terminated.”
The lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court by Vice Inc. whose chief executive officer and principal executive officer are Art of Anarchy guitarist Jonathan Votta and drummer Vincent Votta.
They seems to have a run of bad luck when it comes to picking singers. In July 2015, the band also sued ex-Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, alleging that he refused to help promote their album and take part in music videos after agreeing to write and perform the lyrics for 10 songs for the disc. According to The Blast, Vice Inc. said that it paid Weiland $230,000 upfront for his work. Weiland never performed live with the group and distanced himself from the project before his death from an overdose of drugs and alcohol in December 2015.
Queens of the Sone Age surprised fans on Saturday night by covering Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The song came 3rd in their encore at the Los Angeles Forum.
Though it was their first live performance of the classic hit, fans know – it’s not their only connection to the legend. Their friendship began when Elton called frontman Josh Homme out of the blue. Homme said, “He called me on the phone and it took me a minute to work out if I was being punked or not.”
Afterwards they recorded together and Elton told the band they needed an “actual queen.” In 2013, Elton contributed vocals and played piano on “Fairweather Friends” which appears on the Queens of the Stone Age album, Like Clockwork.
Less than a week after a school shooting in Florida left 14 students and three teachers dead, All That Remains frontman Phil Labonte has weighed in on the gun control debate.
Labonte, a staunch gun-rights advocate posted his controversial view in a seven-minute video on YouTube. Talking about how people want something done, he said, “(If) you wanna ban a certain type of gun, it’s not gonna fix anything, it’s not gonna stop the problems that we have with people attacking soft-target schools and stuff.
Labonte commented about the massacre in Florida last week, “One of the things that drives me nuts about it, is everything failed. The FBI failed, and there was a police officer who was armed on the campus. He wasn’t there. The kid got his guns legally. What do you do when everything goes wrong?
The singer has been outspoken on the subject before and went on to say, “I’m not a fan of the Patriot Act. I don’t like the NSA spying. I don’t like the idea of the federal government being able to just snatch up people without due process. And I don’t think that empowering the government to just confiscate guns ‘just because’ is a good idea.”
Just last week, Smashing Pumpkins announced their return to the road, and this week, there’s another reunion of sorts.
As part of the upcoming tour, they tracked down the two little girls that appeared on the cover of their album Siamese Dream for a reunion photo. After nearly 25 years, Ali Laengerand LySandra Roberts, now fully grown, posed once again in butterfly wings.
Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgen reflected on seeing the two together again. In part, he posted this on Instagram: “We adore you, and having you be a part of today’s launch brings tears to my eyes. For life goes fast, and I can still see you in my mind’s eye wearing crisp white dresses in a stranger’s backyard, looking like little Mother Mary’s, smiling and laughing into the sun.”
The tour, which coincides with the 30th anniversary of the band’s formation, will highlight music from the group’s inception through 2000. Exclusively featuring music from Siamese Dream, as well as Gish, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, Adore, and Machina.
Finally, in birthdays, Kurt Cobain would have been 51 today. Sigh.
