Happy Friday! The new Stone Temple Pilots album is out TODAY! Here’s some delicious music news for your eyes and ears:
Queens Of The Stone Age, The Killers, Coldplay and Mumford & Sons are among the acts are paying tribute to Elton John on a new collection called Revamp And Restoration. The two-disc set will be broken up between rock and pop artists on the Revamp half and country artists on the Restoration side. Others contributing Elton covers to the April 6th release include Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Q-Tip, Ed Sheeran, Willie Nelson, Don Henley and more.
Queens Of The Stone Age performed its cover of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” onstage in February at the Forum in Los Angeles. Elton John was also a special guest on Queens Of The Stone Age’s 2013 album, . . . Like Clockwork, lending piano and backing vocals to the song “Fairweather Friends.”
Skillet drummer Jen Ledger will release her first solo EP, titled Ledger, on April 13th through Hear It Loud, a label imprint launched by Skillet frontman John Cooper and his wife, Skillet keyboardist Korey Cooper. Ledger told Billboard about the project, “I feel I’ve just been growing and changing over the last few years and I feel the time is now. It just feels like everything is lined up all at once. It’s super exciting because it is a little bit of a destiny moment.”
Ledger credited the Coopers with mentoring her and helping her develop her own sound, explaining, “Over the last couple of years, the Coopers have really been training me, helping me on my writing and really helping me find my own unique style.” She added, “I’m not just mini-Skillet. I’m edgy and rocky, but I’m also soft and got a little bit of pop in me too. They’ve been helping me find out not only who I am musically, but also who I am as a person and what do I want to say.”
Ledger is not leaving Skillet, saying, “We’re all on the same team and we’re all kind of mixed into everything . . . I get to do everything I want and have the best of both worlds.” Ledger, together with a full band, will serve as opening act on Skillet’s upcoming tour and then take her usual place behind the drums for Skillet’s headlining set. The trek kicks off on April 12th in Amarillo, Texas. Skillet’s latest LP, Unleashed, was released in 2016. The group’s 10th studio effort featured the hit singles “Back From The Dead” and “Feel Invincible.”
Trent Reznor said in a new BBC Radio interview on Thursday, March 15th that a new Nine Inch Nails EP will be released sometime before mid-June. No title or specific release date was provided for the EP, which is the third in a trilogy that started with 2016’s Not The Actual Events and continued with 2017’s Add Violence.
One track from the latter EP, called “She’s Gone Away,” was performed by Nine Inch Nails on the eighth episode of last year’s Twin Peaks: The Return, which aired on Showtime. Nine Inch Nail duo Reznor and Atticus Ross also composed the score last year for the PBS documentary series, The Vietnam War. Nine Inch Nails will next play London’s Meltdown Festival on June 22nd, with a string of European shows to follow.
Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell is masterminding a new entertainment complex called Kind Heaven in partnership with Caesars Entertainment, Hollywood producer Cary Granat and Star Wars visual effects pioneer Ed Jones. A press release describes the project as “an active and dynamic world extending across multiple levels and more than 100,000 square feet, offering the best of Southeast Asian culture, music, food, danger, fashion, exoticism, exploration, legendary mysteries, and spiritual enlightenment.”
The press release adds that the complex, which is scheduled to open in 2019, will be “family-friendly by day and dangerously adult at night, offering a 360-degree assault on the senses.” According to Forbes, Kind Heaven will be a five-story space that will feature five music venues, 40 food stations, theatrical performances, bars, and more, all being built at a reported cost of $100 million.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that one venue “will feature virtual monkeys that wrestle each other. Patrons can bet on which monkey will win for prizes.”
Farrell told Forbes that the project was inspired by a dream, explaining, “I saw Kind Heaven as a city from overhead as if I was a bird or an angel. I came down upon the city, landed on the city, watched a girl pickpocket someone who was passed out on the street, run away and there I was in this place.”
Farrell added that in Kind Heaven, “everything that you see, except for my wife, is for sale.” He also said that the space’s “story” will be constantly changing and interactive, and will include holograms — including one of Farrell himself. The singer, who is still involved with the annual Lollapalooza destination festival in Chicago every summer, said in a statement that Kind Heaven is aimed at “mesmerizing the audience through sights, sounds and deliciously exotic smells. Nothing like this has ever been attempted before. It’s going to be incredible.”
Finally, Happy birthday to Wolfgang Van Halen! Have a great Friday everyone!
