Good morning Radicals! Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. To help kick start the work week, here’s a fresh dose of music news!
Rock On The Range, one of the biggest rock festivals in North America, is coming to an end after a 12-year run at Columbus, Ohio’s MAPFRE Stadium. The event will be reborn next year as the Sonic Temple Art + Music Festival, and will debut at the same venue on May 17th, 18th and 19th, 2019.
The changes are due to a split between Danny Wimmer Presents and AEG Live, the two companies that have co-produced the event in the past. Danny Wimmer told Loudwire that he sees the rebranding as a chance to upgrade the festival, explaining, “I feel like Rock On The Range has fallen short on delivering better art installations and better food and drink options. Rock On The Range is the biggest rock festival in America that has no bells and whistles. This show deserves to have better offerings.”
Wimmer added, “We’ve built this to 45,000 fans a day, they deserve to get the art and the secondary entertainment. They deserve the best food options. They deserve to have the stadium look different than it does for normal events. They deserve for this to not be just another stadium parking lot show.”
Rock On The Range has featured a top-shelf lineup of acts over the past dozen years, including Metallica, Tool, Slash, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, Alice In Chains, Three Days Grace, Stone Sour, Greta Van Fleet, Halestorm, Seether, Disturbed, Volbeat and many others.
Seether frontman Shaun Morgan recalled a while back what he felt the first time the band played there: “When you first walk out there, it’s very daunting to see that many people. You know, you walk out on the stage and you’re like, ‘Whoa, this is a serious deal,’ and for us, we weren’t used to that kind of thing, so it was an interesting experience.”
Korn played Rock On The Range four times and bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu told us why he enjoyed going: “I like doing those big festival shows ’cause there’s so many bands and like, I don’t know, I have a good time, you know, checking out bands and it’s more like a party. There’s like a lot going on. You know, like, you got all the events out there — it’s almost like going to the fair or something. It’s cool.”
Greta Van Fleet has set October 19th as the release date for the band’s first full-length album, Anthem Of The Peaceful Army, while also sharing a brand new song called “Watching Over” from the upcoming set. Fans who pre-order the LP will receive the song as an instant download.
Written by all four band members, the album’s 10 original songs explore a variety of topics, including “fresh starts, love, integrity, innocence, adventure, diversity and peace, the life cycle and its inherent responsibilities, courage, masked deceptions, revolution, and truth,” according to a press statement.
The first single from Anthem Of The Peaceful Army, called “When The Curtain Falls,” arrived at rock radio on August 15th and is already a Top 10 track with more than 13 million total audio streams. The song’s companion music video has surpassed 1.7 million views.
Music fans were first introduced to Greta Van Fleet in March 2017 with the band’s debut single, “Highway Tune,” which held the Number One position at rock radio for five consecutive weeks.
Foo Fighters returned to the stage on Saturday night, September 8th, in Vancouver after being forced to postpone two concerts when frontman Dave Grohl lost his voice due to a cold. According to reports, Grohl was back in fine form Saturday night after struggling to get through the September 1st gig in Seattle that brought him down.
As per the band’s usual custom, they invited fans onstage to join the show at one point. In this case it was to perform David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” and the fans who came up appeared to be a mother and daughter. The daughter did most of the singing, while the mother helped out drummer Taylor Hawkins at one point.
Foo Fighters are out on the road behind their ninth studio album, Concrete And Gold, which arrived last year. The trek continues tonight in Portland, Oregon and will last through mid-October.
The band will headline the second edition of the revived CalJam on October 5th and 6th in San Bernardino, California leading a bill that includes Greta Van Fleet, Garbage, Iggy Pop, Billy Idol, Silversun Pickups and others in addition to the Foos.
Our condolences go out to Mastodon, who lost their longtime manager Nick John to pancreatic cancer on Saturday. Mastodon singer/guitarist Brent Hinds broke the news of John’s death, writing on Instagram “R.I.P. Nick John” and adding a broken heart emoji. The band, which canceled a a fall tour when John’s condition took a turn for the worse, later issued a statement thanking John for his “unconditional love and friendship.” John was a 20-year employee of Rick Sales Entertainment, where he also worked with Slayer, Gojira and others.
Rob Zombie will host Rob Zombie’s 13 Nights Of Halloween for the second time on HDNet Movies. The channel will focus on a different film every evening at 9:00 p.m. ET, airing in prime time from Friday, October 19th through Wednesday, October 31st. Rob Zombie will be on hand himself to introduce each film and provide his unique insight on their impact to the genre. Among the films that will be shown are The Blair Witch Project, Flatliners, The Evil Dead, Natural Born Killers, Angel Heart and his own The Lords Of Salem.
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday today to Aerosmith and Hollywood Vampires guitarist Joe Perry, My Chemical Romance guitarist Mikey Way,Bush drummer Robin Goodridge and Fastball singer-guitarist Miles Zuniga! Have a great day everyone!
