Good morning and Happy Friday, you made it! As a reward, here’s what some of your favorite bands have been up to:
If you stand at just the right spot on Market street you can hear Metallica play Dreamforce because the sound is literally bouncing off the Twitter building. I don’t know what the analogy is here. But I feel like it’s something. pic.twitter.com/Uj0YJaU7A0
— Gabe Kangas (@gabek) September 27, 2018
A Metallica concert in San Francisco on Wednesday night, September 26th, angered some of the neighbors because of the noise, which traveled a considerable distance across the city. The band played a massive concert at Civic Center Plaza as part of the ninth annual Dreamfest fundraising event for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
People reported hearing the concert from as far away as Dogpatch, Cole Valley and the Mission. The performance, part of Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference, was held to raise millions for UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, the hospital that bears Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff‘s name.
One local resident wrote on Twitter, “Not a dream for me. Wrong to make an entire city a private venue. Anyone who thinks it’s great is probably going home at the end of the week.”
Another resident tweeted, “Most people outgrow making the neighbors listen to your favorite band sometime in college. Clearly Salesforce thinks it’s a good look in middle-age.”
The $1,000-per-ticket event also included appearances by Janet Jackson, plus MC Hammer and DJ Rob Garza. An after-party ran from 9:30 p.m. to midnight at City Hall. The annual concert has raised a total of $60 million over nine years for the Children’s Hospitals.
Speaking of Metallica, Paul Curcio, who produced Metallica‘s debut album Kill ‘Em All, has died at the age of 74 after suffering a heart attack. Curcio’s death, which occurred on September 10th, was confirmed by his daughter on Thursday, September 27th to Billboard.
Curcio was best known for building studios when he was hired to sit behind the board for Kill ‘Em All, and had only one other production credit — an early demo for the Doobie Brothers — to his name when he got the job.
The Kill ‘Em All sessions cost just $15,000, and only took a few weeks, but the band fought with Curcio throughout the process. In the book Metallica: The Complete Illustrated History, Megaforce label head Jon Zazula, who had signed the group, recalled, “I get there at the end of the album . . . (frontman) James (Hetfield) is all depressed. And (drummer) Lars (Ulrich) has to speak to me, and he says, ‘Jonny, this isn’t heavy enough.’ So, we went in and had James redo all the rhythms, with the big, big chunky sound he’s famous for.”
The situation improved from there, with Ulrich telling Yahoo! in 2013, “It was our first recording experience and we were so psyched and appreciative with the fact that we were making a record, and we were psyched about the way it was sounding.”
We asked Ulrich a while back if he ever misses the old days: “I miss elements of it. I miss the chaos of it. I like chaos. But at the same time, I mean, what that represents mostly to me is not having any responsibilities. Now I got kids at home — there’s a lot different things that you gotta make sure is happening now, and sometimes I miss not having those responsibilities.”
Kill ‘Em All was released in June 1983 and became an instant landmark in the emergence of the thrash metal movement. The LP eventually sold more than three million copies. Curcio himself told Billboard earlier this year, “We were all part of making one of the greatest albums of all time.”
Curcio is survived by four children, two grandchildren, his sister and a niece.
Rage Against The Machine and Prophets Of Rage drummer Brad Wilk recently went on social media to discuss living with Type 1 Diabetes for roughly the past twenty years. He wrote, “I’ve been a Type 1 diabetic for almost 20 years now. Not gonna lie it’s a real s**tty but manageable disease. It’s very different than Type 2 diabetes in that it has more to do with genetics and or environment.”
Wilk continued, “But fact is if you want good control (or to cure your type 2!), it all starts with diet and exercise. Anyone living with this disease, know that you don’t have to let it control your life. You need to control the disease. I’ve been living my life and traveling around the world for 20 years with it.”
The drummer added, “Don’t let this disease stop you from doing the things you wanna do. Unless you want to enter a pie eating contest. I’d say skip that!!!”
Wilk was first diagnosed with the disease in 1997 while on tour with Rage Against The Machine. In a 2000 interview with diabetesforecast.com, he recalled, “One night on tour I went to bed and had to get up to urinate four or five times during the night — and I didn’t drink anything before I went to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, my eyesight had diminished by about 40 percent. I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Everything was a blur. I also felt seriously weighed down and sluggish.”
Wilk and the rest of Prophets Of Rage recently released a new song called “Heart Afire” and revealed that they finished work on their sophomore LP not long ago.
Pearl Jam held a press conference on Thursday, September 27th, to announce a statewide effort to end youth homelessness. A statement from the band read in part, “Every year, more than 13,000 unaccompanied young people under the age of 25 experience homelessness in the state of Washington — 1,500 experience homelessness on any given night in Seattle and King County alone.”
The band continued, “Every person deserves a safe and stable home. To achieve this goal, Pearl Jam is banding together with two efforts — working in coordination — to end youth homelessness in King County and across Washington State.”
The group stated that it will work with All Home on their initiative to ensure that every young person in Seattle and King County has a home by 2020. The band will also support A Way Home Washington’s “Anchor Community” initiative, a pilot program to end youth homelessness in four Washington communities by 2022.
Pearl Jam raised money for both organizations through the Home Shows, two concerts it played at Seattle’s SafeCo Field earlier this summer. Guitarist Stone Gossard said, “Just as our community came together around the Home Shows, these initiatives will bring together nonprofits, government agencies, businesses, schools, families, and the community, to connect young people with the services they need to exit homelessness quickly, and find permanent and safe housing.”
Pearl Jam is reportedly working on a new album for release in 2019.
Looks like word is out! Who is ready for some new Chevelle music? pic.twitter.com/qQyfq0R3Lx
— Chevelle (@ChevelleInc) September 26, 2018
Chevelle will release an album of rarities titled 12 Bloody Spies on October 26th. The band announced the collection by mailing a letter to 12 of its biggest fans. A copy of the letter was later posted to the band’s Twitter account.
The letter read in part, “Chevelle is releasing its first-ever rarities album, 12 Bloody Spies, and you are one of the first 12 fans to get the news! We wanted to do something very special for you since you have been so dedicated and loyal over the years. Our fans are truly the best, and we want you to know how much we appreciated you.”
Meanwhile, drummer Sam Loeffler told a radio station last month that the band has commenced the songwriting process for the follow-up to 2016’s The North Corridor album. Loeffler revealed, “We’ve got about half a record that we’ve been working on forever, . . . I’m excited about the music, so that’s a bonus.”
Frontman Pete Loeffler told us a while back that Chevelle is never concerned with shifts in musical tastes or changes in the music business as they prepare a new album: “As far as the fad goes, as far as what’s cool, that shifts and goes wherever it goes. But as far as we go, you know, I don’t know, our music, we’re just doing the same thing we do every time we make a record. If it’s good music, it’s gonna stand the test of time. It’s not about record sales anymore, and it shouldn’t have been in the first place.”
The North Corridor debuted at Number Eight on the Billboard 200 album chart and produced another chart-topping single for the band, “Joyride (Omen).”
Muse has shared a new single called “Pressure,” along with an accompanying music video. The song is the fifth that the band has issued from its forthcoming eighth studio album, Simulation Theory, which is due out on November 9th. Previous songs were “Thought Contagion,” “Dig Down,” “Something Human” and “The Dark Side.”
The video for “Pressure” is an epic, consciously silly, over-the-top ’80s throwback, featuring everything from a John Hughes-style school dance to Terry Crews zapping gremlins with a Ghostbuster-like proton pack. Previous clips from the LP have also played off the nostalgia for ’80s movies, with time travel, lasers and other pop culture references.
The band apparently intends to release videos for every song on Simulation Theory, with all of them uniting into a single conceptual film.
Drummer Dominic Howard told us a while back what the band strives for every time they make a new record: “You always want to kind of create better music and discover new musical ideas and feel like we’re moving forward and not backwards. We certainly don’t have any outside pressure from anyone else. I mean, if anything, it’s just an internal thing, just to feel like we’re discovering some new ideas.”
Finally, we’d like to wish a Happy Birthday to Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie drummer Ginger Fish! Have a great Friday and a lovely weekend!
