Good morning Radicals! I hope everyone’s ready for their Thanksgiving Day dinner tomorrow! We’ve still got some food shopping to do, that should be nuts. Anywho, here’s your music news for today:
LEAK — More info is emerging on a possible Woodstock 50th anniversary celebration(s?) including the possibility of a new event named ‘Journey On’: 6+ stages, 35,000+ people, Woodstock legends + more.
*This event remains UNCONFIRMED. Although official 50th teasers have started. pic.twitter.com/3PCOMU0tAh
— Festive Owl (@TheFestiveOwl) November 16, 2018
Rumors of a 50th anniversary celebration of 1969’s legendary Woodstock festival have been circulating since early this year, and recent reports indicate that acts such as Pearl Jam, Foo Fighters and Coldplay could be approached about performing at the event if it does happen in 2019.
The Festival Owl has shared images from a marketing deck used to promote the potential concert to sponsors, and one of the slides indicates a list of possible artists that includes the three already mentioned as well as Lorde, The Weeknd, Mumford and Sons, Lumineers, Ariana Grande, Eminem, Graham Nash, Neil Young, Santana, The Who, Phish, Joan Baez, Bon Jovi, Elton John, The Doobie Brothers, Zac Brown Band, Florida Georgia Line, Daft Punk, Chainsmokers, Chance The Rapper, Pink and more.
Although that is merely a wish list and not a single artist has been confirmed so far, original Woodstock promoter Michael Lang told the Poughkeepsie Journal that he is “very close” to finalizing a deal for a 50th anniversary event. Lang said, “We have definite plans . . . These are plans. This is not a done deal yet. But it’s very close.”
Lang co-created the original festival in 1969 and two follow-ups in 1994 for the 25th anniversary and 1999 for the event’s 30th anniversary.
Weezer has invited a fan named Kira Iaconetti to one of the band’s upcoming shows in 2019, after footage of her singing the group’s song “Island in the Sun” in the midst of having brain surgery went viral.
The 19-year-old Iaconetti, an aspiring musician, was recently diagnosed with a form of epilepsy that triggers seizures when she listens to or performs music. She explained about her condition, “It just (felt) like a light switch switches in my brain and suddenly I’m tone deaf. I can’t sing. I can’t process the words in time with the music.”
Doctors decided that Iaconetti could be treated for her condition through an awake craniotomy, in which she was put under anesthesia but kept awake during the surgery and asked to sing — so doctors could see which part of her brain was in use when she sang.
Video footage of Iaconetti singing during her surgery has since emerged. She sang the 2001 Weezer track “Island in the Sun” since it both reminded her of her birthplace in Hawaii and because it contained the line “I can’t control my brain.”
The surgery was successful, with Seattle Children’s Hospital confirming that Iaconetti was playing guitar and singing in her hospital bed 48 hours after the operation. Following the publication of Iaconetti’s remarkable story, Weezer reached out and invited her to join them on one of their tour dates next spring.
Slipknot percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan has revealed to Metal Hammer magazine that he is sitting on an album’s worth of music recorded during the 2008 sessions for the band’s fourth album, All Hope Is Gone. While making that LP, Crahan, Slipknot guitarist Jim Root, singer Corey Taylor and turntablist Sid Wilson wrote and laid down different music at a separate studio.
Crahan explained, “There’s a collection of songs that were recorded, 11 I think, I’ve held on to them for 10 years because it hasn’t been right, and I’m going to let you know now that it’s feeling right. Is it Slipknot? No, it’s not Slipknot. Is it four members of Slipknot? Yes. It’s four members of Slipknot. Is it music being written at the same time as All Hope Is Gone? Absolutely.”
One of the resulting songs, “‘Til We Die,” is featured on the digipak release of All Hope Is Gone, but the rest has yet to see the light of day. Crahan remarked, “It wasn’t going to be one of those things to loosely go out and confuse everyone, and piss everyone off . . . The right way is that sooner or later, people need to be made aware of it because it’s the truth. It happened. We spent time doing it, we worked it every day, we mixed it, we mastered it, there’s artwork. It’s amazing stuff. But it’s all got to be right in the story of Slipknot.”
Jim Root told us a while back that if it was up to him, he’d spend more time in the studio: “I wish we could spend most of our time in the studio writing, because that’s, you know, when you just kind of, you know, let all your inhibitions go in the studio and that’s when you start breaking down walls and barriers, you know. I mean, look what the Beatles did — they lived in studios, they stopped touring.”
A 10th anniversary edition of All Hope Is Gone will be released on December 7th. The package will feature re-imagined artwork and a bonus disc containing an audio recording of the band’s 2009 headlining concert at Madison Square Garden. It will not contain the unreleased music recorded during the same sessions.
It’s actually— Blink eighteen-two. People have all gotten this wrong for years. Sometimes this can happen with very complex, thoughtful and elevated art. https://t.co/jmsfv401KF
— Tom DeLonge (@tomdelonge) November 19, 2018
What is the right way to pronounce the band name Blink-182? The matter has apparently been a source of debate that has grown to encompass the members of the group itself as well as late night host James Corden.
It all started when Late Late Show co-head writer and stand-up Ian Karmel noted on Twitter, “The British call Blink-182 ‘Blink One Eight Two’ and I’m not saying that’s WHY they lost the Revolutionary War, but…” When British fans asked the comic how Americans say it, he informed them it was “one eighty-two.”
That’s when Karmel’s boss, Corden, weighed in, admitting that the British pronunciation was wrong, but that so was the American way. He joked, “They technically should be called ‘Blink one hundred and eighty two.’ Don’t take some moral high ground here.”
It finally took a member of Blink-182 to solve the debate, with bassist Mark Hoppus tweeting that either “one eight two” or “one eighty-two” was fine. Hoppus took issue with another common mistake, noting, “In all of this, I feel like we’ve lost sight of the fact that the B in blink-182 should be lower-case.”
Former Blink member Tom DeLonge also chimed in, screwing things up even more by writing, “It’s actually Blink eighteen-two. People have all gotten this wrong for years. Sometimes this can happen with very complex, thoughtful and elevated art.”
Blink-182 — say it any way you want — is expected to release a new album in 2019.
In This Moment singer Maria Brink recently confirmed to New York radio station Q103 that the band has begun the songwriting process for the follow-up to last year’s Ritual album. Brink explained, “Some of my band members are flying in here to Albany and they’re gonna be writing with me for a few weeks here . . . We’re writing on the road as well. So it’s all happening.”
Brink added that the band intends to keep writing even while continuing to tour, saying, “We have the highest sales that we’ve ever had, we’re getting the biggest offers we’ve ever had, we’re climbing up to the top, we’re headlining certain festivals. We can’t believe it — we’re the strongest we’ve ever been — so we don’t wanna ruin our momentum and all of a sudden disappear for a really long time. We feel really empowered, we feel really creative and kind of excited.”
Brink told us a while back why expressing herself through music is important: “For me it’s perfect because it’s an outlet. It’s like, I don’t even know where I would be or what I — I’d probably be some kind of psychopath maniac if I couldn’t release all of this. It’s almost like therapy and I mean, it all comes out into the album and just pours onto everybody else. But people, you know, seem to relate and identify too, because everybody has something, you know, that they go through or can identify with.”
Earlier this year, guitarist Chris Howorth told Guitar Interactive magazine that In This Moment will tentatively enter the studio in February 2019 to begin recording its seventh album.
2017’s Ritual included an eerie hit cover of Phil Collins‘ “In The Air Tonight”, and Brink has hinted in interviews that the next record will see the band tackling yet another classic song.
That’s a wrap! Have a great Holiday everyone!
