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Tuesday, Sep 10 2019

Julian Woolsey


Good morning hardDriveRadio fans! Let’s kick things off with the biggest announcement of the day:

 

Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer might be heading out on the road together, according to various hints left by all three bands on social media about something called the “Hella Mega Tour.”

It all began when Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong tagged Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz in response to a since-deleted Instagram post from The Office star Rainn Wilson.

Armstrong simply wrote, “Hella mega,” and soon fans uncovered Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages for the “Hella Mega Tour.” The sites are largely empty at the moment, while the actual HellaMegaTour.com site features only an image of — what a surprise! — Rainn Wilson dressed as Office character Dwight Schrute.

There is one video on the Instagram account that features Armstrong sporting a shirt with the Weezer and Fall Out Boy logos drawn on it. He sings an acoustic version of “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” changing the song’s lyrics to “Wake me up on September 10th,” and implying that news could arrive on Tuesday (September 10th).

Meanwhile, select fans have reported receiving packages of merch featuring the names and images of the three groups — except all on each other’s items. The shipping address is that of Crush Music, the management company that represents all three bands.

Metallica played its two highly-anticipated shows with the San Francisco Symphony on Friday (September 6th) and Sunday (September 8th), recreating a musical collaboration that first took place 20 years ago and was filmed and recorded back then as the S&M album and concert film.

This time out, the S&M2 shows were performed as part of the grand opening of San Francisco’s new Chase Center, the new home of the Golden State Warriors. Both shows drew 16,000 fans each to hear Metallica and the orchestra perform many of the same songs they did two decades ago, along with some newer cuts and rarities.

Both nights saw the four members of Metallica playing on a circular, revolving stage in the center of the arena floor, surrounded by 75 members of the Symphony. The three-hour concert was split into two parts and included a rendition of “Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)” from Metallica’s debut album, Kill ‘Em All. The piece was performed as a solo by Symphony bassist Scott Pingel in tribute to late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton. The set list was identical both nights.

Other tracks given the symphonic treatment for the first time included “The Day That Never Comes” from 2008’s Death Magnetic LP, an acoustic version of “All Within My Hands” from 2003’s St. Anger, an orchestral version of “The Unforgiven III” and several cuts from the band’s latest effort, Hardwired…To Self-Destruct.

A film of this past weekend’s concerts, titled S&M2, will arrive in theaters worldwide on October 9th for a one-night showing.

Late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is being commemorated with an official apparel collection, inspired by the singer’s artwork and personal journal entries and curated by his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

The “Kurt Was Here” collection features T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hoodies adorned with Cobain’s sketches, paintings, and hand-written notes. It features more than 50 pieces in total, available in unisex sizing and styling. The designs were all taken directly from Cobain’s original artwork and have not been edited or re-sized for the garments. Some of the T-shirts are priced as high as $113.

The collection is a partnership between The End of Music, LLC — which is the business arm of Cobain’s estate — and Live Nation Merchandise. It launched on Monday (September 9th) at Barneys, U.K. department store Selfridges, and online at KurtCobainShop.com.

While Nirvana merch and apparel featuring Cobain’s likeness have been a cultural staple since the singer took his own life in April 1994, this is the first clothing collection that features Cobain’s personal archive of artwork. Selected paintings and sketches by Cobain have fetched tens of thousands of dollars at auction.

Nirvana biographer Charles R. Cross told us that Cobain had a complicated relationship with success: “When Kurt became popular and he started hanging out with people in alternative rock, he still felt the same kind of clique that he had felt earlier in life. Nirvana were very successful, Kurt definitely was a mainstream artist, he wanted that punk cred, but I think in some ways he felt like that the requirement that he be unsuccessful sort of doomed his capacity to truly be a punk.”

Slash has shot down reports that Guns N’ Roses has been approached to record a new song for the upcoming movie Terminator: Dark Fate. A rumor surfaced last week that four members of the band went to a private viewing of the upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger sequel to see if they want to put a song on the soundtrack.

But during an appearance on Trunk Nation, Slash denied the reports, saying, “There’s nothing in the Terminator movie. These rumors, they take off and then they get a life of their own. And you can’t reel ’em in. They just sort of get tossed around in the wind. Anyway, but, yeah, so there’s nothing in there, in that.”

The guitarist said that aside from a short U.S. tour starting later this month and some possible live work next March, the band is focused on new music. He explained, “Obviously, everybody knows that we’re working on new material, which is really exciting, and so, that’s really primarily what the focus is.”

Asked if the band will release individual songs or intends to create a full album, Slash replied, “All things considered, it’s like the Wild West out there; there is no formula for any of it. I haven’t seen any routine kind of thing that works. I mean, you can do any one of a million different things to releasing a record. But at the end of the day, I think that we will ultimately release a full album.”

Ever since Slash, singer Axl Rose and bassist Duff McKagan reunited in 2016 as Guns N’ Roses, rumors have been circulating that new music from the band — the first to feature the three founding members since 1993 — was in the works.

Finally, join me in wishing a Happy Birthday today to Aerosmith guitar legend Joe Perry, Bush drummer Robin Goodridge and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance! Have a wonderful day!