HARDDRIVE LIVE TOUR is in NYC! Sound the horns! Fly the confetti! Bring on the cheerleaders! It’s here! WOO HOO! Halestorm stops in the talk to Lou Brutus, we’ve got local radio contest winners, guitar and drumhead for the VIVOGIG contest to get signed, lots of stuff in the works! hardDriveRadio is the first radio interview for Dan Donegan, who’ll be on the hotLine to talk about his new venture, Fight or Flight. It’s a huge day! Tomorrow and rest of week also busy with Trapt, Filter and Escape the Fate dropping by the hardDrive Studios. Ah, all in a day’s work around here! I think we’d be lost if it wasn’t hectic!….In the meantime, here’s some news. I was bummed I had to give away my tickets to see Trent Reznor‘s new band, How to Destroy Angels, perform at the legendary Apollo Theater uptown here in Harlem, USA. I heard from my friend who got my tickets the show was AH-MAZING. A light show that rivals anything Pink Floyd ever did. Figures, Trent would pull out all the stops! Sorry I missed it!… Pulse Content reports Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan and drummer Danny Carey were interviewed this week by New Zealand publication Rip It Up, and naturally the subject of a new album came up. What did they have to say? Carey explained, “Maynard deals with the lyrical content. He’s been pretty busy with his wine and other projects lately, but right now it’s just Justin and Adam and I working on things and, you know, little bits and pieces, lots of musical things.” That sounds like very little progress has been made since Tool’s webmaster claimed to have heard about half an album’s worth of music earlier this year. Keenan was even more casual about the record’s progress or lack thereof, talking more about balancing his other bands and his winemaking business, commenting, “Well with the wine — it’s attached — it’s basically part of my house. And it’s just my wife and I that work it . . . when I am working on any kind of music in terms of writing and recording, especially with Puscifer it’s right here . . . When it comes to writing with Tool and A Perfect Circle it’s a whole different process and, uh, that requires a whole different set of patience.” Tool has not released a new album since 2006’s 10,000 Days. Guitarist Adam Jones recently told Revolver magazine, “It’s unfortunate that we haven’t put anything out in a while, but you know, we’ve changed as a band . . . We’ve become even more eclectic and distant, so getting things done and getting together is very hard.” Tool is playing in New Zealand, Australia and Japan during the first two weeks of May….Surviving Beastie Boys members Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have reportedly signed a deal with Random House to write a book, according to The New York Times. But the tome won’t be a standard memoir, with publisher Julie Grau saying the pair are “interested in challenging the form and making the book a multidimensional experience.” The book will be “loosely structured as an oral history” with a “strong visual component.” The yet-to-be-titled book is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2015. This Saturday (May 4th) will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of fellow Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch, who succumbed to cancer at the age of 47, just weeks after the trio were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…Rolling Stone reports Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello will headline the concert portion of A Tribute To Tomas Young, an event celebrating the life of the paralyzed Iraq veteran and anti-war activist that”s scheduled to take place in Young’s hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, on May 19th. The event will also include an appearance from former tv talk show host, Phil Donahue, who co-directed a documentary about Young called Body Of War. Young has planned to end his life in May by removing the feeding tube he has been using since his colon was removed last November. In a recent open letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney on the 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq, Young wrote: “I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live.” …Happy 80th to Willie Nelson and Happy 65th to Wayne Kramer of the legendary punk rock band MC5.
