To all our listeners in the path of those torrential rain and twisters, stay safe! And a reminder, you can donate to the United Way. www.facebook.com/unitedway ….Man, what a week! Yesterday, news we’ll have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT coming at ya on Mon, Jun 24th! So keep your little beady eyes locked here for it!…Today, I will hear the new Nine Inch Nails tune, which I am very much looking forward to. Monday, Lou Brutus will have Soil on the hotLine (love their new tune!) and on Tuesday, our LA correspondent and Pulse editor Don Kaye will interview Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler from Black Sabbath! Also next week, I will get Mr Serj Tankian on the hotLine. Loved that he thought of me as one of the first folks he wanted to speak with, so that is very sweet! And another HUGE BAND happens to be in NYC next week and those guys reached out to say I could come by to hear the mixes and do an interview! I am not TOO PSYCHED! Needless to say, there’s never a dull moment around the ole hardDrive cubicle!….Meanwhile, the drama continues! Former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland has spoken out in his first interview since last week, when the band filed a lawsuit against him and announced Linkin Park‘s Chester Bennington as their new vocalist. Speaking with AZCentral, Weiland said, “Is that how I want to see STP now? Not at all. Not the band that I started. Not the band that I named. Not the band that when I was in Huntington Beach, took a shot and called Robert DeLeo at his apartment, doing nothing in music, living with his girlfriend, and said, ‘Hey man, would you like to do a band?‘” Asked where things stand with him and his former bandmates, Weiland replied, “I don’t really think about it a lot. I think about how disrespectful they are, sometimes, in between a sip of coffee and a hit of my cigarette. I think about how selfish they are and how much it blows me away that after two times of trying this, they still think they have any opportunity of doing it without me.” Weiland said he and the rest of the band disagreed over how to handle their career, explaining, “I said, ‘Look, we need to take a break. We need to make an album. We’ve been playing the same (expletive) set for four years, without a change. We’ve been watching ourselves go from playing 20,000-seat arenas to country fairs and 2,000-seat casinos.‘” He continued, “They had different management. Their managers, who are just basically booking agents, to put it lightly, they have no problem with STP and its legacy being destroyed . . . So I wouldn’t (expletive) do it. And they can’t do it without me . . . they’ve already done two bands (Talk Show and Army Of Anyone) and failed.” Weiland said the group was supposed to play the entire Core album on a 20th anniversary tour, in conjunction with a boxed set and a new hits collection, but that guitarist Dean DeLeo scuttled those plans. Weiland himself is on a club and theater tour that brings him to Scottsdale, Arizona tonight (May 31st). He is playing material from the first two STP records on this trek — a move that reportedly angered his ex-band. The rest of STP filed their lawsuit against Weiland last Friday (May 24th), accusing him of using the band’s name to advance his solo career while claiming that his own poor performances, late arrivals at concerts and addiction struggles harmed the band’s career. The suit asks a judge to block Weiland from performing any STP songs in his solo shows and from even calling himself a former member of the band. STP made a surprise appearance on May 18th at a Los Angeles-area radio festival and debuted Bennington on vocals, playing six old songs while also premiering their new song, “Out Of Time.” Bennington will continue to work with the group while also remaining a member of Linkin Park. Actually, I am glad the rest of the guys are keeping a low profile. Scott continues to talk a load of bull, IMHO, and thinking back to all the nightmares he put them through, this is karma, don’t ya think? And if he’s so down on playing the old tunes, why is his set riddled with them? First off, in my rebuttal to these statements, look, the touring business has changed drastically. Many bands who once played arenas by themselves are doing theaters and clubs again. It’s just the way the ECONOMY is, Scott. And secondly, I have two words for you, VELVET REVOLVER. Mr. Weiland would do very well with 28 or more days in rehab. Maybe it’s time to take a good look in the mirror, my friend….Shinedown singer Brent Smith has told Loudwire that this summer’s Carnival Of Madness tour will feature one thing that’s been missing from the previous three editions: an actual carnival. Smith explained, “We called it Carnival Of Madnessfor a reason; we wanted it to be a carnival . . . This is this first year that we’re actually going to make it a full-fledged carnival. We’re going to be bringing performers on the road with us so you’re going to see fire-breathers and lots of cool clown type individuals. You’re going to see the ringleader and you’re going to see people on stilts.” Smith added, “You’re going to have this masquerade of beautiful characters who are going to be a part of the show this year which is something that we always wanted to do.” …. A week after the Jeff Hanneman Memorial/Tribute show in LA, Slayer‘s Tom Araya and Kerry King have announced drummer Paul Bostaph has rejoined the band on a full-time basis. Bostaph will be behind the drum kit beginning June 4 when the band kicks off the first leg of its 2013 international tour in Warsaw, Poland. Exodus‘ Gary Holt will continue to fill in for fallen guitarist Hanneman. Slayer’s 2013 itinerary will have the band playing 35 dates that will include headline shows as well as a number of major summer festivals in Europe, Eastern Europe and South America between June and October. “Paul’s a great drummer and a good friend, and we’re very happy that he’s decided to rejoin the band,” said Tom Araya. “We’re still pretty numb from the loss of Jeff, but we don’t want to disappoint our European and South American fans, and we need to begin moving forward… Having Paul back in the band makes that a whole lot easier.”
“I’m very excited to be rejoining Slayer,” added Bostaph. “We spent a very intense ten years of our lives together, had a lot of fun, made a lot of great music, so for me, this feels like coming home.“….Lastly, Tim Lambesis of As I Lay Dying posted $2Million bail to be released from the detention center he’d been in for the past 3 weeks in San Diego. His next hearing is Jun 26. His lawyers contend his erratic behavior was due to steroid use. He was booked on trying to hire an undercover cop to kill his estranged wife…..Celebrating birthdays this weekend: On Saturday, Ronnie Wood aka “Woody” of the Rolling Stones turns 66 (ah, the age I plan to retire) and Alanis Morissette is 39 (my current age, LOL). On Sunday, the old man of the Stones, Charlie Watts turns 72 (tho I swear he’s older) and B-Real of Cypress Hill turns 43.
