Weekly Music News

[FH]

MÖTLEY CRÜE's 'Greatest Video Hits' DVD To Surface In November - Sep. 24, 2003

MÖTLEY CRÜE's "Greatest Video Hits", a DVD collection of videos never-before-available on a single commercial release, will be issued on November 11. Twenty-one core videos make up this unique collector's item with new 5.1 mixes and stereo remastered audio giving diehard MÖTLEY fans fresh new versions of their favorite songs. On top of the twenty-one core videos come six alternate videos ranging from the X-rated, uncensored versions of "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Hell On High Heels" and "Primal Scream" to an all-band performance of "Dr. Feelgood" and the 1991 remix of their signature ballad "Home Sweet Home". With twenty-seven videos in total there are a few hidden gems that fans are going to have to find to believe.

For the first time in years, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee came together and shot a new interview segment special for this DVD reflecting back to each video mixed with archival band personal footage ranging from the beginning of the CRÜE's unprecedented explosion as rock legends all the way through to their latest album, "New Tattoo".

A Personal Playlist is included to give CRÜEheads everywhere the chance to experience this once in a lifetime collection in the order they wish to view it. A complete album discography plus weblinks finish out this DVD as one of the greatest collections of music videos to date.

* First time release of MÖTLEY CRÜE videos on DVD
* 27 videos in total including 6 alternative videos that are uncensored, remixed or alternate versions.
* A new interview segment with Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee only available on this DVD
* New 5.1 mixes and stereo remastered audio
* Personal Playlist - CRÜEheads choose the play sequence of the videos
* Discography
* Weblinks
* Easter eggs

Explicit Tracklisting:

01. Kickstart My Heart
02. Same Ol' Situation
03. Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)
04. Without You
05. Wild Side
06. Girls, Girls, Girls
07. Dr. Feelgood
08. The Looks That Kill
09. Live Wire
10. You're All I Need
11. Too Young To Fall In Love
12. Primal Scream
13. Anarchy In The U.K.
14. Afraid
15. Smoke The Sky
16. Misunderstood
17. Enslaved
18. Smokin' In The Boys Room
19. Hooligan's Holiday
20. Hell On High Heels
21. Home Sweet Home

BONUS MATERIAL

Alternate Videos:

22. Girls, Girls, Girls (X-rated Version)
23. Dr. Feelgood (Alternate Version)
24. Primal Scream (Uncensored)
25. Misunderstood (Uncensored)
26. Hell On High Heels (Uncensored)
27. Home Sweet Home ('91 Remix)

New Interview segment with Nikki & Tommy
Personal Playlist
Discography
Weblinks

Edited Tracklisting:

01. Kickstart My Heart
02. Same Ol' Situation
03. Don't Go Away Mad
04. Without You
05. Wild Side
06. Girls, Girls, Girls
07. Dr. Feelgood
08. The Looks That Kill
09. Live Wire
10. Too Young Too Fall In Love
11. Smoke The Sky
12. Smokin' In The Boys Room
13. Hell On High Heels
14. Home Sweet Home

BONUS MATERIAL
Personal Playlist
Discography
Weblinks

Suggested retail price will be $19.98.

[FH]

A PERFECT CIRCLE's 'Thirteenth Step' Enters BILLBOARD Chart At No. 2! - Sep. 24, 2003

A PERFECT CIRCLE's sophomore full-length album, "Thirteenth Step", has sold 225,966 copies in its first week of release, landing at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 chart (right behind rapper DMX, whose new Def Jam/IDJ album, "Grand Champ", moved 310,436 units).

"Thirteenth Step" is the follow-up to 2000's "Mer de Noms", which debuted at No. 4 on The Billboard 200 and has sold more than 1.4 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan. It spawned the singles "Judith" (No. 4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks airplay chart, No. 5 Modern Rock Tracks), "3 Libras" (No. 12 Modern/Mainstream Rock Tracks), and "The Hollow" (No. 14 Mainstream Rock, No. 17 Modern Rock).

[FH]

NEWS - Quiet Riot Calls It Quits?
09/22/2003



(9/22/03, 10 a.m. ET) -- Stop the presses: '80s metal band Quiet Riot has apparently called it quits after more than 20 years. Fans surfing to the band's website, quietriotforce.com, were undoubtedly crushed to find the following message: "Thank you for 20 years of rock and roll. Goodbye, Quiet Riot."

LAUNCH contacted drummer Frankie Banali for confirmation, and he responded with a cryptic message of his own: "I can only confirm that Quiet Riot with members Kevin DuBrow, (bassist) Rudy Sarzo, (guitarist) Carlos Cavazo, and myself has ceased to exist and further dates will not be performed."


Quiet Riot was formed in 1975 by lead singer Kevin DuBrow and future guitar legend Randy Rhoads. That band broke up after two albums that were issued only in Japan, but DuBrow put together a new version and released Metal Health in 1983. The record spawned a smash cover of Slade's "Come On Feel The Noize" and was the first metal album to hit Number One on the Billboard Top 200.


The group suffered various ups and down--well, mostly downs--in the years since, firing DuBrow in the late '80s before breaking up once again. But he resurrected the group in 1991, turning out records on tiny labels throughout the rest of the decade. Their last release was 2001's appropriately-named Guilty Pleasures.

[FH]

VELVET REVOLVER's SLASH And DUFF Explain Why IZZY STRADLIN Is Not Part Of Their New Band - Sep. 24, 2003

Former GUNS N' ROSES members Slash and Duff McKagan recently spoke to Guitar World magazine about ex-GNR guitarist Izzy Stradlin's brief involvement with their current project, VELVET REVOLVER.

According to Slash, when Stradlin suddenly started showing up at rehearsals during the early songwriting sessions for VELVET REVOLVER, current VR second guitarist Dave Kushner began to wonder if his days in the band were numbered. "Izzy just came out of nowhere, as Izzy does," Slash says, laughing. "Poor Dave. Izzy's sitting there, this ominous presence, and Dave's thinkin', That's the original guitarist from GUNS N' ROSES. Am I still gonna have a job? But we're real loyal people. It wasn't like, 'Hey, Dave, we're gonna work on some songs with Izzy — call us back in a couple of weeks!' When Izzy was there, we just played with three guitarists."

Stradlin hung out and jammed with his old mates for several weeks, but Slash and McKagan both say there was never any real possibility of their old guitarist joining their new band. "The Izzy thing probably got misconstrued a little bit," says McKagan. "I think he wanted to come in, like, 'Let's go out on tour right away! I've got eight songs, let's go! We'll do some covers — Duff and I will sing!' [laughs] But Matt [Sorum] and Slash and I were more like, 'If we're gonna do this, we're gonna have to do it so it's amazing.' I've heard a lot of fans saying, 'Why don't you have Izzy in the band now?' Well, this isn't cut out for him — he's more of a guy who will be here one day and be gone the next, and you won't know where he's gone to. But he added a new energy that we probably needed at that point." "You have to understand our relationship with Izzy," Slash explains. "Izzy's always been the guy who's sort of there and sort of not there. Duff and I have seen Izzy periodically — I've played on his records a couple of times, and Duff has done the same thing. And then he called up right when we were in the midst of writing, and he actually came over and brought a couple of songs with him. And then we just started hanging out and jamming, and we wrote, like, 10 or so songs. It was just a lot of fun, but he didn't want to deal with the fuckin' long haul at all. As soon as we started to physically audition singers, we didn't see him again." Slash laughs. "He's so fucking shattered from his experience [with Axl Rose] that he refuses to ever do anything involving a singer again!"

[FH]

Florida Theater Owner Pulls Plug On Suicide Band - Sep. 24, 2003

The owner of a theater where a band said it would stage a live suicide during a concert next month said Wednesday he isn't allowing the show to take place, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the owner of another club where the band HELL ON EARTH said they intended to move their show, also said Wednesday he won't allow the show either, leaving in question whether the band will be allowed to play at all.

David Hundley, owner of the State Theater in St. Petersburg, said he was certain the suicide was either a publicity stunt or would be an "illusion," but said he was worried of what some other "nut case" might do during the show.

"We couldn't allow anything to happen," Hundley said at a news conference.

"We deal with a lot of kids here and we don't want their parents to think anything bad or that their kids are ever at risk."

The owner of Club Venom, a Pinellas Park venue where the band said would be the new location of the show, also said he won't allow them to play if a suicide is going to be part of the act.

"We're going to nip it before it happens," owner Matt Mullins said.

Lead singer Billy Tourtelot did not immediately return a phone message. The band has a nationwide tour planned for the weeks following what would have been its St. Petersburg concert.

HELL ON EARTH are a rock band known for their stage antics, which have included grinding up rats in a blender.

The group said last week on their web site that a terminally ill member of a right-to-die group planned to commit suicide on stage in a political statement about euthanasia. St. Petersburg police, unable to do anything before the performance, had planned to have officers in the audience if a suicide was attempted.

Hundley said he was worried the international attention the event had already attracted would harm his theater's reputation, as well as the businesses along St. Petersburg's downtown commerce district.

"Now that the word is out, we can't allow them even to go on," Hundley said of the band.

[FH]

"He was real excited," recalls producer Rick Rubin, describing his last phone conversation with Johnny Cash. They talked, Rubin says, about the imminent completion of Unearthed, a boxed set of previously unissued recordings from the sessions for the four, acclaimed albums they had made together since 1994: American Recordings, Unchained, American III: Solitary Man, and last year's American IV: The Man Comes Around. "I said, 'We finished all the mixes, and we're sending them to you this weekend, so you can hear them all.'" Cash never heard those mixes. He died the next day, September 12th, in Nashville of complications from diabetes, at the age of seventy-one.
Speaking the day after Cash's funeral, Rubin was still hopeful that Unearthed would be issued as originally planned, before Christmas. The collection will include a greatest-hits disc drawn from the four original albums, plus four, thematically constructed CDs with their own subtitles: "Who's Gonna Cry," "Trouble in Mind," "Redemption Songs" and "My Mother's Hymnbook," the last one an entire, unreleased gospel album cut at the same time Cash made Unchained. "But there may be a sixth disc," Rubin adds, "because I just found a whole other batch of tapes. It came as a surprise at the last minute -- songs we had worked on four, five months ago, when we started the new project," a reference to American V, another gospel album which Cash and Rubin had also been laboring on over the past year, despite the singer's increasingly perilous health.

"It was a new kind of gospel album for him to do," Rubin says of Cash's last studio recordings. "It was heavy, old blues-type things -- 'No Grave's Gonna Hold My Body Down,' 'John the Revelator' -- but also some gospel songs that he'd grown up singing but had never recorded. We'd been working so furiously on the boxed set, that I haven't gotten into it enough to know where we are. But I know there's a lot there, and it's going to be amazing." As for the feast of outtakes on Unearthed, Rubin sighs with awe. "The older stuff -- it's just phenomenal. It's blowing my mind, how great it is."

What was the state of the last work you did with Johnny? How much had he recorded, and how much of it was finished?

We recorded about fifty songs, working towards the next album. And they are in various states of being done. It was going to be "The Black Gospel Album." But along the way, we recorded a lot of other stuff. In my last conversations with Johnny, the songs that we continued picking and working on were not gospel songs. It's not like the idea went to the wayside. I just don't know if that would have ended up being the next album.

How many songs would you cut with Johnny for each of those four, original American albums?

I would say anywhere between forty and eighty. There was a lot of experimentation. Not all of the experiments were successful. And some of the things on the boxed set are things that we liked the idea of, but when we actually recorded them, we thought, "Hmm, this isn't going to work on the album."

For example?

There's a Dolly Parton song which I wanted to record, "I'm a Drifter" [from Parton's 1976 album All I Can Do]. We tried recording it for the first album and the second album. On the box, there are two different versions recorded during the second album. One was recorded with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and one was recorded, I think, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' rhythm section. They're both good, but neither of them felt up to what was on the rest of the album. I felt like we never really captured it. We never found a way to get the song over in a way that the most successful songs had gotten over for him.

Were you surprised by the fearlessness with which he made these records with you? This was a man who had been at the birth of everything, at Sun Records in the 1950s, and had made some of the best and most important country albums of the 1960s and 1970s. He had nothing left to prove to anyone.

It was about the quality of the songs. There were loads of songs that I would suggest that he would not want to do. I would send him a CD of fifteen or twenty songs, and he would say, "Well, I like these three or four." Or, in some cases, "I like none of them." But he would really listen to the lyrics.

Some songs were a harder sell than others, based on the way they were originally recorded. When I first played him the Soundgarden version of "Rusty Cage," he looked at me like I was crazy: "You don't think I'm going to do that?" I said, "Listen to the song." Still, it was a hard one to get past him. It's a heavy metal record; Chris Cornell is screaming. He didn't know what to make of it.

I did a demo of how I imagined it would be if we did it together, how his version would go. When I played him that and showed him the lyrics, he loved it: "I'll do this one."

How did you sell him on the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt"? Trent Reznor, as a singer and songwriter, is so wrapped up in himself, in his own agony. Yet Johnny hijacked the song for himself, made it truly his own.

He just heard the words. They resonated with him. I remember when I sent it to him. I said, "I really feel like this one has the potential to be special." So he may have given it a stronger chance, than if it was one of twenty songs on a CD. I don't know if he would have picked it, but I asked him to listen closely and pay attention to the words. I imagined him singing it and knew how powerful it could be.

It's fascinating to look at the songs he covered on the American albums, and the people who wrote them: Reznor, Soundgarden, Beck, Nick Cave. With his intense life experiences with drugs, poverty, despair and ultimately resurrection, Johnny Cash had every right to look at these younger songwriters and say, "What the hell do these kids now about life?"

He wasn't like that. He looked at everyone and everything equally. He liked what he liked, and he didn't like what he didn't like. It didn't have anything to do with who you were or what experience you had or what your track record was. He looked at these songs as art, judged them as art. And he decided, "This is good art, and it's good art that fits me.

He was like that in every way in his life. It's not unique to his music. He didn't see barriers or classifications between people. He just loved people.

When did you first meet him?

In 1992. I went to see him perform, got to meet him after the show backstage. And we talked. I can't really remember anything about it. But I felt like there was a strong connection. The connection we made didn't seem to come from the words we spoke. It felt like we could have sat together silently for the same amount of time, and the exchange would have been the same -- or maybe better.

Were you awed by his titanic presence, the gravity of his voice?

It's odd: With some people, I've had that. For some reason, I didn't feel that with him. It was an immediate feeling of safety. There was no sense of intimidation, right from the time we met.

What do you think he saw in you as a producer? He had been in the music business for four decades. He had worked with Sam Phillips at Sun Records and with the top dogs in Nashville -- and outlasted many of them. What do you feel he needed from you?

I don't know the answer to that. But I will tell you something that someone told me at the funeral. A friend of his -- someone I didn't know but who came up and talked to me -- said that he just wanted to let me know how much Johnny cared about me. Johnny told him, "Rick saw something in me that I didn't know was there anymore. Because of that, when he saw that in me, when the work we did was accepted, it made me trust him."

He was not an ego-driven person. He did not come from a place of confidence. For all of his success, he was somewhat insecure. When we were working on the first album, we tried a lot of experiments, before we found out we were going to do the acoustic thing. We recorded with bands, did all kinds of thing, to find out what this new sound was going to be. Eventually, we went back to the acoustic recordings that he did in my living room. That's where the songs got over in the best way.

Once we decided that, after a lot of experimentation, I asked him if he would get up at a club and do a set of acoustic material. I felt it would have impact on the acoustic recording we were doing. We set up a show at the Viper Room [in Los Angeles]. It was an incredible show. And I remember, he was terrified before going on. This was a guy who did 200 shows a year for forty years. He'd played prisons. And the idea of going up by himself, with a guitar and singing songs, absolutely terrified him. I remember watching him, how nervous he was through the first song. Then everyone accepted him, and he calmed down a bit. By the end of the second song, he was fine.

But he was not overly confident. I think that is part of why people connect with him. He was humble, someone who fought to be ego-less. I'm sure he wasn't always. But it was something he always worked on.

What was the state of his health during the sessions for The Man Comes Around? There is a poignant fragility to his singing, compared to the deep strength in his voice a few years earlier, on Unchained.

It was difficult. But I'll tell you the difference between those two records. Unchained was hard to make, because that was right when he got sick. He was struggling -- he didn't know why, and it was new. He'd have to lay down. He wasn't his normal self. His body was stronger, but his psyche was more confused, because he didn't know what was hitting him. On the last album, his body was weaker, but his psyche was stronger. He knew what was going on; he was more in control.

Was there a sense -- an acceptance -- that it could be his last record? Topically, the record is drenched in death, references to reckoning and mortality: the opening reading from the Book of Revelation; songs like "Streets of Laredo" and "We'll Meet Again."

It's not the kind of thing we would talk about. He wrote something interesting for [the liner notes of] the third album: that while he was working on it, "I thought it would be my last." Then the fact that we made the fourth album -- something shifted. He realized, "We're just going to keep going." We talked about that all the time. I can remember, not long ago, telling him, "There should be ten volumes in this American series, and then we'll figure out what we want to do after that."

On the other hand, he wanted "We'll Meet Again" to be the last song on the record. He had all of the people around -- his staff in Nashville, the people who worked on the record and in his home -- sing along on "We'll Meet Again." When we came to L.A. to finish the record, he said to me, "You have to sing on it." All of the guitar players in L.A. who were on the album: "You guys have to sing on it too. I want everybody on this." He was adamant about it.

DAVID FRICKE
(September 23, 2003)

[FH]

City Says No To 'Suicide Show', But Band Says Yes - Sep. 25, 2003

Florida shock-rockers HELL ON EARTH have vowed to go ahead with their plans to stage a live suicide during a concert in the city of St. Petersburg next month.

Despite the fact that the city officials, in cooperation with the Florida Governors Office, have "strong-armed" venues into canceling their previously announced performance at State Theater on October 4, bandleader Billy Tourtelot has announced that the show will indeed take place at an undisclosed location within St. Petersburg city limits. The concert, which will include a live suicide by a terminally ill Euthanasia Society member, will be broadcast live over the Internet on www.hellonearth.net.

Commented the singer, "This show is far more than a typical HELL ON EARTH performance — this is about standing up for what you believe in and I am a strong supporter of physician-assisted suicide. This performance will go on in its entirety and it will [take place] in St. Petersburg on October 4th."

The Tampa group said last week on their web site that a terminally ill member of a right-to-die group planned to commit suicide on stage in a political statement about euthanasia. St. Petersburg police, unable to do anything before the performance, had planned to have officers in the audience if a suicide was attempted.

Past band performances have included sodomizing skinned calves and blending dead rats then having fans drink the concoction.

[FH]

Former VAN HALEN/EXTREME Singer To Star In Musical Version Of 'The Wall' - Sep. 25, 2003

Former VAN HALEN/EXTREME singer Gary Cherone will spend the next few months starring in a small community musical version of PINK FLOYD's "The Wall" in Wisconsin, according to Undercover News.

Cherone will play Pink, the starring role Bob Geldof played in the movie. The show will premiere at The Schauer Arts and Activities Center in Hartford on November 29 and then move on to the Scottish Rite in Milwaukee from January 22 until February 1, 2004.

Cherone, who is involved with the Boston Rock Opera company, has played Judas in their 2000 production of "Jesus Christ Superstar".

He recently told Classic Rock magazine that after the release of the critically panned "III" CD and the critical panning, the writing was on the wall for VAN HALEN. "We were on tour and we brought the old catalog and the majority of the fans did appreciate it but in the end they wanted their Dave [Lee Roth]. That is what it was."

Last year, Cherone released an album with his current band TRIBE OF JUDAH called "Exit Elvis".

[FH]

QUEENSRŸCHE Singer To Begin Work On Second Solo Album - Sep. 26, 2003

QUEENSRŸCHE frontman Geoff Tate has revealed to MySanAntonio.com that he is working on the material for his second solo album, tentatively due before the end of 2004 through Sanctuary Records.

"It's not difficult to balance the solo work with QUEENSRŸCHE," Geoff said. "It's more difficult to find the time. I'm trying to devote six months to QUEENSRŸCHE and six months to other things I'm interested in. On the solo record I use different musicians, classical, R&B and jazz players. I wanted to hear my voice in a different template. I feel incredibly successful just making the [solo] record. It worked for me."

In other news, QUEENSRŸCHE have selected the track "Losing Myself" as the next single from their latest CD, "Tribe". It heads to radio on October 6. A DVD-A version of "Tribe" is planned for release on November 4, and will include the following bonus features:

- 24 bit/96 kHz DVD-Audio (MLP) and 24 bit/48 kHz Dolby Digital (AC3) 5.1 surround sound options
- A "Desert Dance" live performance video
- A QUEENSRŸCHE Photo Gallery

QUEENSRŸCHE will be making an October 15 appearance on the syndicated radio program "Rockline" to help promote their headlining tour, which stops in Corpus Christi, Texas tonight (September 26). A list of radio stations that carry the program is posted at the official "Rockline" web site.

Upcoming QUEENSRŸCHE tour dates:

Sep. 26 - Concrete Street - Corpus Christi, TX
Sep. 27 - Sunken Gardens - San Antonio, TX
Sep. 30 - Blue Note – Columbia, MO
Oct. 02 - The Cotillion – Wichita, KS
Oct. 03 - Val Air Ballroom - Des Moines, IA
Oct. 04 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO
Oct. 06 - Washington Pavilion - Sioux Falls, SD
Oct. 07 - Playmakers Pavilion – Fargo, ND
Oct. 09 - State Theater – Kalamazoo, MI
Oct. 10 - Star Plaza – Merrillville, IN
Oct. 11 - Quest Club – Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 12 - Rave / Eagles Ballroom – Milwaukee, WI
Oct. 14 - Checkered Flag – Appleton, WI
Oct. 16 - Jillian's – Louisville, KY
Oct. 17 - Stranahan Theater – Toledo, OH
Oct. 18 - Morris PAC - South Bend, IN
Oct. 21 - 9:30 Club – Washington, D.C.
Oct. 22 - Turning Stone Casino – Verona, NY
Oct. 23 - Westbury Music Fair – Westbury, NY
Oct. 24 - Keswick – Philadelphia, PA
Oct. 25 - Hampton Beach Casino - Hampton Beach, NH
Oct. 26 - Lupo's – Providence, RI
Oct. 28 - Webster Theatre – Hartford, CT
Oct. 29 - Northern Lights - Clifton Park, NY
Oct. 30 - The Norva – Norfolk, VA
Nov. 01 - The Staircase – Pittston, PA
Nov. 02 - Warner Theater – Erie, PA

[FH]

DREAM THEATER: 'Train Of Thought' Cover Art Revealed - Sep. 26, 2003

The cover artwork for DREAM THEATER's forthcoming album, "Train Of Thought", can be viewed at this location.

"Train Of Thought", due on November 11 through Elektra Records, was produced by guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy and engineered by Doug Oberkircher. It was mixed by Kevin Shirley, who has previously worked with IRON MAIDEN, LED ZEPPELIN and JOURNEY, among others.

The complete track listing for the CD is as follows:

01. As I Am
02. This Dying Soul
03. Endless Sacrifice
04. Honor Thy Father
05. Vacant
06. Stream Of Consciousness
07. In The Name Of God