There has truly never been a better time to be into or to get into the music of the legendary Frank Zappa. This is especially the case if you are a fan of Progressive or Avant-garde type of stuff because there was no one else quite like him and that is what makes me share this bit of press with you readers of the PiercingMetal Musings blog. Prepare yourself now….go ahead….
The other day while reading my Facebook Page news feed I noticed a posting from Metal Sucks that spoke about one of the stops on the upcoming Lamb Of God, Dethklok, & Gojira tour being cancelled and the money refunded to buyers. They wondered aloud if the whole tour would be cancelled because as you know singer Randy Blythe remains in a Czech Republic prison. Needing more insight into this since I have the Events Calendar for our site visitors, I reached out to a Live Nation contact about the whole tour but no information was disclosed at the time but now a few days later we got the press release about the events complete cancellation from their publicity arm. Given the fact that we have so many concert fans reading the PiercingMetal site and blogs, I am sharing the press release with you all to make sure you are in the loop.
From Adrenaline PR Representatives:
Due to the continued incarceration of LAMB OF GOD singer Randy Blythe in the Czech Republic, the band’s co-headline tour with Dethklok scheduled to begin August 1st in Seattle is being cancelled. The band regrets the decision but the uncertainty of Randy’s release makes it impossible to carry on with the tour. Upon Randy’s release, it is the band’s intention to rebook a tour in the fall and at this time the band fully intends to participate in the Mayhem Cruise in December. LAMB OF GOD wishes to thank Dethklok, Adult Swim and Gojira for their support and patience as well as all of the promoters who had dates on the tour. Last but certainly not least, the band thanks all of the fans who bought tickets for the tour and who have been supportive of Randy and the band over the last month that Randy has been held in Prague. Without the fans, there is no LAMB OF GOD.
Facebones Says “Free Randy Blythe!!!”
Sadly, the Czech Republic government is keeping Randy imprisoned and are not allowing him release even after making bail. Let’s not forget that he has yet to be formally charged in this incident. With this being the case let’s all please keep Randy in our thoughts. I have seen the footage that is said to come from this fateful night and it really does not show Randy as being guilty of anything. It’s still unfortunate that a fan lost his life, but it was NOT at the hands of Blythe in my humble opinion. Those with tickets can get refunds for the show they were attending and at this point in time it is far too early to know when dates can be made up. It’s a shame and all I can leave you with is to stay tuned to your favorite providers of Metal information for the latest details in this ever continuing tale. I’ll close with “Hang In There Randy, The Metal Community Is Behind You!”
For more information on these bands please visit their respective sites
Official Website: http://www.lamb-of-god.com/
Official Website: http://www.dethklok.org/
Official Website: http://www.gojira-music.com/
Just a little while ago I was tooling around my Facebook news feed when I should have been doing something else and learned of an absolutely surprising fact. Apparently, the Sam Ash Music stores that now reside on West 48th Street, a region most famously known as “Music Row” for decades, will be closing up these spaces and heading down to 34th Street around the Penn Station area. They’ll be consolidating all of the shops that now fill this street into one gigantic location.
Now this is not going to happen immediately or overnight so don’t worry music fans because you should still have some time to go to shop and absorb this in the same fashion that many of us used to do as musicians time and time again. It’s going to be a little bit of a process as they get the new space into proper shape to house all of their unique stores. I read how the brass, winds, and drums stores will be the first of the group to move to the new location. They’ll obviously be followed by the guitars and other electronics which seem to be their biggest batch of things offered and while the new place might be awesome to behold I could not help getting a little nostalgic about the news. Here’s why.
As a youth growing up way back when, heading over to Music Row was something I did with my bands or just other musicians I knew and we would get there almost at the stores opening and stay in the region all damned day. Back then it was more than just Sam Ash Music occupying almost all of the retail space and was instead places like Alex Music, Manny’s Music, We Buy and even Electro-Harmonix. This area was like being loose in the toy shop if you played music and if you were a regular you often got to meet many great people who worked at the places and if you were lucky you just might have run into a famous musician of some kind if they happened to be in town and needed something. As a drummer I first used to go to the Professional Percussion Center which I think was around the corner or close by but not exactly on Music Row. Sadly they ripped me and pretty much all their other customers off in what became some big legal brouhaha and after this I became a strictly Sam Ash and Manny’s dude. I loved going into Manny’s because they had all the photos of the bands that were signed and hanging on literally every inch of wall space that you would look at. As a Hard Rock and Metal fan I always smiled a little more when I saw the photos of KISS, Scorpions, Motley Crue and Van Halen along with many more of this kind. Eventually Manny’s would close and Sam Ash Music would take them over. They kept the name for a short time to transition I guess.
This was how you did it if you played anything and needed something for your arsenal. You could likely go to a more local neighborhood shop but that was not the same to a lot of people in my circle. Remember that for us older musicians, there was no online ordering yet. Oh the humanity you must be saying. According to the news that I have read, the Sam Ash building with the parking lot next to it will be torn down and in its space will come a………….condominium (where you expecting something else). I’ll def head over to the new space when its all ready to go, but it’s really kind of sad to know how something that was so unique and so memorable will be a fading memory sooner than we think.
Have any cool stories from Music Row? Please consider leaving them in the comments section.
The big day is finally here for the fans of the Batman franchise as “The Dark Knight Rises” opens up in theaters everywhere. The film continues and apparently completes the saga that Chris Nolan began with “Batman Begins” and continued with “The Dark Knight” and I have to admit that I never realized this was going to be a trilogy. Nolan’s Batman was grittier than any we had seen before, and even more so than the one from the 1989 film where he was played by Michael Keaton. In any event I am excited for this movie.
The readers of the PiercingMetal Musings blog know that we love the comic book medium here on the site and that is why we’ve been posting narratives about a number of comic book properties such as DC Comics’ own “The New 52” pieces. It will be interesting to see just how Batman returns to the mix after the actions in “The Dark Knight” and how he fares against the likes of The Catwoman (Ann Hathaway) and Bane (Tom Hardy). We’ve all seen the costumes that these villains will be sporting in advertisements and across the Internet and while I like the Catwoman suit, I will say that Bane is not too much in terms of design in my humble opinion. The film once again stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon.
Since I don’t think that I will be offering up a review before the film has been out for a few weeks based on ticket availability and my own time to see it, I’m going to leave the comments section closed on this little advertisement posting to avoid any spoilers that might accidentally happen and especially to prevent those who just love to ruin it for everyone else. Hope you all enjoy the film if you see it before me. Now…..to the Batmobile……
I’m going to assume that all of my readers are up to date on what Steel Panther is all about because I’ve written about them three times over the past two years and two of those times have been less than six months ago. This band clearly has a lot of love for NYC and I cannot blame them since they manage to sell out each and every performance that they do. That being said, the readers can enjoy my full on concert report by clicking the logo below. It will take you over to the core PiercingMetal website where such objective concert reporting is dished out. Of course we then want you to return here to scroll through a bunch of images that are only presented in this location. I think you will enjoy it this time around more than the others.
If there is one things that I love most about being a music scribe and photographer, it’s that you get the chance to meet a host of wonderful and talented people during your adventures and that is what brings me to this next particular event. Let me scroll back and reflect how during the 2011 Book Expo America we happened upon the Hermes Press booth and met their then publicist Chris Irving. As media outlets both Skeleton Pete and I kept in touch with Chris but as we often find happening in this business, Chris would move on to other pursuits and I would lose track of his adventuring for the time being. Then as luck would have it, while planning out some new events with Pete, he mentioned reading about this happening in Time Out magazine. Apparently Chris and a colleague had put out a book and would be having a discussion about the material at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in New York City.
Wow. “Screaming For Vengeance” is 30 years old today but before I touch upon this I want to ask you readers a question. Do you remember when you first heard Judas Priest? I know that I do, and while it was a few albums back before this one with “Unleashed In The East”, “Hell Bent For Leather” and “Stained Class” all being appreciated at the exact same time, it was still a band that I became an instant fan of when I heard them. I heard those albums at a band mates house but the first album that I ever owned by the band was 1980′s “British Steel“. If my memory still serves me correctly “Screaming For Vengeance” was the first Judas Priest album that I bought “with my own money”, meaning either having worked to earn it via chores of some kind. I know that I bought this at a long closed down shop called The Record Factory in Bay Ridge and that the first time that I saw it I said “WOW SO COOL” as I gazed upon the bright yellow cover and the imposing attack that The Hellion was in. Metal was on the attack and you saw this right in front of your eyes with the cover.
It might surprise you to learn that this is the biggest seller from the Judas Priest catalog, well, at least their Wikipedia entry says that about it. I know I was shocked because both “Breaking The Law” and “Living After Midnight” from their previous blockbuster “British Steel” were a lot more radio friendly than much of the fare found on “Screaming For Vengeance”. What I loved most about this particular album was that it was a kick ass Metal release. There were tunes on this one that grabbed you by the throat and you know that I am talking about the title track itself along with “Electric Eye” and even “Devil’s Child”. There was also a semi-ballad in “Take These Chains” and let’s not forget the show stopping “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”. To me, even in 2012 this is a kick your ass inside out album and even though Judas Priest has become all the more visible thanks to using “The Hellion” in a car commercial and their not too long ago appearance on American Idol they still manage to bring it. Of course these days they do it without one of their founding members as K.K. Downing officially left the group in 2011.
They’ve announced that a special edition of this album will be coming out in early September which is reported to have a bonus DVD and some additional live tracks. One has to assume that all of this pertains to the time of the albums release and I will surely be doing a review of it once I get my hands on a copy. Back in 2006 I had reviewed the original remaster for the website and have pasted that article HERE for your reading pleasure. Even though at the point of this writing that you can only pre-order the upcoming edition, I pasted in that particular releases Amazon.com code.
Official Website: www,judaspriest.com
Official Album Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_for_Vengeance
So the other day at SDCC they announced some of the upcoming Marvel superhero films that will continue to expand upon their shared cinematic universe and I will say that I am all for them if they continue the excellence that we found in Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Incredible Hulk and The Avengers. I downloaded the logos for each of them and will speak a little bit about the offerings and what I personally hope we can expect.
(continue reading…)
The music world is humbly paused today as the sad news about the passing of the legendary Jon Lord started being circulated around the Internet. It’s without question that his name is synonymous with the term “Classic Rock” and thanks to the musical contributions that he made with his band mates in Deep Purple during their earliest years, had offered up as much inspiration as the likes of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Isn’t it amazing that such a man was not yet inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame while he was still able to enjoy the “honor”. Mr. Lord was born Jonathan “Jon” Douglas Lord back in 1941 and in addition to numerous releases with Purple also worked with Whitesnake and was a respected composer of classical material. Even though Lord had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he was still working on music but that would all end today when at aged 71 he would leave us.
Writing this brief memorial notation finds me recalling only ever seeing Deep Purple in concert once and this was during their “Perfect Strangers” tour. Despite this, I still have a considerable amount of Deep Purple in my music library collection and will be spinning quite a few of their most amazing tracks in Lord’s honor. There are keyboardists and there are keyboardists, but there was only one Jon Lord. He was the prime reason that so many Rock fans held the sound of the Hammond organ so valuable. Sit back and think on their music for a moment and you can almost hear it playing in your head at maximum volume. I know that I can that is for sure. Thank you Jon for giving us that unique sound that you did, you are forever in our musical hearts and memory. May you Rest in Peace.
Learn more about Jon’s illustrious career and life via his Wikipedia entry HERE.
And it would seem that the countdown continues so in some sense I guess that there should be a sigh of relief that we are not yet extinct at all but moving steadily along. Yeah we have the occasional mishap out there but I digress. So can you believe that it has been twenty years since Megadeth first released their “Countdown To Extinction” album? I know that it amazes me, but I will say that I really enjoyed this particular album myself.
Back when this album came out I was finding myself getting more into Megadeth as a Metal fan than I ever had been before. Yeah there were some moments on the debut and I liked the same songs that everyone liked on “Peace Sells” but there was not much that thrilled me on “So Far So Good So What”. It happens. It was not until “Rust In Peace” (1990) that I found them to be a band of preference to me and this was largely based on a friend who ran a radio show in the region and played them all the time. I was also very involved in a Metal band of my own and I reckon that Megadeth was “speaking” to me as a player even though I was a drummer and not a guitar slinger like Mustaine. At the end of the day I guess I was also just leaning more into this brand of Metal based on how it was put together. Faster, more aggressive and making a larger point with its lyrical content. This appreciation really continued to brew when the band delivered “Countdown To Extinction”. I found “Skin O’ My Teeth” to be an energetic tune and “Symphony Of Destruction” would become a live staple that always set the audience off. The views in “Foreclosure Of A Dream” were slightly ahead of their time and when listened to today are speaking volumes about the way we live. This was a powerful album for sure and one who’s message was rather bleak about some societal ills that we find ourselves facing. The playing was also top drawer from Mustaine who had Marty Friedman, Dave Ellefson and Nick Menza as a part of the band at this time.
Congratulations Dave on a great milestone. Perhaps we shall find you touring for this album in full like you did with “Peace Sells” and “Rust In Peace” a few years ago. If so, I hope to be able to catch one of the shows……
Official Website: www.megadeth.com
Here is a link to the original remaster of the album. Whenever the decision is made to offer up some kind of special edition I will just add it to the links that you see below. It’s an easy fix for sure.
