Rock Music

“Chet was there virtually from the beginning and remained throughout Rolling Stone‘s golden years,” said Jann Wenner, the magazine’s founding editor and publisher who remains head of its parent company, Wenner Media. “Chet was very much inside the Rolling Stone family at that time, and was well-loved by several writers and editors.” One of those was Paul Scanlon, who was Flippo’s managing editor. Scanlon said that while Flippo was a versatile music writer, he was most passionate about country music’s convergence with rock. “He was the only person paying attention to county at first,” said Scanlon. “His first cover story was on (Texas country-rocker) Doug Sahm, and in 1973, he wrote a story called Country Music: The Rock and Roll Influence.‘” Mark Kemp, “Famed music journalist Chet Flippo, 69, dies” (The Tennessean) There’s a great recent picture of Chet here, links to some other tributes here. Also, an interesting 1976 piece on Dolly Parton from the archives.

Dr. Dog, Blues Traveler, and Greensky Bluegrass will be headlining the inaugural Audiotree Music Festival in Kalamazoo, MI on August 31. Music website, Audiotree, announced its festival’s lineup this afternoon, :promising a day full of music by 15 favorite lo...

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion have announced an extensive North American tour in support of their forthcoming album, Wassaic Way. The album is set to be released on August 6, and the duo will preview songs at a Housing Works Bookstore benefit show with Dawe...

Blondie have announced their No Principals Tour, which will make stops throughout the U.S. this fall. The tour will kick off September 5 in Hampton Beach, NH and will make stops in the Northeast, Midwest, West Coast and southern U.S. before coming to a close at Rosela...

www.metal-rules.com Legendary U.S. band KISS started its long awaited European leg of the Monster tour in Friends Arena, Stockholm on 1’st of June. The band introduced in front of 30 000 fans, its new spectacular stage set called the “Spider”. Two days later, KISS landed in Finland and played a sold out show in the Hartwall Arena. I met the band’s drummer, Eric Singer, the day after the gig at the hotel in Helsinki. Eric was really excited about the new tour and because of his very good mood we then had a long conversation about the Monster tour, the Spider, KISS fan-dom, the future of KISS, and various other topics. Read on! NEW STAGE SHOW Marko: First of all Eric, I have to say that the new Spider stage is amazing! Eric Singer: It’s going to get better. We are still working it out and it will take more, like maybe about eight or nine shows, until it’s ready. Marko: So you are going to add more elements and parts on it? Eric Singer: You’ll see, yeah we are. We didn’t get to rehearse, we tried to rehearse with it and the stuff wasn’t working. So, on the first day we only played music. First show was first time we were doing this thing. We came in that day to practice the beginning. So, it will get better. Paul and Doc saw the stage when they had built it, because they designed it, Paul designed it, but I did not see it until we came to Stockholm, I only saw… I didn’t physically see it with my own eyes until we came. I saw the videos when Paul first came, he sent me video clips showing me how it looks, how some things moves and things like this. I saw just a video clip where he went to the place where they built it and the way they designed it. So, he went there and my drum tech, the tech, that production man, they all went there. I didn’t go. I only saw it when we got here. And then my drum tech, he told me, “Here is how it’s going to look, your drum riser is going to be this big.” Because the crew put this together with Paul, Paul designed and the crew built it and then they tell them what we need. Like my drum tech for example would say, “Eric’s drum set is going to be this many pieces. If it’s this big, we need this size of drum riser. Because originally they want to make it smaller, I said, “No, I need it big because I have more than like 3-4 toms.” I have a lot of drums, I’ve got seven tom tom’s, so.MONSTER TOUR AND SET LIST TALK Marko: The album MONSTER was released in October 2012 and you been doing a few tours after that. I was going to ask, why it took so long until you now introduced this new stage? Eric Singer: The reason why was this. We were going to do the tour of the MONSTER, when the album came out, and then the opportunity to go on tour with Motley Crue together as a co-headline bill came up, the offer. And Gene and Paul and Doc and Motley Crue guys, everyone decided like….They thought was a cool thing and a good idea, they said, “Okay, let’s do that.” So, they decided to call it The Tour and instead of doing a KISS Monster tour they decided to do a co- headline special tour together and said “We will do a proper Monster tour later. We will go to new stage and do it for that.” So, that’s the reason it happened. Marko: So, this current one is the actual Monster tour? Eric Singer: So, this is now the Monster tour because. Like said, we did the Motley Crue thing. And then they asked us to go down to Australia with Motley Crue again, they wanted us to do I think more days here, but Motley Crue really decided they want to go do Canada. We came over here to do this instead and then will go to Canada. So, now was the time. Then they said, “Okay, now will go to new stage with new Monster tour.” And now it’s the Monster tour. Marko: On new set list, there are only two songs included from MONSTER. Isn’t this tour purpose to promote the new album? Eric Singer: Why, how many do you want? Marko: I would like to hear something like four to five new songs? Eric Sin

James Gandolfini and Diane Lane as producer/director Craig Gilbert and Pat Loud, promotional still from the film “Cinema Verite`“ R.I.P. James Gandolfini, popular, revered actor and Soprano. My fave of his roles remains the portrayal of producer/director Craig Gilbert in “Cinema Verite,`” termed by the Wall Street Journal “…the real gift beyond price here.” First his character reveled in the creative/competitive/pushy streak essential for any commercial artist, particularly a ground-breaking one (documentarian Gilbert invented reality tv with PBS’ 1973 series “An American Family” with the Loud clan.) Then Gandolfini drifts into the eventual angst for his role in a sea-change of pop culture that proved as destructive for its subjects as it was informative about them. You believed this was the man who, haunted like Oppenheimer over the terrible power he’d unleashed, did not work in the business again. Taken from this post:R.I.P. JAMES GANDOLFINI

Photo Source: Ross HalfinHere's a photo of Gene Simmons taken by Ross Halfin at Mediolanum Forum in Milan, Italy on Tuesday, June 18, 2013.See larger image HERE.Photo Source: Ross Halfin www.facebook.com/rosshalfinofficial

0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US; I DON’T WANT to tell you where. It seems too private. Not that I have all that much to tell, only what I saw. Midafternoon, a warm sun, the wind whipping off the nearby ocean so blustery and fresh I am almost cold and warm at once. And there I am … running through a graveyard on the south coast of NSW. The cliffs fall away and the water heaves. As far as the eye can see, north or south, the coastline stretches into a salty mist until it disappears. I’m plugged in to Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way on my iPhone. I’ve had this record for years, but this is the first time I have really listened to it, and it’s astounding. The way Davis plays: as if he is not quite in the music but above it, a great bird flying over a cool landscape. It’s the first track, Shh/Peaceful, that sucks me in – time 17:58, what would have been all of side one in the days of black vinyl. Oh, the pleasures of headphones and hi-tech mobility when it comes to our listening experience today. Hearing it makes me feel as if I, too, could fly, just like Davis’s shining trumpet, serene and above it all. I’ve come south and separated myself from home and family for a few weeks to work on a book project, a biography of another musician as it happens, Australian singer and songwriter Nick Cave. Back where I’ve come from in Sydney, there’s a tribute concert built around Cave’s many great songs, with some fine artists performing, but I have an inkling Nicholas Edward Cave has already moved on from all that is being celebrated. Last year, when we met, Cave spoke of Davis’s On the Corner (1972), arguably the jazz master’s most forward-looking, street-wise and darkly funky work. I can see how the fusions, fury and fun Davis was having at the turn of the 1970s – when the trumpeter began accelerating across the divide between jazz and rock ‘n’ roll, progressing from acoustic formations into electronic grooves, Afro-beats and Stockhausen-inspired cut-ups – has more recently informed Cave’s sonic palette with his prog-rock blues band Grinderman. Art is a hall of mirrors: connections, ambitions, echoes, heroes and their struggles. As Cave’s biographer-to-be I am looking at not just his work but also everything that affects it: from Samuel Beckett’s novels to German expressionist art, from Davis to King Crimson and David Bowie. What I seek is more than a study of the influences; it’s the fuel that can lift me up to places where I don’t just know something, I feel it by dint of the force of those same influences on me. Of course I can get distracted and go in way too deep to be practical. And so it is that I end up exploring everything about how Davis electrified his sound, beginning with the crystal ambience of In a Silent Way (1969) and metastasising into Dark Magus (1974), a storming live show documenting what some perceived as the height of improvisory rock ‘n’ jazz madness. Somewhere in the middle of all that was the genre-defining fusion landmark, Bitches Brew (1970). And yet another dark spark, the September 18, 1970, death of Davis’s friend Jimi Hendrix, the guitarist with whom the trumpeter had been hanging out and jamming during the late 60s. I

Poll created by The.Crimson.King — Sometimes you have to dig deep to find treasure. These 70's American prog bands never really made it to the surface but toiled underground releasing at least one album in their brief attempts at prog stardom. In your comments, let us know how you discovered the bands you voted for! This is a multiple choice poll, so vote for all of these 70's American prog bands that you like.

Review by kenethlevine — After a series of half prog-pop albums throughout most of the 1980s, in which the quality of the side long prog track declined with each release, MIKE OLDFIELD dispensed with the requisite magnum opus on "Earth Moving", the single worst album of his career. As if in reaction, he followed this with a CD consisting of one 60 minute track, "Amarok" which many saw as a return to form. Mike even enlisted some old friends like PADDY MOLONEY of CHIEFTAINS fame, who had appeared on "Five Miles Out", and CLODAGH SIMMONDS ("Ommadawn"), to appease and convince long time fans that this was the real deal. Indeed, how could he miss the mark with so much going for him. But miss it he did, hugely. It's like his early classics were held together by ritalin and now we have the hyperactive adult re-imagining them the way they were meant to be. This is a slapdash goulash of deliberately undeveloped concepts that rarely impress even as much as the mediocre "Wind Chimes", its most recent predecessor at the time. It's intentionally schizophrenic, but rather than furnishing even virtual links it severs them. Even on the vividly disjointed "Taurus 2", there was rhyme and reason and yes, melody. This isn't entirely lost, but even in the MP3 era, it's too hard to extract the 8 or so outstanding minutes - mostly those with tribal rhythms as a cross between "Five Miles out"and "Ommadawn" without improving upon them in the slightest, from their murky milieu. This is like the "on the rebound" album, where the second relationship is only better because it is so different, and it couldn't have been worse anyway. True, but not by much.