Classic Rock 93.9

After 50 years together, Aerosmith is ready to start their long farewell to the road. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers will launch their Peace Out final tour on Saturday, September 2, at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, featuring special guests The Black Crowes.

“It’s not goodbye it’s PEACE OUT!” the band shared when they announced the tour. “Get ready and walk this way, you’re going to get the best show of our lives.”

Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton and Brad Whitford are all on board for the trek, although drummer Joey Kramer is sitting this one out “to focus his full attention on his family and health.” The band noted, “Joey’s unmistakable and legendary presence behind the drum kit will be sorely missed.”

And it certainly sounds like Aerosmith is going all out for this one. They shared on Instagram that the tour is their biggest production ever and needs “133 person crew, 22 semi trucks, 158 rigging points, 10 tour busses.” It will also consist of “over 600 lights, 67 guitars, 10 basses, 5 scarves and 4 legends of rock.”

The tour is Aerosmith’s first full-scale trek since the 2017-18 Aero-Vederci Baby! Tour. In 2019 they debuted their Deuces Are Wild residency, with dates in Las Vegas, Maryland and Massachusetts. It lasted until September 2022, with dates scheduled for December of that year canceled when Tyler went to rehab.

As of now, the Peace Out tour is set to run until January 26 in Montreal, Canada. The tour also includes a very special New Year’s Eve show in the band’s home city of Boston, Massachusetts. A complete list of dates can be found at aerosmith.com.

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Foo Fighters have reached a new Billboard chart milestone with their latest single, “Under You.”

The track has hit #8 on the Alternative Airplay ranking, giving Dave Grohl and company a total of 30 top-10 hits on the tally. Not only does that extend the Foos record for the most Alternative Airplay top 10s, it also makes them the first act in the chart’s 35-year history to have 30 singles reach the top 10.

Red Hot Chili Peppers are in second place, with 28.

“Under You” appears on the new Foo Fighters album, But Here We Are, their first record since the 2022 death of drummer Taylor Hawkins. They’ve been touring over the spring and summer playing one-off festival and headlining shows with new drummer Josh Freese.

The next Foo Fighters show takes place September 3 in Aspen, Colorado.

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Paul McCartney will launch a new leg of his Got Back tour in Australia in October, which means a lot of traveling for the two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. And he has some specific ways he likes to pass the time.

In a new Q&A posted to his website, McCartney was asked how he keeps himself busy while traveling on a plane, with the fan wondering if he has hobbies like “reading, watching TV, or knitting…?” McCartney says he’s not a knitter, although he notes, “I imagine that would be quite cool, actually … it must be a great release of tension.”

“But I watch movies,” he says. “So when I travel from London to New York, its [sic] normally a seven-hour journey so I end up watching about three movies, and in the middle of it all I try and have a meal.”

For long car rides, McCartney says he’ll watch movies or TV shows on his iPad, revealing, “I’m currently on Better Call Saul and it’s a good one.”  

One thing he doesn’t do is read, leaving that instead for just before he goes to bed. “I try to read biographies, which can be a little bit dry,” he says. “After a few pages you start you yawn, the page goes fuzzy, so it’s light off and straight to sleep. I like that!” 

Paul McCartney’s Got Back tour kicks off October 18 in Adelaide, Australia. He’s also announced dates in Brazil and Mexico City. A complete list of dates can be found at paulmccartney.com.

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Aerosmith‘s hits are still popular with fans. The band’s recent Greatest Hits compilation tops the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart this week.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers moved 19,000 equivalent album units, 10,000 of which were from album sales, to land at #1. It’s their second chart-topper on the Rock Albums chart following 2012’s Music From Another Dimension, which was their last album of original songs.

Greatest Hits also lands at #4 on the Top Rock Albums chart and #7 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart. It’s at #36 on the all genre Billboard 200 chart, their 31st album on that chart.

But this isn’t the first time Aerosmith has released a greatest hits package. In 1980 Columbia released Aerosmith’s Greatest Hits, which was then reissued in 1997 with hits they accumulated through 1988. They also released Big Ones in 1994, O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits in 2002 and Devil’s Got A New Disguise: The Very Best of Aerosmith in 2006.

The latest Greatest Hits album was released ahead of Aerosmith’s Peace Out tour, which will be their goodbye to the road. It launches Saturday, September 2, in Philadelphia. A complete list of dates can be found at aerosmith.com.

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The effect artificial intelligence will have on music has been the subject of hot debate, and Queen’s Brian May has shared his thoughts on the subject.

“I think a lot of great stuff will come from AI, because it is going to increase the powers of humans to solve problems,” May shares in an interview with Guitar Player. But he says, “[M]y major concern with it now is in the artistic area. I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans.”

He continues, “I think we might look back on 2023 as the last year when humans really dominated the music scene. … It makes me feel apprehensive, and I’m preparing to feel sad about this.”

May shares that he’s worried about “the potential for AI to cause evil” in all areas, not just music.

“I think the whole thing is massively scary. It’s much more far-reaching than anybody realized — well, certainly than I realized,” he says.

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U2’s Bono has huge FOMO, according to Noel Gallagher. The Oasis rocker revealed the fun tidbit during an interview discussing his first meeting with Bruce Springsteen. 

Gallagher tells Sunday World’s Shuffle feature that his meeting with Springsteen happened by chance when they bumped into each other in Ibiza, Spain. Noel called Springsteen an “amazing guy” and recalled the fun time he had lunching with The Boss, his wife, Patti Scialfa, and others.

“We were sat at this long table, we’d had a few bottles of wine and there’s food everywhere and we took a selfie with each other and [Springsteen] said, ‘Should we ruin Bono’s day?’ And we sent him the selfie,” Gallagher shared, suggesting the U2 frontman “has got a crippling fear of missing out.”

“And his wife called me and said, ‘When you sent him that photograph he couldn’t handle the fact that you two were in Spain having the time of your life and he wasn’t there,'” he says.

But it was all in fun, as Gallagher called Bono “one of his dearest friends.”

“He gets a lot of flack, but I f***** love him,” Gallagher said.

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The Jimi Hendrix documentary Music, Money, Madness … Jimi Hendrix In Maui is getting a special screening in Los Angeles, with proceeds going to help the victims of the recent wildfires in Maui, Hawaii. 

The screening is happening September 20 at the TCL Chinese Theatre at 7 p.m. It will include a Q&A with the film’s producers: Janie Hendrix, Hendrix’s sister and Experience Hendrix CEO, and John McDermott, who also directed the film. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Maui Food Bank, Hawaii Community Foundation—Maui Strong Fund and Maui Humane Society. 

“Jimi loved Hawaii! His time there proved to be historic and really rather epic,” said Janie. “He was also a humanitarian in his own right, and very concerned about the human condition. This screening of the film of Jimi’s live concert in Maui is a profound opportunity for him to continue what he started there all those years ago, and at the same time help the people of Maui who have suffered such a tremendous loss.” 

Music, Money, Madness … Jimi Hendrix In Maui follows the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1970 visit to Maui and their participation in the critically panned counterculture film Rainbow Bridge, produced by their controversial manager Michael Jeffery.

Tickets for the special TCL Chinese Theatre screening are on sale now.

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Fleetwood Mac has released another track off their upcoming Rumours Live double album, which drops September 8.

The latest is a live version of their classic “Go Your Own Way,” written by Lindsey Buckingham. The original was the lead single from 1977’s Rumours and became the band’s first top 10 hit. This is the third track they’ve released from Rumuors Live, following live versions of “Dreams” and “Say You Love Me.”

Rumours Live features performances from the band’s August 29, 1977, concert at the Forum in Los Angeles. The 90-minute concert was the opening night of a three-night stand, where the band performed live versions of “You Make Loving Fun,” “Songbird” and “The Chain,” as well as “Landslide,” “Rhiannon” and others from 1975’s Fleetwood Mac.

Rumors Live is available for preorder now.

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On This Day, August 31, 1945 …

George Ivan Morrison aka the legendary singer Van Morrison was born in Belfast, Ireland.

Morrison started his career in the mid-1960s as leader of the band Them, which broke up in 1966. He went on to have a hugely successful solo career: He released his debut solo album, Blowin’ Your Mind, in 1967, featuring the track “Brown Eyed Girl,” which was a top 10 hit and went on to become his signature tune.

In 1968 Morrison released the critically acclaimed album Astral Weeks, which some consider the best album of all time. That was followed by Moondance, which was his first million-selling record, with the title track and “Into The Mystic” becoming Morrison classics.

Morrison has released over 40 albums and continues to tour to this day. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. He was also made a knight in 2016.

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Thanks to two full moons in August, Peter Gabriel has released his second new single this month. The latest is “Love Can Heal,” the ninth track he’s released from his upcoming album, i/o, which still doesn’t have a release date.  

Gabriel describes the track as “a dreamy, experiential piece with some abstract imagery,” adding it’s “a carpet of sound, a tapestry where things are woven together, but not necessarily supposed to stick out, but just form part of a whole.”  

Gabriel shares, “I think the song fits right in to the themes of the album in the sense that i/o is about feeling and being connected to everything and in a way, the next evolution of being connected to things is a feeling of love for everything.” 

As he’s done with all the other songs he’s released from i/o, Gabriel plans to release several different remixes. The first release is Mark “Spike” Stent‘s Bright-Side Mix, which will be followed in mid-September by the Tchad Blake (Dark-Side Mix) and Hans-Martin Buff’s Atmos mix (In-Side Mix).

Gabriel is due to kick off the North American leg of his i/o tour on September 8 in Quebec, Canada. It hits the U.S. on September 14 in Boston. A complete list of dates can be found at petergabriel.com.

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