Alice in Chains guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell has announced two new signature guitars in partnership with Epiphone.
The newly launched instruments include the Jerry Cantrell “Wino” Les Paul Custom and the Les Paul Custom Prophecy. The Wino is inspired by Cantrell’s own beloved Les Paul, while the Prophecy is described as a “modern collaboration.”
Cantrell previously released a signature Wino Les Paul with Epiphone’s parent company, Gibson. He joined Gibson as an official brand ambassador in 2020.
You can see Cantrell play a variety of guitars on his current tour in support of his new solo album, Brighten, which continues Wednesday in Sacramento, California.
Billy Corgan has a word for people criticizing his voice. Or, rather, a finger representing two words.
In a recent Instagram post, the Smashing Pumpkins frontman shared a picture of himself onstage while raising his middle finger. Text across the image reads, “To the conspiracists about the state of my voice.”
While it’s unclear exactly who or what inspired Corgan’s ire, Pumpkins fans on Reddit theorize Corgan was responding to comments on his recent vocal performance of the song “X.Y.U.” during last weekend’s Beale Street festival, which featured some pretty intense screaming.
However, a quick perusal of the comments on the performance seem to be in favor of the screaming — perhaps Corgan’s middle finger was more of a triumphant eff-you to doubters rather than an angry one.
To hear Corgan’s voice in person, you can catch the Pumpkins’ ongoing Rock Invasion 2 tour, which finally kicked off this week after a two-year pandemic delay.
After revealing last Thursday that Ozzy had contracted the virus, his wife Sharon told the U.K.’s The Talk Monday that she and their daughter, Kelly, have since tested positive, too. Sharon, who’d been in the U.K. when Ozzy was diagnosed, traveled back to Los Angeles to help care for husband.
“The entire household has it now,” Sharon said.
Sharon adds that she “feel[s] OK,” and generally seems to be in much brighter spirits than when she announced Ozzy’s diagnosis through tears last week. She also shares that Ozzy is “doing much better.”
“His temperature is now back to normal, his coughing has stopped,” Sharon said.
Sharon previously tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2020, and was briefly hospitalized.
Graham Nash‘s long-awaited live album showcasing a series of special concerts he played in September 2019 during which he performed his first two solo album — 1971’s Songs for Beginners and 1974’s Wild Tales — in their entirety, finally will be released this Friday, May 6.
Graham Nash: Live — Songs for Beginners/Wild Tales features renditions of every tune from Nash’s two studio efforts, including the 1971 hit “Chicago/We Can Change the World,” and gems like “Military Madness,” “Simple Man,” “Prison Song” and “Oh! Camil.”
The full-albums concerts, which took place at four venues in the northeastern U.S., featured Nash performing with his two regular backing musicians — guitarist Shane Fontayne and keyboardist Todd Caldwell — plus a drummer, a bassist, a pedal-steel guitarist and two female backup singers.
Reflecting on why the Songs for Beginners and Wild Tales albums were so popular with fans, Nash says, “I think it’s that intimacy and that immediacy of my emotions.”
He also laments that some of the topical songs he wrote during the ’70s remain relevant today.
“We’re supposed to learn from history and it doesn’t appear as if we’re learning much,” he maintains. “Songs like ‘Military Madness’…is that not relevant today? The hope that we can change the world, isn’t that still relevant today? I’m very flattered that my music seems to have lasted this long, but I’m also a little upset that we have to keep singing a song like ‘Military Madness’ right up to the present. Enough already!”
Graham Nash: Live, which can be pre-ordered now, is available on CD, as a two-LP set and via digital formats.
Here’s the live album’s full track list:
“Military Madness”
“Better Days”
“Wounded Bird”
“I Used to Be a King”
“Be Yourself”
“Simple Man”
“Man in the Mirror”
“There’s Only One”
“Sleep Song”
“Chicago”/”We Can Change the World”
“Wild Tales”
“Hey You (Looking at the Moon)”
“Prison Song”
“You’ll Never Be the Same”
“And So It Goes”
“Grave Concern”
“Oh! Camil”
“I Miss You”
“On the Line”
“Another Sleep Song”
The 2021 documentary The Beatles and India, a film that explores the impact of the South Asian country and its culture on The Beatles‘ lives and music, as well as how the Fab Four helped introduce Indian music to the world, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on June 21.
The Beatles and India was co-directed by Ajoy Bose, author of the book Across the Universe — The Beatles in India, which served as the inspiration for the movie. The film includes rare archival footage, recordings and photographs; expert commentary; eyewitness accounts; and new segments filmed across India.
According to the film’s official website, the documentary “is the first serious exploration of how India shaped the development of the greatest-ever rock band and their own pioneering role bridging two vastly different cultures across the universe.”
The Beatles’ interest in Indian music was sparked after guitarist George Harrison bought a sitar and began to take lessons from Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar. The band first featured sitar on their classic 1965 tune “Norwegian Wood,” and Indian influences were subsequently included on such songs as “Tomorrow Never Knows,” “Love You To,” “Within You Without You” and “The Inner Light.”
The Beatles and India also looks at the band’s 1968 trip to Transcendental Meditation guru the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi‘s ashram in Rishikesh, during which many of the songs that appeared on The White Album were written.
You can pre-order the DVD and Blu-ray versions of The Beatles and India now at MVDShop.com.
Former Blue Öyster Cult bassist Joe Bouchard has released a new single titled “My Way Is the Highway” that’s an advance track from his forthcoming solo album, American Rocker.
The song is available now as a digital download and via streaming services, while a companion music video has premiered on the Deko Entertainment label’s official YouTube channel.
“The song ‘My Way Is the Highway’ is a dream of tour destinations while cruising down the coast as the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean,” Joe explains. “It is powered by the drums of Mickey Curry, and cementing the groove is brother Albert on his iconic cowbell — the original ‘more-cowbell man’! This song makes you want to put the pedal to the metal while you dance to the rocking music of the 70s.”
Curry is best known as Bryan Adams‘ longtime drummer, and he’s also worked with many other famous artists, including Daryl Hall, Cher, Tina Turner, Alice Cooper and The Cult. Albert Bouchard was Blue Öyster Cult’s original drummer, and he and Joe have collaborated on many projects together, including their band Blue Coupe with original Alice Cooper bassist Dennis Dunaway.
American Rocker is an 11-track collection that will be released on June 3. CD copies of the album can be pre-ordered now at Merchbucket.com. Also available are special bundles pairing the CD with a t-shirt and an autographed booklet.
Joe’s upcoming concert schedule includes a July 16 show with Blue Coupe in Sacketts Harbor, New York, and a U.K. tour in August with Albert performing as The Bouchard Brothers.
Here’s American Rocker‘s full track list:
“My Way Is the Highway”
“In the Golden Age”
“Deadly Kisses”
“Love Out of Thin Air”
“Off Season Hotel”
“Hounds of Hell”
“Conspiracy”
“Rocket to Fame”
“The Devil’s in the Details”
“Katherine”
“Hey There Suzi Dear”
Ozzy Osbourne is “on the mend” amid his bout with COVID-19.
That’s according to his son, Jack, who tweeted a video of the metal legend on a FaceTime call with his wife, Sharon Osbourne. On the call, Ozzy seems much more concerned with Sharon pointing the camera at their Pomeranian Rocky than he is with talking about his health.
In the clip’s caption, Jack wrote, “Dad is on the mend and back to FaceTiming the dogs” alongside a face-palm emoji.
Jack added, “Thank you for all the love & support!”
Sharon revealed last Thursday that Ozzy, 73, had tested positive for COVID-19. She said that while she’s “very worried” about her husband, he was doing “OK.”
Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Welcome to country music, Axl Rose.
The Guns N’ Roses frontman made a surprise appearance at the Stagecoach country festival in Indio, California, over the weekend. He joined Carrie Underwood for renditions of the GN’R classics “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
In an Instagram post, Underwood shared a batch of photos from the onstage collaboration alongside the caption, “Best. Night. Of. My. Life!!!”
“I am still freaking out!!!” Underwood added. “Thank you, Axl, for making this lifelong dream come true!!!You rocked that @stagecoach stage harder than anyone has ever rocked it before!”
Unfortunately Rose didn’t stick around for Underwood’s set-closing performance of “Before He Cheats,” if only so we could hear him sing the line, “I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights.”
Maybe Underwood can return to the favor when Guns N’ Roses headline the Welcome to Rockville festival, taking place May 19-22 in Daytona Beach, Florida.
In September 2020, Todd Rundgren announced that he would be releasing a new album titled Space Force in early 2021 featuring collaborations with an eclectic variety of artists, similar to his most recent studio effort, 2017’s White Knight.
However, Space Force has yet to be released, and Rundgren recently admitted to ABC Audio that there was no “hard date” for the album’s arrival, even though the project has “been done for a year.”
The 73-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer explained that the delay was due to supply chain issues involving vinyl, noting that his label, Cleopatra Records, “insists on putting out all formats at once.”
Rundgren added with a laugh, “[T]hey’re just waiting for Adele to stop hogging up all the vinyl [for her hit album 30], and then maybe we’ll have a release date.”
Todd has already released four advance tracks from Space Force — “Espionage,” featuring Iraqi-Canadian hip-hop artist Narcy; “Down with the Ship” with Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo; “Your Fandango” with eclectic sibling duo Sparks; and “Godiva Girl” with The Roots.
Rundgren revealed that other guest artists on Space Force include Cheap Trick‘s Rick Nielsen, Steve Vai, Thomas Dolby, Crowded House frontman Neil Finn, former King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew, and indie-rock group The Lemon Twigs.
Meanwhile, Todd has a busy upcoming U.S. tour schedule. From May 12 to May 22, he’ll be opening for Daryl Hall on a run of six concert. From May 24 to June 26, he’ll be taking part in a new series of dates on the “It Was Fifty Years Ago Today” Beatles tribute trek that also features Joey Molland, Denny Laine, Christopher Cross and Jason Scheff. Then, from June 30 to July 30, Rundgren will be hafining his own Unpredictable Tour.
A previously unreleased soundtrack album that Peter Gabriel recorded in 1981 for a short film called Undecurrents, by renowned British painter Graham Dean, will be included in a multimedia box set focusing on Dean’s work titled Strange Beauty that’s due out on June 30.
The Deluxe Edition of the Strange Beauty collection features a book of Dean’s artwork, a DVD boasting films and music videos that Graham directed, and cassette of the Undercurrents soundtrack, marking the recording’s first official release.
Limited to only 50 copies and priced at $600, the deluxe box set also comes with a certificate signed by Dean and two pieces of his artwork.
The Undercurrents is a 14-minute instrumental piece that Peter composed and recorded to accompany a short film Dean made for an exhibition of his work. The flick, which combines images and film footage that Dean then manipulated, also was shown at the time on a BBC arts television program called Riverside.
Graham recalls that Peter agreed to take part in the project in exchange for a painting, and the recording was done over the course of an all-night session.
The original multi-track tapes of the soundtrack were recently rediscovered by Gabriel’s Real World record label and the recording was newly remixed last year.
The DVD featured in the Strange Beauty box set includes the Undercurrents film, as well as music videos Dean shot in 1993 for two of Gabriel’s classic songs: “Solsbury Hill” and “In Your Eyes.” The disc also includes two other short films by Dean that feature music by Gabriel’s longtime guitarist David Rhodes.
