Foo Fighters have announced a trio of U.S. headlining shows.
The newly added dates include stops in Gilford, New Hampshire, on May 24; Rogers, Arkansas, on June 14; and Pelham, Alabama, on June 16.
Tickets go on sale Friday, March 3, at 10 a.m. local time. For all ticket info, visit FooFighters.com.
The concerts mark the first headlining Foo Fighters shows of 2023, joining previously announced festival sets at Bonnaroo, Boston Calling and others. Dave Grohl and company are making their live comeback this year following the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins last March.
The Alarm is back and ready to release new music. The band is set to drop the new album Forwards on June 2, and they’ve just dropped the title track.
The album comes after a year of frontman Mike Peters dealing with some major health issues, including a battle with pneumonia and a relapse of his leukemia.
“I literally took my guitar into [the] hospital with me,” Peters shares. “I was on the ward for such a long time, I started writing these songs in between IV sessions and the first people to hear the music were the very people who were trying to keep me alive.”
The result is 10 new life affirming songs. “I’ve been to places only deep suffering can take the human spirit and, in the darkness, I clung onto every piece of light I could find to work my way back to life,” Peters shares. “This was the energy that drove me to write and record Forwards.”
The album will be released on both CD and vinyl, with two vinyl options available, a classic green and white star white vinyl edition, and a limited edition metallic green vinyl available only at independent record stores.
Here’s the track list for Forwards:
“Forwards”
“The Returning”
“Another Way”
“Love and Forgiveness”
“Next”
“Whatever”
“Transition”
“Love Disappearing”
“New Standards”
“X”
Let it be known that Metallica isn’t behind the times when it comes to social media.
The metal legends have taken to TikTok to tease a new song, presumably off their upcoming album, 72 Seasons. The clip features James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo jamming together remotely while inviting fans to join them.
Metallica previously used TikTok to share a mash-up of Hetfield jamming “Master of Puppets” alongside the famed scene in Stranger Things featuring the song.
72 Seasons will be released on April 14. It includes the previously released songs “Lux Æterna” and “Screaming Suicide.”
April 20 marks the 50th anniversary of David Bowie’s classic album Aladdin Sane. The Southbank Centre in London will be celebrating with a slew of events, including live performances and a monthlong exhibition dedicated to the album’s iconic artwork.
The artwork exhibition is set to run from April 6 to May 28. It was curated by Chris Duffy, the son of photographer Brian Duffy, who shot the cover, and Geoff Marsh.
“My father’s image of Bowie is often called the Mona Lisa of Pop,” Chris shares. “It’s extraordinary how it’s lasted and been endlessly reworked. Wherever I go in the world, it’s always somewhere on a t-shirt.”
The celebration will also include a tribute concert to Aladdin Sane on April 21 at the Royal Festival Hall, featuring Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears, Mercury Prize nominee Anna Calvi and others performing the album in full.
Other planned events include a free display celebrating Bowie’s history with the Southbank Centre, dance parties, talks and poetry events.
A full list of Aladdin Sane events, plus ticket information, can be found at southbankcentre.co.uk.
News of the Aladdin Sane celebrations comes just days after it was revealed that 80,000 objects from Bowie’s archives have been acquired by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the largest donation in the museum’s history. The archive will eventually be housed in the V&A’s new site at East London’s Olympic Park, in The David Bowie Centre for the Study of Performing Arts. It is expected to open in 2025.
The Beale Street Music Festival returns to Memphis, Tennessee, in May and has nabbed quite a lineup.
The festival, taking place May 5 to 7 at Tom Lee Park, features headliners Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, along with Living Colour, Gov’t Mule, Earth, Wind & Fire, Ziggy Marley and more.
Also headlining the three-day fest are The Lumineers and Greta Van Fleet, with the lineup also featuring The Roots, Live, Gary Clark Jr., Lucinda Williams and 311.
For the full lineup and all ticket info, visit MemphisinMay.org.
An exhibition of Linda McCartney’s 30-year photography career just opened in Tucson, Arizona. The Linda McCartney Retrospective, co-curated by Paul and Mary McCartney and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, has been traveling the globe since 2013, but this is its first stop in North America.
As part of the exhibit, CCP students got to ask Sir Paul some questions about Linda’s work, including what parts of her photography most excited her.
McCartney notes that she was “excited about all her photography, because it was her life,” sharing that when she started out her photography was focused on the music scene, but then shifted to “family life with the kids, horses, countryside and landscapes.”
He notes, “Whatever situation she was in she would use it for her art, and her craft naturally developed that way.”
McCartney also shared whether or not his and Linda’s creative partnership extended to photography. “I was very into photography, so I could relate to what she was doing. But I knew she was better,” he says. “There was never any question of that. I admired her skills, and we could talk about photography.”
David Byrne is the latest artist to be added to next month’s Oscars telecast. Byrne will be joined by music trio Son Lux and Oscar-nominated actress Stephanie Hsu for a performance of the Best Original Song nominee “This Is A Life” from the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once.
The artists join previously announced Oscar performers Rihanna, who’ll be on hand to perform her nominated track “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Diane Warren and Sofia Carson, who’ll perform “Applause” from the movie Tell It like a Woman.
Other songs nominated in the category include “Hold My Hand,” written by Lady Gaga for Top Gun: Maverick, and “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian film RRR.
Byrne was previously nominated and won a Best Original Score Oscar in 1987 for his collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and CongSu on Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.
The 95th annual Academy Awards, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, air March 12 on ABC.
Roger Waters‘ concert schedule just got a little lighter. The Jerusalem Post reports the Pink Floyd member’s May 28 show in Frankfurt, Germany, has been canceled by the local city council.
The city council’s reason for canceling the show mentions Waters allegedly being “one of the world’s most well-known antisemites,” pointing out his use of an inflatable pig with a Star of David on it at one of his shows. They also noted his support for boycotting Israel.
In making their announcement, the city council noted that the venue where the show was to be held, the “Festhalle” complex, was also a place where 2,000 Jewish men were held in November 1938 before being beaten and sent to concentration camps. The municipality owns 60 percent of the venue, so they had the power to cancel the show.
Waters has not addressed the cancelation directly, although he did comment on a Twitter post by RamzyBaroud that argued Waters was not an antisemite, noting, “Thanks Ramzy! You tell’ em my brother.”
Sir Rod Stewart surprised patients waiting for their MRI scans at a British hospital by taking care of the bill. The money not only helped pay for their visit, it also allowed the hospital to provide faster service.
The Guardian reports Stewart donated funds that covered a full day of scans at Princess Alexandra hospital in Essex, England.
As previously reported, the singer was inspired to cover patients’ scans last month. He told Sky News it was ridiculous people had to wait in long lines for the procedure.
“I had just come from my scan in a private clinic near Harley Street,” he said. “I walked in and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, I’m half an hour late.’ They said, ‘Don’t worry, there’s hardly anybody in here today.'”
“There were eight people with hardly anything to do. Then I thought this is a terrible injustice, so here we are,” he added.
A hospital representative said the singer’s donation reduced the waiting list by about 10 percent.
When making good on his word, Stewart joked he wanted to “prove I’m not all mouth and trousers.”
Stewart now wants to help pay for MRI scans at other hospitals and hopes to inspire more people with the means to help others. “If this is a big success, which I think it will be, I’d like to do it in Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, and just keep it going and hope some other people follow me,” he said.
The singer also rallied for nurses to be paid more.
“There must be enough money in the coffers to pay up for these nurses – only two years ago we were clapping and now … Bless them, they work so hard, salt of the earth,” Stewart said.
A new documentary is coming out that focuses on John Lennon’s 18-month relationship with his personal assistant during a brief split from Yoko Ono in the early ’70s.
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story is May Pang’s account of that relationship. Pang, now 72, was just 19 when she got a job working at Apple Records, which eventually led to her becoming Lennon and Ono’s personal assistant.
In a new trailer for the film, archival footage shows Pang explaining how it was Ono who suggested the relationship with Lennon in the first place.
“Yoko walked into my office and said, ‘John and I are not getting along. I want you to go out with him,'” she says. “‘Well are you kidding? I can’t do that, he’s my employer, he’s my boss. He’s your husband.'” Eventually, Pang moved in with Lennon in New York, noting she “was 23 and my first boyfriend was John Lennon.”
Their relationship lasted 18 months and was referred to as Lennon’s “lost weekend.” It ended in February 1975, when Ono decided to return to Lennon.
“[Ono] did not realize it was going to turn into such a big love affair,” Pang says. “She thought it would be two weeks, gone, goodbye. She told me, ‘I’m thinking of taking John back.’ And I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘I think it’s time.'”
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story hits theaters April 13.
