Steve Miller was the surprise guest at John Mayer’s solo show at New York’s Madison Square Garden Tuesday, October 3.
Fan-shot video posted to YouTube shows a seated Miller and Mayer performing Miller’s classic tune “The Joker” to a very enthusiastic audience.
Miller, who turns 80 on October 5, is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Joker album. In September, he released the box set J50: The Evolution of The Joker, which featured not only the original album but 27 previously unreleased recordings.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer will be hitting the road with the Steve Miller Band later this month, starting with a concert in Tucson, Arizona, on October 25. A complete list of dates can be found at stevemillerband.com.
Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett just launched his Genesis Revisited: Foxtrot at Fifty + Hackett Highlights tour in North America, which sees him playing Genesis’ 1972 classic album, Foxtrot,in its entirety, as well as some of his solo material.
The album is a big favorite among Genesis fans, and Hackett believes it’s because of one particular song, though he says some “call it indulgent”: the over 20-minute classic “Supper’s Ready.”
“Somebody I was talking to earlier said it was like a suite of pieces all put together and more classical music in that sense,” he tells ABC Audio. “It’s a little bit like a mini musical.”
When performing the tune, Hackett says he doesn’t get too creative although he does like to “branch away and go off” at times, which can be an issue.
He jokes, “Sometimes that 23 minute song can end up being 25 minutes long and the band are all hoping that the guitarist, i.e. me, is going to finish his guitar solo soon so that they can all go home for supper themselves.”
In the end, Hackett says he does his best to perform authentic versions of both Genesis songs and his own solo material so fans will be able to recognize the tracks they love. He compared his approach to the Queen stage musical, We Will Rock You.
He explains, “We know on stage it’s not the same people, but the power of the music and the fact that it’s authentically done, that’s important.”
Hackett’s Genesis Revisited: Foxtrot at Fifty + Hackett Highlightstour hits Toronto, Canada, on October 5, with the first U.S. show happening October 6 in Ithaca, New York. A complete list of dates can be found at hackettsongs.com.
Bret Michaels recently had a cancer scare, but it didn’t keep him from rocking. In an Instagram post, the Poison frontman showed off a scar on his hip from a biopsy he had done Friday.
“Just knowing that I absolutely love the outdoors & the sun but with the recent passing of my friend Jimmy Buffett, I decided it was time for a more recent check up of something I thought was nothing,” he writes. “Turns out, it was something.” Buffett passed away September 1 after a four-year battle with Merkel cell skin cancer.
Michaels says his own procedure “not only may have saved my life but surely extended it,” adding he’s “not completely out of the woods yet.”
He concludes the post by encouraging his followers, especially those who love the outdoors, to get themselves checked out. “You are never out of the fight until the fight is out of you…Remain unbroken, my friends!” he notes.
Michael’s procedure hasn’t slowed him down. Not long after the biopsy, he took the stage in Houston, Texas. His next show is happening October 13 in Corbin, Kentucky. A complete list of dates can be found at bretmichaels.com.
Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters is set to promote the release of his upcoming album, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, with live shows at The London Palladium October 8 and 9, and he’s giving fans a preview of what to expect.
The rocker has shared some clips from rehearsals on Instagram, including footage of him performing “Us and Them” and “Money.” There’s also a clip of Waters giving his band some direction, and he appears to be pleased.
“Sounds great,” he says. “You guys have done a lot of proper homework.”
The Dark Side of the Moon Redux isWaters’ reimagining of Pink Floyd’s classic 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. It drops October 6 and is available for preorder now. Anyone who presaves the release on Spotify or Apple Music will be entered into a sweepstakes to win a signed test pressing of the album.
ZZ Top‘s Billy F. Gibbons, Heart‘s Nancy Wilson and The Black Crowes‘ Chris Robinson are among the guests featured on the upcoming second season of Power Hour, AXS TV’s rock-themed news and interview show.
Others set to appear include Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich, Foo Fighters‘ Chris Shiflett, Green Day, Guns N’ Roses‘ Duff McKagan, Iron Maiden‘s Bruce Dickinson and Wolfgang Van Halen, as well as members of Blondie, Sex Pistols, Megadeth and more.
“The lineup of Rock & Roll legends we have for Season 2 of the Power Hour is comprised of some of the biggest names in music history,” says Power Hour co-host Matt Pinfield. “Many of these artists I have known for years and consider friends, but being able to have them join the show with [co-hosts] Josh [Bernstein] and Caity [Babs] is a new career highlight for me. We’re just as excited to turn viewers on to all of the new bands we’ve been discovering and premiering, who are the future of Rock music.”
Season 2 of Power Hour premieres Thursday, October 5, at 11 p.m. ET.
Little Feet is set to reissue 2004’s Little Feat: Highwire Act In St. Louis on November 3.
Originally released on DVD, the concert will now come out as a Blu-ray/two-CD set, the first time it’s been available on Blu-ray and the first time it’s been packaged with the audio CD. It will also get its first-ever digital release.
Filmed in 2003, Little Feat: Highwire Act In St. Louis was a concert that celebrated the band’s more than 30-year career. The release includes the full show, with performances of songs like “Dixie Chicken,” “Willin’,” “Oh, Atlanta,” “Time Loves A Hero,” “Fat Man In The Bathtub” and more.
It also includes Little Feat Close Up In St. Louis, an 11-minute documentary that has band members reflecting on the history of Little Feet.
The streaming platform Veeps has announced a new subscription service dubbed All Access.
Subscribers will have on-demand access to a library of concerts from artists including Aerosmith, Alanis Morissette, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, The Cure, Def Leppard, Grateful Dead, Metallica, The Rolling Stones, Sheryl Crow, Sting, The Smashing Pumpkins and The Who.
“We started Veeps for artists and their fans. For the people that love music and the ones that create it,” says GoodCharlotte’s Joel Madden, who is Veeps’ co-founder and CEO. “As music fans have become used to having concerts and live performances available in the same way they consume sports and movies, it was obvious that we needed to create a model that wasn’t limited to pay-per-view.”
Subscriptions cost $11.99 a month. You can also sign up for an annual pass for $120.
Steely Dan has announced the latest album in their vinyl reissue program. This time the band is set to release 1980’s Gaucho, marking the first time it’s been available on vinyl in 15 years.
Dropping December 1, the reissue has been remastered from a 1980 analog tape copy and will be released on 180 gram black vinyl, as well as a limited-edition premium 45 RPM version on Ultra High-Quality Vinyl.
Released November 21, 1980, Gaucho was Steely Dan’s seventh studio album and featured the top 10 hit “Hey Nineteen,” as well as “Babylon Sisters” and “Time Out of Mind.” The album earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year and won a trophy for Best Engineered Recording-Non Classical.
This will be the fifth Steely Dan record to get a vinyl reissue. The reissue program, which Donald Fagen has overseen, started with their 1972 debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, reissued in November 2022. It was then followed by 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, which dropped in May; 1974’s Pretzel Logic, which dropped in July; and Aja, which was released in September.
The program plans to reissue two more albums — 1975’s Katy Lied and 1976’s The Royal Scam — over the next year.
Last April marked the 45th anniversary of The Band’s iconic concert film The Last Waltz, and now the occasion is being marked with a new reissue, screenings and more.
The celebrations start on October 6 with the release of a three-LP audiophile pressing of the soundtrack. That will be followed that evening by a record release party taking place at Analog inside the Hutton Hotel in Nashville, which will feature an exhibit of photos of The Band and Bob Dylan by Ernst Haas, as well as a Q&A with the soundtrack’s producer and engineer, Rob Fraboni.
And fans who never got to see The Last Waltz on the big screen will now get their chance. Fathom Events will bring the movie back to theaters nationwide for one night only on November 5, with screenings at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Information on which theaters will be showing The Last Waltz can be found at fathomevents.com.
The Last Waltz, directed by Martin Scorsese, focused on The Band’s farewell concert, which took place Thanksgiving Day in 1976 at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. It featured guest appearances by Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Dr. John, Ronnie Wood, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Neil Young and more.
Considered one of the greatest concert documentaries of all time, in 2019 the film was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry.
Lindsey Buckingham, former singer, lead guitarist and songwriter for Fleetwood Mac, was born in Palo Alto, California.
Before joining Fleetwood Mac, Buckingham and his then-girlfriend Stevie Nicks recorded together as Buckingham Nicks, releasing their debut album in September 1973.
In 1974, Mick Fleetwood invited Lindsey to join Fleetwood Mac, but he would only join if Stevie was with him. The addition of the pair led to huge commercial success for Fleetwood Mac, with the first album featuring the duo, 1975’s self-titled release, going to #1, and the follow-up, Rumours, also topping the chart and becoming the band’s best-selling album.
Buckingham is responsible for writing such Fleetwood Mac classics as “Go Your Own Way,” “Never Going Back Again,” “Tusk,” and “Big Love.”
Buckingham was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with Fleetwood Mac in 1998.
He left and rejoined Fleetwood Mac several times over the years, with his last departure coming in April, 2018, when he says he was fired from the group over a disagreement about touring.
