Let’s take a trip back to 1990 and the movie Young Guns II. The story goes, Emilio Estevez had asked Jon to use “Wanted Dead or Alive” as the main song for the film but instead, Jon wrote a new song and an albums worth of material. Kiefer Sutherland mentioned in an interview many years ago, “When Jon (Bon Jovi) joined the team for Young Guns 2, we were all eating hamburgers in a diner and Jon was scribbling on this napkin for, say, six minutes. He declared he’d written ‘Blaze of Glory’, which of course then went through the roof in the States. He later gave Emilio Estevez the napkin. We were munching burgers while he wrote a No. 1 song… Made us feel stupid.” The song later won the Golden Globe for best original song and received an Oscar nomination (but lost to Stephen Sondheim’s “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man) from Dick Tracy… Talk about a robbery).
Today is a great day. Alice In Chains released their first new song in 5 years called “The One You Know” and it’s fuckin awesome! I’m not going to waste your time talking about it. Just listen and you’ll get it!
Alice In Chains- The One You Know:
I will never forget seeing the video for “Estranged” which is my favorite Guns N Roses song. First I wanted a pair of shoes like Axl had, and second I wanted to jump off an aircraft carrier (even though it’s an oil tanker) into the ocean and swim with dolphins. Yes, we all know the video is a bit far fetched but you can’t deny how awesome it really is. They don’t make videos like this anymore. If I’m not mistaken the cost of this video was in the millions too. Anyways enjoy this great video!
I was listening back to the Garage Inc Metallica album the other day on my way home from work. While listening it got me thinking about how many great covers Metallica did on that album. There are quite a few songs they covered that in my opinion are better than the original. For example their version of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page,” as well as their version of Queen’s “Stone Cold Crazy” is quite possibly better than the original.
Since the break up of Rage Against The Machine, Zach De La Rocha has remained relatively quiet on the music front. There was the One Day As A Lion project he did in 2007 but other than that there hasn’t been much from him in a long while. Which got me thinking, that I should do a Guest Vocalist post about all the songs he’s guested on over the years. Most recently Zach can be heard on the last two Run The Jewels albums. Anyways, here are a bunch of tracks to enjoy that Zach lent his vocals to.
Finding the right balance of being heavy and melodic isn’t as easy as you would think. There are many bands over the years that have mastered it and there are others that just miss the mark. (more…)
Since I heard Liam Gallagher’s solo album As You Were, I’ve been on a kick of listening to all things Liam and Oasis. While listening to all these albums I’ve really come to realize how truly great Oasis was. I did have the pleasure of seeing them live back in 2007 before they announced their break up. It was a great show with a really good set list. Needless to say I’ve put together an album ranking of Oasis’s albums from not their best to the absolute best.
Two very different bands and both have a song entitled Dirt. This is going to be one of the most interesting same name song battles I’ve posted. I love both bands. Alice In Chains a bit more obviously but, there is no denying the impact The Stooges had on inspiring countless amounts of bands over the years, Alice In Chains included. The Stooges song dirt is off their album Fun House which I must add is one of the coolest albums ever! Alice In Chains song “Dirt” is from their masterpiece of a 2nd album of the same name. Both songs are so different but due to my love of Alice, I’m going to have to pick theirs but, The Stooges song is friggin great too.
It’s been 15 years since A Perfect Circle has released an album of new original material. I don’t count their covers/remix album. That was absolutely unnecessary to even be released in the first place (but that’s for another day and debate). Enter 2018 and the release of Eat The Elephant. Despite being back in a live setting for one off shows since 2010, the groundwork for this album only started to come to fruition a couple years back. This project has always been mainly Maynard and Billy with the occasional input from other members of the band way back when (mainly Josh Freese). This new one is purely Billy and Maynard with the help of producer David Sardy (Far, Oasis and so many other bands he’s worked with). The sad part is the end result of their work.
This is not the A Perfect Circle you enjoyed when they first came out with Mer De Noms or The Thirteenth Step. What you have instead is a strange grandiose album that is at times pretentious and seems like one giant inside joke. The album’s lyrical content is very topical to the times we live in giving the album a very NOW feel. Musically though gone are the riffs and drums which are replaced with dramatic layers upon layers of keys and electronic elements. The only song on the album with that similar “classic” is “The Doomed” and even that song is very flat in terms of dynamics. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments throughout the rest of the album that have a presensce but that mainly comes from Maynard’s lyrics and delivery. Songs like “TalkTalk,” “Feathers” and “Hourglass” certainly have spots that shine. One song you might recognize a bit is “By and Down The River” which was released a few years back on a sort of best of/live album. The song has been reworked a bit but it’s still that song you heard. “Disillusioned” has a very lullaby feel. Actually the majority of the album feels like one big lullaby. The song “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish” sounds like it could be on a Coldplay or Imagine Dragons album. I could go on and on about this album but I’m not going to.
Needless to say as a fan of the band, this is a let down. After 15 years without new music from A Perfect Circle and this being the end result is not worth it. Something else that the album lacks is the performances musically. Newer members Jeff Friedl and Matt McJunkins, while they are solid musicians they just lack the “feel” and “vibe” that made A Perfect Circle so impactful. This doesn’t feel like an A Perfect Circle album after listening to it a few times. Some of you out there might really love this new side of the band, which is perfectly fine. There are also those out there that will just eat up what ever Maynard serves and hold it as gospel. Put it this way, this album isn’t for everyone. Instead I’ll wait patiently for the new Tool album, which after almost 13 years, better not be a let down like this is.
Yesterday I shared a really awesome cover with you all. Today I wanted to remind you all of this atrocity that happened at the MTV Icon Metallica show in 2003. This is probably one of the worst things I’ve ever heard in my life. I still remember cringing when I watched this.
