Kurt Cobain's Pre-Bleach Era Mixtape Surfaces Online

It's a fascinating time capsule of where Cobain was at sonically, because it's so different from the band's album which would follow. On the mixtape, unearthed by Dangerous Minds, Cobain tinkers with noise rock, layering samples from the radio and his home collection of recordings along with sounds and drones. By the time he made it, noise rock - an offshoot of Krautrock - was in full swing in San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., especially.

Cobain's take on it spans 15-plus minutes and includes moments from Jimi Hendrix's speech at the Monterey Pop Festival, Fred Flintstone screaming after his bowling ball, the Jackson Five's "ABC," James Brown's "Hot Pants" and, most surprisingly, William Shatner's cover of "Wild Thing."

Cobain would have painstakingly compiled each sample from its source manually, well before YouTube or Spotify existed, using a four-track cassette recorder.

Listen to the project and check out a list of its samples via United Mutilations here.

Ozzy Osbourne Can't Stand His Daughter's Bon Jovi Obsession

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, as Ozzy Osbourne knows all too well. In this 1987 interview, he discusses his daughter Kelly's intense fandom of Bon Jovi: "My daughter's a Bon Jovi freak," he exclaims. "She thinks the sun shines out of his you-know-what."

In 1987, of course, Bon Jovi was one of the biggest stars on the planet, thanks to the prior year's Slippery When Wet, which included monster hits like "Livin' On A Prayer," "You Give Love a Bad Name," "Wanted Dead or Alive" and "Never Say Goodbye." Alas, even those catchy tunes can get tiresome after repeated listening. At least, according to Ozzy.

"She listens to it all day long!" he complained. "I met him the other week and he's a real nice guy. And he's really worked hard for it, and whether you like his music or not, he deserves [his success] because he's a nice guy!"

But still, he points out, "Enough of anything is enough! I can't stand to hear any music too much. Too much music of any sort gives you a headache." Somewhere, the parents of kids who played Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" over and over were smiling.

Check it out here.

Van Halen Tops Poll

"Arguably one of the most iconic drum intros in rock, and playing it is a holy grail for a lot of drummers," says Rhythm of the "1984" single. "Alex Van Halen steps out of his guitarist brother Eddie's shadow to shine with a blistering drum solo before kicking into a furious double-bass shuffle in a flurry of kick drum notes."

Rush's 1980 track, "The Spirit Of Radio", lands in second spot, followed by tunes by Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin, Queens Of The Stone Age and more.

Notably, Dave Grohl took three of the top 10 positions with three different bands: Queens Of The Stone Age (5), Nirvana (8) and Foo Fighters (9). Check out the full top 10 and "Hot For Teacher" here.

Stevie Nicks Does Rare Stripped Down Rhiannon Performance

The song is featured on Nicks' "24 Karat Gold - Songs From the Vault", a collection of lost and stray songs that the singer has written and recorded through the years, but never made it onto an album.

The selections were all newly-recorded earlier this year in Nashville. Nicks is currently on a North American tour with Fleetwood Mac. The singer will host a Q&A session on her Facebook page on Wednesday, November 5 at 3:45 PM EST.

Watch both performances from The Tonight Show here.

Devo Star and Wes Anderson Want To Create Theme Park?

So it is with much anticipation and a great hope that it is not a joke that news can be shared that Anderson and Mothersbaugh want to make a theme park. (via CoS).

"I hope to soon secure the means to commission the construction of an important and sizable theme park to be conceived and designed entirely by Mark Mothersbaugh," Anderson says in the foreword of Mothersbaugh's new book of visual art, Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia.

Read more here.

Chrissie Hynde Streams Cover of The Beatles Let It Be

"'Let It Be' sounds like a hymn, and because it says 'mother Mary,' people assume it's a religious song, but it isn't," explains Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn. "'Mother Mary' is Paul's mother Mary - his mother was Mary McCartney - and Paul was 26 when he wrote this. He was 14 when his mother died, so only 12 years earlier that she had died..... [In the song] he's in trouble, he's having a troubled moment, and his mother comes to him and says, 'Don't worry, son, everything will be all right. The answer will come. Let it be, let the answer be.'"

Due November 17 (Nov 18 in North America), "The Art Of McCartney" features a variety of artists joining the former Beatle's long time band to perform songs from the bassist's legendary songwriting catalog.

Guests include Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, The Cure, Brian Wilson, Dr John, Yusuf, Barry Gibb, Jamie Cullum, KISS, ELO's Jeff Lynne, and many more. Check out the song stream here.

Rolling Stones Release Live Video From 1981 Concert

The December 18 performance at Virginia's Hampton Coliseum was originally broadcast as "The World's Greatest Rock'n'Roll Party" on pay-per-view and in closed circuit cinemas, becoming the first pay-per-view music event.

It's the first release from the Stones new From The Vault series, which will be followed on November 17 with "From The Vault - LA Forum - Live In 1975."

Both releases are available as SD Blu-ray, DVD, DVD+2CD and DVD+3LP. Check out the live video clip from the release here.

Machine Head Go Mystic With New Album Preview

It opens with a tarot reader asking, "Is there something you wish to know?" Mainman Robb Flynn replies, "What does the future hold?" and the mystic answers, "Change is coming - a great battle is upon you."

The two-minute clip follows the first installment which appeared last week and clocked in at nearly double the length. Flynn recently admitted the making of their eighth studio work had been more of a challenge than they'd anticipated. It forced them to cancel a US tour, which landed them in trouble with fans of planned support act Children Of Bodom.

But he insisted: "We feel this record is a milestone; we have something truly special here. I feel proud, man - I just feel like we killed it on this thing."

Watch the trailer here.

Classic Genesis Live Video Released

It was shot during the band's Abacab tour in North America, and after its original VHS release it's only previously been available on DVD as a box set.

Eagle Rock say: "As always with Genesis, the show is visually stunning and it captures the band in their transition from their progressive days in the seventies through to the hugely successful pop/rock act they became from the mid-eighties onwards."

Check out the video and the track details here.

Distorted Harmony Release Live Hollow Video

The Prog Award-nominated Isreali outfit launched the follow-up to 2012's Utopia in July, vowing to deliver a "heavier, more focused and mature" work. The launch followed a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Distorted Harmony play their first-ever show outside their native country at the Haunted Sky festival in Tilburg, the Netherlands on November 8. Check out the live video here.

Why Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert Won't Be Interviewed Together

But in an interview that aired this weekend on CBS' 60 Minutes, Shelton and wife Miranda Lambert - separately - speak on their careers, their lives together and why they won't ever do an interview with each other in the same room.

"I know that would be interesting," he said of the idea of he and Lambert sitting down together for interviews. "We try so hard to keep people's focus on what we do and not our marriage. It's almost impossible to do that."

He said he doesn't want to open that door any further to give "every other magazine out there a two second quote that turns into alien babies. "When we do interviews, I love talking about her. I could talk about her all day," he added. "All we've got left is she and I and our home and we just want to keep it that way."

Read more here.

Singled Out: Sun Gods to Gamma Rays' A Ghost to Find

The song "A Ghost to Find" was written about halfway through writing our new album. Our guitarist Paul came to practice with the skeleton of the song he had demoed, we all dug it, so we decided to jam on it a bit and learn the chords.

Often while the band is working on learning the structure of a new song, I'll sit down with a pad of paper and pen and get to writing. Most of our lyrics for this record were written in one go, on the spot, while the rest of the band was learning the chords. This has been a really fun dynamic for me because I get to infuse a new song with ideas while everyone is still learning it, and that's exactly what happened with "A Ghost to Find." While the band was learning their chords, and I writing the songs lyrics, I came up with the chorus chords and melody in a bit of a spontaneous breakaway from the groove and verse chords.

Our whole record lyrically represents a divorce from one's original self, and the blossoming of someone new. This song embodies the breakaway stage, and is lyrically very precious to me. I grew up a self-imposed, charismatic, evangelical Christian. A few years after high school I went off to university and studied philosophy, myth, and literature. It was during this time that I became very confused about my faith, as so many of us have experienced. However, studying the importance of narrative and myth, I also learned how the stories we tell ourselves are still incredibly important-it's hard to just let them go. The lyrics to "A Ghost to Find" represent a moment in time where I yearned to live a life that was knowable, where I wouldn't have to fight myself about my beliefs anymore. But in some ways the lyrics still use traditional Christian tropes, while kind of turning them on their head, so to speak.

The first four lines give a clear picture of what is happening: "I am floating away from you/ you said that you would stay/ now here I am, reflections grow dark/ now here I am, in shades of gray." There is a sense of loneliness and pain, and a sense that the person singing is struggling with not living a life that is binary any longer.

The second verse represents the ghost of religion past, how it's always there asking questions and making judgments: "haunted just by the thought of you/ a ghost inside my head." Beside the obvious sense of haunting, I wanted to portray that I was emotionally tired of this internal struggle with who I once was and who I am becoming. The last two lines really develop that feeling: "but I want, want to be found/ I can't stand to face this again."

The chorus is really where a lyrical interpretation get's tricky, and the chorus lyrics still even elude me sometimes. "Come and find me in the dark/ come and take my by the hand/ come and heal me of my scars/ won't you come and heal my sins." Sometimes when I am on stage singing these lyrics I am desperate for a time in my past when I felt I had a clear understanding of my worldview. Othertimes I am singing these lyrics into the abyss, hoping that maybe someone will hear my call and come along side me in my struggle to understand my changing worldview. I like that the lyrics can be continually re-negotiated, because in many ways that embodies the struggle that is represented in the lyrics: that life isn't nearly as black and white as we think it is.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself as you watch the video here and learn more about the group and the album right here!

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