Judas Priest's Rob Halford Lashes Out At Metal Misconception

Halford says rock and metal is all about "good vibes". He tells Hot 106.1: "You put somebody in front of me that can absolutely say to my face that rock and roll or metal is destructive, and I'll tear that idea to pieces, because it's not.

"Everything that we do in rock and roll, in metal, it doesn't matter how extreme it is, it's all about good vibes, it's all about energy. It doesn't matter whether it's aggressive energy or any other kind of energy.

"We're not in this business to do anything other than make the best music that we can give you, the best times that we can give you, the best memories that we can. I think everybody in music does that - it doesn't matter whether it's rock or metal or folk or R&B, soul, blues." Read more here.

Anvil Singer Surprised Paul McCartney Knew Him

Lips was at the People's choice Awards with drummer Robb Reiner, hoping to win an award for the 2008 documentary Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, only to lose out to dolphin documentary The Cove.

He tells the Sydney Morning Herald: "We were at the People's Choice Awards with the film and I could see Paul McCartney sitting at a table 20 feet away.

".... we rush up to Paul McCartney, and he's surrounded by his people, but he takes a look at Robb and I and goes, 'Oh my God, it's the Anvil boys. Are we rockin' tonight?' Paul McCartney knew who we were. I almost passed out." Read his full comments here.

Jeff Bridges Talks Music And Big Lebowski

But if, say, you've watched The Big Lebowski a hundred times, it's just surreal hearing "Hey, how ya doin', maaaaan?" from Jeff Bridges, who sounds uncannily like his Lebowski character, The Dude. Of course, the guy has been in so many iconic films including King Kong, Tron, Against All Odds, Iron Man, Crazy Heart and True Grit, among many others. But, by his own admission, of all his roles, he's most like Jeff Lebowski (or the Dude, or His Dudeness, or Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

So, you get on the phone with him, and you have to remember that your job is to talk to him about his new live album, simply called Live.

When music journalists interview actors about a music project (such as 30 Seconds To Mars' Jared Leto, or She and Him's Zooey Deschanel or Minnie Driver, for instance) it's kind of understood the subject will be their music, not their filmography. But Jeff Bridges' backing band is actually called the Abiders; Live features his cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lookin' Out My Back Door" - which was featured in a classic Lebowski scene. So clearly, he's kind of OK with blurring the lines between his movie and music careers.

During our twenty-minute phone conversation, he chatted happily about both, including some of his other film roles, and also his commitment to No Kid Hungry, an organization dedicated to ending child hunger in America. And also about a few wild rumors.

Radio.com: Lots of actors who move into music like to keep their careers very separate, and don't like to talk about their films when they're promoting an album or a tour. You kind of diffuse that covering "Lookin' Out My Back Door" and also doing songs that you sang as "Bad Blake" in Crazy Heart. And you named your band "The Abiders." Was that a conscious choice to diffuse that, and say, "Yeah, I'm the guy from Big Lebowski"?

Jeff Bridges: Yeah, I think it was. We were sitting around trying to think of the name for the band. Titles are supposed to draw attention, I guess, to the guys who are playing. Like you say, a lot of people know me from Lebowski, I happen to love that movie, I loved the experience of doing that film. The guys in the band kind of wanted to call it that, she I just said "What the heck, let's do it!" I don't mind when people are wearing Lebowski shirts to the shows and stuff. We had a great time playing the Lebowski Fest in L.A. We had a wonderful time doing that.

It must be a bit surreal to be performing a concert, and seeing all these people who look like you, or think they look like you, or are trying to look like you, in the audience. It's pretty surreal, yeah. It's kind of a wonderful thing, I'm so pleased that movie means so much to the fans. It's one of my favorite movies, and it would be even if I wasn't in it. Those guys, the Coen Brothers, they just know how to do it.

I'm wondering if you relate to those fans on some level: I know you're a big Bob Dylan fan - you cover "The Man In Me" at your shows - and you co-stared with him in his film, [2003's] Masked and Anonymous. Oh, gosh, that was a dream come true. We did a little pickin' while we were shooting the film. Just working with him as an actor was so much fun. I think he really enjoyed it. He's certainly good at it.

If you're a fan, you must have had so many questions for him. Did you go overboard with asking him about The Basement Tapes or whatever? [laughs] I think I kind of "fan-ed out" probably. I'm a fan of his just like everybody else. I didn't go on too far. But I did get to tell him how much I loved his most recent stuff, which I was a big fan of.

Did your role in Crazy Heart help you in your music career; you sang live in the film and on the soundtrack. You were so believable as Blind Blake. Yeah, I think it really set fire to it, at the beginning of that whole run. Years before, when I did Heaven's Gate [in 1980], Kris Kristofferson was the lead in that film, he brought a bunch of his buddies, Stephen Bruton and T-Bone Burnett among them, to the set. We jammed all the time and wrote music together, and I kept a relationship with Stephen and T-Bone all these years. When Crazy Heart came around, I originally turned it down, because there was no music written for the film yet. And then when I found out that T-Bone was involved, I was like, "Let's go, man!" I knew we'd be in good hands, musically, with him. And Crazy Heart is dedicated to Stephen Bruton [who passed away in 2009], he was with me every day on the set, giving me guidance and helping me make it as real as possible and giving me guitar lessons and stuff like that. That experience helped me to say, "Gee, if I ever want to get this music thing going and take it to the next level, this is a good time." So, shortly after Crazy Heart, I got with T-Bone and we did some more tunes and put out another album, and then started touring with my hometown guys, the Abiders.

Read the full interview here.

Enter Shikari Release The Last Garrison Video

Speaking about the song, Shikari frontman Rou Reynolds says: "Life can often seem like a tumultuous onslaught of ups and downs; good and bad, euphoric and arduous.

"Our circumstances can change in a flicker of an eyelid. Sometimes it's beneficial to take a step back from everything and appreciate the honour that we're still alive."

The Mindsweep will be released on January 19, via Ambush Reality/Play It Again Sam. Watch the new music video here.

Robert Plant Takes On Led Zeppelin Copycats In Classic Interview

Back in 1988, pop-metal ruled the airwaves and MTV. Nearly all of these bands would cite Led Zeppelin as an influence, and even if they didn't, well, it was pretty obvious. Whitesnake - a band led by former Deep Purple frontman David Coverdale - always wore their Zep influences on their sleeve, but their '88 hit "In the Still of the Night" with its violin-bow guitar solo seemed to veer on parody. Newcomers Kingdom Come were accused of outright ripping off "Kashmir" in parts of their hit "Get It On."

And while imitation (or possible copyright infringement) could be seen as the most sincerest form of flattery, Robert Plant was not impressed. Or rather, he barely noticed them. "A lot of those people are great musicians, and the bands make good records," he says in this '88 interview. "Or, so I've been told." Ouch!

At the time, Plant was promoting Now and Zen, which saw him nodding towards his history with Zeppelin more than he had previously had done in his solo career. Jimmy Page guested on two songs, one of them being "Tall Cool One," which sampled a number of Zep classics. But he was more interested in what was considered "college rock," or alternative music, of the day: he cites R.E.M. and H�sker D� as favorites (at the time, he would also often cite the Cure and Let's Active as other bands he respected).

He doesn't have a problem with imitation either (he admits that he was always trying to sound like Ray Charles) it's just that he wasn't down with what he referred to as "the pomposity of the corporate rock pet." Jimmy Page took a different view: five years later, he teamed up with Coverdale for a duo album. Happily, the year after that, in 1994, Page and Plant reunited for their No Quarter: Unledded album and tour.

Watch it here.

Pineapple Thief's Bruce Soord Unplugs For Magnolia

The mainman says: "All the songs on Magnolia began their life this way, on acoustic guitar and vocal. So it was really nice to go back and play this song in the form as it was when it was born."

TPT begin a European tour on November 18, culminating with four UK shows in December. Check out those tour dates and watch the video for the acoustic Magnolia here.

Cancer Bats Release Video For New Song Satellites

Set for release on December 22, the song will feature on the Bats' forthcoming fifth album, which is scheduled to be released on March 9, 2015.

The new album was produced by Ross Robinson (Slipknot/Korn/Glassjaw). You can check out the track-listing for Searching For Zero and watch the video for the new track here.

Bernie Torme Looks Back On His Career Launch With Ian Gillan

Torme tells Metal Express Radio: "At the time Ian was having a hard time. He hadn't been able to get a recording contract. He had one in Japan, but no-one in the US or England would touch him.

"He had done the Ian Gillan Band albums, the jazzy albums, and the last of them hadn't sold at all so he had a bad name in terms of record labels. But it would just at the beginning of the NWOBHM and we were just in the right place at the right time. It all just happened.

"I came out of that and I had a name, I was able to live. After I left they had a lot of pressure from Virgin and it changed how the band played and recorded and I think that was bad." Read more here.

...end