Today's Day in Rock Stories

George Michael's Cause of Death Revealed

San Francisco Art Exchange will be making eleven original paintings available, each one created and hand-selected by English artist Gerald Scarfe.

The clip features studio footage and images from the 97-minute movie documentary, "From Here To InFinite"; the movie is part of the limited CD+DVD edition of the album

"All I Got Is You" follows the project's lead track, "Time For Bedlam", as the second tune issued in advance of the April 7 release of the group's twentieth album.

The package delivers nine new tracks alongside a cover of The Doors' classic, "Roadhouse Blues." Deep Purple recorded "InFinite" last year in Nashville, TN with producer Bob Ezrin, who also teamed up with them on 2013's "Now What?!"

Mastodon recorded their seventh studio effort with producer Brendan O'Brien at the Quarry in Kennesaw, Georgia last year. "'Emperor of sand' is like the grim reaper," says drummer/vocalist Brann Dailor. "Sand represents time. If you or anyone you know has ever received a terminal diagnosis, the first thought is about time. Invariably, you ask, 'How much time is left?'

"There is a tie, a concept that goes between them," adds Dailor about the album's theme. "The last couple of years have been not... there's been some illness within the bands' family, there's been a bunch of cancer. So the whole album is sort of all about cancer basically. Well, not literally. It's a big story that sort of roped to go along with it. It takes place in the desert."

The kids, who range between ages 6 and 13, listen to the band's 1987 album Appetite for Destruction, and their reactions to the title alone are funny. "Ok, that's a weird name," says Max (age 8). Dominick (age 7) might have the best response, though. "What?" he asks, incredulously.

When they learn the band's name, Sydney (age 9) can't quite understand the combination. "Roses are so elegant and then guns are war and violence," she says. Most of the kids dig "Welcome to the Jungle," but some of the other songs don't quite hold up to the high bar it set. But, all in all, Guns N' Roses make some new fans.

The concert marked the third and final show of a three-night stand in the city with special guest Iggy Pop as part of the band's WorldWired tour. "Muchas Gracias Mexico!," says the group. "You showed us so much love that together we broke the record for the most people to attend three shows at Foro Sol as 197,444 of you rocked the house!"

Metallica will next play Lollapalooza festivals in Brazil (March 25), Argentina (March 31) and Chile (April 1) before launching a 25-show summer stadium tour of North America at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, MD on May 10.

Directed by Matt Eastin, who previously directed Imagine Dragons' "On Top of the World" and "Roots" videos, the video also features actor Dolph Lundgren. Set in a cross between Tron and space, the psychedelic video finds lead singer Dan Reynolds preparing to fight Lundgren in a boxing match.

The special live set will be taking place on May 18th at the Express Live! in Columbus, OH. General on sale tickets for the event will begin this Friday, March 10th at Noon EST at Ticketmaster and the festival's website.

Here is the official word from the band, "Rocket Fizz and KISS have reached a gigantic licensing and co-branding agreement. Rocket Fizz will be bottling and distributing worldwide Kiss soda pops, beginning with the Kiss Destroyer Cola. Rocket Fizz will also be producing Kiss and Rocket Fizz co-branded t-shirts and tin signs.

The summer trek is scheduled to kick off on May 2nd in Knoxville, TN at The Mill & Mine and will be concluding on August 6th in Portland, OR at the Roseland Theatre.

They will be kicking things off in Bangor, Maine at Darling's Waterfront Pavilion on July 27th and will be concluding the tour on August 26th in Los Angeles at a still to be revealed venue.

Rancid's Tim Armstrong had the following comments and revealed details about the support acts for the summer outing, "Rancid is looking forward to hitting the road with our brothers the Dropkick Murphys.

"We will end the night with DKM and us playing songs together. Look out for The Bouncing Souls, The Selecter, Kevin Seconds and Jake Burns to be on certain shows. SEE YA IN THE PIT!"

The new album will be entitled "SIX" and is set to be released on May 26th. It is the follow-up to the band's 2010 album "In The Night" and as the title suggests, it will be the group's sixth full length record.

"Six" was produced by guitarist guitarist Fredrik Nordstr�m at his Studio Fredman facilities, which has been used by numerous other bands including In Flames, Arch Enemy, HammerFall, At The Gates, Dimmu Borgir, Architects and Bring Me The Horizon, among others, according to the announcement.

The band had the following to say, "Finally, SIX years after the release of 'In The Night' we started to record our new album entitled 'SIX', which is Dream Evil's album number SIX.

The veteran band will be launching the tour in support of their 2015 album "XIV" and it's set to kick off on June 2nd in Lake Charles, LA at the Golden Nugget Lake Charles - Grand Event Center.

The trek will feature Steve Lukather, David Paich Steve Porcaro, and Joseph Williams being joined by Lenny Castro, Shannon Forest, Shem von Schroeck and Warren Ham, according to ABC Radio.

"I felt compelled to follow up the record I made last year, Metal Dog, where I was trying to go into a new territory - with not just a straight-ahead jazz or jazz fusion or rock or pop, but something very much my own genre.

Vocalists Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda and guitarist Brad Delson answered questions about each other, from softball challenges like "who would Mike choose to star in his biopic?" (not James Franco, definitely Johnny Depp) to "Who would Brad pick to bail him out?" (drummer Rob Bourdon, not Chester).

We learned that Mike sings "Sexual Healing" in the shower, not "Like a Virgin." Chester's favorite underwear are white with red roses and black barbed wire, not red, as suspected.

Blotzer posted audio of Nicols singing over a recording of a Ratt song along with the following lengthy message, "I see that an afternoon at a beach bar has taken on a life of its own out there regarding who is rumored to be in the frontman spot in Ratt. My wife and I were attending a friend's party in a small bar in Carlsbad, (down by San Diego) on Sunday, and hanging with some friends - jamming a few tunes on March 5th.

"In July, when we were on the very successful Ratt tour of 2016, and we had a few dropouts, I moved swiftly to a great array of awesome friends and great players - we never skipped a beat. Not a day or a show fell. When the other guys dropped, I asked our then singer, 'are you going too?', because the road might not be as easy as everyone thought it might be. I was apprised by a great buddy of mine that he knew of a ripping lead singer. I told our then singer about him out of sheer honesty. And he replied to me as he did at every single show 'no, you know how much I appreciate being in this, I'm in for the long haul.' The last time I spoke to him was December 16th, Kentucky show. Great! We continued thru the year with 35 more shows, give or take.

"This other lead singer guy sent me his voice singing over our Ratt songs with Pearcy's voice pulled out and him singing in place. Well, fking Hell, I was quite astonished to be honest. I stuck it out with the other singer, my word is real. But he knew there was someone in the wings. And the guy I met over the phone in July, ended up with our fellow touring band guys in Quiet Riot. Cool, way to go, I thought (also not knowing why our ex-bandmate Mr J. Pearl was gone from QR).

Some songs you have to chip away at for months or years even but this one arrived pretty much fully formed. I think it's quite a blunt track, certainly the verse doesn't move around much. A lot of it is just in supporting what the what the lyrics have to say.

The lyrics can be read like the shortest of short stories, it is that of a Preacher who has hit a crisis of faith. When seeing the evil in the world or even just the seemingly random acts of devastation he is struggling to reconcile that with an all loving, all powerful God. If he could then why wouldn't he step in? In short he runs up against The Problem of Evil, which I won't talk to you anymore about because you either know it and likely know more on the subject than me or you can google and very quickly surpass my limited knowledge on the arguments.

The arrangement with the band came very quickly too, I think after half a rehearsal the song was in a very recognisable form to what it is now. I guess it was just one of those times when everyone just got it. I do remember us talking about not going for any hooks in this. There is no need for hooks we said, It was more about building up and dropping down with the songs natural ebb and flow.

The place we ended up recording the track had this beautiful Hammond organ and we knew we had to get it on the track. We liked it so much that we added this outro section, a little breather section with just that and some field recordings. There was various bowing of cymbals and added percussion that our Producer and Band mate Ben Jackson encouraged us to try out. There was also the playing around with guitars sounds and different vocals mics but all in all it was a very effortless song to put together and it also felt very good to get it out.