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Day in Rock Report for 01/18/2018


Today's Day in Rock Stories


Former AC/DC, Ozzy, Dio Members Form New Supergroup

Former members of AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne, Dio, and Quiet Riot have formed a brand new supergroup called Dream Child, which has inked a deal with Frontiers Music Srl for the release of their debut album.

The group features guitarist Craig Goldy (Dio, Giuffria), drummer Simon Wright (AC/DC, Dio, Operation: Mindcrime), bassist Rudy Sarzo (Quiet Riot, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Dio), singer Diego Valdez (Helker) and guitarist and keyboardist Wayne Findlay (MSG).

Goldy had the following to say, "The band Dream Child was conceived during a brainstorming session with Serafino (president of Frontiers) and I one day while discussing other matters. I had been listening to my favorite bands a lot recently, Deep Purple and Rainbow's 'Rising' album, among others in that style, and had noticed that many people who also love those bands often have the very same comments as one another: 'They don't make music like that anymore!' Even though I said that in passing, Serafino asked me a question that would forever shape my future. He simply asked, 'Well, can you?' and I said, 'Yes!!!'" Read more here.

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Paul McCartney Jams Beatles Classic With Members Of Muse

(Radio.com) On Tuesday night (Jan. 16), Muse frontman Matt Bellamy and drummer Dom Howard played a show with friends as Dr. Pepper's Jaded Hearts Club Band -- a supergroup dedicated to the Beatles.

In the past, the lineup has also featured Jet drummer Chris Cester, Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin and The Zutons drummer Sean Payne, reports NME. That's impressive enough, but during Tuesday night's gig, the Jaded Hearts welcomed a bona fide Beatles legend to the stage -- Sir Paul McCartney.

During the show, Macca joined the group for "Helter Skelter" and Bellamy shared footage from the incredible moment on Instagram. 'Just did Macca with Macca #walkinglegend," he wrote.

Muse has a big 2018 in store. In addition to headlining Bonnaroo, they're inching closer to the completion of their eighth studio album. So far, fans have heard "Dig Down" from the yet-untitled album and another single called "Thought Contagion" is on the way. Watch the clip from the show here.

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Rockers Pay Tribute To Cranberries' Dolores O' Riordan

(Gibson) Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of the Irish alternative rock band the Cranberries, passed away earlier this week (Jan. 15) at the age of 46. O'Riordan, a powerhouse vocalist, was admired by many in the rock world. Musicians from all over the musical spectrum are sending out their condolences.

"Devastated for fans and her family- Dolores O'Riorden had such an exquisite voice, so distinctive and defining of an era," tweeted Liz Phair. "She would have continued to be a rare musical treasure late into a long life #gonetoosoon."

"We are crushed to hear the news about the passing of Dolores O'Riordan," tweeted rockers Duran Duran. "Our thoughts go out to her family at this terrible time."

"So saddened to hear about the sudden death of Dolores O'Riordan," tweeted Garbage. "Our sincerest condolences to (The Cranberries) and all of her loved ones." Read more tributes here.

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Concert For George Harrison Getting Deluxe Reissue

(hennemusic) "Concert For George", a 2002 tribute event in honor of George Harrison, will be reissued on Friday, February 23 to mark the late Beatles guitarist's 75th birthday on February 25.

Organized by Eric Clapton and Olivia Harrison, the November 29, 2002 show at London's Royal Albert Hall landed one year to the day after Harrison's passing from lung cancer at the age of 58.

The evening featured George's songs, and music he loved, performed by a lineup that included Clapton, Joe Brown, Dhani Harrison, Jools Holland, Jeff Lynne, Paul McCartney, Monty Python, Tom Petty, Billy Preston, Ravi and Anoushka Shankar, Ringo Starr and many more.

"We will always celebrate George's birthday," says Olivia, "and this year we are releasing Concert For George in a very special package in memory of a special man."

Directed by David Leland, "Concert For George" will be reissued as a Deluxe Edition Box Set, a 4-LP Box Set, plus new CD/DVD and CD/Blu-ray combo packages.

Presented in a 12" by 12" hardbound book, the Deluxe Box Set - limited to 1000 copies worldwide - features the complete sound and film recordings from the concert on 4 180-gram audiophile LPs, 2 CDs, 2 DVDs and 2 Blu-rays, plus an opportunity to own a piece of the historic event, by way of a cutting from the original hand-painted on-stage tapestry used as the backdrop at the show. Read more here.

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Singled Out: Down & Out (Featuring Hit The Lights' Nick Thompson)

Brisbane punk-pop band Down & Out just released their debut single "Horizon" featuring Nick Thompson from Hit The Lights and to celebrate we asked them to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

The song has quite a bit of history; we wrote and recorded this years ago under a different band name with a friend Shinji, from the Japanese band Secret 7 Line, but never released it.

Andy (Vocals/Guitar) was living in Brisbane and I (Mark (Guitar)) was in Sydney for work when I heard the news Shinji passed away in a car accident. Andy and I hadn't spoken much, I guess we were both busy with work and other projects, but when I heard about Shinji it was the first time we spoke. We threw around the idea of finishing the song and giving to Secret 7 Line for a tribute, which never came about. We decided to make 2 versions of the song, with the Shinji version for Japan release only.

We thought it would be cool to contact one of our idols Nick Thompson from Hit The Lights to see if he would feature on the track. We couldn't believe he was keen and Andy and I kept it a bit of a secret from Anthony (Bass) and Josh (Drums) until the night of shooting the video clip. Suffice to say, they were just as stoked as we were.

The song was written about how once a month we would go down the Gold Coast, get a hotel and drink ourselves silly. We tried to have that simple story line as the clip. We were so lucky in many aspects, firstly to get someone like Clay Fisher to direct and also everything to fall into place. We had arranged with the hotel to play in the room within a certain time frame and as we start up the first take I think "shit, this is way louder than I thought it would be", as we finish the take there is a banging on the door! That's it! We will have to stop, we have no plan b! Little lady at the door, "would you like fresh towels?".

We are so stoked how the clip and song has been received so far with over 65,000+ views on Facebook in the first 3 days. We never imagined that sort of response! Much love to everyone who has checked it out!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself as you watch the video right here!

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Beatles Land In New Guinness World Records Book

(Gibson) The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is a favorite for many Beatles fans, and now, the popular album will be featured in the Guinness World Records book. The 1967 record is being honored for having the longest time between placements at No. 1 on the U.K. chart, according to uDiscoverMusic.com.

So, what made Sgt. Pepper No. 1 again? A deluxe 50th anniversary reissue that dropped in late May of last year kicked the record back to the No. 1 slot on the U.K.'s Official Albums Chart on June 8, 2017. That's 49 years and 125 days since the last time Sgt. Pepper took the No. 1 position, on Feb. 3, 1968, making it the largest gap between No. 1 records.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band first entered the No. 1 spot on the chart on June 10, 1967, and stayed there for 23 consecutive weeks. It went back up to No. 1 four more times between November of 1967 and February of 1968.

Before the Beatles, the longest time between No. 1 albums in the U.K. was held by the Rolling Stones' 1972 release Exile on Main St. That album hit No. 1 with a deluxe reissue on May 29, 2010, 37 years and 353 days since it had first reached No. 1. Read more here.

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U2 Announce Songs Of Experience Euro Tour

(hennemusic) U2 have announced dates for a fall tour of Europe in support of their latest album, "Songs Of Experience." In addition, plans are currently being finalized for some special hometown shows in Dublin and Belfast, with dates, venues and on-sale details to be announced soon.

The trek will open in Berlin, Germany on August 31, with stops set for France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Italy and Holland before things wrap up in London on October 23.

Tickets for the announced shows will go on sale from Friday, January 26 and U2.com subscribers will be first in line in a pre-sale beginning Thursday, January 18 at 10:00 am and running through Saturday, January 20 at 5:00 pm

Additionally, fans who pre-ordered "Songs Of Experience" with participating retailers prior to November 30, 2017 are also eligible for a pre-sale opportunity for shows in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Italy and Holland. Eligible fans will receive a unique code allowing access for a limited presale opportunity beginning Monday, January 22 at 9am through Wednesday. January 24 at 5pm subject to availability while supplies last and limited to 2 tickets per person (note: a code does not guarantee a ticket). Read more and see the announced dates and the promo video here.

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Most Anticipated Heavy Rock Albums For 2018

(Gibson) It's a new year, and with it comes a crop of fresh album releases. From Judas Priest to Tool to Five Finger Death Punch, this year is already looking up when it comes to new tunes. Read on for 10 much-anticipated albums releases (in alphabetical order) on the way for 2018.

A Perfect Circle: It's the year for new A Perfect Circle music. The band has promised to unleash their first studio album since 2004's eMOTIVe sometime this spring, and judging by the band's two new tracks, "The Doomed" and "Disillusioned," the set will be doom-y and atmospheric, in classic A Perfect Circle style. Guitarist Billy Howerdel has a fancy for Gibsons, especially Les Pauls. "It's all I really play," he told Gibson.com in a previous interview, adding that, "They're solid. They do well when you throw them 30 feet in the air. Plus, there's the beefiness of the sound, the playability, the scale. I prefer the Gibson scale. It really comes down to the sound for me. To me, there is no other guitar I go towards."

Five Finger Death Punch: Five Finger Death Punch guitarist Jason Hook told Gibson.com last last year that the band "finished a brand new record," and the group made the news public with a tweet announcing, "new album this spring." Hook, who rocks his own signature M-4 Sherman, also told Gibson.com that, "We work very hard on these records. I think it's your standard percentage of meat-and-potatoes Five Finger Death Punch that everyone expects and likes, but then we took a couple songs and said, "Let's try to push ourselves a bit and step outside the box, stylistically," and I think we did that, too. So, I'm curious to see how the public will react to those songs that are slightly different for us."

Judas Priest: You know it's going to be a good year when new Judas Priest music is involved. The British metal heavyweights continue to soar with their towering classic metal sounds, and their new album, Firepower, is expected to drop in the early part of 2018. Longstanding members Rob Halford and Glenn Tipton wrote the tracks with their newest band member, the talented Flying V and Les Paul player Richie Faulkner. "Gibson is part of who I am as a player," Faulkner told Gibson.com in a previous interview. "It's been synonymous with rock 'n' roll and blues and wherever you can imagine."

Megadeth: Megadeth enjoyed major success with their 2016 studio set, Dystopia, which earned the band their first Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance. Now, is new Megadeth up ahead for 2018? Frontman Dave Mustaine recently tweeted that the band will be back in the studio to work on a new album by the middle of 2018. "I work in the studio all the time. Do yo mean for the new record? That will be prolly the mid of 18," he tweeted in response to a fan's question. Bring it on!

Ozzy Osbourne: Metal icon Ozzy Osbourne has already announced that his farewell tour will run from 2018 to 2020, but what about a final album? Ozzy has been dropping hints that he's working on a new record, and now that Zakk Wylde is back in the fold, we're extra excited for Ozzy's final studio collection.

Tool: Could 2018 be the year for new music from Maynard James Keenan's Tool and A Perfect Circle? We can hope. Fans have been begging Tool to release their follow-up to 2006's 10,000 Days for years now, and drummer Danny Carey has implied that the new tunes will be out by the middle of 2018. That said, rumors of a new Tool album have circulated for years. What is confirmed is that Tool, along with A Perfect Circle, will both perform at Rock on the Range festival this May in Columbus, Ohio.

See who else made the list here.

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Billy Idol Adds New Dates To U.S .Tour

(hennemusic) Billy Idol has added four new dates to his US spring tour. Idol will follow the spring US run of seven concerts with an extensive summer trek across Europe that will begin at Austria's Nova Rock Festival on June 16.

The rocker will now play shows in Biloxi, MS, Atlanta, GA, Valley Center, CA and Indio, CA in April and May in addition to his festival appearances at the Welcome To Rockville Festival in Jacksonville, FL on April 29, the Carolina Rebellion in Concord, NC on May 6 and Napa Valley, CA's Bottlerock on May 26.

Ticket pre-sales begin Wednesday, January 17 at 10am local venue time (password: cyberpunk) with general public seats available Friday, January 19 at 10am local time.

Last fall, the singer released newly-remastered vinyl editions of the solo debut, 1983's "Rebel Yell", and the 2008 collection, "Idolize Yourself: The Very Best of Billy Idol", as part of a reissues campaign.

Idol's latest studio release is 2014's "Kings & Queens Of The Underground." See the tour dates here.

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Previously Unreleased Prince Recordings and Video Part Of Tribute

(Radio.com) This April will mark two years since Prince's passing. To celebrate his life and legacy, his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota will hold a four-day celebration of music which will include the theatrical concert event Prince: Live on the Big Screen.

The tribute show will feature his all-star band with special guests accompanied by 'newly remastered and never-before-released audio and video of Prince." The show is scheduled to takes place at the Target Center on April 21.

The concert is one of many events planned during Celebration 2018, which runs from April 19-22, according to Billboard. Read more here.

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Royal Blood's Late Late Show Performance Goes Online

(hennemusic) Royal Blood performed their current US single, "I Only Lie When I Love You", on CBS-TV's The Late Late Show with James Corden on January 16 and video from the program is streaming online.

The song is the second track issued from the sophomore effort, "How Did We Get So Dark?", which debuted atop the UK charts upon its release last June to duplicate the success of the band's 2014 self-titled record, the fastest-selling British rock debut album in their native country in three years.

Bassist/vocalist Mike Kerr says that he and drummer Ben Thatcher experimented with new sounds and techniques for their second studio effort. "One thing we learned," Kerr tells the BBC, "is we have quite a delicate sound and once you add things - the wrong things - our whole sound sort of shrivels. Or it capsizes and it doesn't sound like us anymore. We've realized a lot of the identity of our music is when me and Ben play together.

"Even the backing vocals - we did try having girls come in and sing, but it just didn't work. It had to be my voice. It had to be just about me and Ben."

Following a tour of Australia and New Zealand that begins in late April, Royal Blood will launch a spring US headlining trek in Brooklyn, NY on May 28. Watch the Late Late show appearance
here.

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The Afghan Whigs and Built To Spill Announce Tour

The Afghan Whigs and Built To Spill have announced that they will be hitting the road together this spring for a North American tour that will hit 24 cities.

The trek will feature support from special guests Rituals Of Mine from April 11th through April 25th and Ed Harcourt will be taking over on April 27th through May 15th.

The tour is set to kick off on April 11th in Madison, WI at Majestic and will be concluding on May 15th in Seattle, WA at Showbox. See all of the dates here.

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A Look At 2018 Rock Hall Inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe

(Gibson) The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame sure has its critics, but arguably no artist has been more overdue for recognition than Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Her induction into the Hall's "Influences" is coming in 2018 but it's more than just a victory for rockin' sisterhood, it's a long-awaited shout to a truly great artist. Don't know enough about her? Praise be, here's your guide to a true great and the first Lady Of Gibson...

Who was she?: Back in the day, music was even more sliced and diced into categories than it is now. However, if there was one "Gospel" artist who was the genre's breakout name, the first real crossover superstar, it was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Sister Tharpe was rockin' before rockin' existed - her first hit (and it was even called "Rock Me"!) was way back in 1938, when Elvis was a mere toddler.

She was born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas in 1915, and was, frankly, a remarkable prodigy. Rosetta was singing gospel in church by age six, and soon playing some mean guitar too. Via a move to Chicago, where her musical education exploded, she headed to New York City. Like a righteous gatecrasher, she was soon playing at the Cotton Club with Duke Ellington as her teens swung by, she played with Dizzy Gillespie, then with swing bandleader Lucky Millinder. She soon headed back south to tour with fellow gospel icons the Dixie Hummingbirds.

That first single of hers had come in 1938, and in 1945, her sassy single "Strange Things Happening Every Day" - with its hot guitar solo - was the first gospel single to cross over on the Billboard race charts, what we'd now call R&B. Amid all the claims for the "first rock'n'roll record" over the years, "Strange Things Happening Every Day" has as good a claim as any.

Signature Sounds: The thing is, it remains hard to categorize Rosetta Tharpe's music as it is broad. Pure Gospel, smooth jazz, horn-backed ballads, proto rock'n'roll jump rhythms, shredding guitar (yes!) - she covered a lot of bases. Her guitar playing though was notable, and she was one of the very first players to use distortion. Which for a gospel singer is pretty darn extraordinary.

Tharpe was a brilliant guitar player, yet almost never acknowledged in the annals of rock'n'roll. It shouldn't be a surprise really, even if it's wrong. The "accepted" tale of rock'n'roll - with Elvis as some sort of fountainhead - is the story of white men, and Sister Tharpe was, of course, neither white nor a man. But, whooa, she could play.

According to fellow gospel star of the day, Inez Andrews, "The fellows would look at her, and I don't know whether there was envy or what, but sometimes she would play rings around them. She was the only lady I know that would pick a guitar and the men would stand back." "She could play the guitar like nobody else � nobody!" added Lottie Henry, a member of Tharpe's back-up vocal group The Rosettes.

And plenty others were wowed by her. Chuck Berry was a fan (you can clearly hear her influence on his double-stop licks and his songs), so was Little Richard (she was also a brilliant pianist), Isaac Hayes and Elvis himself was a massive devotee. "Elvis loved Rosetta Tharpe," attests Gordon Stoker of The Jordanaires, who backed both Sister Rosetta and Elvis. "Not only did he dig her guitar playing, but he dug her singing too." here.

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