Schlock N' Hyperbole Flashback: Scourge Overkill® - Music notes for 2/8/06
By Art Shimko
shimko_7@hotmail.com
Scourge Overkill® - Music notes for 2/8/06
-- Below is a music news report from my old blog Schlock N' Hyperbole dating back to 2/8/06...
== I wrote on this blog sometime ago about my feelings regarding illegal music downloads being the cause of the music industry's current slump in CD sales. I, along with friends I've discussed this subject all agreed that it was in fact the music industry's current product combined with outrageous CD prices that were turning people away from purchasing music. MTV.com and MSNBC reported that Rolling Stone Magazine and the Associated Press conducted a poll where 92% of 1,000 people never downloaded music and 80% think it's stealing. BUT, 75% said that the reason for decline in record sales is due to CD COSTING TOO MUCH with the average price being $20US which is fucking insane, and 58% said the quality of music is basically shitty. More than 99% buy their music digitally opting to buy a single track for 99¢ rather than buy an entire album. It's funny because the music industry is behind the times in general, and while these reasons for declining record sales have been known for years, the music biz is FINALLY seeing the writing on the wall. Buying music digitally may in fact bring singles sales back into the industry as buying entire albums are being extinct, unless you have an album that will be full of great songs, but in this day and age where pop acts reign supreme, they rely more on a single hit rather than a hit album producing 4 or 5 hit singles or a cohesively great album.
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== The line-up for this year's Bonnaroo festival in Manchester Tennessee on 6/16-6/18 is nothing worth making a road trip for in my opinion. The headliners are Radiohead, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Phil Lesh & Friends which is quite a hodgepodge that in a post-Lollapalooza age just seems weird and doesn't speak to speciific demographics as in the past, which would be fine except this year's line-up and headliners are all over the place. I enjoy Radiohead but Bonnaroo is not a place I'd expect to see them, think Lollapalooza '96 when Metallica headlined, yeah it was different but did it make a difference in booking Lollapalooza as far as its audience accepting such a move? Tom Petty is not a weird choice for Bonnaroo but as a headliner I question that move although I don't doubt he'll have a crowd at his set, and I love Phil Lesh and Friends but his band line-up this year is not getting such critical acclaim like in the past and he's played with clowns like John Mayer, Ryan Adams and Chris Robinson, yuck! Many music fans have diverse tastes with so many genres and mixing of genres to choose from, but there are times you expect a certain flavor at festivals. Would Iron Maiden being booked for a jazz festival be innovative booking or way too radical, that may be an extreme example but think about it for a moment then look at past Bonnaroo line-ups and compare to this year's and 2005's line-up and you'll see major differences. I feel, why screw with a formula that's been successful for years prior to the 2005-2006 Bonnaroo, but as I saw when I went in 2004, lots of younger, college kids were attending as compared to 2003 when my friends went saying it was a mix of old heads and young people, the booking seems to be catering to the young folks who have endless money supplies from mom and dad as far as the choice of bands on the bill. Sure you still have Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Buddy Guy, Bill Frisell, Jerry Douglas Medeski Martin & Wood and Steel Pulse who help bring the essence and flavor of past Bonnaroos but to me there aren't enough bands on the line-up to convince me that another 13-hour road trip is worth enduring for this festival. The rest of the line-up can be seen on the Bonnaroo site.
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== MTV dot com reported on 2/2 that The Smashing Pumpkins will indeed be reforming, although frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Billy Chamberlin are the only two original members working as the Pumpkins so far, this makes sense as Corgan said in interviews that he felt that Chamberlin was a musical soulmate so-to-speak and that Chamberlin was the only other talented musician as Chamberlin is a jazz drummer, they have signed with Azoff Management and are currently writing new music. Former Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur who replaced original bassist D'Arcy Wretzky in 1999, said she wasn't sure if Corgan has contacted Wretzky and original guitarist James Iha about the reunion and that it wouldn't be a true reunion without them, however she offered her services to Corgan should Wretzky not come back. There have been lots of rumors going around the internet regarding this story, including a website which I blogged about here about a new album by "The New Pumpkins" called "Drawn" coming out in April which was a hoax. Also rumors of the band headlining the Coachella festival in California in April were spread, only to be put to bed when it was announced that Tool and Depeche Mode where announced as headliners. This all started when Corgan took out a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune regarding a reunion but contained no other information. Corgan had remained quiet about the subject until now, from here we'll see what unfolds in the soap opera that is The Smashing Pumpkins.
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== Friday 2/3 was the 47th anniversary of "The Day The Music Died" where musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) all died in a plane crash as they were headed to Moorhead, Minnesota from Clear Lake, Iowa for the Winter Dance Party tour which was to cover 24 Midwest cities. The tour was not booked conveniently as the tour stops were very far from each other, and on the fateful night at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Holly wasn't going to put up with the tour bus any longer and decided to charter a flight to the next tour stop instead. Despite horrendous weather conditions, Holly decided to take a plane to travel the 430-mile trek to Fargo, North Dakota because Moorhead didn't have an airport. At 1AM CST on 2/3/59, the plane took off from Mason City, Iowa, at 1:05AM CST, the manager of the Surf Ballroom saw lights of the plane disappearing from the sky to the ground, he thought it was an optical illusion. The next morning a search party was sent out when the plane never landed in Fargo and found wreckage of a light plane in a farmer's cornfield about five miles away from Mason City Airport. One eerie part of the story was when The Big Bopper, who had the flu, asked Waylon Jennings, a member of Holly's band, for his seat on the plane. Holly heard about this and said to Jennings, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up!" to which Jennings replied, "Well, I hope your plane crashes!" Of course the two were ribbing each other but that exchange haunted Jennings for years.
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== On 2/5 a security guard was shot and killed in a Brooklyn warehouse where rapper Busta Rhymes was filming a video. The victim, 29-year-old Israel Ramirez, was shot in the chest. Five other bullets also hit an SUV outside the building. The police have not found a motive nor have any suspects been caught, one piece of information released from a production team member said that security had asked a group of rowdy men watching the video shoot to leave 30 minutes before the shooting, said to be a lot pf tension during the incident. That afternoon, police recovered a gun near the building and are still determining if it is the weapon that was used in the shooting.
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== Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland has signed a deal with Scribner to publish his memoir about his rise and fall in Stone Temple Pilots and his drug abuse as well as his road to sobriety. That should be an interesting read.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Thomas "Pig Champion" Roberts, a founding member of influential punk act Poison Idea, died in his Portland, Oregon, home on Monday 1/30 at the age of 47. Roberts had left the band in 1993 yet they went on and Roberts made occasional appearances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Heather Locklear is divorcing her second rocker husband, Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora, after 10 years of marriage, they have an 8-year-old daughter, Ava Elizabeth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Rolling Rock beer is ending its annual Rolling Rock Town Fair, a one-day music festival that took place in Latrobe, PA since 2000. The brewery plans to work with Little Steven Van Zandt on a series of nationwide shows called "Garage Rock" which is designed to bring new rock acts to cities across America such as New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Seattle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== With iPods and other mp3 players being a major part of people's everyday lives, forbes.com has an article on how listeners should be aware of the potential hearing loss these devices can cause with the way people tend to listen to music at extremely loud volumes through the little ear buds that accompany the devices. This concern has been brought up many times since headphones where introduced to home stereos years ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== In another story that involves both pro-wrestling and music, which is pretty much the basis of this blog site, Peter Gabriel's hit song "Big Time" is the theme song for this year's Wrestlemania 22 which will take place in Chicago on 4/2.
©2006 Schlock N' Hyperbole
shimko_7@hotmail.com
Scourge Overkill® - Music notes for 2/8/06
-- Below is a music news report from my old blog Schlock N' Hyperbole dating back to 2/8/06...
== I wrote on this blog sometime ago about my feelings regarding illegal music downloads being the cause of the music industry's current slump in CD sales. I, along with friends I've discussed this subject all agreed that it was in fact the music industry's current product combined with outrageous CD prices that were turning people away from purchasing music. MTV.com and MSNBC reported that Rolling Stone Magazine and the Associated Press conducted a poll where 92% of 1,000 people never downloaded music and 80% think it's stealing. BUT, 75% said that the reason for decline in record sales is due to CD COSTING TOO MUCH with the average price being $20US which is fucking insane, and 58% said the quality of music is basically shitty. More than 99% buy their music digitally opting to buy a single track for 99¢ rather than buy an entire album. It's funny because the music industry is behind the times in general, and while these reasons for declining record sales have been known for years, the music biz is FINALLY seeing the writing on the wall. Buying music digitally may in fact bring singles sales back into the industry as buying entire albums are being extinct, unless you have an album that will be full of great songs, but in this day and age where pop acts reign supreme, they rely more on a single hit rather than a hit album producing 4 or 5 hit singles or a cohesively great album.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== The line-up for this year's Bonnaroo festival in Manchester Tennessee on 6/16-6/18 is nothing worth making a road trip for in my opinion. The headliners are Radiohead, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Phil Lesh & Friends which is quite a hodgepodge that in a post-Lollapalooza age just seems weird and doesn't speak to speciific demographics as in the past, which would be fine except this year's line-up and headliners are all over the place. I enjoy Radiohead but Bonnaroo is not a place I'd expect to see them, think Lollapalooza '96 when Metallica headlined, yeah it was different but did it make a difference in booking Lollapalooza as far as its audience accepting such a move? Tom Petty is not a weird choice for Bonnaroo but as a headliner I question that move although I don't doubt he'll have a crowd at his set, and I love Phil Lesh and Friends but his band line-up this year is not getting such critical acclaim like in the past and he's played with clowns like John Mayer, Ryan Adams and Chris Robinson, yuck! Many music fans have diverse tastes with so many genres and mixing of genres to choose from, but there are times you expect a certain flavor at festivals. Would Iron Maiden being booked for a jazz festival be innovative booking or way too radical, that may be an extreme example but think about it for a moment then look at past Bonnaroo line-ups and compare to this year's and 2005's line-up and you'll see major differences. I feel, why screw with a formula that's been successful for years prior to the 2005-2006 Bonnaroo, but as I saw when I went in 2004, lots of younger, college kids were attending as compared to 2003 when my friends went saying it was a mix of old heads and young people, the booking seems to be catering to the young folks who have endless money supplies from mom and dad as far as the choice of bands on the bill. Sure you still have Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Buddy Guy, Bill Frisell, Jerry Douglas Medeski Martin & Wood and Steel Pulse who help bring the essence and flavor of past Bonnaroos but to me there aren't enough bands on the line-up to convince me that another 13-hour road trip is worth enduring for this festival. The rest of the line-up can be seen on the Bonnaroo site.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== MTV dot com reported on 2/2 that The Smashing Pumpkins will indeed be reforming, although frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Billy Chamberlin are the only two original members working as the Pumpkins so far, this makes sense as Corgan said in interviews that he felt that Chamberlin was a musical soulmate so-to-speak and that Chamberlin was the only other talented musician as Chamberlin is a jazz drummer, they have signed with Azoff Management and are currently writing new music. Former Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur who replaced original bassist D'Arcy Wretzky in 1999, said she wasn't sure if Corgan has contacted Wretzky and original guitarist James Iha about the reunion and that it wouldn't be a true reunion without them, however she offered her services to Corgan should Wretzky not come back. There have been lots of rumors going around the internet regarding this story, including a website which I blogged about here about a new album by "The New Pumpkins" called "Drawn" coming out in April which was a hoax. Also rumors of the band headlining the Coachella festival in California in April were spread, only to be put to bed when it was announced that Tool and Depeche Mode where announced as headliners. This all started when Corgan took out a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune regarding a reunion but contained no other information. Corgan had remained quiet about the subject until now, from here we'll see what unfolds in the soap opera that is The Smashing Pumpkins.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Friday 2/3 was the 47th anniversary of "The Day The Music Died" where musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) all died in a plane crash as they were headed to Moorhead, Minnesota from Clear Lake, Iowa for the Winter Dance Party tour which was to cover 24 Midwest cities. The tour was not booked conveniently as the tour stops were very far from each other, and on the fateful night at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Holly wasn't going to put up with the tour bus any longer and decided to charter a flight to the next tour stop instead. Despite horrendous weather conditions, Holly decided to take a plane to travel the 430-mile trek to Fargo, North Dakota because Moorhead didn't have an airport. At 1AM CST on 2/3/59, the plane took off from Mason City, Iowa, at 1:05AM CST, the manager of the Surf Ballroom saw lights of the plane disappearing from the sky to the ground, he thought it was an optical illusion. The next morning a search party was sent out when the plane never landed in Fargo and found wreckage of a light plane in a farmer's cornfield about five miles away from Mason City Airport. One eerie part of the story was when The Big Bopper, who had the flu, asked Waylon Jennings, a member of Holly's band, for his seat on the plane. Holly heard about this and said to Jennings, "Well, I hope your old bus freezes up!" to which Jennings replied, "Well, I hope your plane crashes!" Of course the two were ribbing each other but that exchange haunted Jennings for years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== On 2/5 a security guard was shot and killed in a Brooklyn warehouse where rapper Busta Rhymes was filming a video. The victim, 29-year-old Israel Ramirez, was shot in the chest. Five other bullets also hit an SUV outside the building. The police have not found a motive nor have any suspects been caught, one piece of information released from a production team member said that security had asked a group of rowdy men watching the video shoot to leave 30 minutes before the shooting, said to be a lot pf tension during the incident. That afternoon, police recovered a gun near the building and are still determining if it is the weapon that was used in the shooting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Velvet Revolver frontman Scott Weiland has signed a deal with Scribner to publish his memoir about his rise and fall in Stone Temple Pilots and his drug abuse as well as his road to sobriety. That should be an interesting read.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Thomas "Pig Champion" Roberts, a founding member of influential punk act Poison Idea, died in his Portland, Oregon, home on Monday 1/30 at the age of 47. Roberts had left the band in 1993 yet they went on and Roberts made occasional appearances.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Heather Locklear is divorcing her second rocker husband, Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora, after 10 years of marriage, they have an 8-year-old daughter, Ava Elizabeth.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== Rolling Rock beer is ending its annual Rolling Rock Town Fair, a one-day music festival that took place in Latrobe, PA since 2000. The brewery plans to work with Little Steven Van Zandt on a series of nationwide shows called "Garage Rock" which is designed to bring new rock acts to cities across America such as New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Seattle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== With iPods and other mp3 players being a major part of people's everyday lives, forbes.com has an article on how listeners should be aware of the potential hearing loss these devices can cause with the way people tend to listen to music at extremely loud volumes through the little ear buds that accompany the devices. This concern has been brought up many times since headphones where introduced to home stereos years ago.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
== In another story that involves both pro-wrestling and music, which is pretty much the basis of this blog site, Peter Gabriel's hit song "Big Time" is the theme song for this year's Wrestlemania 22 which will take place in Chicago on 4/2.
©2006 Schlock N' Hyperbole
Labels: Art Shimko, Flashback, Music, News, Schlock N' Hyperbole
posted by Art Shimko at 2/07/2007 04:14:00 AM
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