New York City Rock band PSSR has some famous members trying to do justice to the greatest names in NYC rock history such as KISS, The New York Dolls, The Strokes, The Ramones, Living Colour, and The Velvet Underground. Capturing the spirit of those bands and haunts such as t just the bands, CBGB’s, Fillmore East, The Mercury Lounge and Bowery Ballroom, PSSR is comprised Eric J, on vocals and guitar, Guns N” Roses drummer Frank “Thunderchucker” Ferrer, and bassist Brett Bass (Greg Allman), and lead guitarist/producer Rob Bailey (Delta Goodrem, David Johansen). Check out two new singles “Busted” (also with a new video) and “Push’! A third, “Last Time”, will drop late July. “Busted” features Ferrer”s Guns N” Roses bandmate Richard Fortus on guitar and introduces the band with tough defiant lyrics and vocals over a gritty NYC rock backdrop. Check them out!Continue reading →
A lot of artists have been doing covers to pass the time thanks to quarantine due to coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Watch Mike Portnoy (Sons of Apollo, The Winery Dogs, Neal Morse Band, BPMD) cover The Ramones classic ‘We’re A Happy Family’ on vocals and all the instruments. Extra points if you catch where he changed the lyrics to his own happy family!
Connecticut based photographer Tom Hearn was fortunate enough to document The Ramones at the height of the burgeoning Punk scene in the mid-1970s. This weekend in New York a new exhibition of his photography, The First Time I saw the Ramones, a solo exhibition by Hearn opens at 72 Gallery in New York City. The collected photos are from July 22 1976 when Tom was asked by his friend Legs McNeil(Please Kill Me) to see the Ramones play at the Arcadia Ballroom in New Haven. The exhibition runs until June 6th and the gallery is typically open Tuesday through Sunday, with details below.
The new trailer for Spider Man: Far From Home just dropped and once again Queens, New York legends The Ramones are being repped by the movie. Spider-Man’s character is actually from Forrest Hills, the same neighborhood as The Ramones, and the iconic Punks are synonymous with New York attitude and style. ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ can be heard at the top of the trailer, much like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ was used in the trailers and the movie Spider-Man: Homecoming. The trailer always has an orchestral version of the popular original Spider-Man Cartoon theme song from the 1960s. Spider-Man Far From Home releases on July 5th 2019 from Sony Pictures. Continue reading →
A 60s classic rock song covered by The Ramones was featured on Episode 2 of the current season of The X-Files. ‘California Sun’, originally by Joe Jones, and was covered many times, was originally recorded by The Ramones on their second album, Leave Home (Sire) in 1977. The song is heard in the cold open of the show and the Ramones can be seen on a TV the main characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are watching on the couch in that scene. Continue reading →
The music world was rocked last night as news of the death at age 90 of iconic originator Chuck Berry spread over the internet. Berry’s monumental influence on generations of guitarists and bands is hard to measure, but not to quantify in importance to music. Chuck personally led to the wide-spread love and understanding of rock and roll through a string of hit songs and other anthems championing the nascent genre in the early 1950s. He died near his home of St. Charles County, MO and his death was confirmed by the St. Charles County, Mo., police department.
Hailing from Sierra Vista, Arizona are Fuzz Evil, formed in 2014 by Wayne (guitar/vocals) and Joseph Rudell (bass/vocals) whose previous band was the wonderfully named Powdered Wig Machine, with Marlin Tuttle on drums rounding off the trio. This Fuzz Evil’s self titled début came out last month on Battleground Records and it is a loud blast of punk energy, with a wonderfully colourful and psychedelic front cover that the Blues Pills would be proud of.Continue reading →
The 1990s was a simpler time in the world. Before the internet was huge, and before everyone had a cell phone. Before apps, downloading, WiFi, and streaming. The rock music seemed a bit more genuine in the post Nirvana second half of the decade especially and even the bands with hits, didn’t have a hard time being sincere while making catchy rock music for the masses. For four years the annual Summerland Tour has been the traveling home to this party tour that still knows what you did last summer, and every time. Summerland 2016 featured all returning bands from previous tours, each one capable of headlining this show any day: Sugar Ray, Everclear, Lit, and Sponge. Sponge opened the proceedings and had the shortest set, but they have always been one of the best and most underrated live acts to come from that era. Lit followed with their infectious pop-rock and closed with their biggest hit, ‘My Own Worst Enemy’. Everclear has led this tour several times and the depth of their set list always proves their credibility to this day. Led by Art Alexakis, the band plays hit after hit and still goes pretty hard nightly. Smash radio hits (when radio was radio still) may have softened the fury that Sugar Ray once had in their youth. But you can’t deny the catchiness of the majority of their songs or the fun they bring. Even though they eschewed some of their stronger originals for some odd covers on this tour (EMF and The Ramones) one can’t deny that this music just smacks of warm nights, cold beers, and good memories. Caught and captured for Ghost Cult in Las Vegas by Jesse Lambert of Arch Angel Studios, you can see why year after year the Summerland Tour still packs em in!
Rather unsurprisingly, Rob Zombie records are much like Rob Zombie films. You either like them or you don’t. His films are nightmarish, brutal gore-soaked rides featuring masked or grease-painted trailer trash homicidal maniacs, old B-movie references (and actors), a marvelously excessive use of the word “motherfucker”, and of course, Sheri Moon Zombie. His albums are almost identical except possibly for more gasoline guzzling, psychoholic undead werewolf go-go dancers.
So, if you’re reading this review then there’s a good chance you already have more than a reasonable idea of what’s waiting for you even before you start listening. All you really want to do now is read about how fucked up it is and how much you’re going to like it.
The preposterously titled The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser (Zodiac Swan) begins with ‘The Last of the Demons Defeated’, a short intro featuring the voice of infamous occultist Aleister Crowley. The first proper song, ‘Satanic Cyanide! The Killer Rocks On!’, is a typically
bombastic assault, featuring quotes from leader of the Texas Cornerstone “Megachurch”,Pastor John Hagee (amusingly sped up so he sounds like some kind of loopy religious Minion) and author Steven Jacobson speaking about mind control.
‘The Life and Times of a Teenage Rock God’ begins slowly with keyboard effects acting like the soundtrack to a mad scientist’s laboratory, but soon hits you with a driving beat and an Alice Cooper vibe. As a bit of an unusual departure, RZ releases his inner Les Claypool with ‘Everybody’s Fucking in a UFO’. If you haven’t already heard it, just imagine ‘Winona’s Big Brown Beaver’ by Primus, but with a crunching riff, more profanity, and huge spurts of green alien jizz.
‘A Hearse That Overturns With the Coffin Bursting Open’ is a an acoustic interlude that lasts only a little longer than it takes to say the title. This is followed by ‘The Hideous Exhibitions of a Dedicated Gore Whore’ which includes a Vox organ and a creepy audio sample featuring Charles Manson family member Leslie Van Houten (taken from the same interview, incidentally, that White Zombie used for ‘Real Solution #9’).
‘Medication For the Melancholy’ is a fast and furious affair, the obligatory featured audio sample coming this time from Pam Grier blaxploitation flick, Coffy. ‘In The Age of the Consecrated Vampire We All Get High’ (come on, Rob. Really?) is a thunderously good signature Zombie tune that doesn’t sound a million miles away from long-time fan favourite, ‘Superbeast’, and ‘Super-Doom Hex-Gloom Part One’ is another instrumental interlude, but unfortunately doesn’t really do anything that interesting.
Rob Zombie, by Melina D Photography
‘In The Bone Pile’ comes with bags of attitude and a surprisingly short title, while ‘Get Your Boots On! That’s The End of Rock and Roll” is absurdly catchy with its “Gabba Gabba Hey, Be-Bop-A-Lula” chorus, and album closer ‘Wurdalak’ is a slow, grinding, atmospheric tribute to Boris Karloff in the 1963 Mario Bava horror film “Black Sabbath”.
Zombie has referred to his new album (there’s no way I’m writing that title out again) as “seriously our heaviest most fucked up musical monster to date”, and although it’s clearly a beast, it’s not dramatically heavier than his last couple of releases. It’s also a relatively short album, coming in at only just over thirty minutes in length. But the truth is that it doesn’t have to be heavy as hell or longer than the average album to make an impression. Each song is a short, sharp jab of (sick) bubblegum Americana, a swift, strikingly confident punch in the face that knocks you down but makes you want to get straight back up to take more of its addictive abuse.
The music world lost one of its true great baddasses when Ian Frasier Kilmister, known to scores of fans by his eponymous nickname Lemmy of Motörhead, passed away suddenly from cancer on December 28th. The shockwave felt with from announcement of his death at age 70 on social media, and then confirmation by the band was heartbreaking for many who followed his career of nearly five decades. Although he has struggled with health issues the last few years, Motörhead was last seen on tour in Europe three weeks earlier, supporting their recent new album Bad Magic (UDR). One of the most enduring sounds in rock music, the obscenely loud volume of the bands’ live backline, unmatched by any band in any genre, will never be heard again. Continue reading →
