Male Bassist in New Smashing Pumpkins Lineup; End of Days Feared

Billy Corgan unveiled the new Smashing Pumpkins lineup in Chicago this past week, which includes bassist Mark Stoermer of The Killers and Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave drummer Brad Wilk. As previously reported, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, who recently recorded with the band, will not be joining the Pumpkins due to commitments with his own band, who are on a farewell tour that won't conclude until late next year.

According to Consequence of Sound, the Pumpkins show at Chicago's recently renovated, 800-capacity Thalia Hall this past Wednesday night was a success, praising the new songs culled from the upcoming Monuments to an Elegy album [Martha's Music/BMG], despite misgivings about the new rhythm section:

Wilk’s heavy-handed playing felt out of place on some songs and was downright sloppy on older cuts like “Hummer” and “Drown”. Stoermer, meanwhile, was unusually shy, hardly ever looking up from his fretboard.

Read the whole CoS review here.

Setlist:
One and All (We Are) [live debut]
Being Beige [live debut]
Hummer
Tiberius [live debut]
Tonight, Tonight
Drum + Fife [live debut]
Glass and the Ghost Children
Stand Inside Your Love
Monuments [live debut]
Drown
Disarm
Zero
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Fame [David Bowie cover]
Silverfuck

Encore:
Burnt Orange-Black

Epic

Faith No More Play Their First U.S. Show In Nearly Four Years at Amoeba Records

There's a Song For That

Three years ago, at the 2011 American Music Awards, actress/comedienne Jenny McCarthy complained about the difficulty of finding “a man’s man” in Hollywood.

“I’m from Chicago. I’m from the South Side, where guys eat meat and potatoes. They don’t know what a vegetarian means. They’re a guy through and through. Out here, they want to borrow my makeup and concealer. I want to bring a little bit of importing into my life hopefully, and look for guys outside of L.A.,” she told Access Hollywood.

McCarthy has since married former New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg. So, our question is, Wahlberg: man’s man, or did she settle?

James Marshall Hendrix (Nov. 27, 1942 – Sept. 18, 1970)

Quote of the Day

“He can play 15 instruments. I can’t play Lotto.”

- Chuck D on his Public Enemy bandmate and musical prodigy, Flavor Flav.

Milestones: 'The Futurist'

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. 
The Futurist 
[Sony-2004]

The haunting piano instrumental that Robert Downey Jr. plays at the end of the movie Two Girls and A Guy [1997] piqued our interest in his then-unbeknownst to us musical side. Scanning through the film’s end credits we were even more intrigued when we learned it was one of his own compositions.


That particular song, "Snake", is not included in The Futurist. What can be found on this album is mostly piano-driven singer/songwriter material reminiscent of Elton John’s "I Want Love", in whose video Downey Jr. appears as the protagonist. 

Sadly, due to The Futurist not doing too well sales-wise, Iron Man decided to put the kibosh on his music career. Too bad: this is a moving full-length debut—one that should appeal to an audience looking for mellow, more adult-contemporary fare—from a talented musician better known for his day job and run-ins with the law. Guests include former Yes vocalist Jon Anderson on "Your Move" first half of his old band's "I've Seen All Good People" medley; and legendary jazz bassist Charlie Haden, who performs on a heartfelt cover of Charlie Chaplin’s "Smile", appropriately enough.

Highlights: 
"Kimberly Glide", "Little Clownz", "Your Move", "Details", "Hannah", "Smile".

Coming Attractions: Joni Says 'No', Cobains Say 'Yes'

Last year we commented on a rumor that Taylor Swift was to play Joni Mitchell in an upcoming biopic. Well, it turns out it was more than a rumor: the pop songstress was indeed chosen to play the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer [class of '97] on the big screen in an adaptation of Girls Like Us, a book written by Sheila Weller which focuses on the influence of Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon. The great John Sayles was hired as screenwriter with Kate Jacobs set to direct.

But Mitchell put the kibosh on the project. "I said to the producer, 'All you've got is a girl with high cheekbones.' It's just a lot of gossip, you don't have the great scenes."

Meanwhile, HBO will air Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, an authorized documentary about the late Nirvana frontman which has the blessing of Cobain's family, in 2015. Montage of Heck was written, directed and produced by Oscar-nominee Brett Morgen.

Victims of Revisionism: '90s U2

Interesting how U2's experimental/ironic '90s were welcomed and lauded at the time; the band celebrated for leaving behind their earnestness and breaking from its past. It was a new decade and U2 were supposedly discarding the trappings of their collective '80s persona, embracing irony and fun, their reinvention hailed everywhere. Yet 20 odd years later, it seems like a 'what-were-they-thinking?' revisionism has started to take hold. Hmm...

Truth is, those guys wrote great songs AND lackluster songs before, during and after Achtung Baby [Island-1991],  Zooropa [Island-1993], and Pop [Island-1997]. Our only beef with them is they let critics and not their own vision dictate their path. As none other than Bruce Springsteen himself stated in his speech at U2's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, "[H]old the McDonald's arches on the stage set, boys, we are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the stations of the cross -- there's no getting out of it."

Amen.

'Death Metal Angola'

An award-winning rockumentary that casts the music against the backdrop of an African nation devastated by war. Directed by Jeremy Xido. (In Portuguese with English subtitles.)

A Tale of Two ECs: Clapton, Costello and Racism

We've always found selective judgement both fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. (Actually, more of the latter, to be honest.) How two people in the same field could commit a similar act and yet be viewed drastically different is a trait we find deplorable, and one we've encountered everywhere from the public life of celebrities to the private life of family, friends and associates. And of course, it happens in the music business as well: We firmly believe that if the vast majority of those who complained about finding a free copy of U2's recent album on their Apple device had instead encountered the latest release by some unknown, they would've treated it like spam and simply erased it, with no further to-do. But it was U2, so they had to pour on the hyperbole and bitch and moan endlessly about the whole thing. Haters, yo.

But here's a much more touchy scenario: alleged racism. Let's start with Elvis Costello.

Costello caught much grief when a March, 1979 drunken argument with Stephen Stills and Bonnie Bramlett at a Columbus, Ohio Holiday Inn bar, devolved into Costello making racist remarks about James Brown and Ray Charles. Costello held a press conference in New York City a few days later in which he apologized for trying "to outrage these people with about the most obnoxious and offensive remarks that I could muster." Costello was forgiven by Ray Charles who declared "Drunken talk isn't meant to be printed in the paper." (James Brown never weighed in on the subject.)

Eric Clapton, on the other hand, fared much better despite a much more damning outburst.

On August 5, 1976, Clapton said the following from a Birmingham concert stage:

"Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch [Powell, conservative politician infamous for his 1968 anti-immigration "Rivers of Blood" speech] will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking [indecipherable] don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!"

How much flak did Clapton catch for that? Zilch. Has he apologized for it? Nope.
This was his immediate response:

"I thought it was quite funny actually. I don't know much about politics. I don't even know if it would be good or bad for him to get in. I don't even know who the Prime Minister is now. I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing... I thought the whole thing was like Monty Python. There's this rock group playing on-stage and the singer starts talking about politics. It's so stupid. Those people who paid their money sittin' listening to this madman dribbling on and the band meanwhile getting fidgety thinking 'oh dear'".

Hilarious.

So, why the double standard? Why was Costello eviscerated and Clapton been the human embodiment of Teflon? Sure, Costello gets to make albums with The Roots these days, but he apologized profusely for his drunken outburst. Clapton, on the other hand has recently reiterated his support for Powell and denied that the late politician's views, or Clapton himself, were racist. Sold.

Ugh.