FIRST, YOU SHOCK THEM, THEN THEY PUT YOU IN A MUSEUM...

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Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame LIVE
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Time Life proudly presents the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Live, a 9 DVD collection featuring rare, one-of-a-kind performances from the induction ceremonies of the Rock Hall Of Fame, shot during the last 24 years. You'll see the biggest names in rock 'n' roll perform in intimate settings, and jam in combinations not seen anywhere else. Additionally, each DVD features exclusive induction speeches by rock royalty, from heartfelt tributes to hilarious zingers. Plus, each DVD has over an hour of bonus material, including rare, behind-the-scenes material and rehersal footage. Some highlights include:

Bruce Springsteen and Bono share a microphone on U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

The original 3 members of Cream take the stage for the first time in 25 years to play a 3 song set of the group's biggest hits.

Mick Jagger and Tina Turner perform a sultry duet of the Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman."

This is the first time ever these performances have been available on home video! With 125 exclusive performances, over 24 hours of classic rock entertainment, and over 9 hours of bonus material, the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Live is a comprehensive collection sure to exceed the expectations of any rock 'n' roll fan!


You can make jokes all you want about The Jonas Brothers, Britney Spears or Milli Vanilli. For my money, the single biggest joke ever pulled in the name of popular music continues to be The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. If you don't believe me, ask yourself this.

Who decides who gets inducted and who gets left out? Where does the money come from to put on these big ceremonies every year? Why did VH1 Classic start airing these shows only five years ago? How come they are just as tepid and cumbersome as any other awards telecast? Where is that 120 dollars going that I shelled out for this DVD box set?

And, of course, the most obvious one: How the fuck did someone decide that The Pretenders and Elvis Costello had a greater effect on the course of rock and roll than, say, The Stooges or The MC5?

How does Metallica manage to be the first heavy metal band inducted before Motorhead, Iron Maiden or Thin Lizzy?

Today, the Clown College, excuse me, Hall Of Fame announced their nominations for induction. Not the actual inductees, but the artists who have a shot at getting in this year.

The list of potentials includes Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Stooges, ABBA, Genesis and, most shockingly, KISS. Gene Simmons has been brutally honest in his disdain for the institution. If they make it in on their first go-round, I will start telling myself we are winning the war in Iraq.

Also, to keep hip-hop in the running they announced LL Cool J. Why it seems so important to put rap music in the place I don't understand. I like early hip-hop but something tells me when they open up The Rap Museum nobody is going to induct Anthrax for their contributions to the genre.

And, also, not surprisingly, they snubbed Cheap Trick and Alice Cooper for Laura Nyro. Anyone who can tell me who the fuck that is and why she belongs in the museum gets my vinyl copies of "Welcome To My Nightmare","At Budokan" as well as a swift kick in the ovaries.

What I do know about the Hall Of Fame is this-- Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner pretty much decides everything that happens involving the inductees. It is determined by his preferences and musical tastes (which explains ABBA) and what he feels will make good copy in his magazine and bring in ratings when VH1 airs the ceremony. For thirty years, he and his magazine have done a great job of pretending like Alice and KISS never happened so why should his vanity chest of a museum be any different? I speculate that because VH1 and KISS have made a lot of money on DVDs together lately that they may have weighed in on how good it would be for them to be in the show.

Mark my words on what WILL definitely happen this year. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a shoo-in. Not that they don't deserve it, but because Flea inducted Metallica last year. Don't be surprised if Lars Ulrich does the honors this time. Also, The Stooges are a lock this year because they performed "Like A Virgin" at the ceremony inducting Madonna two years ago. It was bizarre and beautiful, like Iggy Pop himself.

At the end of the day, none of this shit matters. I have my own Hall Of Fame, and I encourage you to start your own, too. We may not have the money the "official" one has but at least we know ours has integrity.

One thing I was really impressed with was earlier this year when Metallica were inducted, James Hetfield had the guts to mention a bunch of other bands who needed to go through the museum doors before him....forward to the 6:00 mark in this clip...

ACE IS BACK AND HE TOLD YOU SO....

Ace Frehley has always been a BIG reason why I have loved KISS. I loved all four of the guys and their personas for various reasons, but Ace's playing and attitude has always stood out for me. He had better chops than the rest of the band, the songs he wrote just had a more streetwise feel to them, and, onstage or off, he really did seem to come from outer space.

As a kid, i was too young to realize that was just the effects of constant consumption of champagne and painkillers.

Until a couple of years ago, I really thought we were gonna lose The Space Ace. He's one of those guys who you knew was gonna go on partying and playing til he dropped, but, realistically, how much longer until that happened?

Ace got all sobered up on us a couple years ago, went out on the road with a solid and lucid touring band, and now he has come roaring back with ANOMALY, the solo album he has been telling us about since, i don't know, Bill Clinton's first term or something.

The good news is, it doesn't suck. His playing is as loose and fluid as his drunkest nights onstage and his vocals are more confident than ever. It rocks hard and loud as you would expect it to and it almost feels like with his newly found sobriety he has realized that he needs to reclaim his status as a genuine guitar hero.

Seriously, The Space Ace influenced as many future guitarists in the 70s as Eddie Van Halen, Brian May or Jimmy Page. Unfortunately, I think he let his lifestyle interfere with his legacy for the past three decades and, save for us loyal KISS Army geeks, the rest of the world kind of forgot about the depth of his greatness.

Anyone who checks out Anomaly or the upcoming live shows will happily have their memories refreshed along with a face full of smoking Les Paul solos.

Sure, I miss the drunk lunatic Ace who was literally in his own world when he played and loved to make the crowd feel like he was hosting a big party for all of us. I loved hearing all the wild stories about the car wrecks and near-death experiences. But I am genuinely happy to see that he has found some true inner peace and has raised the odds of sticking around for a few extra years.

I'll take the clean and sober Ace over no Ace at all.

Bless you, Curly. ACK!!

SO MUCH FOR THE ZEPPELIN REUNION....

To the delight of dozens of rock fans everywhere, Bonham has just announced the following U.S. tour dates--

from Blabbermouth.net

Oct. 14 - Revolution Live - Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Oct. 15 - House of Blues - Orlando, FL
Oct. 16 - State Theatre - St. Petersburg, FL
Oct. 29 - Coach House - San Juan Capistrano, CA
Oct. 30 - The Canyon - Agoura Hills, CA

BONHAM will perform selections from LED ZEPPELIN, UFO, FOREIGNER "and a whole lot more."

BONHAM released its first record, "The Disregard of Timekeeping", in September 1989, which was eventually certified gold, and featured the single "Wait For You". A follow-up album, "Mad Hatter", was released in 1992.

BONHAM singer Daniel MacMaster, 39, died unexpectedly on March 16, 2008 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada following complications from pneumonia, after a strep A infection entered his bloodstream.

I think I speak for all rock fans everywhere when I say it won't feel like Bonham without whatshisname...i mean, er, ah, Daniel MacMaster.

LEONARD COHEN FAINTS ONSTAGE IN SPAIN....

Remarkable...

Even Leonard Cohen can't stay awake while listening to Leonard Cohen.

Fast forward to about 3:20 to see the music finally take its toll on the poor guy who has to sing it every night....

ONE THING I FORGOT....

...to mention about the Sgt. Pepper/Cheap Trick show at The Hilton was how awkward it felt when, during "Fixing A Hole", Kanye West stormed onstage, grabbing the mic from Robin Zander and began yelling about how much better George Burns' version in the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie was.

Peculiar.

IF I DON'T SEE YOU NO MORE IN THIS WORLD...

I'll meet you in the next one. Don't be late.....

RIP James Marshall Hendrix on the 39th anniversary of his passing at the age of 27.

Thank you, Jimi, for all of us who picked up an instrument in our lifetimes with the dream of blowing minds open like you did.....

Live 12-31-69...he manages to get Vietnam out of his guitar just by standing still and closing his eyes....

My two favorite Hendrix songs because they showcase his skills as a songwriter and sonic architect....

GOO GOO GA JOOB

My Beatles obsession may have officially hit feverish proportions these past few weeks.

I have been in love with this band since 1978. Ironically, it was not even their records that did it to me. It was seeing the so-bad-it's-awesome movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" that corrupted me at the age of 10.I had never heard music like "A Day In The Life" or "Here Comes The Sun" before. You just didn't get songs like that on top 40 radio in the age of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and "Funkytown". As if the mere viewing of this cocaine-fueled cinematic monstrosity had not affected me deeply enough, the actual songs burned a hole into my heart and bones where it remains today.

School, friends and being a normal kid just didn't matter anymore.

At some point in my teens, I had amassed every piece of vinyl they released, including all their solo work in the seventies and eighties, not to mention multiple copies of several titles on different labels. Not to mention dozens of books and magazines on the band. By the age of 16, I was not merely a hardcore collector, I was a Harvard professor-level authority on the subject.

Fast forward to the late summer of 2009, I am just finishing up this amazing autobiography by Philip Norman called John Lennon-The Life. 800 pages I dedicated my summer to reading and I made it through all the better for it. I honestly thought to myself before getting this book, "What could i possibly not know about John's life after all these years?"

Turns out, a million things. The book carefully details his parents' and grandparents' lives and relationships, the events leading up to his birth and subsequent abandonment by both parents, and his childhood and teenage years beautifully and succinctly. The second half of the book flies through his last twenty years on Earth at a dizzying speed, much like what I felt his actual life was like. It competently illustrates his many personality quirks and foibles, his brash confidence battling internally with his raging insecurities. I don't feel the author left any stone unturned and I am happy to report the book never falls into crass exploitation or gossip-page innuendo. Ultimately, I finished this book feeling that John was a very complicated man unsuccessfully trying to live a simple life.




I also sold off a heavy chunk of those aforementioned LPs from my teens to build up enough store credit to buy the newly remastered Beatles CD catalog that hit the world on 9-9-09. (A Lennon reference I'm sure I was not alone in catching). Parting with all that weighty vinyl was an honest load off my mind. It was getting harder with every move into a new place to rationalize keeping it unplayed and untouched after all these years. The sacrifice was well worth it.

The new CDs sound beautiful and give the music the sonic makeover it had been waiting for since the inception of digital music technology. The original pressings in 1987 were good for that time but hardly revolutionary. They really just sounded like virgin vinyl processed onto a CD. Now, you can honestly hear a crispness in the acoustic guitars and a thunder in the drumming i never noticed before. The vocals no longer have an unnecessary echo or hiss like before. On some songs, there is a presence in them so strong it feels like the vocal tracks are being recorded in front of you.



The packaging is superior with all new liner notes on the history and recording of each title, brand new photos unpublished anywhere, and each CD comes with a 5-minute exclusive mini-documentary viewed on any PC.

Fantastic. Beautiful. Thrilling. The best stuff on Earth just got better.

Earlier this week, one of my other favorite bands, Cheap Trick started a nine-day engagement at The Las Vegas Hilton performing the Sgt. Pepper album in its entirety. If any American band can pull off a fitting tribute, it's Cheap Trick. The band has all the catchy songs and goofy charm that i heard in The Beatles, but with an edgier, sarcastic undercurrent in their sound that to this day gives them an almost punklike snarl.

The show starts off in a very un-Vegas way with a live band (not Trick) playing a Fab Four medley backed by a 30-piece symphony orchestra. Joan Osbourne, Ian Ball and Rob Laufer all take turns on a few numbers admirably. After the spoken introduction of "Ladies & Gentlemen, the best fucking band you have ever heard in your life..." Cheap Trick come out and just rock the joint in their usual way. I have seen these guys over a dozen times in a dozen years and they are still consistently great. This was especially exciting just because it was something different than a CT greatest hits package show, which i also like but have watched twice too many.

Many thanks to Robin, Rick, Tom and Bun E. for trying something different and challenging with great SUCK potential but never actually meeting that.

I would love to say that my obsession has found some sort of peak but I know it never will. There are some things in life you can outgrow or change your mind about, like clothes or politics. But I cannot imagine singing songs of love and life will ever get old. No matter how old we get.

WHEN DOES THE INSTRUCTIONAL DVD ON ROCK SMOKING COME OUT?

PEOPLE WHO DIED

from The New York Times:


Jim Carroll, poet, singer, author of The Basketball Diaries dead at 60.

The cause was a heart attack, said Rosemary Carroll, his former wife.

As a teenage basketball star in the 1960s at Trinity, an elite private school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mr. Carroll led a chaotic life that combined sports, drugs and poetry. This highly unusual combination lent a lurid appeal to “The Basketball Diaries,” the journal he kept during high school and published in 1978, by which time his poetry had already won him a cult reputation as the new Bob Dylan.

“I met him in 1970, and already he was pretty much universally recognized as the best poet of his generation,” the singer Patti Smith said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty.”

The diaries began, innocently: “Today was my first Biddy League game and my first day in any organized basketball league. I’m enthused about life due to this exciting event.”

By the end of the book, Mr. Carroll was a heroin addict who supported his habit by hustling in Times Square. “Totally zonked, and all the dope scraped or sniffed clean from the tiny cellophane bags,” the final entry read, continuing, “I can see the Cloisters with its million in medieval art out the bedroom window. I got to go in and puke. I just want to be pure.”

“The Basketball Diaries,” reissued in a mass-market edition in 1980, became enormously popular, especially on college campuses. In a film adaptation in 1995, Leonardo DiCaprio played the part of Mr. Carroll.

The writer’s good looks and flair for drama made him ideal raw material for rock stardom. “When I was about 9 years old, man, I realized that the real thing was not only to do what you were doing totally great, but to look totally great while you were doing it,” he told the poet Ted Berrigan in the 1960s. In the late 1970s, with the encouragement of Ms. Smith, he formed the Jim Carroll Band, whose first release, “Catholic Boy” (1980), is sometimes called the last great punk album.

James Dennis Carroll, the son of a bar owner, spent his childhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he attended Roman Catholic schools. After the family moved to Inwood, at the northern end of Manhattan, he won a basketball scholarship to Trinity. There he discovered a love of writing and began spending time at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in the East Village, falling under the spell of Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara.

Still in his teens, he published a limited-edition pamphlet of his poems, “Organic Trains” (1967), which, with its successor, “4 Ups and 1 Down” (1970), won him a cult following that was enhanced when The Paris Review published excerpts from his journals in 1970. “Living at the Movies” (1973), issued by a mainstream publisher, won him both acclaim and a wider audience.

His life was colorful. Hailed by Ginsberg, Berrigan and Jack Kerouac as a powerful new poetic voice, he became a fixture on the downtown scene. After briefly attending Wagner College on Staten Island and Columbia University, he found his way to Andy Warhol’s Factory, contributing dialogue for Warhol’s films. Later he worked as a studio assistant for the painter Larry Rivers and lived with Ms. Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer. He chronicled this frenetic period in “Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries, 1971-1973.”

In 1973 Mr. Carroll left New York to escape drugs. He settled in Bolinas, an artistic community north of San Francisco, where met and married Rosemary Klemfuss in 1978. The marriage ended in divorce. He is survived by a brother, Tom.

Mr. Carroll’s music career started by accident when Ms. Smith brought him onstage to declaim his poetry with her band providing background. Encouraged by the response, he formed his own band. It caught the attention of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, who arranged a three-record deal with Atlantic Records.

The critic Stephen Holden described Mr. Carroll in The New York Times in 1982 as “not so much a singer as an incantatory rock-and-roll poet.” Like Lou Reed, he had a mesmerizing power, evident on songs like “People Who Died” from “Catholic Boy,” a poetic litany of his dead friends that became a hit on college radio and part of the soundtrack for “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.”

The group’s next two albums, “Dry Dreams” (1982) and “I Write Your Name” (1984), caused much less stir. After writing lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult and Boz Scaggs, Mr. Carroll returned to the studio in 1998 to record “Pools of Mercury.”

Mr. Carroll published several more poetry collections — “The Book of Nods” (1986), “Fear of Dreaming” (1993) and “Void of Course: Poems 1994-1997” (1998) — as well as releasing several spoken-word albums.

Eight Years Later.....

September 11, 2009.

I still want answers.
I'm still pissed off.
I know I'm not alone.

In the meantime, I'm gonna yearn for a simpler time when Geddy Lee had a mullet to end all mullets.....

AMERICAN IDOL NEWS FLASH!!!!

It's officially official.

Ellen DeGeneres has been named as the new fourth judge on next season of American Idol, replacing the pharmaceutically-enhanced wunderkind formerly known as Paula Abdul.

I personally love all those comedies she made with Ben Stiller and laugh my balls off every time I catch Wedding Crashers on cable, so I'm considering watching the show for my very first time.

Congratulations, Ellen!! Great to see you on TV more often!!

9-9-09...number nine...number nine...

So what with today being 9-9-09?

Well, the remastered, souped-up 22 years in the making Beatles CD catalog hits today.

Not to mention The Beatles Rock Band game, which, if I were into playing a 300 dollar version of "Simon" with toy guitars, would also be an extremely big deal for me.

I'm picking up the CDs this week at Zia Records, because Wal-Mart and Best Buy regard true music fans the same way George W. regarded the victims of Hurricane Katrina. An annoying afterthought. I'll have that review over the weekend, I promise.

9-9-09 made me remember a little thing that happened on 6-6-06. Some metal fans publicized that date as National Day Of Slayer, and encouraged everybody to just crank up tuneage from the almighty Satan-worshippers all day long.

Unfortunately, I did not participate. When my friend called to tell me about the festivities, his cell phone cut out and I thought he was calling for National Day Of Player. Imagine my depression after listening to this song 322 times in one day.....

How does anyone not laugh at this laugh?

I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL ALL NITE...AND PART OF EVERY DAY...LIKE MAYBE BETWEEN NOON AND 3 PM I'M AVAILABLE

It's gonna be a busy month for us foot soldiers in the KISS Army.

(Actually, i prefer to think of myself as a semi-retired lieutenant colonel)

September 15th is the release date for the new Ace Frehley CD, Anomaly. It's the legendary Space Ace's first solo release in 96 years. Actually, it's only been like twenty but, let's face it, Cassettes were still the biggest-selling music media when i last saw a new Ace record anywhere.

October 6th sees the new studio CD (only 10 years in the making) from KISS called Sonic Boom. The CD will be exclusively available at Wal-Mart stores everywhere, coveniently located next to the all-new KISS adult diapers.

Hey, don't let it be said that Gene Simmons does not know his demographics.

Of course, there will be four collectible KISS adult diapers.

The Gene Simmons Adult Diaper-- not only full of more shit than any other adult diaper on the market, can also spew and recycle more shit than one human can biologically reproduce.

The Ace Frehley Adult Diaper-- defective upon purchase. Just does as little as possible all the time.

The Paul Stanley Adult Diaper-- just feels like a tongue in your ass 24-7. Perfect if you're into that sort of thing...not that there is anything wrong with that.

The Peter Criss Adult Diaper-- just complains constantly that he doesn't get as much shit as the other three.


I can already imagine Gene suggesting the taglines to the ad agency. "Dressed To Spill", "Let's Put The X In Excrement", "Crappy, Crappy Nights"...oh, i could go on and on.

In reality, how much further away are we from this MAD TV sketch?

WHEN GREAT CONCEPTS COLLIDE WITH BAD MOVIES....

My latest adventure at the movies was an interesting one. I got to simultaneously enjoy the nerve-wracking feel of a roller coaster ride combined with a REALLY stupid movie.

I went to see The Final Destination. For a lark, it was decided that it would be experienced in a theater that was screening it not only in 3D, but in a new feature called D-BOX Seating.

I tried to find a decent video that would give a better idea what it's like but all i could find was this......

Boy, can that kid sell a product or what? Watch out, Billy Mays.

Anyway, what D-Box essentially does is move your seat according to the movie you are watching. If there's a wild car chase or an explosion, you feel it. Hell, if someone sneezes or farts in the movie, you feel it. It is a lot of fun but definitely not for people who suffer motion sickness easily.

The reason I chose the latest Final Destination movie was clear...the movies are so dumb they're awesome. I don't go expecting a great suspense movie. I want bad acting, thoughtless writing, and completely unrealistic death scenes you can see coming an hour beforehand. And in 3D, no less!! I had yet to see anything in the "new" 3D technology i have been reading about lately. I have to admit it looks pretty cool. It still makes me yearn for the old days of Dr. Tongue's 3d House Of Stewardesses, though.....