Restless Wind

Funk legends War seemingly forgot that war is good for absolutely nothing this week when guitarist Howard E. Scott laced into the Beastie Boys. 

Why did this happen? 

The Beastie Boys are being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, and War aren’t. Scott thinks this is pretty damn insulting, considering MCA, Ad Rock and Mike D sampled War’s “Low Rider” on their 1986 Licensed to Ill album. 

“We were cranking out gold records when they were still in diapers,” Scott told TMZ. “How could the Beastie Boys get in before us when they sampled War’s music on their first album? I’ll eat their platinum records!

“[The snub] felt like I was kicked in the back of my britches.”

The Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N’ Roses, Donovan and The Small Faces/The Faces are being inducted into the hall with a ceremony in Cleveland on April 14. 

The question on everyone’s mind is: Will the original Guns N’ Roses lineup reunite for a performance at the induction? But the question on my mind is: How long is Axl Rose going to make everyone wait before he comes on stage? Five hours? 

American operatic pop singer Josh Groban has met with quite a few detractors throughout his career, but he recently met up with an entirely different one: a baby crocodile.

Perhaps said crocodile was angry at Groban for the various musical crimes he has perpetrated throughout his career, such as singing with Celine Dion at the 1999 Grammy Awards. 

Whatever. At any rate, he was in South Africa recently, holding a baby crocodile “with a really dumb grin on [his] face,” he said on Live! With Kelly yesterday, when the reptile decided to show him what it really thought of him.  

“They’ve got his mouth taped with Scotch tape,” he said. 

“And then right after that picture was taken, his tail whacked me across the face to prove to me that, even though he’s only five days old, he can still destroy me. It’s a sting I will not soon forget.”

Perhaps the crocodile was also angry that its mouth was taped shut, and Groban’s wasn’t. It never is anyway. 

Okay, fine, to be honest, I’d much rather this crocodile have slapped Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger across the face, but whatever. This is still fucking hilarious. And almost as good as that time a horse headbutted Leona Lewis.

Guided by Voices cancelled all their upcoming tour appearances earlier this week, but they aren’t breaking up. 

That’s not the point of this piece, though. 

One of the gigs Guided by Voices were supposed to play was the All Tomorrow’s Parties London I’ll Be Your Mirror festival at London, England’s Alexandra Palace from May 25 to 27. They’re obviously not playing now, so a substitute was needed to replace them. 

Enter Cincinnati soul rockers The Afghan Whigs, who haven’t performed in 13 years, but will reunite for I’ll Be Your Mirror. The organizers of ATP seem to be extremely good at getting long-ago-broken-up-but-revered indie acts to reunite to play single gigs… or, in some cases, more than that. 

The Afghan Whigs will also curate ATP’s I’ll Be Your Mirror festival in Asbury Park, N.J. from Sept. 21 to 23, and will headline Sept. 22. 

Tix to ATP London are on sale now through ATP’s website. They’ll run you about 130. You can get single-day tix for 39 (Friday) or 59 (Saturday, Sunday). 

ATP New Jersey tix go on sale through ATP’s website in January. 

In case you’re curious who’s playing I’ll Be Your Mirror London, it’s a pretty eclectic lineup:

Archers of Loaf
Chavez
Codeine
Demdike Stare
Dirty Three
The Melvins
Mogwai
Mudhoney
Siskiyou
Slayer (they’re doing Reign in Blood in entirety)
Sleep
Wolves in the Throne Room
Yob
Yuck

Digable Planets, the ’90s rap trio that featured Butterfly, Ladybug Mecca and Cee Knowledge, are reforming and will release an album and tour in 2012.

The trio’s last release was 1994’s Blowout Comb, and they went platinum in 1993 with Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space). They also won a Grammy Award for “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat).” 

Since the group split, Butterfly has been working with Shabazz Palaces, whose new Black Up album made many critics’ best-of lists this year. 

There’s no other information available about Digable Planets’ reunion or album just yet, but when we get word, we’ll let you know!

In the meantime, you can see Shabazz Palaces here:

Jan. 11 Brisbane, Australia @ Alhambra Lounge
Jan. 12 Melbourne, Australia @ RAOB GAB Buffalo Club
Jan. 13 Sydney, Australia @ Becks Bar (Sydney Festival Spiegeltent)
Jan. 14 Melbourne, Australia @ Forum Theatre
Jan. 15 Perth, Australia @ The Bakery

Earlier this year, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon said the Grammys were basically irrelevant, and said an artist’s musical integrity gets called into question when they want a Grammy. 

Australian turntablists The Avalanches took him to task yesterday because Vernon recently appeared in an advertisement for Bushmills whiskey. 

“a musician’s ‘art is compromised’ if he/she desires a Grammy. But endor$ing a product with proven devastating health risks is ok?” The Avalanches tweeted yesterday, attaching a photo of a Bushmills ad with Vernon in it. 

“do u drink whiskey?” Vernon wrote back.

“actually vodka is more my thing, but this aint no rock n roll pissing contest,” The Avalanches responded. “i have seen alcohol destroy many families … including my own.. and you are making money off this shit . don’t try and justify it.”

Vernon hasn’t responded further. To be honest, we’re confused - would advertising vodka be okay instead of whiskey? Because The Avalanches’ point about alcohol being bad kinda became moot when they mentioned they enjoy vodka. 

Bon Iver’s got the following tour dates lined up to support his self-titled album:

Dec. 7 Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
Dec. 9 Chicago, IL @ University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion
Dec. 10 Madison, WI @ Orpheum Theatre
Dec. 12-13 Eau Claire, WI @ University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Zorn Arena
Feb. 27-28 Wellington, New Zealand @ Wellington Town Hall (New Zealand International Arts Festival)
March 3 Perth, Australia @ Red Hill Auditorium (Perth International Arts Festival)
March 8 Melbourne, Australia @ Sidney Myer Music Bowl
March 10 Meredith, Australia @ Meredith Supernatural Amphitheatre
March 11-13 Sydney, Australia @ Sydney Opera House
March 15-17 Brisbane, Australia @ Tivoli Theatre

Interscope has finally gotten the courage to do what it should have done way back in 1999: It’s dropped Limp Bizkit.

I know this must have been a hard decision for the folks over at the Universal-owned company to make, seeing as they’ve put out every Limp Bizkit album (save 2005’s The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) - for which there was no Part 2) since 1999, but they’ve done it nonetheless. 

See, guys, that wasn’t so hard, was it? 

I guess seeing as Three Dollar Bill, Y’All, Significant Other and Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water sold so well back in the nu-metal days, Interscope must have figured Gold Cobra (which is almost as horribly-titled as Chocolate Starfish) would do the same. 

But the problem with that is we seem to now live in an era where kids these days seem to think it’s cooler to listen to Tyler, the Creator spout “faggot” over and over again instead of listening to Fred Durst scream about breaking shit. But if you think about it, those are kind of on the same level, artistically.

That and, you know, people grow up, and 99 per cent of former Limp Bizkit fans probably look at their former favourite band with shame and derision now that they’ve realized the error of their ways. Or not. 

Whatever. Gold Cobra didn’t sell, and that’s the point, and that’s why Fred Durst and company got dropped. Which should have happened a long time ago, but at least now Interscope’s had the guts to do it.

Durst doesn’t seem too worried to be dropped by his longtime label. To be fair, the majors aren’t quite what they used to be anyway. But getting dropped by your label usually sucks major patootie. Unless, of course, you’re Amanda Palmer and you wanted it to happen in the first place. 

“One of the things with Gold Cobra was that it was a record for us to do for ourselves, for the core fans, for some of the people that we know in the industry,” Durst recently told Poolside With Dean Delray. 

“It wasn’t our step forward to make a big pop, smash radio record; we just didn’t want to make that record at that time. We have been working for a while now to renavigate where we are going to take Limp Bizkit and finally we have been able to get off our label and become independent.”

Some of us are probably hoping that last sentence means that “renavigation” means the band are going nowhere, and that independence means Durst and company can sail off into the sunset and be forgotten, because their 15 minutes was up long, long ago. 

Former Smiths and current Modest Mouse guitarist Johnny Marr can’t drive 55.

In fact, he can’t drive 56. Fifty-six days, in fact. 

That’s the number of days in a discretionary ban against him getting behind the wheel of any vehicle. The ban was imposed by magistrates in England after Marr was caught traveling 116 kilometres per hour in a 64 kilometres per hour zone near Manchester, England in April. Marr was also fined £535 (about $835 U.S. and $843 Canadian).

Marr was going to be banned from driving for six months, but his lawyer successfully argued that his case should have been heard before two speeding offences that contribute to the demerits points on his license. 

“It was something he deeply regrets and it is the first time he has been banned from the roads,” Gwyn Lewis, Marr’s lawyer, said, according to the Daily Mirror. 

He’d better be careful. Marr’s a vegan - what if he hits a poor widdle animal going 116 kilometres per hour?

While I’m sure Marilyn Manson has had worse things spit on him than water, this is still amusing nonetheless.

Actor Shia LaBeouf (Transformers) was out in Los Angeles on Friday night, at the opening of exclusive new nightclub The Box (insert dirty joke like, “Oh, so THAT’S why Manson was there…). According to the New York Post, he was sitting at a table with Karolyn Pho, his girlfriend, and Manson.

As the night went on, LaBeouf got progressively more intoxicated to the point where this happened:

“Shia picked up a water bottle and shot a mouthful of water all over his date’s legs,” an eyewitness told the newspaper. “Then he put more water in his mouth and started spitting it all over his tablemates, including Marilyn Manson.”

LaBeouf then reportedly got very angry, screamed at Pho and then “lunged” through the crowd to get out of the nightclub.

I had to wonder why the hell Manson let LaBeouf get away with something like this and didn’t, say, remove his genitalia with some kind of gothic scythe and then feed them back to him mixed in a glass of absinthe, as one can imagine him doing. Then I remembered that the two are friends, and LaBeouf is directing a documentary about Manson. How much of it involves spitting water on people?

Manson’s currently working on his eighth studio album. The as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2009’s The High End of Low will come out sometime this fall.

There are two musical genres I hate more than any other: nu metal and dub step. Any combination of the two would logically seem like musical hell to me, then, right?

Enter Korn, who are set to release a… dub step album. (Yes, seriously.)

It’s called The Path to Totality, and it’s coming out Nov. 15. It features collaborations with DJs like Skrillex, Kill the Noise and 12th Planet.

“I thought it would be fun to experiment again and see what we come up with, and maybe come up with something like this that we’re really, really excited about,” Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis told The Pulse of Radio earlier this year.

See, experimentation’s all well and good… except when you’re Korn.

“We like to experiment and try things, and we’re not gonna put out something that we don’t all like,” he continued. “So I think me and [Munky, guitar] and [Fieldy, bass] and Ray [Luzier, drums] are really, really excited about this.”

Luzier told Download he was worried the band recording a dub step album meant a drum machine would be used instead of an actual, in the flesh drummer. But he didn’t have to worry because that’s not the case.

Seriously, why can’t someone just replace all the members of Korn with machines? It’d sound way better.

You can hear the first single, “Get Up!,” which features Skrillex, below. It’d be kind of good, almost, if it didn’t, you know, just sound like a remix.

Korn Feat Skrillex - Get Up (Autoerotique Mix) by kornofficial

You can see Korn here:

Oct. 7 Mobile, Alabama, USA @ BayFest
Oct. 8 El Paso, Texas, USA @ Speaking Rock Event Center
Oct. 16 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA @ Luxor Festival Grounds