With this sober debut from some of rocks most excess abused survivors,
Velvet Revolver shows promise, but may need some long road and studio tuning to reach that true Supergroup potential.
Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, bassist Chris Chaney and drummer Stephen Perkins have formed a new band with Skycycle vocalist Steve Isaacs. The as-yet-unnamed group has penned three songs and has begun recording with producer Danny Saber, who worked with Navarro on his 2001 Capitol solo debut, “Trust No One.”
Speculation has been rampant that this spells the end of Jane’s Addiction, which has been inactive since completing touring and promotion for its 2003 Capitol reunion album, “Strays.”
“I am not replacing [Jane’s Addiction vocalist] Perry [Farrell],” Isaacs wrote on his official Web site. “Even writing that like it were possible is crazy to me. Dave, Stephen, and Chris and I are just taking some time to do what is the most fun thing in the world to do — make music and write songs.”
Navarro was more specific in a Web post of his own this week, when he proclaimed, “The deal is that [the reunion] simply didn’t work out. Sometimes things just don’t work out. In all honesty, we have broken up and rejoined roughly four times over the years. Perhaps that should shed some light as to where we are now. We really don’t know. We do know that we really gave it everything we had this time and we actually made a really great record after so many years of silence.”
“Sometimes the best creative relationships are the most combustible and they aren’t meant to last forever,” he continued. Both Capitol and Jane’s Addiction’s management declined further comment on Navarro’s post.
“I don’t know what the future of Jane’s Addiction is, but I do know from being in a band for five years, that you yearn to play with other people and see what making NEW music sounds like,” Isaacs said. “Life is beautiful, magical, and way too short, and to spend time not making music makes you die a little bit inside. I know about that, too.”
The news comes just days after the Farrell-reared Lollapalooza tour cancelled its entire summer run due to poor ticket sales.
Source billboard.com.
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Copyright 2004 Billboard
Rhino Records has set an Aug. 17 release date for two retrospectives celebrating the work of influential quartet Talking Heads. The label’s revamp of the live package “The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads” will mark the first CD issue of a fan-favorite release from 1982, while “The Best of Talking Heads” is the group’s first U.S. single-disc greatest-hits set.
Both titles were assembled with the involvement of all of the band’s members — David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and Jerry Harrison.
Originally a double-vinyl set, “The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads” has been buffed up to a two-disc release with the addition of 13 previously unreleased live tracks spanning 1977-1981. Also appended to the album are three cuts from a 1979 promotional-only live disc — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls,” an early version of “Drugs” titled “Electricity” and “Found a Job.”
“The Best of Talking Heads” is an 18-track collection of the band’s most popular tunes, including “Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down the House” and “And She Was.”
Last fall, Rhino released the three-CD, one-DVD box set “Once in a Lifetime,” including songs from throughout the band’s career as well as all its videos. A 1992 Sire/Warner Bros. compilation, “Popular Favorites 1976-1992: Sand in the Vaseline,” surveyed each of the band’s studio albums across two discs and added five then-previously unreleased songs.
In related news, former Heads frontman Byrne will follow a July European tour with another North American run. He is touring behind his latest album, “Grown Backwards,” released in April by Nonesuch.
Source billboard.com.
Late last summer I brewed my annual stout. But rather than going back to the cherry and hazelnut flavorings I tinkered with to moderate success, this time I took it up a notch and brewed my first Blueberry Stout.
