Who's Left in the Velvet Revolver Sweepstakes?

In the interest of clearing up some of the confusion that's been generated in the last week, I present the following.

Below is a list of people who are NOT the new lead singer for Velvet Revolver:
Scott Weiland (duh.)
Chester Bennington (denied rumors, still working with Linkin Park)
Steve Isaacs (MTV VJ/Panic Channel leader also denied reports yesterday)
Sebastian Bach (Not doing it)
Layne Staley (no one has come forward to deny his involvement yet, but given that he's dead, I'm gonna go ahead and scratch him off my list)
David Cook (would be a good fit, but the Idol win ties up his schedule for the next year or so)

This leaves the rest of the band with:
The Unknown Australian
Any one of a million YouTubers (would be cool if Journey hadn't already blazed that trail)
Scott Stapp (Going from one Pearl Jam clone [Weiland] to another. Plus, dude's available)
Amy Winehouse (Unlikely she's one of about 12 people with an expiration date sooner than Weiland's)
Robert Plant (would silence the Led Zeppelin rumors for awhile)
Axl Rose (Like we haven't all been thinking it for the last 3 months)

Anyone I'm forgetting on either list?

Velvet Revolver - She Builds Quick Machines [iTunes]
Guns N Roses - November Rain [iTunes]

==TJ==

Rapid Fire: Linkin Park, Velvet Revolver, Teddy Geiger (?!?!), etc.

Rather than try to do a bazillion posts today, I'm consolidating three into one.

=First, and update on an Under the Radar band; Canadian alt-rock outfit Your Favorite Enemies dropped their first full-length album, Love is a Promise Whispering Goodbye earlier this week. It's available dirt cheap on iTunes, and most of it is streaming from their MySpace page. I sadly have not yet picked up my copy, but once I do, expect a review

Your Favorite Enemies - Open Your Eyes [iTunes]

=Teddy Geiger, who despite falling off the face of the map since Love Monkey was unfortunately canceled two years ago is not dead, has set up a site via a service called musicane which is letting fans help select tracks from his long in-production second album. Fans can hear snippets from 33 songs, rate them, and if they so choose buy high-quality MP3s of their favorites. Relatively ingenious for a guy my age, but if people choose to buy their favorite songs from this set...won't that basically render useless releasing an album that might not have everyone's favorites on it?

=And now, the non-story of this set; Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington has squashed the rumors that he's on the shortlist to take over singing duties for the newly Weiland-free Velvet Revolver. Given that at last report, the VR camp was in talks with "an unknown Australian singer", I'm not sure who thought Chester was on the shortlist, as he is neither unknown nor Australian. Bennington says his current focus is on completing the Projekt Revolution tour with LP and releasing the debut album from his solo project Dead By Sunrise.

==TJ==

Weiland Slashed from Velvet Revolver

I was originally going to devote this entry to all the press Chris Cornell has gotten in the last week after a certain American Idol performance, but Idolator and WMMR picked up this story late yesterday and its more relevant. After a very public battle online and in concert between the members of Velvet Revolver/Guns N Roses and singer Scott Weiland, the band and its management yesterday announced that Scott Weiland was no longer a member of the supergroup. So says Slash:

"This band is all about its fans and its music and Scott Weiland isn't 100% committed to either...Among other things, his increasingly erratic on-stage behavior and personal problems have forced us to move on."

The on-stage behavior in question is Weiland's statement at a recent concert that this would be the band's last tour. Those remarks sparked a battle between Weiland, Slash and bassist Duff McKagan, as well as some nasty statements about ego and jealousy from drummer Matt Sorum. Slash has promised that Velvet Revolver will continue with a new lead singer, preferably one that doesn't go into rehab every 14 months.

Anyone worried about where Weiland will get his next meal/heroin fix can rest easy. A short time ago Weiland's original band Stone Temple Pilots announced it was reuniting and will be playing a number of dates this year. Based on the number of canceled VR dates because of Weilands problems, all tickets for all STP shows will not go on sale until one hour before the show so as to verify Weiland will actually be there.

Memo to American Idol contestant David Cook; VLM humbly recommends tanking this season and auditioning for the Velvet Revolver vacancy.

(Video below is Cook's performance of Chris Cornell's take on "Billie Jean"...more on Cornell later today)

Velvet Revolver - The Last Fight [iTunes]

==TJ==

Kanye, 50 set to do battle

For starters, I just started playing a leaked version of Graduation by Kanye West. I'll tell you what I think when I blast through the whole thing, but you should know that "Stronger" has been getting frequent play on my iPod for the last week or so. Both this album and 50 Cent's Curtis are slated for a Sept. 11th release, creating much fanfare and rivalry in the hip-hop world. In a very shady coincidence, both albums also leaked within hours of each other early last week. Fiddy has claimed that he will retire if Kanye sells more albums, a bet I sincerely wish we got in writing. Rolling Stone had the two appear as their cover story, and while the pieces are well worth the read, I was kind of disappointed to find out that the West/50 rivalry isn't nearly as heated as everyone would like to believe. I kind of enjoyed the image of Kanye holding his hands up in victory as he stands on a crying 50 Cent's body curled up in the fetal position. Maybe he's handing 50 a gold watch to help commemorate his retirement too. I dunno.

Last night my roommate handed me a mix of Okkervil River's stuff. I had heard of them insofar that their the new indie band du jour, but don't know much of their stuff. I'm gonna give it a shot a little later, see if maybe the indie kids got something right this time around.

Till then, I offer you a little taste of what I've been listening to in the last week or so:

Matchbox 20 - How Far We've Come
Kanye West - Stronger
Linkin Park - Shadow of the Day
Velvet Revolver - The Last Fight
Finger Eleven - Paralyzer
Pearl Jam - Daughter (Live at Lollapalooza 07) [The unedited version that caused a shitstorm last month]

That's pretty much it. Back later in the week, probably with more info on the radio show.

==TJ==

What I listened to this week

What with it being my first week back in civilization, I had quite a bit of catching up to do when it comes to music. I spent an unhealthy amount of quality time with my iPod (whose name is Dash Z. Linkin, if you were curious), and here's a quick rundown of what I was playing:

-Fuel released Angels & Devils, its first album with Toryn Green as lead singer on Tuesday. Green's a decent fit with the band, but in some ways he's almost too good a fit, and his voice gets lost behind Carl Bell's guitars and just becomes part of one big clusterfuck of radio rock. Tracks like "Wasted Time" and "Scars in the Making" show off how well the band can be when everyone's on, but Fuel has always been about its lead singer, whether it's Brett Scallions or Toryn Green, and for too much of Angel's and Devils Green gets washed out by simply serviceable instrumentation
Ruling on the field: 5.5/10
Highlight Reel: "Wasted Time"

-It only took about a week for me to get tired of "Who Knew" by P!nk. It's OK, 'cause that's still 6 days, 23 hours, and 57 minutes longer than it took "Girlfriend". Meanwhile, the new singles from Velvet Revolver and Finger Eleven are incredible.

-I know I'm a month late, but I got around to hearing Smashing Pumpkins' Zeitgeist. It has it's moments, but like everything else Billy Corgan's done, it's just a bit too weird and without direction for my taste.
Ruling on the field: 6/10

-At the suggestion of a friend from over the summer, I picked up the second album from Boston duo The Dresden Dolls, entitled Yes, Virginia. Expecting an hour-long lesson in elitist girl punk a la Courtney Love with a piano, I was very pleasantly surprised. Amanda Palmer's voice is strong, albeit it not very nuanced, but the drummer is absolutely sick in every sense of the word. Think Panic! At the Disco for people who have too many brain cells to deal with P!ATD.
Ruling on the field: 8/10
Highlight Reel: "Backstabber"

Downloading music from my blog makes me feel good about myself, but buying the music is good karma.

Fuel on iTunes
Smashing Pumpkins on iTunes
Dresden Dolls on iTunes

==TJ==

VLM Makes A Triumphant Return!!

OK everybody, I'm back! The month off was pretty awesome, but let's just dive in to the music!

-The Foo is back! The Foo Fighters have set September 25th as the release date for their new album, Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace. A tentative tracklisting is on their myspace page, and early last week the first single "The Pretender" leaked onto the internet. The song isn't quite as good as "The Best of You", but as a sign of what's to come on the new album, I'll take it. In addition, the Foo Fighters have released a 10th anniversary edition of The Colour and the Shape with new bonus tracks. Normally this would suck and reek of corporate underpinnings, but since the bonus tracks are decent and they don't jack the price of the album up, it marks another classy move by the always awesome Dave Grohl.

Ruling on the Field: 6.5/10

Foo Fighters - The Pretender [via sendspace]

-Joining in on the fun is Jimmy Eat World, who slated October 16th as the release for Chase This Light, and also re-released Clarity and Static Prevails in anticipation. No single out yet, but look for one in the next few weeks.

Ruling on the Field: I want a single, dammit!

-A very large (and probably long overdue) "F--k you!" goes out to Chad Kroeger and the guys from Nickelback. The commercially angsty Canucks just reissued their 2005 smash All the Right Reasons with three pointless live tracks and a DVD of music videos. Since I'm pretty sure everyone who's going to buy All the Right Reasons already did so, this move just marks a cheap marketing ploy to scrounge another 30 bucks out of Nickelback's "hardcore" fans. Real smooth, guys...real smooth.

Ruling on the Field: Fuck you, Nickelback!!

-I Ruckused Sum 41's controversial new album Underclass Hero shortly after coming home, and damn it if it isn't a throwback to what punk rock is SUPPOSED to sound like! The title track is a ballbuster of the highest caliber, and nothing on the album is inherently bad, it just tends to lean into territory already walked by the likes of Blink 182. Regardless, Sum 41 comes through again with what might be the most underrated punk album of the year.

Ruling on the field: 7.5/10
Highlight Reel: "Underclass Hero", "Speak of the Devil", "March of the Dogs"

-My list of CDs I need to hear has expanded, now including Who We Are from Lifehouse (tentative ruling based on what I have heard: 8.5/10), Smashing Pumpkins' new album Zeitgeist, and the new one from Velvet Revolver. More on those when I sit down and hear them in full.

-Linkin Park released the video for their second single off Minutes to Midnight, "Bleed it Out". Love the camera work and the song's awesome, but didn't Coldplay already trademark the whole everything-in-reverse idea?



OK that's all. Back later

==TJ==