Tom “T-Bone” Wolk 1951-2010

Today the music world mourns the loss of Tom “T-Bone” Wolk, longtime bassist for Hall & Oates and the Saturday Night Live Band. Often seen working in the company of guitarist G.E. Smith, Wolk died of a heart attack February 27, 2010. He was 58 years old. Wolk was a Yonkers, NY native who first came to prominence playing bass on Kurtis Blow’s seminal rap classic “These Are The Breaks,” which was the first rap track to achieve a gold record. Read more

Peavey IPR 1600 Stereo Power Amp

The Peavey IPR 1600 stereo power amp features 830 watts per channel at 2 ohms and weighs in at 7 pounds! The IPR1600 also has 2 channel independent fourth order Linkwitz-Riley crossovers, a variable-speed fan housed in a lightweight aluminum chassis, patented DDT speaker protection, and the revolutionary new IPR class D topology. Read more

Fight Club – Original vs. Cover Bands

One of the biggest divides in this thing of ours is between those who play their own original material and those who play other people’s songs in cover bands. If you believe the arguments that continually rage on the forums and on craigslist, original bands are made up of self-indulgent wankers that really believe their take on the two-note power chord will land them on the cover of Rolling Stone Read more

QSC K Series Active Loudspeaker Review

Could this be the speaker everyone has been waiting for?
QSC K Series Presser – QSC is marketing the new K Series as “The New Standard.” After spending some time with these speaker and putting them through their paces, I might have to agree that the bar has just been set higher than ever before in the category of portable active loudspeakers. Read more

Song of the night: MAYLENE AND THE SONS OF DISASTER

Maylene And The Sons of Disaster:

Step up–This is a bad ass video for a bad ass song. From the looks of it the clip was filmed somewhere in the U.S. south, possibly near the band’s hometown of Birmingham, AL. Who knows?

READY TO ROCK?

Maylene And The Sons of Disaster: Step up (I’m On It)

JAMES HETFIELD takes Pie in the face for 46th Birthday

Video footage of METALLICA frontman James Hetfield getting covered in cream pies for his birthday at the conclusion of the band’s performance at the Sonisphere festival on Sunday, August 2 at the legendary Knebworth Park, United Kingdom can be viewed below. Read more

Clutch – 50,000 Unstoppable Watts Video & Tour Dates

Clutch Rocks!–We gots the goods. And so do Clutch; like a fine wine, these Marylanders just get better and better with age. We’ve got their brand new track “50,000 Unstoppable Watts” – from their new album Strange Cousins From the West (released July 7th). Produced by Clutch and the legendary J. Robbins, the effort is the first Clutch original to be released on the band’s own Weathermaker Music. Clutch, the road dogs that they are, already have a 7 month worldwide headlining tour planned, taking flight in the US on May 6th with support from Wino and Maylene & the Sons of Disaster, followed by their July US tour with the wicked, wicked Baroness as main support. Full list of confirmed dates after the jump and the new track streaming video below — enjoy!

Clutch Tour Dates

8/5 First Avenue Minneapolis, Minnesota^
8/6 Eagle’s Ballroom Milwaukee, Wisconsin^
8/7 House of Blues Cleveland, Ohio^
8/8 Sonar Baltimore, Maryland^
9/9 Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr Smalls**
9/10 Buffalo, NY @ The Town Ballroom**
9/11 Philadelphia, PA @ The Electric Factory**
9/12 Hartford, CT @ The Webster Theater**
9/13 Montreal, QC @ Lee Saints**
9/15 London, ON @ London Music Hall**
9/16 Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Theatre**
9/18 Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel**
9/19 Jackson, MS @ Club Fire**
9/20 New Orleans, LA @ House of Blues**
9/22 Mobile, AL @ Soul Kitchen**
9/23 Nashville, TN @ Cannery Ballroom**
9/24 Columbus, OH @ Newport Music Hall**
9/25 Grand Rapids, MI @ The Orbit Room**
9/26 Chicago, IL @ The Metro**
9/27 Omaha, NE @ Sokol Auditorium**
9/29 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Depot**
9/30 Denver, CO @ The Fillmore**
10/1 Kansas City, MO @ The Beaumont Club**
10/2 Memphis, TN @ New Daisy Theatre**
10/3 Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom**
10/4 Austin, TX @ Austin City Limits Music Festival**
10/6 Lake Buena Vista, FL @ House of Blues**
10/7 Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage**
10/8 Richmond, VA @ The National**
10/9 New York, NY @ Irving Plaza**
10/10 New York, NY @ Irving Plaza**
* w/ Wino, Shadows Fall
^ w/ Baroness, Lionize
** w/ Wino, Revolution Mother

JamHub Silent Rehearsal Studio Launches at NAMM

Press Release–In an industry hungry for new innovations, JamHub silent rehearsal studio, made a lot of noise with its debut at Summer NAMM, a global event for the music products industry, by winning an unprecedented three awards. Read more

Creed Planning to Release New CD in August

What? A new CD from who?

Surely you remember the rock band Creed, right?

After a long hiatus, the band Creed, known for their hits “Higher”, “With Arms Wide Open”
and others, have decided to reunite and are planning to release their next album in August
of 2009. Read more

A LETTER FROM THE FRONT…, RE: THIRTYSECONDSTOMARS / EMI (THE LAWSUIT)

Follow up letter from Jared Leto (30 Seconds to Mars)

To our Friends and Fans,

Despite rumors to the contrary, 30 Seconds to Mars is NOT calling it quits. We are incredibly happy, healthy and very much together here, in Los Angeles, recording our new record. Besides this ridiculously overblown lawsuit (courtesy of Virgin/EMI), we are having one of the most inspiring, wonderful and exciting times that we’ve experienced to date. (More on that later…)

Beyond this distraction, we are so incredibly grateful to all of you around the world that have supported us so passionately. We would never consider stopping this just yet. These past few phenomenal years have been beyond imaginable and we owe every single bit of it to you. Thank you all for that!

So, as you may have heard we are being sued by our former record company for the ridiculously oversized, totally unrealistic and pretty silly (but slightly clever) sum of $30,000,000. Insane? Yea that’s what we said too.

A little history…

We had been signed to our record contract for 9 years. Basically, under California law, where we live and signed our deal, one cannot be bound to a contract for more than 7 years. This is widely known by all the record companies and has been for years. In fact, so aware of it are they that they desperately try to make deals outside of California whenever possible. It is a law that protects people from lengthy, unfair, career-spanning contracts. This law also gave us the legal right to explore other possible opportunities.

Yes we have been sued by EMI. But NOT for failing to deliver music or for ‘quitting’. We have been sued by the corporation quite simply because roughly 45 days ago we exercised our legal right to terminate our old, out of date contract, which, according to the law is null and void.

We terminated for a number of reasons, which we won’t go into here (we’d rather not air any dirty laundry) but basically our representatives could not get EMI to agree to make a fair and reasonable deal.

A few things to note…

If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier. That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn’t a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even? We think so.

That, and other issues, like the new regime at EMI firing most of the people we know and love, wanting to place advertisements on our website, EMI owning 100 percent of the masters of our record…forever, and basically having a revolving door of regimes at the company made it easy to not want to continue as is.

As the result of this takeover – and the firing of over 2000 employees – we have lost many of the people that were near and dear to us at Virgin/EMI and crucial to the success of 30 Seconds to Mars. A few of the great ones are still there, but it is hardly the same company we have known. After more than 5 regime changes in 9 years you’d think we would be used to the inconsistency, but the team that took the journey together for A Beautiful Lie was a very very special group of people and it’s a huge loss that so many of them are gone. (Quick fact: There is not a single employee at Virgin records who was working at the company when we signed.)

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FYI Virgin/EMI was not required to make this lawsuit public or to list such an egregiously and stupendously large amount of mullah. In fact, they were not required to set any price even close to this. We did not want to take this public, but we felt it best to explain our point of view to you, our
friends and fans, in hope that you can better understand our point of view.

We would always do our best to avoid a fight, but sometimes it’s important to stand up for what you believe in. We hope that by doing what’s right we can help to change things for the better, for ourselves and possibly others.

P.S. We will always remain grateful to the people at Virgin/EMI who were so integral to our success. And we hope that, above all, we can find a resolution to this in as civil and kind a way as possible.

There are certainly more important things out there in the world to spend time and energy on.

To be continued…

Jared Leto
30 Seconds to Mars
http://thirtysecondstomars.forumsunlimited.com/index.php?showtopic=312534

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