I'm officially done at the Planet and on my way out of Huntington...

Kiss, the Stooges, and the Chili Peppers among nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame... Final decision coming in January

For those interested, the legendary capitol theater in wheeling is reopening this weekend-been closed since 2007

Z-brick is turning the old campus carryout location into a dine-in extension

Tim burton will be making a full-length remake of frankenweenie

Just heard on the radio: "miller lite reminds you, with great beer comes great responsibility"

So who are Them Crooked Vultures, and why the hell am I so excited?

Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones, and Josh Homme. No, I'm not drunk. Yes, this is real. BEHOLD.

My competitor says he has no idea when Them Crooked Vultures is playing next... I do, and i'm telling on air in a few minutes

Them Crooked Vultures (the new Dave Grohl/John Paul Jones/Josh Homme supergroup) hits Columbus's Lifestyle Communities Pavilion Oct. 6

Nirvana's 1992 performance at the Reading Festival will be released on CD and DVD in November

Talking to chuck landon of the herald-dispatch in a few minutes

Lennyfail fact of the day: the first time i saw "yuengling" i thought it was korean :-p

Correction-no word on actual setting, but it will definitely be filmed in detroit

There's going to be a remake of red dawn, filmed and set in the detroit area

Bob dylan may end up voicing GPS systems soon

NEW KISS SINGLE

Right here, "Modern Day Delilah". Gonna be on their new Sonic Boom album, out October 6--a Walmart exclusive, which means they're probably gonna sell a zillion copies that first week.

Still waiting on details on that fan-routed tour, BTW...

At rally on the river... The suede brothers are FANTASTIC. Like a cross between rush, wolfmother, and queens of the stone age

Hank Williams III's band Assjack releases its first album today

Pop Evil is back in town August 21 at Tequila Rocks in Huntington!

YouTube find of the moment

Cowboys From Hell... on cello.

Thought some of you might like this

Just got an email-the kiss fan-routed tour balloting is officially over, the itinerary will be announced next month

Jacko and farrah fawcett die on my brother's birthday, billy mays dies on my birthday, which celebrity death will herald my son's birth?

There will be TEN nominees for best picture at next year's oscars

For those of you wondering about Virgin Festival 2009...

...Washington, DC's DC101 will have the full scoop tomorrow. It will be a one-day event, 20 August, at Meriwether Post Pavillion, so the lineup will certainly not be as awesome as previous years, but here's to hoping for quality triumphing over quantity.

In other news, the Rock and Roll Jesus is working with God Himself on his next album.

Where are they now: Evanescence

So I missed this entirely, but Evanescence had for all intents and purposes broken up--since we last heard from them in 2006, the rest of the band had been replaced EXCEPT for Amy Lee. Well the rest of the band reformed... with Carly Smithson, former American Idol contestant, on vocals. They're going to call themselves The Fallen; a press conference is scheduled for Monday, with their first single available for download at their website (which won't be active until then). One problem they might have is that there are entirely too many bands with that name--just do a quick Googlesearch and see it's a pretty popular name.

Interesting thing from the article--on releasing new music:

The Fallen plans to tour in September and initially will release its songs in small doses every few months, Moody says, "so there's always new music and new reasons to come to another show."

Weird Al has taken a similar approach, realizing that he can now release more relevant parodies through internet singles as opposed to waiting until he has a dozen or so and releasing an album, by which point the oldest one might be completely irrelevant. This is the neat thing about the digital music revolution--after taking a back seat to albums over the last couple decades, now singles are as relevant as they've ever been in the last 40 years.

Where are they now: Edge City Outlaws

Every once in a while we will play "(Weed) Women and Wine" by a band called the Edge City Outlaws. They signed with Universal, released that one single, got a bunch of press for it, then vanished off the face of the Earth. Seriously, they haven't updated their Myspace page in TWO YEARS.

A difficult task it would seem, then, to figure out exactly what the hell happened. One clue left: the only person with a full name on the page was the lead singer, Luke Metcalf; it also mentions the guitarist, Griffin. Google Luke Metcalf and the first entry is for a band called SOUND AND FURY, with that same Griffin on guitars, and a filled-out lineup. Turns out Edge City Outlaws and Sound and Fury are one and the same; they toured England last year with Airbourne and I can happily report that they checked their Myspace page today.

Assjack-hank williams III's hardcore band-releases its first album august 4

To the guy in the red wings shirt at the man room giveaway-kick ass dude, can't wait for game 7

Upcoming albums: MEGADETH!

Dave Mustaine and Megadeth have wrapped up their next album; untitled #12 will be out in September...

Movies full of guys and girls--separately

I somehow missed this, but production has started on a movie about the legendary all-girl rock group the Runaways--the band that launched the careers of Lita Ford and Joan Jett. Kristen Stewart from the Twilight movies is playing Joan Jett, Dakota Fanning is lead singer Cherie Currie, and a girl named Alessandra Torresani has been plucked out of relative obscurity to play Lita Ford (who also has a producing credit on this one). Expected out next year, I think this might kick quite a bit of ass.

Then there's this fun little film I had forgotten about--The Expendables. Also out next year--release date 23 April--written, directed, and starring Sylvester Stallone. Also starring:

• Jason Statham
• Jet Li
• Mickey Rourke
• Dolph Lundgren
• Danny Trejo
• Steve Austin (yes, THAT Steve Austin)
• Randy Couture
• cameo role for Arnold Schwarzenegger

This may very well be the greatest guy movie ever made. (no qualifiers are needed for a project of this magnitude)

Update: Kiss's fan-routed tour

They're gonna have Buckcherry opening for it. Voting ceases at the end of this month, and at this rate it looks like it'll be a barnstormer through the Canadian junior hockey leagues, with a few dates in America for good measure. I don't know what the cutoff point is (also, in the fine print it does mention that the cities have to have suitable venues, so I don't know if there's any kind of capacity issues that poor Oshawa might be up against).

Don't fret though Tri-State--there's still plenty of time to vote Huntington up there. Even if we don't make it up there, Louisville and Lexington are in the top 40--who's up for a Rupp roadie to see Kiss?

Hendix murdered?

Startling allegation from former Jimi Hendrix roadie Tappy Wright, who writes in a new book that Hendrix was murdered by his manager over a life insurance policy. Karma's a bitch though--Michael Jeffery would die himself a few years later in a plane crash. Seriously, if this is true I want to vomit.

To cheer you guys up, amazed I've never been here before, but Wolfgang's Vault is the free-to-access archives of legendary San Francisco promoter Bill Graham, with gobs of old concerts as well as newer shows by up-and-coming bands.

Duff McKagan sees West-By-God, then writes about it

A couple bits wrong (there were much more than 30 people in the Marshall crash, and the V-Club is at 6th Ave/8th St), but beyond the nitpicks a great article...

http://www.playboy.com/articles/duffonomics-west-virginia-is-the-future-of-america/index.html

West Virginia is the Future of America—and That’s a Good Thing

My band Loaded have just started to tour our new record, Sick, and our first area of attack has been the American South—the region hit perhaps worst by this most recent economic recession. I say most recent because, again, I want to stress that economic recessions and depressions are cyclical—and we have always come out of them.

Traveling to Huntington, West Virginia, from Augusta, Georgia, by bus takes you straight through the heart of Appalachia and its depleted coal towns and “hollers”—valleys known as hollows, or hollers in the local drawl. This area long ago got used to being ignored when it comes to government infrastructure help. Diane Sawyer did a two-hour expose on poverty in the Appalachian Mountains a few weeks back that was jaw-dropping. The stuff she documented just shouldn’t be happening here in the States—but it is.

Huntington itself is the town that holds Marshall University, of “We Are Marshall” fame. Many people in Huntington have still yet to see this film, as the memory of losing more than 30 of its young men in a single incident still burns like a fresh and jagged cut. On the day of my visit, last Friday, it was the day before the annual spring football scrimmage at Marshall, the culmination of spring practice and a peek at what might be in store for the fall season. An event like this is equivalent to play-off baseball in big cities, a real event. Many alumni from the undefeated team of 1999 were said to be in town. But all I saw on that afternoon were closed shops with “for lease” signs and boarded-up storefronts. To my eye, about 60 percent of the businesses were shut down.

As I walked across town, I wondered to myself whether this place would make it through. I looked at a decrepit 15-storey building that once housed a bank, no doubt making loans to earnest young businesses and families at a time when there was plenty and growth had no horizon. Coal was king. Those times, to my northern and untrained eye, were long gone. When I got to the venue for sound check (V-club on 12th), the first signs of how wrong I was in my assumptions about this small town began to become apparent.

The club itself was one of the best of its size that I’ve seen anywhere. Attention to sound and lights was second to none and there was an air of cool that I wasn’t expecting. (I was probably expecting the club-owners to be a bit downtrodden after the walk through town.) A parcel had been delivered to the club from a local investment firm, inviting me to talk with them about new opportunities there in town. They also wanted to talk to me about the things I write about in Playboy, and to explain how a small town like Huntington, once reliant on income from coal, was making a full and vibrant turnaround. I asked the club-owners about all the boarded-up storefronts. They made me feel foolish, revealing that some of the places were actually refurbishing while construction was so cheap.

After sound check, I walked in the darkening night to the hotel for a pre-gig shower. What I saw as dismal in the daytime became lively and dare I say beautiful that evening. While I was approached by a few people on street-corners for a handout (an ever more frequent occurrence wherever you go), it was the people going into brightly-lit and freshly-scrubbed restaurants and bars that turned my head. The streets were humming with life and an unspoken hope for what is to come.

I began to think at that moment that a story like Huntington’s could very well epitomize the true American story. The people here know what adversity is and don’t sulk in its shadow when they very well could (without being blamed one bit). No, this town knows how to dust itself off, put its blinders on, and forge ahead, learning from its history but not getting mired in it.

Queen-or brian may at least-wants to work with american idol runner-up adam lampert

Bud Carroll is on Facebook now, thought you guys'd like to know

TOUR COMING: staind, shinedown, halestorm and chevelle, the "stimulate this!" tour, in pikeville KY july 21 and corbin KY july 22

For those into hockey-themed punk rock: www.thezambonis.com

So after the mayo...

...what else should I attempt?

Fun Youtube Find, 1 May edition

Behold, Corey Taylor playing with Camp Freddy (Dave Navarro's current band, with Matt Sorum on drums!), covering "Ain't Talkin Bout Love" by Van Halen...

Taylor's also indulging in a new sideproject, the Junk Beer Kidnap Band. No, really.

Add another to the 90s reunion list-korn has TWO albums coming this year

I can now update this thing from my cellphone! Hooray technology! I will be doing this much more often, and i promise to use as little shorthand as possible...

Worse things have happened

Creed are back together. I guess this was the inevitable third part of the 90s reunion trifecta, given that Limp Bizkit and Blink 182 had already announced. Now I understand Scott Stapp is less of a douche than he was way back in the day, so hopefully this will bode well as far as some decent music. Alter Bridge has shown the rest of the guys certainly have the goods, and it's good to hear that AB will still be the primary band for those guys (who woulda thunk a decade ago Creed would be a side-project!).

UPDATE--Duff McKagan show moved to Huntington!

So the day after I FINALLY found out where the Battleground Amphitheatre was, word comes that Duff McKagan's WV show will in fact be at the V-Club in Huntington! Same Gun-time, same Gun-program, but now a fair bit closer.

Ooo ooo ooo concerts!

Just spotted--April 24, Duff McKagan's Loaded is going to be in Charleston. He's booked a place called "Battlefield Amphitheatre", which to be honest I've never heard of (asked Reevis, he's not sure either)--perhaps one of you guys can help me out where exactly it is. Important thing is that DUFF MCKAGAN IS COMING TO WEST-BY-GOD :^D

BRING KISS TO HUNTINGTON

Kiss is teaming up with Eventful.com to have a fan-driven itinerary for their fall '09 tour: eventful.com/kiss

I want EVERYDAMNONE to vote Huntington. The internet is a weird place--Kingston, Ontario currently has the highest demand, so certainly Huntington deserves to be right up there.

For now, where does the Tri-State stack up? (not just Huntington, but other places we tend to go for concerts...)

#21--Columbus
#28--Cincinnati
#43--Louisville
#70--Lexington
#85--Charleston
#139--Pikeville
#151--Huntington
#335--Morgantown (WHOO WE'RE BEATING THE COUCHBURNERS)

Rumors--2009 Virgin Mobile Festival

Those who know me well know this is my favorite concert (and indeed the only festival I've been bothered to spend money on!); I just saw a blurb at Consequence of Sound about this year's potential incarnation.

Bad news: it may not take place at venerable Pimlico, which may in fact meet the wrecking ball shortly acc. to the CoS guys (being based out of DC, their sources are probably a tick better than mine)! The rumor is that if it isn't at Pimlico, it will end up just outside Baltimore, at Meriwether Post Pavillion.

Good news: METALLICA MAY HEADLINE. Or at least that's one rumor. The lineups are very eclectic, but heavy on stuff that sells a zillion copies in England.

Kick my ass for March Madness

We've got our March Madness game going (printable bracket at the Real Rock Website) for gobs of fun Planet goodies, but if you want the extra thrill of knowing you're better at this stuff than I am, I'm in two free bracket games online: one at Yahoo ("HerdNation.com") and one at ESPN.com ("Fans of Marshall"). It's free to sign up (if you aren't already signed up), and if you want to razz me my bracket is very clearly marked. Let the games begin!

While I have this 100-degree fever, let's talk about Lexington

A fantastic place. It's like Huntington if it actually applied itself--big-ass skyscrapers, an indie-paper worth half a damn, and--oh yeah, a 22,000 seat arena.

Highlights:

--Reevis recommended a place called Raising Cane's, and I will recommend it as well if you're heading that way--it's a restaurant that serves NOTHING BUT CHICKEN FINGERS. Great sauce too, I can't put my finger on the recipe but I think it shares a few things in common with Big Mac Sauce. Also got my first taste of Krystal.

--The show itself? Pretty damn good. A few things I didn't mention when I was twittering like crazy:

• they serve wine at the concessions stand at Rupp--$5 a glass (cheaper than beer!)
• Seether's show was by far the best; I like the whole "speak softly, kick a lot of ass" thing
• I saw a house that had been turned into a Subway. No, really.

...while I'm pointing people to my Twitter page, add The Real Rock Twitter while you're at it. Seriously, this is addictive as hell.

My love of cars driving around in circles

Watched the Daytona 5oo yesterday, which was a bit anti-climactic (outside of the Big One of course). I'm not huge on NASCAR, but I will watch a handful of races: the plate races, Bristol, the May races in Charlotte (hell, night racing in general). My big racing interests are Indycars and F1, which makes me one of maybe a dozen people in this state... or at least it bloody feels like it. No big shake though, racing is racing is racing no matter what they're racing. I enjoy the hell out of it regardless.

Favorite driver? I have a few...

NASCAR: Tony Stewart can drive pretty much anything.
Indycars: I'd like to see Marco Andretti really take off this year.
F1: a fellow named Sebastian Vettel--won his first race last year, now driving for Red Bull's team.

Then there's this specimen of driving talent... who do you guys like?

The pros and cons of ADD

I was going to post a big long thingy about sports, until this caught my attention: Seether recorded--and have made available via iTunes download--a cover of... GEORGE MICHAEL. Well Wham! to be precise, "Careless Whisper". The thought alone is frightening... blood-curdling... and... bloody awesome?! Behold, the greatest rock band to ever come out of South Africa, making mincemeat out of middle-of-the-road music:

Grammy nominations are out...

...actually they've been out for a while, but I'm just now getting around to really looking at them. Since I'm typing this up for the digestion of you Planet peoples, there will be minimal mention of Coldplay (except to point out that Joe Satriani deserves three Grammy nominations*), but here, kids, are the people I and you actually give a rat's ass about, in the order that I find them on the Grammy website:

ROBERT PLANT: will probably not be on our airwaves for anything involving Alison Krause, but I think it bears mentioning that those two are up for several Grammys, including Album of the Year, Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Country Collaboration with Vocals, and Contemporary Folk Album--four nominations in three musical styles FOR THE SAME ALBUM. For this I hope they sweep theirs. That, and, ya know, it's ROBERT PLANT.

KID ROCK: "All Summer Long" is up for Male Pop Vocal, Rock and Roll Jesus is up for Best Rock Album (more on that later)

EAGLES: four nominations, for Pop Performance by a Group, Pop Vocal Album, Pop Instrumental Performance, and Rock Performance by a Group.

With that mention, we get to the ROCK GRAMMYS:

SOLO ROCK VOCAL:
John Mayer - Gravity
Paul McCartney - I Saw Her Standing There (live at Amoeba Records)
Bruce Springsteen - Girls In Their Summer Clothes
Eddie Vedder - Rise
Neil Young - No Hidden Path

I'm giving my (nonbinding) vote to Paul McCartney--over the objections of Mrs. Lenny, who would leave me for Eddie Vedder in a heartbeat--on the basis of his performance being done live at a secret show at a small record shop in LA.

GROUP ROCK VOCAL:
AC/DC - Rock and Roll Train
Coldplay - Vio--actually, ya know what? The rest of the nominees are Coldplay, the Eagles, Kings of Leon, and Radiohead, and the four of them combined almost have as much badassness as AC/DC. Score one for the Aussies.

HARD ROCK VOCAL:
Disturbed - Inside the Fire
Judas Priest - Visions
The Mars Volta - Wax Simulacra
Motley Crue - Saints of Los Angeles
Rob Zombie - Lords of Salem

Tough call, but I've always had a tilt toward Zombie, and Lords of Salem is such a bloody awesome track.

METAL PERFORMANCE:
Dragonforce - Heroes of Our Time
Judas Priest - Nostradamus
Metallica - My Apocalypse
Ministry - Under My Thumb (yes, this is a Rolling Stones cover)
Slipknot - Psychosocial

The leak of "My Apocalypse" was proof for me that Death Magnetic was going to be nothing short of EPIC.

ROCK INSTRUMENTAL (my favorite category, because I'm a weirdo):
David Gilmour - Castellorizon
Metallica - Suicide and Redemption
Nine Inch Nails - 34 Ghosts I-IV
Rush - Hope (live for The Art of Peace)
Zappa Plays Zappa (w/ Steve Vai and Napoleon Murphy Brock) - Peaches en Regalia

Good lord, I have to pick one of these? Fine, fine, as much as I rave over Metallica's new stuff, and as awesome as every other one of these guys are, Castellorizon made my college radio days quite awesome (for those of you who missed my Marshall DJing days--say, '06 or so--I would play that cut straight into "On An Island", a 9 minute or so chill-out before I played something else loud and obnoxious).

BEST ROCK SONG:
Bruce Springsteen - Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Radiohead - House of Cards
Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart
Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire
Coldplay - Violet Hill

We've never played any of these on the Planet, to my knowledge, so I'll sum them up for you in single-word descriptions:
1--Boss
2--weird
3--creepy
4--sex
5--meh
I take Kings of Leon.

BEST ROCK ALBUM:
Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Kid Rock - Rock and Roll Jesus
Kings of Leon - Only By the Night
Metallica - Death Magnetic
the Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely

METALLICA.

Now we're out of the rock categories, and there's a few notables farther down the page...

--Stephen Colbert is up for Best Spoken Word Album
--George Carlin is up for Best Comedy Album
--Dewey Cox is up for Best Song Written For Screen ("I told them, no, you're gonna give me that giraffe")
--Metallica is also up for Best Album Packaging (yes, this gets its own category), and Rick Rubin is up for Producer of the Year not only for this, but also albums by Weezer, Neil Diamond, Ours, and Jakob Dylan (remember the Wallflowers? Yeah, it took me a moment to dig back that far too).
--Tom Petty and the Who are up for their only Grammys in Long-Form Video, for recent documentaries done on each of them: Runnin' Down a Dream and Amazing Journey, respectively

And that pretty well sums up the notables. A lot of space taken up for not that much; if not for the impending arrival of Lenny the IInd (proper name coming when we actually know what we're popping out), myself and Mrs. Lenny would find ourselves watching this and drinking until the awards got interesting (I may do this regardless).

*--to be honest I think this might be coincidence, because I don't think Chris Martin is cool enough to have Joe Satriani anywhere near his music collection.