So I’ve been doing the Coachella warm-up countdown over at Examiner. Gratuatous self-promotion in 3….2….1….

CLICK ME FOR FREE MONEY. Just kidding. No, but click for my articles.

Also, I’ve become a full-time writer for MetalRiot.com,which I will also pimp:

All of my articles and reviews

Both avenues are quite fulfilling and MetalRiot is growing at a fine rate. I hope to one day take down Blabbermouth.net, but not for any moral reason. The site is the gold standard and to top it would be monumental. I work with a good team of people and being a part of a successful project may open up doors I never thought possible.

As for concerts, this month and the next are totally packed just so long as promoters and bands hold up their end of the bargain and let me in.

This Friday is the first time I will be seeing Sleeptytime Gorilla Museum and the last time they will ever perform again (not true, they play one more show the next night but I wanted to sound cool).

Then Coachella is NEXT WEEK OH MY GOD and that should be most exciting. No interviews scheduled this year, so it may be a bit less hectic and disappointing than last year. I need more energy for the lasers, anyway.

Saturday, the biggest metal show of all time is coming to Indio and I get to see Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and the mighty Slayer. Also, I may get to do an interview, which would I think cause me to stammer and freak out a bit.

Dredg’s new album comes out May 3rd and a show at the Roxy is due to accompany it. I’m close to being confirmed, but may have to go the night before, which isn’t too bad but I’ve never been a CD release show that didn’t involve a hometown friend being in the band.

May is sort of insane, with that Dredg show being in the same eight day period as Between the Buried and Me, Portugal The Man, Ghostland Observatory, Mogwai, and Coheed & Cambria. I’m only confirmed for the first and the last show of that list, with Coheed’s being a double set (acoustic included) and the entireity of their debut album being played with more promised content. If I do go to each and every show, it will be the best and worst week of my professional life. The pennies in clicks I get pale in comparison to how much gas I have to buy as well as time lost sitting in LA traffic as all six shows are in the City of Angels.

The subject this time is The Queen of Zeitgeist, Lady Gaga.

The young lady behind the makeup has become a one-woman wrecking ball of entertainment. Sure, she has a gigantic team consisting of press, hair, makeup, wardrobe, PR, dancers, musicians, and travel…but if she doesn’t perform exactly right for her 90 minutes, everything would fall apart. While this is “rock n’roll” and her insane tour schedule is grueling (more on that later), one aspect of her, well, entire career I have an issue with is the one thing that makes this entire circus possible: money.

Ugh…

Mz. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is one tough broad. Being thrust into the spotlight after trying for many years to even be noticed takes some backbone to survive. The amount of press and public life exposed would drain the toughest person, let alone a controversial figure who embodies both dialoge and disgust. Her two most recent tours are products of both her controversy and her hard work, but, more than anything, they are products of efficiency and return on investment.

First off, the following data was comprised using data found via Billboard.com and Wikipedia. While I would love to get into the justification for Wikipedia as a valid form of research, I will sum it up thusly: Knowledge gains power when more people can shape the “truth” and discuss its validity.

Up first is her initial gigantic tour, dubbed the “Fame Ball.” This was a seven month excursion that took her literally all over the world, just check out the breakdown of performances in a month.

Mar – 14
april – 6
may – 13
june – 4
july – 22
aug – 11
sep – 2

This means 72 out of 201 nights ended up in a Gaga performance, which is about 36%. The venues were smaller than the ones she plays now, as the box office data shows, giving her a 99.8% sellout rate across the eight shows we have data for. The data also shows a total gross revenue of $347,862 for those eight shows that house about 1,000-3,000 fans per show.

Now check out her latest tour, entitled “The Monster Ball,” which started in November of 2009 and IS STILL GOING ON:

Nov – 3
dec – 18
jan – 13
feb – 7
mar- 14
apr – 9
may – 15
jun – 4
jul – 18
aug – 15
sep – 10
oct – 9
nov – 15
dec – 10
jan – 0
feb – 6
march – 18
april – 14
may – 3

Barring any injury, natural disasters, or lack of egg vehicles, she’s on pace to increase her performance rate to 39% (201 shows out of 525 days).

Sadly, she also jacked up her ticket prices.

Take, for instance, her L.A. performances: the first was at The Wiltern, which houses a modest 3,700 people. That show sold out and grossed nearly $53k for Gags. She came back seven months later and sold out three nights at Nokia Theatre, which houses 6,800. Her gross for each Nokia show was $314,893.33333333333you get the fucking point…

She played to twice the crowd size and gained six times the cash IN THE SAME CALANDER YEAR.

This is atrocious.

But let’s look at the totality of The Monster Ball extrapolating some idea from the box office data. First off, the chick worked her ass off and is planning on touring for a staggering 525 days. That’s 201 times she has to sing “Poker Face,” which is about how many times I had to hear it a day, so maybe that’s fair. Tack on all the press, awards shows, flying, and other promotional stuff she is doing between shows and you can be amazed at how someone can continue going without the use of cocaine.

Billboard gives us data on 46 shows from 40 arenas around the world. A total of 862,783 tickets out of a possible 877,641 were sold, a staggering 98% sales rate. Only 15 were not sold out and the total gross data is nearly $80 million. If we say these 46 shows are indicative of the entire tour, and I do because the data is collected from gigantic stadiums (Bell Center, Staples Center) as well as smaller venues (Scotiabank in Ottawa, UCF in Orlando) and I trust the sample data. If she made $78,249,973 over the course of those 46 shows, then that makes her total gross close to $302 million when she is done in May.

This means she made $16 million a month without factoring in promotion and royalties.

Holy shit, I’m exhausted just typing this out, and I’m not sure if I have a point, except to say this:

Ask more from our artists. Please don’t spend over $100 to see the same show you paid $30 for six months prior. More power to Lady Gaga if she is doing her job well and giving what her fans are asking for, but I know they aren’t asking to triple the amount of cash they spend on a concert during a recession.

You grizzled Adonis. You Saint of Beer. You destroyer of ear drums.

The last time I saw Motorhead was nine years ago and it was amazing. The moled man you see before you opened the Concord Pavillion with a question:

“Con-cord, eh? Never been here before.”

Then they proceeded to whoop everyone’s ass for an hour. It was the best opening act I could have seen as a 16-year old, especially seeing as how Dio and Iron Maiden were next.. The power trio finally made sense and witnessing those same three men playing just as fast at a higher volume nearly a decade later was most excellent. In my review, I mention how the band is very cross-generational, something that grabs attention from all shapes and sizes, but I think they are in an echelon only shared with the great AC/DC. Maybe greater!

Enough hyperlinking…let’s get onto the longwinded portion of today’s topic: 2011 album releases!

Now this is mostly a metal heavy post, focusing on the roughest, toughest, rootinist, tootinist sons of guns in the rock world. Sorry if I don’t mention the 134th Ani DiFranco album, or the double-disc Lady Antebellum frisbee that may or may not be coming out this year. No list can be complete, but here are a few highlights of a year that hopefully makes up for the year prior’s dismal output.

March:

New albums from viking gods Amon Amarth, moody Blackfield, and Christ-like Becoming the Archetype should hold most over, and the best-of Between the Buried and Me compilation is out on 3/29.

April:

NEW BTBAM OMG!!! Also, Bootsy Collins!

May:

Dredg, Fleet Foxes, Moby,  Death Cab, and Beastie Boys should be enough to make the shitty month of May go by. Just kidding. I don’t hate May.

June:

Potentially a new Tool album and the final two albums in the grand Deconstruction Project by Devin Townsend: 2 discs, one heavy, one soft, and both amazingly released on the same day. Add in Arctic Monkeys’ new record “Suck It and See” and June rocks.

September:

Steven Wilson has a solo follow-up to last year’s “Insurgentes” due around my birthday, and another solo album potentially by the end of the year.

TBA

A ton of bands have announced studio time and songwriting without giving a firm date other than “late 2011.” We may potentially see albums from all of the following bands:

Metallica

Opeth

Queens of the Stone Age

Devin Townsend’s sequel to ZILTOID!!!!

Megadeth

Steven Wilson + Mike from Opeth

Rumplestilskin Grinder

The Mars Volta

OSI

Necrophagist

Pig Destroyer

Mastodon

Gojira

NINE INCH NAILS

Bjork

Battles

Fiona Apple

Kraftwerk

Muse

My Morning Jacket

and maybe the best of the year…

I moved down to Long Beach without more than a sniff of the local terrain: I’ve been to Coachella half a dozen times, Disneyland twice, and that’s it. I don’t know my way around anything as I’ve never casually strolled through Sunset Blvd or down Rodeo Drive, and I certainly don’t bring any sense of direction to the table as it took me 18 years to map out my hometown just in time for me to move away for college. When preparing for a trek into the City of Angels, I rely on technology to give me a sneak peak into the world of motor vehicles I am about to enter. GPS, traffic view, maps, alternate routes, and lots of cursing went into figuring out my path.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t pretty.

You could pick any direction and still feel the pain of joining the ant farm that is the 405, 110, 710, 5, or 60. I was entering from the south, but some friends suggested a jetpack might be the way to go instead. I concur.

The first rain of the week decided to start that day, with temperatures hitting sub 40 degrees and I was driving to a venue I’d never visited along a path I’d never traveled in rain I’d never experienced thus far. The wipers were going as fast as they could as I predictably turned the radio down to focus on the task at hand. I guffawed at the audactiy of vehicles that had yet to turn on their lights or drivers going way faster than I would even on a dry night. When I finally got nearby, I did what any poor concert goer does: find free parking. Apparantly I’m not the first to try and use nearby residential areas to leave my car, as every curb within a 5 block radius (in all four directions) was a “No Parking after 6pm” zone. After parking there and relaxing until the show started, I left my car to realize the spot I had chosen was one such “No Parking, idiot” zones and I then had to find another one quickly.

I pulled into the exit of what looked to be an exclsive strip club, asked if parking was free and was told “No. It’s actually very expesnive.” I was confused, but left before being killed. I pulled into another lot, not twenty feet away that had a giant “PUBLIC PARKING” sign guiding me in.

Public? That’s me! Parking? That’s what I need! Success!

I pulled into stall 47 and noticed a small unmarked car pulled up right behind me. I got out of my car, trying not to dawdle while being poured upon, and went to the pay station to make sure my car wouldn’t be towed. I saw it was only a dollar an hour, so I put in 5 bucks just to be sure. After getting my ticket, it said my space was only good until 8:30 and my phone (Who wears watches anymore?) told me it was 8:27. Awesome.

I take my soaked ass back to my car, where the creeper is still creeping behind me, and get behind the wheel. I was ready to just knock on someone’s door and give them the plight of the poor journalist who only needs a place to park and if they would be so kind to lend their driveway….nah, i couldn’t do that.

Driving out of the lot, I notice that car never moved an inch and I needed to push the thought of getting a ticket for parking for 3 minutes out of my mind before I would road rage my way into an accident. I said “Screw it, I’m just going straight for awhile” out loud and did just that. Ten minutes later, I end up back on the same street I parked on and thought was safe a half an hour before. Turns out, I had to get one more block past the 5 block radius to find the safest spot to park. Sure, I had to walk to the venue in the rain and was freezing before the overwhelming heat that an indoor show provides. The kind of heat that makes you curse bringing a sweater in the first place, until the show is over and you head outside back into the grueling downpour. Ugh.

Speaking of freezing, I made life even worse for myself by helping myself: I needed some water before I hopped into the show and decided to stop at a Staples right near the venue and buy some bottled water. The bottle was so goddamn cold and the rain squeezed its way into the purified bottle between sips. I didnt care that I was matching the elements voluntarily as I needed water.

I finally made it to the venue, got shit for having a camera, didn’t get searched, got shit at the will call for not having my name attached to a photo pass (even though all I was asking for was the ticket waiting for me), got shit for my camera before I entered the front door, got shit for my camera when I finally got in, and then found a spot for my two size 13 shoes to cement for the next three hours.

I have a tough time getting the phrase “I’m a journalist” out of my mouth. It, to some people, means a whole lot of training, preparation, and most importantly, school work, went into the final decision to dub myself a journalist. No institution has decreed me as such and no mentor or professor has given me a three year mastership program to work my way through, but I think titles are determined via behavior more than image. These sorts of the nights, like the one I just described, gives me some credibility. The types of trips that make my cat go nuts whe I get home, sniffing all the smells and textures that the cuff of my jeans have brought home with me, tells me I interacted with my community. The death-defying freeway maneuvering and unfamiliar terreign navigation reinforce that notion. The ability to do a job in the face of the unknown and still see it through adds rings to my journalism stump.

I’m not a cop or a doctor, but I think writing is an important cultural cornerstone that way too many think they can do just because they are able to spell and put verbs and nouns in the same sentence. And the point here is that it’s not just writing: it is preparation (both materially and mentally), it is dedication, insight, and instinct to capture the right moments.

I attended my first press conference the day before the Glassjaw show and had absolutely no idea what I was doing there, but I sat down, shut up, and learned from my peers. Next time, I’l be a bit more aggressive in landing interviews or being noticed because ain’t nobody gonna go “Hey, let me stop what ‘m doing to talk to this bald guy!”

Either way, work is tough no matter what profession you choose and doubly so if you actually give a shit about the task at hand. I just hope the task is around the corner next time so I can leave the car at home and walk instead.

Murder By Death is my first band of 2011 and one I am fond of for multiple, brilliant reasons. I mean brilliant in the British sort of way, although the band is from Indiana so no relevance there.

Oh well.

Picking a song is really tough to demonstrate the value of this band so I think an Iron Chef platter is deserved.

I love concept albums and I love literary references: nerdy music is well thought out music. Time and effort is put into being meticulous and creative and the type of art that includes all of the great aspects of other art I love is more than worthwhile. So if you cannot properly pronounce “cello” or appreciate the subtlety of a violin or horn section, then please turn away as there is nothing to see here for you.

Lead singer Adam Turla brings his love for great epic poetry and resolute classic ideals about sin, love, and war to the musical table. I had the opportunity to interview him before the show, and then give a review of the performance, as well.

Enjoy the last track on their third album, entitlted “Spring Break 1899″

So, the rest of the year is starting to come together wonderfully.

- The Press Conference for Revolver’s Golden God Awards are next week and I might be attending. Alice Cooper and Chris Jericho will be there, so I’m fairly pumped.

- GlassJaw is the following day, back in LA. I’ve been trying to see this band for six years and I FINALLY get to (maybe not, don’t want to jinx it)

- Tapes n Tapes is playing where Murder By Death did…excellent venue for their type of music. Very excited for this one.

- Potentially I will be able to see Queens of the Stone Age in April, Coheed in May (playing all of their first album), and The Big 4 a week after Coachella! These are all not-confirmed, but hopefully planets are aligning as you read this and I will be sent on more magical adventures to report the grand times.

Also, Bonnaroo has announced it’s lineup and I think it is excellent. Cuzin Mank and I may return to our stomping grounds, and mayhaps with photo and press passes in hand! We dont any cool access, but it helps when we already take good photos and create great memories. Now we can share them professionally with our friends and the rest of the world.

Here’s my list, thus far:

Friday:
Black Keys
Interpol
Chemical Brothers
Sasha
Lauryn Hill
Crystal Castles
Boyz Noize
Afrojack
Flogging Molly
Pains of being pure at heart
marina and the fucking diamonds
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
Klaxons
Skrillex
Beardyman

Saturday:
Arcade Fire
Mumford
Bright Eyes
Empire
The Kills
Broken Social
One Day as a Lion
Erykah Badu
Paul van Dyk
Scissor Sisters
Gogol Bordello
Cage the Elephant
Shpoungle
Elbow
Daedelus

Sunday:
Strokes
Duran Duran
DFA1979
Wiz Khalifa
Ratatat
JEW
Bloody Beetroots
Chromeo
Presets
CSS
Phantogram

42 bands

Today I try and rectify this with my early vote for album of the year by the unlikeliness of candidates: a  half white/half Native American former homeless skateboarder from Alabama.

Seriously.

Before I begin, I promise not to compare or rank Yelawolf in anyway. Nothing gets hip hop heads more pissed then touching the holy pecking order. It’s like console fanboys raving about the obvious excellence of their beloved product. Also, some people on a hip hop forum laughed at me for my Nas article, so I’m watching myself.

Here is what I wrote after checking him out at last year’s “Rock The Bells” tour.

Yelawolf from Alabama works very hard in this live setting. His flow is constant and the guy must have gills or some other averse way of breathing while spitting out words faster than Mr. Bucket. Sadly, the crowd was being let in later than normal, and the opener on the smaller Paid Dues stage was performing in front of maybe two dozen people. With his eyes focused on the back of the building, the young opener performed like he was the headliner and kept his skills showcased regardless of the venue’s capacity.

Well 2011 is here and the EP “Trunk Muzik” is the first piece of excellence in what should be a strong year for music. I declined writing a top ten for 2010 as I couldn’t even name more than five good albums from the past 52 Tuesdays. Already The Decemberists and Cage the Elephant are proving rock isn’t dead, and now Jay-Z and Kanye are breathing new life into their art. But with Yelawolf, the only expectation is to be another white rapper and that is exactly what he is not.

The vocalist is able to make music with his rhymes by hitting a sort of verbal slipstream: shifting gears mid sentence before drifting around a sharp turn. When matched with ferocious bass and beats that don’t scream “Play me in the club” it’s a thing of beauty. There are a couple of obvious club hits tucked inside, but it’s more of a “Look what I can do” card in his stacked deck of a dozen tracks.

Check out this excellent review that would only make any review I wrote look like failure. It also embeds a few more excellent tracks, all of which made it extremely tough to pick a single entry. I took the title track and opener, as it showcases all of his skills evenly, and gives a nice preview to the effort of the whole project. I highly suggest making this your newest purchase and prepare to have all the other songs bouncing between your ears fade away.

I think the AC/DC crowd will find Maria’s backup band appealing, while casual fans of female badassery will also be pleased. But the men in the crowd might not enjoy this sultry Swede after hearing the following song…

I heard this while driving home a few weeks ago and fell in love. The rest of the album, titled “Katla,” keeps the energy up with tracks like “Cherry Red” and the nearly ten minute “Devil” shows how legit backing band thrives. The horns and 50′s vibe scream of Latin descent, but her voice and finale fits more on “Kill Bill” soundtrack than anywhere else. She has the chops, ranges, control, power, appeal, songwriting, musicianship, and talent to go far. Hopefully they stick to the philosophy that helped them write these gems during the next step in their career.

Then some crazy witch shows up and plays these tasty riffs in your brain and all is well.

I can’t speak to the validity of the above statements, but I am ready to speak of the track “Rip Van Winkle” by Witch. The band does not get creativty points for either track or band names, but they get bonus points for rocking out.

The song follows the “White Rabbit” motif of reinterpretting a favorite childhood story by adding musical context and loads of heavy riffs. It clocks it right under five minutes and starts sounding awesome as soon as you click play. Their whole album is stellar, but this track is a juicy nugget of moist metal that most people, young or old, will find something to headbang too. The psychedlic vocals and Sabbath-esque basslines fuel this avalanche into a flurry of solos and drum explosions that rally toward a fitting finale.

Enjoy!

In a world dominated by men, she showed what it meant to be a true singer. Her voice will never be duplicated or replaced and she did it with ease.

She’s the anti-pop diva, the anti-drama queen, and the definition of a classic.

I know most people already are familiar with a bit of her work, as her few “hits” have stood the test of time. But a hidden gem from her live Woodstock performance is probably one of the best live recordings I’ve ever heard.

Besides the technical aspect of the musical fidelity, Joplin’s voice is in another stratosphere with the blues staple “Summertime.” The grooving bass, trippy solos and fretwork all create this gust of power. The track is fulfilling from start to finish and I have seen people cry after witnessing its glory.

Ok, I’ve hyped it enough.