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Is this the best Mötley Crüe cover version ever? Hard to say since Crüe covers are as rare as sunshine in Seattle, but smart money says this may well be a contender.
Eleven-year-old Alaska-based America's Got Talent contestant Anna Graceman – who already has her own website!? - performed a cover version of the Crüe's power ballad "Home Sweet Home" Monday on the program's second night of semi-finals and absolutely rocked it.
Check it out below.
Quick – someone check and see if Hell has frozen over!
In a stunning and most welcome development, American Idol judge, memoirist and menswear huckster Steven Tyler may be resuming his former role as a proper rock star and – gasp! – a real musician by participating in a new Aerosmith recording, the group’s first batch of original material since 2001’s much-loathed (by them, and rightly so) Just Push Play.
By now most of us are accustomed to live music venues and sports arenas being named not for people or things but for big corporate sponsors – witness Toronto’s Air Canada Centre and Rogers Centre, the Verizon Theater in Los Angeles, the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland, Colorado and so on.
But should there be limits on what – or who – can muscle into your entertainment experience by scoring naming rights to venues? Should there be any kind of standard concerning what constitutes an acceptable name? And should the community a venue serves have a say?
He has been conspicuously absent from stages and studios the past few years while the webiverse has filled the vacuum with speculation that he’s in poor health, despite the occasional red carpet appearance alongside model-wife, Iman.
You have to love performers who aren’t afraid to call out the dummies in the ranks of the fans. First, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl halted a show in London and insisted an aggressive fan leave the venue while the amused audience looked on (so awesome!)
Now Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott has come out swinging against a fan who carped to the singer in an email about the band’s audacity in playing the exact same set-list four days running - a reality Elliott acknowledged but one mitigated by the fact that the shows occurred right after Elliott’s father died.
Texas rock maulers and celebrated beardos ZZ Top are threatening to drop a new, Rick Rubin-produced disc before year’s end. And in a summary that will surprise no one outside of Belarus, the group describes it as “loud, fast… streamlined right on down the line.”
It was seen as a litmus test as to whether they could pull it together and pull it off. But with news that scheduled Australian concert dates by a reformed Van Halen have been cancelled, fans are once again left to wonder if David Lee Roth, Edward Van Halen, Alex Van Halen and the kid can actually conjure the on-stage magic of old.
Jani Lane, singer with 80s-era American rock combo Warrant (see ‘Cherry Pie’) has been found dead at age 47. Various news reports from Los Angeles, where Lane was found, say he was discovered in a Comfort Inn in the Woodland Hills area.
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May 2011
