by Erin Broadley
“We have chemistry that you spend your entire career trying to find.”
– James Michael, Sixx: AM
In Los Angeles, the music industry is more than just a business. For some it’s a game, a l’enfant terrible experiment of intoxicating proportions. For others, it’s an asylum. It’s a labyrinth of lunatics, all lost amongst themselves and all scrambling for something to protect them from the deafening roar of self-destruction. All too often drug addiction becomes the mute button. As Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx details in The Heroin Diaries, it’s an industry that is mysterious and beautiful, as well as shattering, and one whose battles get waged right here, in our hearts, and often at the expense of our own artists.
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by Blogbot
The Sunset Strip’s Viper Room hosted a soirée to celebrate the release of Game author Neil Strauss‘ latest, a rock & roll interview anthology-cum-self help book entitled Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead.
The superstar scribe, who’s penned biographical bestsellers with the likes of Mötley Crüe (The Dirt), Dave Navarro (Don’t Try This at Home) and Marilyn Manson (Long Hard Road Out of Hell), nearly missed his own party thanks to a line of 300 fans who showed for a signing earlier on in the evening at The Grove’s Barnes & Noble.
Though Strauss missed excellent sets from local rockers No More Kings and DTLA’s comical Weekend Pilots, he did make it just in time to see burlesque artist (and Lucha VaVOOM producer) Rita D’Albert shake her last tassel, before unlikely ladies man Har Mar Superstar took over the stage. True to form, Har Mar (the sexed-up R&B alter ego of one Sean Matthew Tillmann) got rid of his clothes as he got the room moving – and SuicideGirls was there to photograph the party in his pants (see images after the jump).
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by Blogbot
This Sunday (April 3rd) our very special in-studio guest will be drummer extraordinaire, and all-round top dude, Josh Freese.
Josh has worked with some of the biggest, craziest and/or coolest names in the business; He’s a member of The Vandals, Devo, and the on-hiatus A Perfect Circle, and has played with NIN, Sting, and Guns N’ Roses, to name but a few.
Fresh off a tour with Devo, the wacky skin whacker will be in-studio talking about his forthcoming E.P., My New Friends (a follow-up of sorts to 2009’s Since 1972), and the novel way he plans on pimping it.
Listen to SG Radio live Sunday night from 10 PM til Midnight on Indie1031.com
Got questions? Then dial our studio hotline digits this Sunday between 10 PM and midnight PST: 877-900-1031
Busy on Sunday? Then find all our podcasts at http://suicidegirlsradio.blip.tv/ and listen at your leisure.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
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by Keith Daniels
“I can get it to a point where I know I could probably do it better, but…”
-Mike Cooley
Georgia-by-way-of-Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers are by nature what so many bands today aspire to be by artifice: authentic, American, rootsy rock’n’roll. They first hit the national radar with their third album, Southern Rock Opera, an ambitious double-album which used the story of Lynyrd Skynyrd as a metaphor for the decline of the South as a whole.
Ever since, even while weathering lineup and label changes, they’ve cranked out a great new record on a near-yearly basis in a decade-long winning streak that few bands have equaled.
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by Erin Broadley
“I’m ready to fight and I’m ready to sing.”
– Pearl Aday
It’s a cool Los Angeles night at the Standard Hotel and the scantily clad girl in the Plexiglas cage above the concierge desk is nodding off… but then again, Mondays are always a little slow. A drifter ambles past the front entrance, down the sidewalk, mouthing along to whatever voice rattles through his head. Meanwhile rock singer Pearl Aday and I are holed up in a booth in the hotel’s the street-side diner. As she drinks tea and I sip merlot, we talk about the current state of music, more specifically women in rock-n-roll, and Pearl is pissed off.
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by Aaron Colter
The first time I saw Che Smith was in the basement of the Purdue Student Union in West Lafayette, Indiana. The Malcontents, a local ska band, were playing a free show in the student center on what was hopefully a weekend night, given the amount of substances I consumed. That evening, while The Malcontents were jamming out a reggae-vibe number called “We Make Profits,” and I was three-quarters into a bottle of Captain Morgan, someone started free-styling over the song – Rhymefest.
Despite starting the night in the basement of a Purdue building and waking up some sixty miles away at Butler University, I remember that song. It was, and remains, one of the single greatest live music moments in my life. But the reason I’m writing about Rhymefest, or rather Che Smith, isn’t because of his music, it’s because Che Smith is running for Alderman of Chicago’s 20th Ward.
Most of the media has defined Che Smith as a childhood friend of Kayne West, a Grammy-winner for “Jesus Walks With Me,” and the winner of a hip-hop battle with Eminem. All of these things are true, but that’s not the entire story.
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by Erin Broadley
“Theres as much chaos in planting vines…”
– Maynard James Keenan
Ghost towns have a bad reputation: Shop doors creak, saloons swirl with phantoms of unloved prostitutes, rotting jail cells are haunted by remorseless outlaws, and the dusty streets are patrolled by spirits of hardened deputies.
For some, ghost towns are merely creepy roadside attractions; for others they are American landmarks brimming with history’s shadows and latent inspiration. The abandoned mining settlement of Jerome, Arizona is one of the oldest and largest American ghost towns. Until recently, its roads lay ruined and its doors were boarded up. It quietly waited for some headstrong thrill-seeker to dust it off and polish its potential. Now a vibrant artist community, Jerome is the place that Maynard James Keenan calls home.
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