The Seattle Sound and more
This Rock & Roar dude is a bona fide all-caps GENIUS.
That one’s gotta be my fave, but R&R has a crapton of these, including Judas Purrst, Slipkcat, Catallica, and this next one.
At last, something AI can do really, really well.
Update! ZOMG, just found this one. My new favorite.
Heh. Go, Angus!
That would be the one, the only, the incomparable Taylor Hawkins, as seen below.
Although I’ve always liked Alanis just fine, they coulda just stayed on Hawkins through the entire video for all me, I woulda been fine with it. Previously, I only knew of Taylor Hawkins from his association with the Foo Fighters and hadn’t bothered to look into the guy a little bit more deeply, not even in the aftermath of his sad demise. So imagine my surprise at learning yesterday evening that he’d pounded the skins for Ms Morissette before signing on with Dave Grohl & Co as a full-fledged Foo Fighter.
David Grohl is by no stretch any kind of slouch on drums his own self. Nirvana was pretty much nothing, nobody, and nowhere until they hired Grohl, he MADE that band. Then, after Cobain’s tragic suicide, Grohl got himself up off the drummer’s throne, came out from behind his kit, and put himself front and center as lead guitarist, singer, and songwriter of the newborn Foo Fighters.
After putting the Foos together—originally conceptualized by Grohl as not so much a band as a one-man recording project with backing musicians brought in as and when needed, a scattershot project which was dropped when it became clear what a murderous pain in the ass it was going to be to call, pitch, obtain consent from, negotiate terms with, agree on said terms, sign contracts with, and book studio time to fit into the schedules of a varied assortment of players, all bringing along their own obligations, agendas, touring/rehearsal/recording schedules, lifestyles, and personal baggage—Grohl made the best hire of his career, signing Taylor Hawkins on as drummer for the fast-gelling Foo Fighters hit-generating machine. Hawkins agreed, the band went to work, and the ascension of the Foo Fighters to the dizziest, most rarified heights of the Billboard pop/rock Hot 100 chart was assured.
Having only just learned of Hawkin’s early work for/with Alanis Morissette—whose powerful, passionate, emotive singing; engaging stage presence; honest and expressive lyrics; and multi-octave-spanning vocal range grabbed me but GOOD the very first time I heard her on the car radio—I thought sharing my felicitous discovery with y’all would fit the bill quite well.
Next up: Whodathunk Taylor Hawkins, being the über-badass drummer he assuredly was, could also hit a creditable lick as vocalist/frontman, stepping into Robert Plant’s great big shoes without breaking a sweat? Not Your Humble Host, I admit. Never saw it coming, me.
Yes, of course that would be Led Zep icons Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones sharing the stage with Hawkins, Grohl, and the rest of their youthful playmates.
Our bud S47 hips us to the punk and metal haps in Rooshya, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. Damned intriguing stuff, if you dig this sort of thing. Which, y’know, I do, actually. This offhand remark caught my eye but hard.
I think this next band is from Novosibirsk or someplace like that, reminds me a lot of Fetchin’ Bones, a band from North Carolina back in the 1980s:
Fetchin’ Bones, HA! Although her musical tastes, interests, and proclivities never much coincided with my own—too jangly-pop and avant garde to suit me by a long yard, meaning no offense if that happens to be your bag—I’ve nevertheless been good friends with F-Bones vocalist Hope Nicholls and her bandmate/hubby Aaron since just about forever. Friendly, warm, unpretentious, soft-spoken; they’re good kids, boih of ‘em (Kids? Hope was born almost exactly a month before I was…OOF!).
Years ago, I read a similarly-themed article about the punk rock underground in some of the more obscure corners of the old USSR, can’t remember where. Kerrang!, Spin, Maximum Rocknroll, perhaps? Some other glossy mass-market publication or hand-Xeroxed, stapled-together fanzine? Creem? Circus? Tiger Beat? Rolling Stone, Gawd help us?
Wherever it was, I must say the grim, true-life accounts of quasi-legal obstacles; constant harassment and/or abuse by omnipotent authorities; unpromoted small-venue shows being shut down by platoons of nameless, faceless, truncheon-wielding goons; arrest, incarceration, vicious beatings, etc made me feel like a contemptible, spoiled little dilettante by comparison.
After expending scads of time and effort convincing oneself how horribly you’ve suffered and sacrificed for Your Art, learning about people who have really had it tough can make one feel mighty dang small.
C’mon, man, who DOESN’T love the legendary Ozzy Osbourne? How could anyone NOT love the guy?
Ozzy Osbourne announces final show with Black Sabbath amid health struggles: ‘This is his full stop’
Ozzy’s out.The British rock star, 76, announced on Wednesday that the original members of Black Sabbath are reuniting for the first time in 20 years for his final show.
The “Back to the Beginning” charity concert will take place July 5 at Villa Park in England. Tickets go on sale on Feb. 14 at LiveNation.
“The all-star event will celebrate the true creators of heavy metal and will see @OzzyOsbourne play his own short set before joining with Black Sabbath for his final bow,” read the announcement, shared on Osbourne’s X account.
Osbourne himself said, “It’s my time to go Back to the Beginning….time for me to give back to the place where I was born. How blessed am I to do it with the help of people whom I love. Birmingham is the true home of metal. Birmingham Forever.”
The lineup is truly…well, talk about your Who’s Who in the metal/hard rock world.
In addition to the Black Sabbath members (Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward), the performing lineup also includes Metallica, Slayer, Lamb of God, Alice in Chains and Anthrax.
The concert’s music director, Rage Against the Machine alum Tom Morello, was quoted saying, “This will be the greatest heavy metal show ever.”
The advance poster for the show:
Yep, that’s pretty much everybody who’s anybody, I should think. Bet my old friend Brent Hinds from ATL is thrilled all to hell and gone to be on this incredible bill.
As I’m sure you all know, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins passed last year, probably the victim of an OD, after years of struggling with heroin addiction. So marvel as his 16 year old son (!) shows off badass, hard-hitting chops that almost have to be coded in his family’s DNA.
Yep, a hard-hitter for sure, just like the old man. Not my favorite Foo Fighters tune, unfortunately; myself, I wish they’d done “Monkeywrench,” but what the hey. As WeirdDave says:
Not only does he absolutely nail it, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a drummer play with such emotion. His anger, pain, rage and yes, love could be bagged and sold. The subtle support he’s getting from the rest of the band, “We got you buddy. You’re with family”, take the performance to another level. I’m not even a Foo Fighters fan, but this one put tears in my eyes.
I won’t go quite as far as all that, but it’s certainly something to see nonetheless.
Update! Just now thought to check it, and lo and behold, the BPs video link I left for Aesop in the comments was bad. Fixed now, sorry ‘bout that.
My title, of course, is one of the great Lemmy Kilmister’s most well-known lines, as well as the name of an album by Lemmy’s band. So I’m sure you can easily guess what I’m going to be embedding for this evening’s Tune Damage segment.
Mass shootings just one sign of the systemic collapse of western society… more hunger, violence, debt and destruction yet to come
We are watching the downfall of western civilization as we know it.The rule of law is dead. Elections are rigged. Free speech is disallowed and a criminally corrupt government now runs an actual Ministry of Truth “disinformation” board. “Science” is a total fraud and the medical system is a murder system. Most of the youth refuse to work, and real-world skills are practically non-existent among those under the age of 30. The education system is run by pedophiles and groomers, Hollywood has gone all-in with satanic programming of children and the US military, under the leadership of woketard Pentagon officials, has become a pathetic shadow of its former self.
On top of all that, the dollar is collapsing in real world value, even as it rises against other currencies (temporarily). The Fed is trapped in an inescapable economic collapse scenario, and the housing bubble is in the process of bursting. Our “president” is a dementia patient who was installed in a rigged election, and our news media — if you can even call them that — are journo-terrorists who parrot CIA lies and corporate disinformation to invoke race wars and covid panic while pushing depopulation vaccines that are designed to exterminate humanity.
None of this is going to get resolved through sanity and reason. It’s all headed for collapse. And when I say “collapse,” I mean the total collapse of western civilization as we know it. This includes the collapse of Western Europe, which is also run by retarded lunatics who are wholly incapable of functioning in any sort of rational way whatsoever.
The West has lost the ability to reason. Logic no longer applies to anything, not science, medicine, journalism, elections, etc.
Oh, I assure you it still DOES apply, and always will. It’s just that most “Americans” have fully bought into the Left’s cherished delusion that logic, like reality itself, can be suspended completely at their capricious whim, then reinstated soon afterwards with no real harm done.
“Journalism” is now just parroting the lies of the corporations and deep state agenda-setters. “Elections” now simply means Democrats running vote-stuffing mules to achieve whatever number of faked votes is necessary to “win.” “Science” means rigging studies, censoring data and destroying the careers of scientific whistleblowers who dare to speak out and warn the world. “Medicine” is a process whereby hospitals and doctors gain financial wealth by murdering patients for profit. “Wall Street” is a Ponzi scheme propped up by seemingly endless money printing. The “gains” are ephemeral. Pension funds and retirement funds are ghosts, and they will collapse toward zero as the house of cards collapses.
Western countries like the USA manufacture almost nothing. We have virtually no domestic supply chain for steel, rare earth minerals, electronics or industrial chemicals and polymers. We are a nation that has abandoned industry and embraced “financialization,” which is the scam of creating make believe wealth by pretending to move numbers around on computer screens, creating derivatives and CDOs and “synthetic CDOs” and other incomprehensible financial instruments that ultimately produce nothing in the real world.
Meanwhile, as China is stockpiling grain in anticipation of a global food shortage — and India has just banned all exports of wheat in order to feed its own people — America continues to export corn, wheat, soy, millet and other agricultural products to China, helping make sure that China won’t starve even while America’s population faces mass famine this year (and next).
There is no longer anything resembling sanity or reason in America. The nation has lost its mind, and the oblivious masses are getting angry enough to start shooting each other with greater frequency. This should come as no surprise.
Believe me, it doesn’t. But odd as it may seem, it ain’t a bad thing, nevessarily. In fact, it’s abundantly clear by now that “shooting each other with greater frequency” is our only way out of this mess. To be specific: sane, sensible, normal Americans are gonna have to start shooting Leftards in job lots if they want their situation to improve. As the saying goes, you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.
Update! Dang it, forgot the embed.
Why yes, of COURSE I have a great story about meeting and hanging out with Lemmy once. Ill have to tell ya all about it sometime.
Updated update! A 2009 live version so racy it has to go below the fold. Continue reading “Everything louder than everything else”
This lucky kid just got to live out a fantasy quietly treasured by every aspiring rocker who ever lived.
Teen drummer Kai Neukermans had counted off the beat for many songs before, his drum sticks leading into fierce covers of bands including Black Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age.
But this time it wasn’t his younger brother and a friend at guitar, bass and mike. Seated at the drum kit, the 18-year-old from Mill Valley stared back at none other than Eddie Vedder and the rest of popular grunge band Pearl Jam. Plus a crowd of fans in the nearly 20,000-seat Oakland Arena.
“Everybody this is Kai; Kai this is everybody!” frontman Vedder called out to the cheering crowd.
Four beats from Neukermans, and they were off. He had led them into an explosive rendition of “Mind Your Manners” from the group’s 2013 “Lightning Bolt” album. Vedder leaned over and screamed into the microphone, chugged from a bottle of red wine and pumped his fist as the audience sang along.
Spin back about 24 hours to get to the unlikely series of events that led this Tamalpais High School senior to share Friday night’s stage with one of the most steadfast bands still kicking from Seattle’s grunge movement.
Neukermans is not just any teen drummer; he’s one-third of the hard-charging teen rock group the Alive, a band “launched between surf and skate sessions in 2018,” as their web bio explains. They’ve played significant stages, from the BottleRock Napa Valley main stage to Lollapalooza Chile and Boardmasters in England. His 14-year-old brother, Manoa Neukermans, plays bass, and their friend Bastian Evans, 17, of Laguna Beach (Orange County) handles guitar and vocals.
Neukermans and his brother had just seen Pearl Jam perform in Los Angeles — the band was in town for a recording session. During Pearl Jam’s first show in Oakland on Thursday, Neukermans and his family started receiving text messages from friends watching the band perform. Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron wasn’t performing because he’d tested positive for the coronavirus.
Unbelievable. So we’ve now reached such an advanced stage of pussification that nothing more menacing than a positive test for this grotesquely overhyped malady is excuse enough to skive off work and stay safely home quaking in fear over your imminent demise from the Chinky Pox, eh?
Now, I have no wish to bring down The Jinx on our non-pussy readership by being impertinent about this silliness, mind. But I can’t help but wonder: would those weak-kneed Pearl Jam panic-ninnies have called off the show if the stand-in hadn’t been up to it for whatever reason? Would disappointed, screwed-over fans have received an expiditious, full refund of the exorbitant admission price they shelled out? It’s a dead cert they’ll have to eat the cost of gas, food, drinks, plus the staggeringly high cost of parking about a good half-hour’s trudge, maybe more, from the venue, no helping that.
But still. Does Pearl Jam feel any obligation to not let their fans down if they can possibly avoid doing so? Can they possibly be so naive, so profoundly gormless, that they do sincerely believe that a single positive test is adequate justification for abjuring that solemn obligation? Could the band make a plausible case for that, collectively or individually, to the fans with a straight face? WOULD they?
They pressed him to offer himself up as a replacement for Friday night’s show.
“It was a last-minute thing, and I didn’t think it was going to work out,” Neukermans said.
But he gave it a shot.
Neukermans had met Vedder’s daughter Olivia Vedder in 2018 at Ohana Fest, founded by her surf-loving father and held on the beach at Dana Point in Orange County. So Neukermans sent her a text. She responded that night and said she’d ask.
Friday morning Neukermans went to school. Around lunchtime he heard they wanted to see a video of him drumming.
Neukermans left school before his last two periods — with permission from his parents, Stefaan and Alexandre Neukermans — and drove down to Green Room Music in Pacifica. He put “Mind Your Manners” on repeat in a rehearsal room and started drumming. Over and over and over.
Okay, enough with the excerpting. If you’re at all interested in these momentous affairs, click on over for our thrilling conclusion.
We mourn the untimely loss of one of the most pure-tee badass drummers I ever did hear tell of.
Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has passed away at the age of 50, according to a statement from the band.
A cause of death has not yet been disclosed.
Whatever the cause turns out to have been, I’m mighty sorry to hear this news. Check out this great old (1998?!? That CAN’T be right) live footage, from some outdoor festival or other up in soggy Vancouver.
The above show marked my first exposure to Hawkins, who blew me away completely. He’s the only kind of drummer I ever really liked: laying down a solid, rock-steady rhythm, gangly arms and legs flailing wildly about, rivers of honest sweat flowing from the opening number; throwing his entire body into pounding those skins so danged hard the front five rows would be in pain from the bludgeoning for days after—in sum, a perfect marriage of flawless technique; originality, passion, and style; and just sheer, fangs-bared ferocity. Seeing him play, you almost had to feel sorry for those poor drum heads and sticks, so profound was their ordeal.
Dave Grohl is a supremely talented multi-instrumentalist, a top-tier drummer, and a bona fide rock star his own self (Grohl, remember is the guy who propelled Nirvana to legendary status; the band spent years spinning their wheels and going nowhere until signing him on). As such, only a monster ass-kicker could ever play drums behind him, or would ever dare to attempt it. The Foo Fighters kept Taylor around for many a long year, which speaks volumes all by itself.
Fare thee well, Taylor Hawkins. You’ll surely be missed, and sorely. Your departure leaves your bandmates with some mighty big shoes to fill; I can’t say I envy them the task.
Update! Doubt me concerning Hawkins’ rabid-gorilla approach as a confirmed Brutalizer of Beat? Think I must be exaggerating the raw, impassioned fury of Taylor’s inimitable attack? Pick up the above vid at, say, 1:35 or so, watch that big tall drink of water slash and burn his way through the turnaround—this is but one of many examples, there are many more. After you do, come back and tell me you still feel that way.
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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums
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—Daniel Webster
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—Charles Bukowski
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—Ezra Pound
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—John Adams
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—Bertrand de Jouvenel
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton
"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing
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—Etienne de la Boiete
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—Dwight D. Eisenhower
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—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
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