Chevelle has announced a U.S. headlining tour in support of the band’s new album, NIRATIAS.
The two-leg fall outing will run from September 1 in Kansas City, Missouri, to September 25 in Mankato, Minnesota, and then from November 4 in Milwaukee to November 21 in Pittsburgh.
“Well, we have to say we are pretty damn happy about a new year, a new album, and now, a new tour,” Chevelle says. “Here’s to seeing you all out there.”
Tickets go on sale this Friday, July 30. Visit GetMoreChevelle.com for the full list of dates and all ticket info.
NIRATIAS, Chevelle’s ninth studio effort, was released in March. It includes the singles “Self Destructor” and “Mars Simula.”
The long-awaited Hella Mega tour featuring Green Day, Weezer and Fall Out Boy finally kicked off over the weekend in Dallas, and the party reached even beyond the stadium full of fans.
Green Day’s set included a cover of the KISS classic “Rock and Roll All Nite,” which caught the attention of band members Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.
Both tweeted video of Billie Joe Armstrong and company’s performance while sharing their approval of the cover. “Thank you, Gentlemen,” Simmons wrote, while Stanley added, “Another reason to love @GreenDay!”
The official KISS Twitter account also shared some love for the cover, writing, “SO Cool! #KISSisEverywhere!”
The Hella Mega tour, which was originally scheduled for 2020 before being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is set to continue Tuesday in Atlanta.
After the Norway women’s beach handball team was penalized for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms during their recent championship match, Pink slammed the “sexist” treatment and offered to pay the team’s fine.
The European Handball Federation ruled that bikini bottoms are required to be worn during matches and handed down a $1,700 fine, charging each woman who opted to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms $175 for being out of uniform.
Pink was incensed by the ruling and took to Twitter over the weekend, rallying in support of the athletes.
“I’m VERY proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team FOR PROTESTING THE VERY SEXIST RULES ABOUT THEIR ‘uniform,'” the three-time Grammy winner penned. “The European handball federation SHOULD BE FINED FOR SEXISM.”
Pink praised the team, offering both vocal and financial support by concluding, “Good on ya, ladies. I’ll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up.”
She later retweeted a photo of the men and women’s beach handball teams posing together, which showed a side-by-side comparison of their uniforms. While the men are wearing shorts and tank tops, the women are wearing bikini tops and bottoms.
The team has yet to respond to Pink’s offer.
However, after the fine was imposed, the Norwegian Handball Association took to Twitter and called upon the European Handball Federation to change its rules about uniforms.
Translated into English, the tweet reads, “We are very proud of these girls who during the European Championships raised their voices and announced that ENOUGH is ENOUGH!”
I’m VERY proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team FOR PROTESTING THE VERY SEXIST RULES ABOUT THEIR “uniform”. The European handball federation SHOULD BE FINED FOR SEXISM. Good on ya, ladies. I’ll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up.
Camila Cabello performed her new song “Don’t Go Yet” live on TV for the first time on Friday on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but some fans expressed concern over the appearance of one of her backup dancers.
The dance number included a diverse array of dancers dressed in 80s fashion — similarly to the song’s official music video. However, critics claimed one backup dancer, who is white, darkened his skin with makeup. This led to some accusing Camila of promoting “blackface.”
Camila denied the accusations when responding to the backlash and explained that the dancer was supposed to represent a white man with a bad orange spray tan.
Taking to Twitter, the Grammy nominee explained, “Hey! So this dude was just supposed to be a white man with a terrible spray tan. [W]e purposefully tried to pull together a multicultural group of performers, the expectation was not that everyone in the performance needed to be Latin.”
She continued, “There are white people, African American people, [L]atin people, etc. and so the point wasn’t to try to make everyone look Latin either. There are a lot of people in the performance who are not.”
“The point was to try to make each person look like an over the top 80’s character just like in the video, including a white dude with a terrible orange spray tan,” the “Havana” singer concluded, signing the note with a red heart emoji.
She also shared an Instagram story from the dancer in question, who posted a photo of his getup and captioned the snap, “In case you missed my spray tan last night.”
In a final tweet on Saturday, Camila teased fans that “Don’t Go Yet” is just the “appetizer of a full-course meal.”
Britney Spears‘ friend and longtime agent Cade Hudson has joined the chorus of people speaking out against her conservatorship.
TMZ reports Hudson took to his private social media account over the weekend to weigh in on the matter, sharing, “I’ve kept my mouth shut for 12 + years on Britney. Enough is enough. After getting thousands of death threats, getting water bottles thrown at my head in bars from bystanders telling me I’m brainwashing her -Britney lm [sic] now speaking up.”
Offering his explanation for Britney’s 2007 breakdown, Cade writes, “Britney who was accused of some errors as a new mom at 26 with 100 cameras in her face daily waiting to document any wrong move she did gets placed under a never-ending conservatorship?”
“Sexism at its best,” Cade declares.
“This is a violation of someone’s basic human rights that were taken away,” he continues. “I’ve kept my mouth shut out of the fear of losing my job as her agent and losing the career I worked my a** off for 15 years to build, out of threats from the man we all know who, but I won’t even dignify mentioning his name. I’m officially done being quiet.”
“The system and the public failed her,” he adds. “Her new attorney is the best of the best and knows that the work has just begun but it’s progress & hope and that’s all we can ask for now until action can be taken.”
“Time to get my girl and best friend back… @Britneyspears it’s your time – the world is listening and is on your side. The world NEEDS you freed and back,” Cade concludes.
R&B singer Tank and his wife, Zena Foster, celebrated their third wedding anniversary last Thursday. After meeting over 20 years ago and sharing two children, Tank says the secret to their longtime love is frequent communication.
“I think we communicate about everything. That’s the first piece of it like you got to be able to communicate, whether it’s good or bad,” he tells ABC Audio. “Because a lot of separation is kind of fueled through people not communicating properly and needs or desires not being met just because the conversation isn’t happening properly.”
The “Can’t Let It Show” singer says he and Zena enjoy moments where they can reconnect when he comes off the road from touring or when she’s not busy promoting her brand, Zena Foster Beauty.
“When when we come back together, we have these moments where it’s like, ‘man, I missed you today or ‘I missed you over the weekend’ or ‘oh you look different. What you do to your hair?'” Tank laughs. “It’s like you get to have those moments where you get to kind of reconnect, which is…cool because it’s kind of like a discovery.”
He believes gaining new information about your spouse from “stimulating conversations” can lead “to even more connection or staying connected.”
“There is no formula for getting it all 100% right, but I do know that communication…it starts there, and then I think healthy space is needed,” Tank adds. “Healthy space, [okay]? Healthy space.”
Journey‘s Neal Schon is selling 112 of his valuable and historic guitars via an online auction hosted by Heritage Auctions, with bidding open until this Saturday, July 31.
Among the guitars being auctioned is a 1977 Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Black Solid Body model that Neal used to record “Don’t Stop Believin'” and other songs on Journey’s chart-topping 1981 album Escape, the opening bid for which is $200,000.
“It’s on many famous songs,” Schon tells ABC Audio. “I used it on…’Who’s Crying Now’ [and] ‘Stone in Love’…I used it a bunch on Escape…And many, many albums after that.”
Other pricey guitars Schon is selling include two 1959 Gibson Les Paul Sunburst models with respective opening bids of $175,000 and $150,000, and two late-1950s Gibson Les Paul Goldtop models with $75,000 opening bids.
Schon, who estimates that he owns about 800 guitars in total, says he has no apprehensions about selling the ones he’s put up for bid, because he actually doesn’t play them that much.
“I’m looking to whittle [my collection] down,” he notes, “[and] put ’em in the hands of somebody that will really appreciate them, so they don’t sit in a case.”
Explaining why he decided to sell off part of his guitar collection, Schon admits, “I simply don’t have any more space…I’ve been collecting my whole life, you know, guitars and equipment, amps, all kinds of gear. We have a huge warehouse that Journey’s had for years, and that is packed.”
The auction ends on the same day that Journey plays Lollapalooza in Chicago, and Schon reveals that if there’s “a high-bidding buyer that wants to know about a guitar [that day], I’m gonna [Skype or FaceTime] with them and…tell them all about it.”
Taylor Swift’s Grammy-winning album folklore celebrated its one-year anniversary on Saturday, and to mark the occasion, she gave fans a gift: the original version of the album’s bonus track, “The Lakes,” which producer Jack Antonoff had revealed the existence of in a recent interview with Billboard.
Jack, who co-wrote and co-produced “The Lakes” with Taylor, told Billboard, “There was this big orchestral version [of ‘The Lakes’], and Taylor was like, ‘Eh, make it small.’ I had gotten lost in the string arrangements and all this stuff, and I took everything out. I was just like, ‘Oh, my God!…this is so perfect.’”
After the interview, fans took to social media to ask for the original version, and Taylor delivered. On her socials, she wrote, “It’s been one year since we escaped the real world together and imagined ourselves someplace simpler. With tall tall trees and salt air. Where you’re allowed to wear lace nightgowns that make you look like a Victorian ghost every day & no one will side-eye you cause no one is around. It’s just you and your imaginary cabin and the stories you make up to pass the time.”
“To say thank you for all you have done to make this album what it was, I wanted to give you the original version of ‘The Lakes,'” Taylor added. Then, referring to the characters who appear in the album’s songs, she wrote, “Happy 1 year anniversary to Rebekah, Betty, Inez, James, Augustine, and the lives we all created around them. Happy Anniversary, folklore.”
“The Lakes” was inspired by the Lake District of England, where Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge found inspiration in the 1800s.
Guitarist Gary Rossington, the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd, recently underwent “emergency heart surgery,” according to a message posted late Friday on the band’s official Facebook page.
“Gary is home resting and recovering with his family,” the message reads. “He wants everyone to know he is doing good and expects a full recovery.”
The note continues, “After this past year, the country being shut down and everything we have all been thru, The [Rossingtons] encouraged the band to go perform in his absence. Music is a powerful healer! We all felt playing the shows and bringing the music to y’all was a better option than cancelling the performances.”
In the message, the band also asks fans to “say some prayers for the Rossington family and if you would like to leave [Gary] a (positive) message please do! He will look forward to reading them!”
Accompanying the Facebook post is a video clip from a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert in Minnesota this past week featuring frontman Johnny Van Zant explaining to the audience that Rossington had to have “an emergency stent put in his heart.”
Van Zant also told the crowd, “Gary said, ‘Go up to Minnesota and kick some a** in my honor,’ and that’s what we’re here to do tonight.” In addition, he revealed that former Alice Cooper guitarist Damon Johnson was standing in for Rossington.
Rossington has experienced numerous heart issues over the years, and has revealed in past interviews that he’s had many stent operations.
The Stray Cats‘ Brian Setzer has released a second advance track from his forthcoming solo studio album Gotta Have the Rumble, a revved-up surf-rock-influenced tune called “Smash Up On Highway One.”
The song is available now as a digital download and via streaming services, while a music video for the tune has premiered at Setzer’s official YouTube channel.
The clip offers up a montage of black-and-white video segments featuring such evocative images as a belly dancer, a burning cigarette, a burning $100 bill, a slithering snake, an animal’s skeleton, a hissing cat, a snarling dog, a solar eclipse, piano keys lit aflame, an iguana, a spider in its web, a tornado, a graveyard and a burning car out in a desert.
Setzer says he got the idea for “Smash Up On Highway One” after he and The Stray Cats played surf-rock legend Dick Dale‘s classic instrumental “Misirlou” with Dale himself.
“I thought, ‘Wow, I’d love to write something as cool as that riff.’ So I came up with something out of left field,” he explains. “I don’t know what you would call it — Middle Eastern or Eastern-European…I had that riff laying around. I guess you could say I’m always collecting cool guitar parts. [Frequent collaborator] Mike Himelstein sent me those lyrics and they just fit right in. I think it’s really cool.”
As previously reported, Gotta Have the Rumble will be released on August 27 on CD and digitally, while a vinyl version will arrive in the fall.
The new collection, which you can pre-order now, features 11 original tunes written or co-written by Setzer. Brian previously released the album’s first song, “Checkered Flag,” as an advance track.
