When Blink-182 confirmed on Monday that they are to tour the United States with fellow American rockers My Chemical Romance this autumn, the news was understandably met with a fans’ backlash here in the UK.
It is not surprising really, especially when just a few weeks previous the Californians postponed their summer gigs over here until next year, stating that they needed to work on completing their new album.
But the band, realising that their US venture has provoked anger from loyal UK followers on social networking sites, have explained that this collaboration with the East Coast outfit was booked before they pulled out of the UK tour and they are now on course to meet the studio deadline.
Bassist Mark Hoppus responded to fans via Facebook as he wrote:
“I understand your confusion and frustration at hearing the US tour announcement tonight. Here’s what’s up. This tour was booked alongside the UK/European dates, a long time ago.
“Now there’s a hard deadline for the album to be turned in, and it will be released during our US tour.”
It would seem like Nickelback singer Chad Kroeger is not the only one who wants to enjoy the luxuries that come with a rock star lifestyle as it has been reported that his ex-girlfriend now wants a share of the spoils.
Maybe the band’s hit record “Rockstar” from a few years back has given Kroeger’s former partner a taste for the extravagance referred to in the lyrics of the song after she has filed for bigger alimony payments totalling almost $100,000 per month (ten times the current figure) this week.
We will have to wait till the summer for the outcome of the proceedings which are due to take place in a British Columbia court.
The Canadian band are currently in the process of writing and recording their seventh studio album.
I’m not sure why I was so surprised at how stunning the visuals were (as well as the rest of the production for that matter) when I went to see Roger Waters perform his former band’s 1979 double album in full at a packed out MEN Arena in Manchester last Saturday night.
Pink Floyd themselves were always known for their elaborate live shows, but the fact that Roger was performing without his former band-mates made me wonder what I had let myself in for.
The rock opera story about how the character Pink becomes more and more isolated from society was excellently executed, with the projections onto the wall, which was slowly built between performers and the audience, creating the desired effect.
I was one of the 200,000 people fortunate enough to see the rockers in their last live performance together when they played at the huge charity concert Live8 back in 2005, and I never thought they’d ever reunite again. This is because 24 had passed since the last time the surviving members of the band took to the stage together.
The well-publicised angst between David Gilmour and Roger Waters meant that a reunion has never really been on the cards, so it was a surprise to hear that David and Nick Mason joined Roger for a few songs at London’s O2 Arena on his Wall tour.
By all accounts, Pink Floyd blew the crowd away with performances of “Comfortably Numb” (which they played at Live8) and “Outside the Wall”. I have tickets for the Manchester MEN show on Saturday, but I’m not holding out much hope that Roger will be joined once again by his former band mates.
I was trawling through Google News today and to my horror I came across an article describing how annoying pop singer Miley Cyrus had performed a cover of the classic Nirvana song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” at a recent gig in Equador.
This just adds to my angst about shows like Glee taking rock hits and turning them into laughing stocks, totally ruining the image of the artist who released the track in the first place.
I wonder what Kurt Cobain would make of the 18-year-old pop icon singing his breakthrough masterpiece?
Rock fans everywhere are in agreement in tweeting and posting critical comments about this incident, but as this is not the first time that the song has been covered, with attempts by the likes of Take That and Justin Timberlake in the past, we will probably have to live with these terrible pop covers of great rock songs.
