Touring tidbit of the day

Weezer and Oasis may be touring together this spring!

Foo Fighters do reality TV

If you like Top Chef (and I gotta be honest, I'd never heard of it until I read this), then tune in in tonight on Bravo, because the Foo Fighters are going to be judging a Thanksgiving dinner cookoff.

Oh, and the episode was apparently taped this past summer. So that turkey is probably really dry and stringy by now.

This week in reunions... Blur! Blink-182! No Doubt! Get Up Kids!

Whole lot of reunion news this week. Let's get to it...

* Damon Albarn said this afternoon on the BBC that Blur will be reforming to record new material in 2009.

*The members of Blink-182 are "talking," says Mark Hoppus, following drummer Travis Barker's plane crash. Does this mean a reunion? Probably not. Angels and Airwaves haven't failed enough for Tom DeLonge to come crawling back; they just got done opening for Weezer.

* If this post on The Get Up Kids' website is true, then the rumors of a reunion tour in '09 are also true. Awesome.

* Also gearing up to tour in 2009 is No Doubt, according to Billboard. The band is also set to put out a new album, its first since 2001's genre-hopping Rock Steady. The last time we heard much from No Doubt was the greatest-hits album in 2003 and a tour in 2004. Since then, Gwen Stefani's put out two solo records, neither of which I liked.

* Jane's Addiction, with all four original members, played another surprise show at a club in Los Angeles, their third this year. Their bassist hints that "rehearsals" have been taking place. Hm...

* The Meat Puppets, with both brothers back in the fold, are touring in December and January. Get dates here. Everybody remembers "Backwater," but do you remember the Puppets' other modern rock hit, 1995's "Scum"?

Yeah, me neither. Allmusic says it hit #28, but I'm guessing it was only there for a week based on the strength of "Backwater" and then fell off. I'm sure I've never heard that song, and I'd never seen the video until I found it on YouTube. Fairly cool video, though.

Coldplay cover Flaming Lips

At their show in Oklahoma City last week, Coldplay covered the Flaming Lips' 1999 single "Waitin' for a Superman":

Win tickets to Oasis in NYC

Go here if you want to win tickets to see Oasis at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The contest ends Dec. 7.

Get a free Everclear mp3

If you go over to Everclear's website, you can get a free mp3 of their new song "Jesus was a Democrat." It's a Christmas song. Or maybe an election song. I'm not sure.

In other Everclear news, they have a new drummer, Tommy Stewart, formerly of Fuel and Godsmack, and they've been touring military bases in Iraq. Also, Art's really pumped about Obama.

Scott Weiland gets incoherent

Click here if you want to watch Scott Weiland struggle to answer simple questions and generally come off as a lost, broken individual. Sad. Oh, and his new album comes out next week.

UPDATE: Happy is actually getting fairly decent reviews. Spin liked it.

UPDATE 2: Weiland was a little incoherent on the American Music Awards:


In other '90s stars-struggling news, click here if you want to see photos of Nine Inch Nails playing in front of a half-empty arena in Columbus, Ohio. Anecdotal evidence suggests this has been pretty common on the fall tour.

More Nixons

Ex-Nixons singer Zac Maloy has three songs on the new David Cook album (more on that later this week), which gives me an excuse to post some more Nixons videos. Here's "Wire," live from South by Southwest.

Not sure why it's cut off like that.

And it's a good time to tell you that the Nixons finally have a Myspace page. Find it here. Does this mean that the guys are talking again (their breakup was rumored to be pretty ugly back in the day) and there might be a reunion? Well, given that the drummer is now with Seether and Maloy has been writing songs with the Jonas Brothers, probably not. But man, were the Nixons awesome. I was in a band in high school in Oklahoma, and all we ever wanted to be was the Nixons.

And for the record, the original "rockin" version of "Sister" was better than the radio hit version.

This week in reunions...

* There are two new songs from the reunited Mighty Mighty Bosstones up on their Myspace page. One is a cover of the Broadway chestnut "Impossible Dream." Seriously.

* Blur's Damon Albarn tells the Guardian that he's been hanging out with estranged guitarist Graham Coxon, and that we might see a Blur reunion at some point. Also, apparently the drummer from Blur ran for city council in London (and lost).

* Stone Temple Pilots have written some new material, but they're not likely to be recording it anytime soon, Scott Weiland tells Spin. A lawsuit filed by Atlantic Records trying to ensure any new STP is released by them is to blame. Meanwhile, the band has scheduled two more dates on the reunion tour: a New Year's Eve show in LA, and a New Year's Day show in Vegas.

Local H + E6 = AWESOME

Local H are on tour with ELECTRIC SIX, one of my favorite non-'90s acts (my musical taste didn't entirely end in 2000), and I'm going to tonight's show in Atlanta.

I saw Local H once before, in 1998 at a giant multi-band thing in All Sports Stadium in Oklahoma City. I was thinking it was the HORDE tour, but this page says they were never on the HORDE tour. So I dunno.

Anyway, here's 1998's "All the Kids are Right," one of the band's three modern rock hits. Can you name the other two?

Links of the week

1) Alternative Addiction has a nice new feature called AA Classics, where you can hear audio links and get more information on bands that may have unjustly fallen off the radar. First up, Oleander, who I kinda liked in '98-'99.

2) Billy Corgan apparently berated the crowd at a Smashing Pumpkins 20th anniversary show in New York City last week, then only played two or three of the hits. Folks are mad.

3) If you're interested in purchasing the upcoming Scott Weiland solo album Happy in Galoshes, it's available from Newbury Comics with an autographed booklet.

Ryan Adams covers Alice in Chains

Here's a video of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals on the radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic recently. They start with one of Adams' best tunes, "Come Pick Me Up," then segue into an interesting country-rock cover of Alice in Chains' "Down in a Hole." What do you think?

Live, remix albums for Xmas

Need a gift for the '90s fan in your life this holiday season? Well, between now and December 25, these will appear on store shelves (well, at the few stores that still stock CDs):

*A Live live album. There are also two new tracks on it, including the song "Forever," which oddly reminds me of the Kiss 1989 single "Forever" (which was written by Michael Bolton!)

* A Foo Fighters live at Wembley Stadium DVD

* A Filter remix album, less than a year after Filter's fourth album flopped.

* A Stereophonics greatest-hits. Living in the UK in 1998-99, the Stereophonics were big stuff. They're still huge over there.

* And my personal favorite, a Vanilla Ice covers album in which Mr. Too Cold, Too Cold does covers of several rap classics from the early '90s. Included are "Baby Got Back," "Jump Around," and "Insane in the Brain." Oh, and four different versions of "Ice Ice Baby."

New Third Eye Blind next week

If you've been anxiously awaiting new Third Eye Blind (and let's be honest, if my Google analytics scores are right, you haven't been), next week brings the release of the Red Star EP, a digital-only taster for the band's fourth album proper, due in 2009. It will have three new tracks, and some unspecified "video content." If I can get it on Amazon MP3 with my Pepsi Stuff points, I'll let you know next week how it is.

Hootie, Horton Heat, and a bunch of country stars

If you're in the southeastern California desert in April, why not head over to Stagecoach, the big country festival? Darius "don't call me Hootie" Rucker will be there flogging his country album, the Reverend Horton Heat (have they gone country, too?) will play a set, Kid Rock will be there, and then there's a bunch of acts readers of this site probably don't care about.

Here's the video for the Rev's only modern rock-charting single, 1994's "One Time for Me" (which barely crept in at #40):

This week in reunions...

* Jane's Addiction (with all four original members) played a surprise set at a Mexican bar in Los Angeles last week. If you're counting, this is the second surprise reunion this year.

* Not really a reunion, since they've never officially broken up, but the Beastie Boys were working on a new album, until they took a break last week to do a Get out and Vote tour. The Boys released an instrumental album in 2007, but their last with-vocals album was 2004's To the 5 Boroughs, which I don't remember hearing much about. Now that I think about it, the last Beastie Boys single I remember hearing on the radio was either "Intergalactic" or "Body Movin," off 1998's Hello Nasty.

*So, you know how the lead singer of Alter Bridge and Mayfield Four might front Led Zeppelin for a reunion tour next year? Well, that might also lead to a Creed reunion. Yeah, I'm not that excited, either. Meanwhile, Chris Cornell is telling people that he hasn't officially been asked to front Led Zeppelin, but he might be interested if they ask. You know, just in case they ask.

Your American Idol goes '90s update

As we previously reported here, American Idol winner David Cook has been working with an all-star cast of alt-rock luminaries, including members of Collective Soul, the Nixons, and Our Lady Peace. The first single, "Light On," was co-written with Chris Cornell. The album is out in two weeks, and while the complete list of songwriting credits isn't available, we do know that one track, "Avalanche," was co-written with Kevin Griffin of Better than Ezra.

Also wanting to get in on the action is AI runner-up David Archuleta; he's got a cover of Robbie Williams' "Angels" on his album, out next week. It's a little treacly.

I have managed to ignore every American Idol alum thus far (though the missus likes Carrie Underwood, and I enjoy Butch Walker's take on "Since U Been Gone"). I might have to buy this David Cook album, though.