Foo Fighters headed for a break

Dave Grohl said on the BBC last week that the Foo Fighters are headed for a long hiatus.

Does this mean another Probot album? Perhaps more Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders? A Sunny Day Real Estate reunion? Watch this space...

Links roundup

Sometimes stuff just doesn't warrant a full post. To wit...

* A reflection on Beck's varied career, over at Idolator. I've never really been able to get into Beck. Sure, I liked the Odelay stuff, I enjoyed "Debra" ironically, and I sort of liked the newer singles when I heard them on the radio, but I don't own a Beck album. I've never seen him live. I probably won't buy his greatest hits, and if I never hear "Loser" or "Where It's At" again, I'd be OK.

* Third Eye Blind may be close to finally putting out a fourth album, says this (fairly-old) post by their new guitarist. As far as original members go, they're down to Stephan Jenkins and the drummer. I didn't like much of the third album or the non-"Never Let You Go" parts of the second album, so...

*A celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Billboard Modern Rock charts, along with some nice YouTube videos. I especially liked "I'll Be Your Chauffeur," from 1990, which I'd never actually heard before.

* There's a nice interview with Robby Takac of the Goo Goo Dolls over at Alternative Addiction. They've just built a studio, put out an odds-and-sods album, and are writing the next album. The first taste is a track called "Real," which was part of the AT&T promo for the Olympics:

This week in solo albums...

* Spin.com has a stream of "Paralysis," the first single off Scott Weiland's second solo album, Happy in Galoshes, out Nov. 25.

* Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace has an album influenced by spoken-word poetry, The Hunters Lullaby, out now. It's self-produced, recorded on vintage equipment, and doesn't sound much like OLP at all. Our Lady Peace should have a new album out soon, according to this article. A new song was premiered at a festival in (you guessed it) Canada this summer.

* Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon has put out a limited-release album with '80s shlockmeister Richard Marx. Vertical Horizon are expected to put out a new album later this year.

* Mark Kano of Athenaeum is still working on a solo album, his first recorded output since 2001 (we previously reported on this here). No word on release date yet.

* John Hampson of Nine Days (now an English teacher), is also working on a solo album. It might be out by the end of the year.

Travis Barker critically injured in plane crash

Blink-182 / +44 drummer Travis Barker was critically injured in a plane crash Friday night in Columbia, SC, hours after performing a free show as TRVSDJ-AM with Perry Farrell and Gavin DeGraw. Four others were killed in the crash.
Barker is reportedly being treated at a burn unit in Augusta, GA.

TRVSDJ-AM, which also includes DJ-AM, was the house band at the 2008 Video Music Awards. AM also survived the crash.

So, about that new Metallica album...

Metallica are back, and it's got me to thinking. Is Metallica really considered a '90s band?
If you look back, the band had a monstrous cult following in the metal community in the early to mid-'80s, then became mega-stars around 1988-89 (that's when all their old albums went platinum within a span of about 18 months, meaning kids were discovering the band and buying everything they could get their hands on).

Then they put out the juggernaut, diamond-certified Black Album (14 million sold so far in the US) in 1991. Load went quintuple-platinum in '96, Reload went triple-platinum in '97, a covers album (Garage, Inc.) went quintuple-platinum in '99.

But here's the conundrum part: people that loudly claim themselves to be true Metallica fans hate their late-'90s work. And their classic '80s albums (Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ... And Justice For All) continue to sell millions of copies. Master of Puppets was certified 6x-platinum in 2003.* Moreover, the band doesn't seem to fit the aesthetic of everything else that was happening in post-Nirvana rock... maybe you can hear some Metallica in lunkheads like Creed and Limp Bizkit at the end of the decade, but I can't. On the other hand, it was the songs from Load / Reload that were finally embraced by modern rock radio, and the band did play the last touring Lollapalooza.

The album that absolutely no one likes, St. Anger, came out in 2003. And the new one (which opened at #1, by the way, to me sounds like a fusion of their '80s and '90s work.

Actually, this conversation works just as well for U2 and (to a lesser extent) R.E.M. So what do you think? Is Metallica within the remit of this here blog, or not? Discuss.

*By the way, if you're curious, you can look up gold and platinum certifications here. It's fun!

This week in reunions...

*Undeterred by half-empty amphitheatres, long-winded, rambling stage patter, and loogies thrown at bass players, Stone Temple Pilots have tacked on some late October dates to their reunion tour, including three shows in Mexico.

* This is completely unconfirmed, but Tonic may be getting back together. At least, that's what some dude who went to a private concert put on by Emerson Hart says. If it does happen, it would probably be 2009 or 2010.

* Alice in Chains plan to go into the studio in October with new lead singer William DuVall to record their first album in 12 years. Then again, they were supposed to be recording back in February, so I'll believe it when I hear it.

* And... Phish got back together. But just to play for a buddy's wedding.

Concert Report: The Toadies

We've got a special treat today: a guest post from my brother Bill Brassky, who went to see the Toadies Thursday night in Los Angeles and was kind enough to file this report.

Toadies at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip... in 2008.

For an hour and 45 minutes, it felt like 1995. There was a mosh pit. There was crowd surfing. (One guy even went with the daring face first crowd surf, inviting hands to grab whatever they pleased.) There was an obscure Waynes World 2 reference. Another dude even got thrown out. The guys in the band seemed genuinely touched by all the enthusiasm (probably a result of the years off) and threw in an extra new song during a five song encore.

Since they only have three albums of material, they were able to play every song you'd think they would--with the notable exception of "Hell Below/Stars Above." They opened with an instrumental jam before going into "Backslider." Finished the regular portion of the show with "I Come From the Water." Opened the encore with "Hell or High Water" (I think that's the title) from the new album and closed with "Tyler." They played "Possum Kingdom" in the middle of the set right after "Push That Hand" (which might have been the highlight of the night for me). There was a lot of jumping up and down.

I had seen the Toadies once before in 2000 when they were promoting Hell Below/Stars Above. Mr. Peppers and I drove out to Foss, Oklahoma (halfway between Amarillo and OKC) to see them at the Foss Ballroom. I don't really remember much about this show except that the lead singer played one of the songs off that album by hitting his guitar with a mallet (he did that again last night) and being told that the place was dead before the show by a rustler at a nearby Conoco.
The Toadies we saw that night were in the same position as the ones I saw Thursday night--a band trying to come back from years away. But the current version seems to be having a better time and accepts that most of the 30somethings in the crowd just want to hear "I Burn" and "Mister Love," not the new stuff. Though, that might also be the difference in playing for a few hundred people in middle of nowhere Oklahoma and a packed room on the Sunset Strip.

It's too bad the Toadies weren't more famous back in the day because they're still really tight. New songs, old songs, not-so-old songs, all sounded great. Their awesomeness might be diminished by playing in bigger venues, but they should give Sponge and the Presidents of the United States of America a call and put together some sort of larger tour (i.e. the greatest tour ever). I'm not sure if those bands appeal to the same audience, but 6th grade me would give up his best Airwalks to see a show like that. If they could somehow get Weezer to quit sucking, they've got themselves a headliner.