Rock Band and the future of music

As album sales keep falling and the growth of downloadable singles through iTunes and others peters out, is Rock Band the future of music? It seems like a lot of acts are jumping on the bandwagon.

I'm completely addicted to Rock Band and its sequel, Rock Band 2, but I long ago played through all the songs on the discs. Thankfully, there's downloadable content (and there are Pepsi giveaways to get free downloadable content). Just this week, the Rock Band folks made available tracks by Blur, Eve 6, Blind Melon, and the Foo Fighters. Third Eye Blind just re-recorded six of their hits for the Rock Band store, and Pearl Jam will make their new album Backspacer available to download and play on September 20, the same day as the album release.

What do you think? I've certainly spent more money this year on Rock Band tracks than actual recorded music. Have you?

This week in break-ups... Blind Melon loses a lead singer

So Blind Melon's second lead singer (the guy with the creepy Shannon Hoon tattoo) is now Blind Melon's ex-lead singer, according to their blog. The band fired him right before embarking on a lengthy US tour, which is now cancelled. According to one of the commenters on this post, a new lead singer may have already been settled on.

Blind Melon's comeback album For My Friends charted at #133 earlier this year, but didn't spin off any hit singles. They just finished a tour of Canada.

Creepy alert: Blind Melon's new singer has a Shannon Hoon tattoo.

Not sure what I think of this.

Original article here.

It's a little like that Mark Wahlberg movie "Rock Star," isn't it?

Blind Melon's new album For My Friends is out April 22 on Adrenaline Records.

More reunions: Alice in Chains, Blind Melon

According to the new Spin magazine (the one with Pete Doherty on the cover), we can expect new albums in 2008 from Green Day, U2, Metallica, No Doubt, Spiritualized, the Cure, the Breeders (really? nice!), Weezer, Portishead, and Beck.
But the big news is the return of two groups who haven't recorded in quite awhile.
Alice in Chains have been touring sporadically since 2006 with new lead singer William DuVall (replacing Layne Staley, who died of a heroin overdose in 2002 after 11 years of heavy drug abuse and 5 years of complete seclusion), though they're now expected to record a new album, their first of all-new material since 1995's self-titled album, which went double-platinum. Remember "Again"?

Big rock hit in early '96? Top 10 on the mainstream rock charts? No? OK, me neither, but I couldn't find embeddable videos for "Heaven Beside You."

It's hard to believe, based on their continued presence on rock radio, but Alice only managed to put out three albums and two EPs, due largely to Staley's heroin problems. Jerry Cantrell has released two fairly well-regarded solo albums (here's 1998's "Cut You In":)


Also back together are Blind Melon, who only managed to record two albums before lead singer Shannon Hoon died in 1995 of a heroin overdose.* New lead singer Travis Warren will make his recording debut April 22, when For My Friends is released. You can hear the new single, "Wishing Well," here.
The band certainly had their fans back in the day; 1992's Blind Melon went quadruple-platinum, and 1995's Soup went gold (in Canada). I know, everybody remembers them for the Bee Girl video, but they had some chops. Here's "Galaxie," from 1995:


*Strange but true story: I saw Sponge at the Diamond Ballroom in Oklahoma City the night Shannon Hoon died. We found out about it because Vinnie Dombrowski from Sponge announced the death from the stage, then the band played "Wish You Were Here." I'm still not sure how (or if) the guys in Sponge knew the guys in Blind Melon, but it still makes for a cool story.