Butthole Surfers return to Austin

The Butthole Surfers will return to Austin September 27, with the complete original lineup performing. As you might recall, the band did a short Northeast tour in June and July without original guitarist Paul Leary.

Splender return

Splender are back, reports Alternative Addiction. Don't remember Splender? 1999's "Yeah, Whatever"? They got in on the very tail-end of the original alt-rock craze (right before Creed and Limp Bizkit brought nu-metal in), along with bands like Stroke 9 and Lit. I saw them at Music Midtown in Atlanta in the spring of 2000, on the same bill as Guster, Oasis, and Travis. They were pretty good live; bass player tweezed his eyebrows a bit too much, but hey, whatever makes you happy. Then they ended up as the only rock act on Clive Davis' J Records label for their second album, which flopped (though I liked it), and they broke up in 2003.

Since the break-up, lead singer Waymon Boone moved to Sacramento and started a band called Headrush, which didn't do much. He also became a songwriter-for-hire, working for Kelly Clarkson, Pink, and Tim McGraw, as well as the Shirley Manson solo album that may have been scrapped.

This reunion features all four original members (hey, Candlebox can't claim that). No tour dates have been announced, but a new album is expected in 2009.
Refresh your memory:

Blink-182 not reuniting

Live Daily has a new interview with Angels and Airwaves frontman Tom DeLonge, where he talks about his painkiller addiction, his new business venture, the Angels and Airwaves documentary (and possibly coffee table books?), and the fact that he doesn't think Blink-182 is ever getting back together.
It's too bad they didn't ask the question really on everyone's mind: when do we get a Boxcar Racer reunion?


DeLonge, of course, has two Top 10 albums with Angels and Airwaves, and Blink only broke up three years ago. I'll lay down $20 we see a Blink reunion tour by 2025.

Angels and Airwaves (also featuring former Rocket from the Crypt and Offspring drummer Atom Willard) will be bringing their punk-meets-Pink Floyd and U2 aesthetic to the Warped Tour all summer. The other two-thirds of Blink are supposedly in the studio working on a second +44 album, though some Internet chatter has indicated that label funding hasn't been forthcoming.

According to Wikipedia, the Angels and Airwaves albums have outsold the +44 album about 4 to 1, although the +44 guys have been playing Blink hits in concert ("Dammit," "What's My Age Again?", etc.)

News bites: Jackopierce, Weezer, Toadies

* Jackopierce, the critically-acclaimed acoustic duo that were a clear influence on groups like Guster and Vertical Horizon, are back together for a new album. Since their break-up, Cary Pierce has written songs with Zac Maloy (of Nixons fame), and Graham Colton, among others.

* The Toadies have expanded their summer tour plans. Originally scheduling a little week-long tour (which starts tomorrow), they've now added shows at Lollapalooza and a festival of their own at Possum Kingdom Lake called Dia de los Toadies, among others.

* Weezer are doing a weird thing this week called "Hootenanny." They're asking people to hop up on stage and play various songs with them, including, oddly, Radiohead's "Creep" (which Prince famously covered earlier this year). The Phoenix Hootenanny was held at an American Legion post. If you live in Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, or LA, check it out.

Butthole Surfers return

The vintage-1980s lineup of the Butthole Surfers will reunite for a series of shows in the US and Europe beginning in June, says Live Daily, minus guitarist Paul Leary, who has prior commitments (Leary has become an in-demand producer and mixer, working with Sublime, the Refreshments, the Meat Puppets, U2, Slightly Stoopid, Pepper, and others).

The band last released any music in the summer of 2002, with an odds-n-sods compilation, Humpty Dumpty LSD. Their last proper album was 2001's Weird Revolution, which was a sort-of replacement for 1998's ultimately-unreleased After the Astronaut (about half of the Astronaut songs ended up on Revolution). You could call Revolution commercially disappointing (it charted at #130, then sank), but come on, "Pepper" was a bit of a fluke, right?

Surfers lead singer Gibby Haynes put out a solo album in 2004.

Butthole Surfers tour dates:
June 24 - Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park, NJ
June 26 - 9:30 Club, Washington DC
June 27 - Electric Factory - Philadelphia
July 15 - Melkweg - Amsterdam
July 17 - Minnemeers - Ghent, Belgium
July 18 - Carling Academy - Bristol, UK
July 19 - Academy 2 - Manchester, UK
July 20 - ABC1 - Glasgow, Scotland
July 22 - Wulfrun Hall - Wolverhampton, UK
July 23 - Rock City - Nottingham, UK
July 24 - Vicar Street - Dublin, Ireland
July 26 - Kentish Town Forum - London, UK
July 28 - The Stone Church - Newmarket, NH
July 29 - Webster Hall - New York, NY (Leary supposedly to play with the band)

Here's 1993's "Who Was in my room last Night?" I believe this is the video that got Beavis and Butthead all hot and bothered.

More reunions: Deep Blue Something, Nerf Herder

This reunion stuff is getting a little out of hand. Just on the heels of words that Deep Blue Something (of 1995's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" fame) reunited for a short tour last month comes word that Nerf Herder is back together with their complete circa-1997 lineup. I actually saw Nerf Herder with Reel Big Fish back in the day; that was a hell of a show.

The original lineup of Nerf Herder will release IV on April 29 through Oglio Records. You can hear some of the new stuff on their myspace page.

Here's "Van Halen."

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.

More reunions: STP, Filter

Following in the recent lead of the Smashing Pumpkins, two more '90s acts have announced activity for 2008, joining the comebacks of the Counting Crows and R.E.M. (see below).

According to multiple reports, Stone Temple Pilots are getting back together for a summer tour. So far, only one date has been announced, May 17 at a festival in Columbus, Ohio, but you would have to assume they'll play multiple summer festivals, just like Rage Against the Machine did last year. No word on what this means for Velvet Revolver, Scott Weiland's supergroup with half of Guns 'N Roses; they're supposed to be touring Australia this week, though at last report Weiland was back in rehab. From what I've heard, both album sales for the band's last record Libertad and ticket sales for the supporting tour were weak, so who knows. Slash is saying publicly that recording on Velvet Revolver's third album could begin in April prior to the STP reunion.

What does seem more concrete is that the other STP-related supergroup, Army of Anyone, is pretty much dead, because the DeLeo brothers are back with STP, and singer Richard Patrick says he's getting Filter back together for their first album since 2002's weak-selling The Amalgamut, which failed to go gold (Filter's first two albums both went platinum). Filter are also playing the same festival in Columbus.

All this, of course, got me thinking about Talk Show, the band formed during a prior Weiland rehab stint that was STP with a new lead singer (who sounded oddly like Liam Gallagher). I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Talk Show open up for Aerosmith in the OKC in December of 1997, and they were pretty good. But, their album didn't sell, Weiland's solo album didn't sell either, and Stone Temple Pilots got back together for two more records (not as good as the first three, in my opinion) and a greatest hits set, before breaking up again in 2003.

Here's Talk Show's one hit, "Hello Hello:"

Since '03, the DeLeo brothers have produced an Alien Ant Farm album (which flopped), and formed Army of Anyone, whose single album did not chart. Drummer Eric Kretz has not done anything since STP broke up (according to AllMusic), and sadly neither has Dave Coutts, the lead singer of Talk Show. He's really the Gary Cherone in this whole mess, isn't he?

Considering that both Velvet Revolver and Army of Anyone have been doing STP songs live, there's clearly still a market for the band. Whether or not any new music is forthcoming has not yet been revealed.