If you consider yourself a fan of 80’s rock’n’roll, then nothing can possibly seem better than a chance to see Skid Row play a sold-out show at the London’s O2 Academy Islington. Yes, the same Skid Row that many years ago toured the world with Guns N’Roses and released songs like “Youth Gone Wild” and “18 and Life” that once were soundtracks for a whole different generation.
What makes things even better is that tonight is a Saturday night, everyone seems to be up for a party and Skid Row have rolled into town bringing two great opening acts with them. Read the rest of this entry »
SEBASTIAN BACH‘S VIDEO FOR “18 & LIFE” TAKEN FROM UPCOMING CD/DVD PACKAGE HAS EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE PREMIERE ON ULTIMATE CLASSIC ROCK TODAY
“ABACHALYPSE NOW” DUE OUT TOMORROW IN NORTH AMERICA VIA FRONTIERS RECORDS
Sebastian Bach fans worldwide can click here to check out the exclusive worldwide premiere of the video for “18 & Life,” taken from the forthcoming CD/DVD package ABachalypse Now; the set is due out tomorrow in North America via Frontiers Records. The ABachalypse Now Ultimate CD/DVD Edition includes never-before-seen footage from last year’s GrasPop Festival in Belgium, the full never-before-seen Hellfest set from France and the fully-remixed and remastered Nokia show from Los Angeles (originally broadcast on AXS TV), as well as bonus music videos. The DVD contains a running time of nearly 160 minutes. ABachalypse Now will be available in two configurations: the Ultimate CD/DVD Edition (2 CDs + DVD) and a standalone DVD; the respective covers can be accessed here and here. You can check out the official EPK here and preorder the set here. Read the rest of this entry »
The second Kiss Kruise was settled to depart Miami, Fla. on October 31 — Halloween — and head to Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas. The scheduled return to the port was on November 4’TH. Thanks to hurricane Sandy the plans had to be changed on last minute and instead of Bahamas, the cruisers were visiting in beautiful Cozumel Island in Mexico. Packages for the cruise begin at $750 per person and it included just about everything what a KISS fan can hope for. The KISS shows, electric and acoustic, Q&A session with the band, a cabin photo with the band in makeup, signed posters and each member of the band leading their own activities like Gene Simmons pick throwing contest, Paul Stanley judged belly flop contest, Eric Singer hosted Blackjack –tournament and Tommy Thayer’s costume contest etc. There were several other acts performing shows on the cruise as well. Of these the best known name was definitely Skid Row. The other names included former Guns’n Roses drummer Steven Adler’s new outfit Adler, Leogun and Radiolucent. The price included all of the above, as well as meals and access to many Norwegian Pearl activities including the pools, massive spa, hot tubs, rock climbing wall, tennis court, and fitness center. It is no wonder that the cruise was again sold out a long time ago. It now brought together KISS fanatics from over 30 countries so there’s more to come for sure!
New Jersey based Skid Row were one of the very last metal bands to hit the mainstream before grunge took over in the mid ’90s. The band’s self-titled debut was released 1989 including such a standard pop-metal classics as “Youth Gone Wild”, “I Remember You” and “18 & Life”. SLAVE TO THE GRIND followed in 1991 debuting at number one in Billboard charts! The third album SUBHUMAN RACE was released in 1995 and it did break the band away from the pop-metal world and introduced more heavy and a darker side of Skid Row. The changing trends in the music business and personal differences eventually caused the classic line-up; vocalist Sebastian Bach, guitarists Dave “Snake” Sabo, Scotti Hill, bassist Rachel Bolan and drummer Rob Affuso break up in 1996. Eventually the core lineup: Sabo, Bolan, Hill and Affuso continued for some time to work together under the working title Ozone Monday. Skid Row was re-formed in 1999 with a pair of new members; vocalist Johnny Solinger and drummer Charlie Mills. The band released its fourth album THICKSKIN in 2003 featuring drummer Phil Varone (ex-Saigon Kick). The latest Skid Row album REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE came out way back in 2006. This November the band accompanied KISS, for the second time in row, on the KISS Kruise. We were honored to sit down with Dave “Snake” Sabo and discuss about various topics including Snake’s KISS fandom, the current state of Skid Row, the continuous rumors about Bach’s return and as well as some stuff from the past. Read on!
Former SEBASTIAN BACH drummer Mark “Bam Bam” McConnell passed away this morning (Thursday, May 24th) in a Gainesville, Florida hospital.
A relative of Mark’s wrote on Facebook: “Mark passed at 9:42 this morning surrounded by family and close friends. We will miss him…he was precious to all of us and touched all our hearts deeply and profoundly. On behalf of our family, thank you to all of you for your prayers and support. We will post more info when we’ve had a chance to catch our breaths.”
His wife Rikki McConnell issued the following statement: “My sweet, beautiful best friend and husband. I miss you SO much and so do Sara and Patch. I’ll take good care of them. My time with you was Way too short but what an adventure! WOW! I’LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS AND ALWAYS! You’ll forever be in my heart!!! XOXOXOXOX.”
Video of McConnell performing “In A Darkened Room” with Bach at the Whisky A Go-Go in 1998 can be seen below:
Vocalist SEBASTIAN BACH recently spoke with Marah Eakin at Chicago-based A.V. Club. An excerpt is available below:
AVC: When fans come out to see you now, are you doing mostly Kicking & Screaming material?
SB: “No, I do whatever I feel in my heart. I’ll do all the old Skid Row songs because I know that’s why people are buying a ticket to come see me play. But, you know, I’m 43 years old. I don’t get excited running onstage saying, ‘We are the youth gone wild,’ when I’m almost 50. It’s kind of silly. I don’t get on the tour bus and drive across the country so I can play my 22-year-old song. I’m doing it so that I can play my new song.”
AVC: That’s respectable. A lot of artists don’t feel that way.
SB: “I mean, think about what we’re talking about. I don’t walk around in 2012 thinking about 1989. I don’t know who does do that but, that’s, I guess, the nature of the business I’m in. But, when I was a kid, we were always excited about the next record that LED ZEPPELIN was going to put out and the next KISS tour, the new KISS costume, and the new KISS record. We didn’t just listen to ‘Rock And Roll All Nite’ for three decades.”
AVC: Yeah, but that’s the radio landscape now.
SB: “That’s what I’m saying. I would like to say to every radio programmer reading this: ‘You are a fucking pussy. You are not a rock fan. You are hustling nostalgia and you have no balls and you suck.’ That’s what I would like to say.”
AVC: Do you worry that, in 20 years, let’s say, people won’t know music that came out in 2012? They’ll just know songs from the ’70s and ’80s?
SB: “I love the song ‘Dream On’ by AEROSMITH, but I’m okay if I never hear it again. I’ve heard it so many times. Like, ‘Comfortably Numb’ by PINK FLOYD —okay, we’ve got it. I’ve fucking heard it since my dad played it when I was fucking 5. I don’t need to hear it anymore. It drives me nuts. That’s not the kind of rock fan that I am. I collect music; I collect rock ’n’ roll. I’m always looking for another record to dump into my iPod. It’s like we invent these iPods that have the storage capability to store every song ever recorded by every musician ever in the history of music, but radio only plays shit from 20 years ago. It’s like, why do we have all these gigabytes? To store the first two Led Zeppelin records? Holy shit (laughs). Give me something new. I’m so weird. I like Robert Plant with Alison Krauss more than Led Zeppelin. I’m the guy that says, ‘Let him be Robert Plant. Let him make something that he’s proud of that is artistically interesting, instead of having a 70-year-old man squeezing his lemon juice as it’s running down his leg.’ That was ’72. People are like, ‘Why doesn’t he get the band back together?’ It’s like, ‘Why don’t you fucking grow up?’”
Bach’s video for the track ‘TunnelVision’, lifted from his new album Kicking And Screaming, can be viewed at the bottom of the page. His Kicking & Screaming & Touring 2012 dates are as follows:
February
7 – Peabody’s Cleveland, OH
8 – Cubby Bear – Chicago, IL
10 – The Venue At The Hub – Fargo, ND
11 – Deerfoot Inn and Casino – Calgary, AB
April
12 – Teatro Caupolican – Santiago, Chile
13 – Teatro Flores – Buenos Aires, Argentina
14 – Carioca Club – São Paulo, Brazil
15 – Opiniao Porto – Alegre, Brazil
Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach has posted the following message on his Facebook page:
“I am numb, in shock and devastated to report that my home of 21 years, my house featured on MTV ‘Cribs’, has been destroyed, condemned and deemed uninhabitable due to the extreme flooding courtesy of Hurricane Irene.
“In the two decades I have lived in this home, there has never been a single drop of water in the basement or anywhere else in the structure. Now Irene has overflowed the reservoir adjacent to my house. The surging waters have snapped the bridge in half next to my house and sent the bridge straight into my garage, knocking the house off of its foundation. The basement that has been dry for over two decades is now overflowing with water and I am not even allowed to start pumping the water out due to fears of electrocution.
“Original SKID ROW and KISS fans, I have bad news for you. Gone are irreplacable items, such as my KISS Gargoyles from the 1979 tour. KISSpinball machine. SKID ROW master tapes, video and audio, concerts, master tapes from ‘Oh Say Can You Scream’, etc. Boxes and boxes of one-of-a-kind SKID ROW memorabilia, from the first tour to our last, all stuff I collected on the road that no one else had. I had a library in the basement with every single magazine that had SKID ROW on the cover. This library took up a big part of the basement. All of this is lost now.
“We will salvage what we can, of course. But how I wish there was a reason to do a box set or something before Hurricane Irene hit. Nobody cared. Now it’s too late.
Photo courtesy of Sebastian Bach
“Don’t know what you got till it’s gone, indeed.
“The good news is that all my father’s artwork, including the 16-foot‘Slave To The Grind’ mural, is all OK. My sons and friends moved all my dad’s art to the second level of the structure before Irene destroyed our home. My Silver Age comic collection is all on the third level, with theDavid Bierk archives, which is a completely dry level. But we are not allowed into the house yet to retrieve everything because the foundation has crumbled and the house could conceivably collapse at any second. We are working with the police and fire department to get the electricity turned off so no one gets electrocuted entering the premises. As soon as the power is off, we will pump out the basement and salvage what we can. Everything will be put into storage and then it looks like we will level the house.
“This has really taught me that the best things in life are indeed ‘free.’ What makes me happy is that my children and ex-wife are safe. My dad’s art is unharmed. No one got hurt. My scrapbooks of memories of my life are dry and safe. The only things that are making me smile today is cranking BLACK VEIL BRIDES‘ ‘Set The World On Fire’ CD over and over again. Texting Danny from ASKING ALEXANDRIA who may become my new roommate in L.A. Getting texts from my girl Minnie [Gupta] in L.A. making sure I’m OK and trying to cheer me up. My neighbours in New Jersey clamouring around my house, calling me, offering help in any way they can. These things mean more to me than mere posessions.
“I have been holding on to my house since December, when my divorce papers were filed. I just could not let go of the only home I had ever known.
“Well, God has other plans for me it seems. He has made His decision for me.
“My home has been taken away by an ‘act of God.’ I just think He is giving me a much-needed push, is all.
“New Jersey, thank you all so much for 25 years of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s all over now.
“I will always love New Jersey, but now there is literally nothing left for me here except memories of a past life.
“Hello, Los Angeles. Hello, New Life. Here i am. It’s time for a new start.
Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach will film two new video videos on Tuesday, June 28 in Hollywood, California with director Devin DeHaven of Fortress Entertainment (PAPA ROACH, WHITESNAKE, METHOD MAN, TALIB KWELI). Bach says, “We are actually going to have three videos, but one of them is mainly live in concert. So, we shoot two concept videos tomorrow and then run through the third song to intersperse the live footage with studio video footage.” He added, “It’s gonna be a fun day.”
Bach will release his new solo album, “Kicking & Screaming”, on September 27 via Frontiers Records. The CD was produced by Bob Marlette (BLACK SABBATH, SHINEDOWN, ATREYU, FILTER) and features young virtuosic guitarist Nick Sterling and drum pro Bobby Jarzombek (HALFORD, RIOT, ICED EARTH). The follow-up to 2007′s “Angel Down” was mastered at Precision Mastering in Los Angeles with Tom Baker.
Sebastian previously stated that the “Kicking & Screaming” cover would feature “the hottest model in the land” — presumably referring to his new girlfriend, 25-year-old model Minnie Gupta — “and reflect the lyrics as well as the brutality of the music. It’s gonna be rock ‘n’ roll to the 9th degree — very heavy, cool, trippy and nightmare-ish.”
Bach stated about his new solo material, “This CD will follow along the lines of ‘Skid Row’, ‘Slave To The Grind’, ‘Subhuman Race’ and ‘Angel Down’. If you like rockin’ guitar riffs, high-energy songs and performances, deadly drums of doom, and ear-shattering screams, we got your rock right here!” He also described the songs as “heavy, interesting, classic sounding, modern sounding, completely rock ‘n’ roll — just how we like it!”
Bach and his crew have been keeping busy playing selected tour dates nationwide, including recent appearances at major festivals M3 and Rocklahoma, and will continue to tour throughout the summer. Fans can expect Bach classics, as well as a sneak preview of material from the forthcoming album.
Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach returned to Finland after 18 months. Last year Sebastian and his band got so many excellent reviews and overall positive feedback that it wasn’t a big surprise that they wanted to return here as soon as he did. This current BACH IN THE SADDLE IN EUROPE –tour consisted of nine shows and when three out of those nine shows were now in Finland so there must have been such a high expectations here. Last year Sebastian played Tampere at the SAUNA OPEN AIR festival and so now it was ttime to find out how successful he will be here one his own?
Written by Robert Williams with photography courtesy of Sandra Torres< ?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
With the recent resurgence in popularity of outdoor summer hard rock festivals such as Rocklahoma and the upcoming Rock On The Bayou fest that harken back to the glory days of the famed 80′s Monsters Of Rock festival, the Lonestar state, not to be outdone by our Okie counterparts, offered up the first annual Nikita Productions Presents: South Texas Rock Fest.
Boasting an almost identical roster of artists as the Rocklahoma lineup, such as Queensryche, Skid Row, Faster Pussycat, Dokken, Tesla, and even Texas favorites Helstar, bands ping ponged back and forth over the course of the weekend, shuttling from Texas to Oklahoma and vice versa.
Garnering media attention from Sirius Satellite Radio, XM’s Boneyard and sponsorship from Miller Lite beer and Harley Davidson motorcycles, the weekend long festival went off without a hitch. The only real complaint would’ve been the grueling Texas heat. Saturday afternoon there was not a cloud to be found in the summer sky, and it made the "all you can hear buffet of buttrawk" seemingly "Hotter Than Hell" but would you really want to hear Y&T play "Summertime Girls" in the rain?
Divided up between two stages and hosted on the Javelina Harley Davidson fairgrounds, vendors served up ice cold Miller Lite products to the estimated capacity crowd of 20,000 strong. Also of note, where as the Rocklahoma crowd could only enjoy 3% beer to their heart’s content, us Texan’s relished in the full strength domestic beer. This was a major concern when choosing which festival to cover. Besides beer, fans could enjoy frozen margaritas’s, fajita’s, burgers, shop for glass blown pipes, rock t-shirts and various other symbolic mementos of a gluttonous good time.
Skid Row was one of the last hard rock bands to hit the mainstream before grunge took over in the early ’90s. The band’s self titled debut album was released in 1989 and it included such classic chart topping songs as songs as “18 and Life”, “I Remember You” and “Youth Gone Wild”. Skid Row then consisted of; vocalist Sebastian Bach, guitarists Scotti Hill and Dave “Snake” Sabo, bassist Rachel Bolan and drummer Rob Affuso – released their second album; SLAVE TO THE GRIND in 1991 and things were going even better then. They did their own headline tours across the world and album was selling even better than the first album, it went into number one in Billboard 200 list. But things started to change soon. There was a lot of bad blood between band members prior the release of third album SUBHUMAN RACE and as a result band broke up in late 1995. There was nothing happening in the world of Skid Row until the year 2000 when the band announced their plans to re-unite and go on tour as a support act for KISS. As a surprise for many, Sebastian Bach wasn’t in the line up anymore. The new incarnation of Skid Row included Texas native vocalist Johnny Solinger and drummer Phil Varone (ex -Saigon Kick) among originals; Snake, Scotti and Rachel. That lineup released album THICKSKIN in 2003. Two years later Phil Varone was out and in 2006 band released their latest album REVOLUTIONS PER MINUTE with new drummer Dave Gara on their ranks. Skid Row has gone through both good and difficult times but what’s most important, they’re here now and the show goes on. In June I met band guitarist Scotti Hill at the Swedenrock festival just prior bands show. Here are the results of our rather long discussion about the past and present of Skid Row, grunge, Rocklahoma, the state of hard rock in the U.S.A., among many other topics… read on!!!
Article and pics by Arto Lehtinen and Marko Syrjälä
(Addiotional comments by J. Huovila – Thanks)
Wow! This is the seventh time that the Finnish Metal-Rules squad made an invasion to the mighty Swedenrock festival. Almost 70 bands descended upon the southern area of Sweden for a festival that turned out to be an utter blast from the beginning to the end! The bill of Swedenrock festival 2007 covers a wide range of metal styles and even classic rock stuff such as Kreator to Black Oak Arkansas and everything between. Therefore, there was at least something for everyone who attended the festival. As usual, the whole festival was once again sold out with around 30,000 people at the area every day. The Swedenrock festival has always had tremendous luck with the weather every year. Once again the gods of weather had given their blessing for this rocking metallic heaven on the earth with an extreme hot and sunny weekend that burned red the skin of several festival goers.
As written in the first sentence, this is already the seventh time that the Swedenrock festival has been featured in the site of Metal-Rules.com, so it is quite logical for us to give an in-depth article of several bands performing at Swedenrock. However we are not able to cover every band, but hopefully you will have a pleasant reading moment… Enjoy !!!
