Posts Tagged ‘Neil Young’

Half of The Smashing Pumpkins are hitting the road to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band.  Frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin will be starting their tour in Cleveland on November 1 and ending in LA on December 3.  

As on their 2007 album Zeitgeist, original members D’arcy and James Iha are not included in the band’s lineup.

The Smashing Pumpkins will play five cities twice on this tour, on consecutive nights.  They promise to play two full sets with no overlapping songs for fans who attend both nights.  The Chicago rockers will also play four nights in their hometown.

October 26 is a big day for the band as well.  They’ll headline Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit that day, and release a new single “G.L.O.W.” as part of Guitar Hero World Tour, following in the footsteps of other bands such as Aerosmith and Metallica to feature their music in the popular gaming series.

It seems like Neil Young is always touring. Now with a new box set ready to hit stores, he’s on the road again for a fall tour which kicks off on Sept. 20 in Mansfield, Massachusetts. The show there will be a benefit for Farm-aid.

Young is a musician who always seems to have an agenda. He doesn’t but he’s been very outspoken about his discontent for our current president and Republican party politics in general – going as far as recording songs like “Lets Impeach the President” and “Looking for a Leader” for 2006’s Living with War album.

The resulting tour for that album (with CSNY) drew the ire of many pro-Bush Young fans with the singer even receiving his share of death threats. The experience is documented in the documentary feature of the tour, an experience Young has no desire, obviously, to ever revisit.

The 2008 fall tour comes at a time when the Bush presidency will, thankfully, be ending. Young will be at a stop in Omaha, Nebraska on election night and there will surely be some celebrating taking place once that show has ended.

The tour makes its way to St. Paul, Minnesota at Xcel Energy Center on Oct. 14. For a complete list of tour dates you can visit neilyoung.com/tour.

Singer/designer/actress Gwen Stefani and her rocker husband Gavin Rossdale welcomed their second child, another son, to the world on August 21 in Los Angeles.

Zuma Nesta Rock joins his two-year-old brother Kingston James McGregor in the Rossdale-Stefani household.

What about that name?  Zuma could refer to a number of things: Zuma Beach is in Malibu, Neil Young had an 1975 album called Zuma…or perhaps the new baby is named after a large stone formation in Nigeria called Zuma Rock?  

Nesta is Bob Marley’s middle name, and might give Zuma a connection to his older brother’s name Kingston, also the capital of Jamaica. 

Stefani is the lead singer in the ska/rock band No Doubt, currently recording their next album (or will be again, once Gwen has the energy to work in the studio).  

Stefani’s last solo album The Sweet Escape came out in December of 2006.  Rossdale’s first solo album WANDERlust came out last June. Rossdale is also the father of 19-year-old Daisy Lowe, a British fashion model.

Fans have been waiting a long time to peek into the deepest corners of Neil Young’s catalog, but before the year is out, they’ll have their peek.

As long ago as the 1980s, the Canadian folk-rocker has spoken of his long-term goal to release a series of archival box sets shedding light on rare and unreleased songs and performances from all eras of his career.  Since then, fans have just had to wait patiently for news of its release.

Until now.

The 62-year-old Young has finally announced plans to release the long-awaited and oft-delayed Volume 1 of the Archives on November 3^rd.  The set will be issued on DVD, but another version will also be available on Blu-Ray.  Perhaps that’s why he waited so long.

The first volume of the Archives covers the years 1963 to 1972 and will feature original artwork from the artist.  One of the highly anticipated elements of the set will be the Special Edition Series, consisting of his “lost” recordings; Young is notorious for recording albums but scrapping them before fans are able to hear the finished result.