Eminem put President Trump and his supporters on blast in a video that aired during Tuesday night’s BET Hip Hop Awards. The freestyle rap titled “The Storm” has Eminem lashing out at Trump as a “racist grandpa” and for being a hypocrite.
He also calls out Trump for using Twitter to distract from bigger issues and for his responses to hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico, the violence in Charlottesville, VA and the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
The nearly five minute video holds nothing back and is sure to generate controversy. Several celebrities and athletes including LeBron James, T Pain, Colin Kaepernick, Keith Olbermann and Ellen DeGeneres have lit up the twittersphere in support of Eminem. Olbermann called it “Best politcal writing of the year, period.”
Eminem is no stranger to controversy nor criticism of Trump. In October he released a freestyle called “Campaign Speech” where he called Trump “a loose cannon who’s blunt with his hand on the button.”
The Detroit rapper also took his followers to task in his lyrics:
And any fan of mine/who’s a supporter of his/I’m drawing in the sand a line/you’re either for or against/and if you can’t decide/who you like more and you’re split/on who you should stand beside/I’ll do it for you with this (middle finger)
The Ominous Seapods’ Tom Pirozzi revealed in September that the band’s reunion show at Cohoes Music Hall on Saturday, January 13 would become a two-night run, plus an addition show on Sunday, January 14 at Brooklyn Bowl, followed by the Zen Tricksters.
I want to thank everyone who bought Ominous Seapod tickets for January 13th. The show sold out in just 5 days! The band is overwhelmed by the support. Due to that fact, and the fact that Dana Monteith is coming all the way from Australia for the show, we’ve decided to expand the event to a weekend run. We will be adding Friday night, January 12th at the Cohoes Music Hall and an encore performance at the Brooklyn Bowl on Sunday Jan. 14th. The Brooklyn Bowl show will be one 90 minute set at 7:30pm followed by a set by the Zen Tricksters. The next day is a holiday so we can all rest on Monday. More details coming soon!!!
When we last saw the Ominous Seapods, they were bidding a fond farewell to co-founder Dana Monteith as he and his wife Deb prepared for a life down under in Perth, Australia. The farewell was Dec. 17, 2011 at Valentine’s in Albany. That show saw a tight version of the band throwing down with guest appearances from moe. drummer Vinnie Amico, Josh Himmelsbach on mandolin and promoter Greg Bell on vocals. Tickets for both Cohoes shows are sold out
The original lineup of the band (Monteith on guitar and vocals, Tom Pirozzi on bass, Ted Marotta on drums, Max Verna on guitar and Brian Mangini on keys) will be on hand for the reunion.
Known for their psychedelic jams and onstage humor, the Ominious Seapods came of age during the “New Renaissance of Jambands” in the early to mid-’90s and achieved a moderate level success over the course of four albums. The band broke up in 2001 and have played a handful of reunion shows since.
Syracuse hardcore band West Berlin just dropped the music video for “Sun.” The working-class anthem clocks in at under three minutes, but packs a powerful punch. It’s the title track off their latest EP which was released during the week of this summer’s solar eclipse. Shot in classic black and white by Dalton Lampo, the video documents their recent tour and includes footage from their high-energy performances and time spent on the road.
An off-Broadway Grateful Dead musical based around the lyrics of Robert Hunter and the music of Jerry Garcia opens later this month.
“Red Roses, Green Gold” opens at New York City’s Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village on Oct. 29. The musical features music and lyrics by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia with additional music provided by founding members of the Grateful Dead Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir. Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, who played with the “core four” founding members for the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead and currently plays with Weir, Hart and Bill Kreutzmann in Dead & Company, will provide musical supervision and arrangements for the musical.
“Red Roses, Green Gold” is the third musical written by Michael Norman Mann that takes inspiration from the music of the Grateful Dead. The musical is directed and choreographed by Rachel Klein, director of “The Anthem” and “Around the World in 80 Days.”
From the website: “This new musical set in 1920s Cumberland tells the fantastical and comical tale of Jackson Jones and his family of swindlers as they gamble their way to love and riches.”
Tickets for “Red Roses, Green Gold” are on sale now. Previews begin Oct. 11.
Hip-hop superstar and rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels drops his latest work, Back From The Dead, The Legend Lives on Record Store Day, Nov. 24. To celebrate the release, he’ll be doing meet-and-greets and talking about his life with fans at record stores throughout the entire weekend:Looney Tunes Records on Long Island (Friday, Nov. 24), Vintage Vinyl Records in Fords, NJ (Saturday, Nov. 25), and The Record Archive in Rochester (Sunday, Nov. 26). Each event starts at 3pm. Fans must pre-order Back From The Dead, The Legend Livesthrough a participating record store in order to get a wristband to attend.
Fans will not want to miss this rare opportunity to meet the legendary Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and hear his inspirational story! The founding member of Run-DMC will be joined at these events by Jason Rockman of Slaves on Dope, who performs on the album. The pair will be available after the talk to take pictures and sign copies of “Back From the Dead, The Legend Lives.” Released on Brookvale Records, the LP is limited to only 4,000 copies.
Friday, Nov. 24
Looney Tunes Music and More (LONG ISLAND, NY)
631.587.7722 www.LTCDS.com
Saturday, Nov. 25
Vintage Vinyl Records (FORDS, NJ)
732.225.7717 www.vvinyl.com
Buffalo’s Head North announced this week that they will be supporting Australian punk pop band Trophy Eyes on a North American Tour. They’ve also booked a series of headlining shows in the Midwest leading up to the extensive 21-date tour. A hometown show at Mohawk Place in Buffalo is slated for Tuesday, Dec. 12. They play New York City at Brooklyn Bazaar on Thursday, Dec. 14. The tour promotes Head North’s recently released debut full-length album The Last Living Man Alive Ever In The History Of The World, a concept album which explores themes about coming of age in a dystopian society. Tickets are on sale now.
Head North. Photo: Eli Ritter
Head North burst onto the pop punk scene in 2015 with their EP Bloodlines and toured relentlessly – crossing the country three times with bands like Knuckle Puck and Have Mercy. After taking time off, they came back this summer with the self-released LP The Last Living Man Alive Ever In The History Of The World, departing from their early angst-driven work and making a foray into indie rock.
The way we operated our band, and the trajectory that we were on in 2015, helped us decide what type of band we wanted to be and how we wanted our sound to reflect that,” drummer Ben Lieber told NYS Music in a recent interview. “And I think what it came down to was being genuine. The sonic direction was a result of personal growth as well as realizing what we didn’t want to do.”
The Last Living Man Alive Ever In The History Of The World is available to stream on Spotify and can be purchased digitally on iTunes and Bandcamp. Physical copies on CD and vinyl, in addition to other merchandise are available on Head North’s webstore.
Tour Dates:
Headlining Shows:
Nov. 14 – Indianapolis, IN – Hoosier Dome
Nov. 15 – Chicago, IL – Camp/Us
Nov. 16 – Dubuque, IA – Olliewood
Nov. 17 – Ames, IA – The Pine House
Nov. 18 – Omaha, NE – The Commons
With Trophy Eyes and Free Throw:
Nov. 24 – Seattle, WA – The Funhouse
Nov. 25 – Portland, OR – Analog Lounge
Nov. 26 – Berkeley, CA – Cornerstone
Nov. 27 – Los Angeles, CA – Echo
Nov. 28 – Anaheim, CA – Chain Reaction
Nov. 29 – San Diego, CA – The Irenic
Nov. 30 – Phoenix, AZ – Rebel Lounge
Dec. 2 – Dallas, TX – Dirty 30
Dec. 3 – Houston, TX – Walters
Dec. 5 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade
Dec. 6 – Nashville, TN – The End
Dec. 7 – Columbus, OH – Woodlands Tavern
Dec. 8 – Detroit, MI – The Shelter
Dec. 9 – Cleveland, OH – Mahalls
Dec. 10 – Toronto, ON – The Hard Luck Dec. 12 – Buffalo, NY – Mohawk Place
Dec. 13 – Boston, MA – Sonia Dec. 14 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Bazaar
Dec. 15 – Philadelphia, PA – The Foundry
Dec. 16 – Washington D.C. – DC9
Dec. 17 – Asbury Park, NJ – House Of Independents
Ithaca natives, X Ambassadors, have released their new music video for the single “Ahead Of Myself,” which was released this past July. In what’s sure to be another hit for the band, the video was filmed near Rochester. Frontman Sam Harris put in an amazing vocal performance, singing the song live for the shoot instead of the usual lip syncing as he and the band walked the streets of Monroe.
Harris recently talked with Billboard about the new music video. He stated:
We’ve done the narrative film structure of the music video. We’ve done full-on big performance video with lights and stuff and we wanted to do something that felt really intimate and real, authentic, so we shot this video in upstate New York, in Rochester. We’re from Ithaca, New York, upstate. My grandfather used to work at the Kodak building in Rochester.
Syracuse.com also reports, according to Billboard, Harris wanted to do the live vocal take to feel more intimate, real, vulnerable, and in the moment. The singer avoided alcohol and fried foods for a week in preparation for the vocal video performance. X Ambassadors left an Easter egg in the new music video, as Harris is seen walking into the Monroe movie theater at TMAAC, the marquee above says the word “Joyful,” the band’s next single.
X Ambassadors will co-headline, along with the Roots, the inaugural Cayuga Sound Festival at Stewart Park in Ithaca on Sept 23. The band hit number one on the Billboard Top 40 in 2015 with the hit “Renegades,” which also became a commercial tie-in for Jeep Renegade. The alternative rock group was formed by Harris, his brother Casey, and childhood friend Noah FeldShuh. The trio went on to college in New York City where they met drummer Adam Levin while attending the New School in 2006. XA blew up all over the N.Y. music scene, and were eventually signed by Interscope Records after Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds heard an acoustic version of their song “Unconsolable,” on the radio while in the hospital. Reynolds told Interscope to sign the band right away.
The band’s inaugural festival, Cayuga Sound takes place this weekend in the band’s hometown. The official pre-festival parties Friday night at The Haunt and The Dock will feature live music from Jukebox the Ghost, Mail the Horse, the Blind Spots, Namahrah, the Miserable Genius, No Comply, Tender Cruncher and Beau Mahadev.
Saturday night will be co-headlined by X Ambassadors and the Roots. There will be two stages at Stewart Park, with artists rotating throughout the day. General admission tickets are still available through Ticketfly. Special VIP packages are sold out. For more information about Cayuga Sound, visit the festival’s website here. See the new video from the band below.
Grant Hart, drummer and one third of the highly influential St. Paul, MN band Hüsker Dü has succumbed to cancer at the age of 56, according to Variety. The announcement was made through an uncaptioned photo of Hart on Hüsker Dü’s Facebook page posted around 2 a.m. Thursday.
Hart met singer/guitarist Bob Mould and bassist Greg Norton in 1978 at the Cheapo Records where Hart worked. As Hart remarked in a July 2000 interview with The Onion, it wasn’t so much what the three had in common that brought Hüsker Dü together as a band, but their differences. Hart was a champion of the local scene while Mould was a fan of the punk being made on the East Coast and largely unavailable in the midwest.
The band’s hardcore sound evolved into a more melodic style, earning them airplay on college radio stations around the country. Hüsker Dü’s first release, the single “Statues” was released in 1981 on the band’s own label Reflex Records. Hart’s songwriting contributions were a stark contrast to Mould’s more bitter lyrical style, offering ranging subjects in songs like “Diane” and “It’s Not Funny Anymore,” his contributions to the band’s EP Metal Circus.
Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist Mike Watt offered his condolences in a Facebook post early Thursday:
Hüsker Dü’s breakthrough came on the seminal double album Zen Arcade, released in 1984. That same year Watt’s Minutemen also released their high watermark Double Nickels on the Dime, both on Greg Ginn’s SST label. The two bands toured together often in the early years and formed a bond in the process.
Hart was the subject of the 2013 documentary Every Everything: The Music, Life and Times of Grant Hart. The film gives a unique inside view of Hart the man and Hart the musician from his youth up to the recording of his final studio album The Argument, a concept album based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Hüsker Dü proved to be a huge influence on what would become the alternative scene of the early 1990s with bands such as the Pixies and Nirvana citing them as an influence. Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic once said,”What Nirvana did was nothing new; Hüsker Dü did it before us.” Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters has cited Hart as a huge early influence on his style of play.
The band was one of the first of the early ’80s punk/hardcore scene to score a major label record deal, signing with Warner Brothers for 1986’s Candy Apple Grey. However, it wasn’t long before tensions between Mould and Hart would lead to the dissolution of the band on the tour for its final album together, the 1987 double album Warehouse: Songs and Stories.
The acrimony continued until just recently when the two performed on stage together at a July show in Minneapolis that also included fellow Minnesotans Babes in Toyland and Soul Asylum. At the end of a set that saw Hart perform several both solo and Hüsker Dü works, Hart signed off simply, “We’ll see you a bit further down the trail.”
Mould paid tribute to his bandmate in a Facebook post early Thursday, saying:
We stopped working together in January 1988. We went on to solo careers, fronting our own bands, finding different ways to tell our individual stories. We stayed in contact over the next 29 years — sometimes peaceful, sometimes difficult, sometimes through go-betweens. For better or worse, that’s how it was, and occasionally that’s what it is when two people care deeply about everything they built together.
The tragic news of Grant’s passing was not unexpected to me. My deepest condolences and thoughts to Grant’s family, friends, and fans around the world.
Grant Hart was a gifted visual artist, a wonderful story teller, and a frighteningly talented musician. Everyone touched by his spirit will always remember.
Godspeed, Grant. I miss you. Be with the angels.
Just last week, it was announced that a new Hüsker Dü box set entitled Savage Young Dü will be released in November. The three-disc box includes 69 tracks recorded during the band’s pre-SST days from 1979-1983 including all of their 7″ singles, a remastered version of their second album Everything Falls Apart and an alternate recording of the debut, Land Speed Record. Also included in the set is a booklet chronicling the band’s early years.
In a 2009 interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Hart offered the following on his legacy:
A long time ago, I started looking at my permanent record — the history of me after I’m gone. Even to speak of it reeks of egotism run wild. But I think when all is said and done, the work that I produced in this lifetime will more than repay the world for any inconvenience I’ve caused it.
These are values that Teenage Halloween embraces, as they deliver upbeat numbers about self-acceptance and empowerment served youthful exuberance and a twist of whimsical irony. Just this week they announced a new release, entitled Eternal Roast.
In Rochester, Teenage Halloween will be sharing the stage at Vineyard Community Space with their tour mates from New Jersey, Secret Mountain, and local bands Full Body (celebrating their new release), as well as Taking Meds and California Cousins (on the final night of their East Coast tour). Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show ends by 10 p.m. The suggested minimum donation is $7.
In Albany, Teenage Halloween and Secret Mountain will be joined by local bands Jouska, Hate Club, and i feel okay. The show runs from 8 p.m. to midnight. Entry is $5.
Members of Teenage Halloween hail from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The entire octet was in the studio to record the latest release: Luke Henderiks on vocals and guitar, Brandon Hakim on Saxophone, Kevin Sabik on trumpet, Lynn Tuimil on bass, Brian DeSeno on drums, Danni Ciminnisi on keyboards & vocals, Eli Frank on lead guitar & Connor Egan on trombone.
Eternal Roast is the follow-up to Teenage Halloween’s 2015 EP It Was Weird But It Worked, and will be available on Oct. 20 in a variety of formats (including vinyl). The limited-edition cassette is now available for pre-order on ‘Get Better Records.’
Walter Becker, bassist and guitarist for the highly successful rock duo Steely Dan died Sunday at the age of 67. His death was announced on his website with a simple diptych of Becker as a child and an adult with the caption, “walter becker feb. 20 1950 – sept. 03 2017.” No further details on the cause of death were provided.
Becker missed both July Steely Dan dates of the Classic West and Classic East shows due to a procedure, his performing partner Donald Fagen revealed in an August interview in Billboard. Fagen didn’t elaborate. The band also recently announced a fall tour with a scheduled stop at Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo Oct. 17.
Becker was born in Queens and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan in 1967. He met Donald Fagen while both were students at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York that same year. A quick friendship was formed when both realized similar interests in music and the beat poets. They performed in various local groups, including the Leather Canary, which included comedian Chevy Chase on drums.
Upon Fagen’s graduation in 1969, the two moved to Brooklyn. Becker and Fagen became touring musicians for Jay and the Americans for a brief time before leaving due to a pay dispute. Their biggest success while still in New York was Barbra Streisand’s recording of their song “I Mean to Shine.” The duo recorded a series of demos and scored a soundtrack for an early Richard Pryor film before making tracks to Los Angeles.
The move to Los Angeles proved fruitful for the eventual Steely Dan. It was here that they connected with ABC Records producer Gary Katz. Katz hired Becker and Fagen as staff songwriters for the label and would go on to produce all of Steely Dan’s 1970s output.
It was in Los Angeles where the two musicians struck out on their own, recruiting guitarists Denny Dias and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder and singer David Palmer to form Steely Dan. The name was chosen as a nod to beat writer William S. Burroughs. The “Steely Dan” was a sex toy mentioned in Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.
What followed was one of the most unlikely string of successful albums put to tape. From Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill in 1972 through the 1977 pinnacle album Aja to 1980’s Gaucho, the band’s penchant for obscure references, dark humor, quirky time changes and studio perfection landed them in an unlikely spot on the Billboard charts time and again.
The duo parted ways in 1981, with Becker taking his family to live in Maui, HI where he quit using drugs and, according to the Steely Dan Timeline, became “a gentleman avocado rancher and self styled critic of the contemporary scene.” During this time, Becker began producing in earnest as well as working with English pop band China Crisis.
Despite the inactivity of Steely Dan, Becker and Fagen still managed to work together formally and informally during their hiatus. Becker sat in with Fagen’s New York Rock and Soul Revue in 1991, which led to his producing Fagen’s 1993 solo album, Kamikiriad. Fagen returned the favor, producing Becker’s 1994 solo outing 11 Tracks of Whack. These collaborations renewed the Steely Dan spark and led to the band’s first tour in 19 years.
They continued to tour and in 2000 dropped an album of all new material, Two Against Nature that garnered Steely Dan four Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. In 2001, Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was honored with an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music.
Another Steely Dan album followed in 2003, with Becker making his vocal debut on the track “Slang of Ages” and the band continued touring through the mid 2010s, including a headlining spot at 2015’s Coachella Festival in Indio, CA.
Becker’s work left an indelible mark on the music industry and musicians worldwide have been offering tribute to him since his death was announced. Josh Kroop, former manager for Connecticut jamband Kung Fu shared professionally shot video of the band’s The Royal Scam set from two years ago, featuring members of the Steely Dan band, Bernard Purdie on drums and Jon Herington on guitar.
On Sunday, Fagen shared a note remembering his long-time friend and collaborator. The full text is below:
Walter Becker was my friend, my writing partner and my bandmate since we met as students at Bard College in 1967. We started writing nutty little tunes on an upright piano in a small sitting room in the lobby of Ward Manor, a mouldering old mansion on the Hudson River that the college used as a dorm.
We liked a lot of the same things: jazz (from the twenties through the mid-sixties), W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, Nabokov, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Berger, and Robert Altman films come to mind. Also soul music and Chicago blues.
Walter had a very rough childhood – I’ll spare you the details. Luckily, he was smart as a whip, an excellent guitarist and a great songwriter. He was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art. He used to write letters (never meant to be sent) in my wife Libby’s singular voice that made the three of us collapse with laughter.
His habits got the best of him by the end of the seventies, and we lost touch for a while. In the eighties, when I was putting together the NY Rock and Soul Review with Libby, we hooked up again, revived the Steely Dan concept and developed another terrific band.
I intend to keep the music we created together alive as long as I can with the Steely Dan band.
Fans will not want to miss this rare opportunity to meet the legendary Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and hear his inspirational story! The founding member of 
These are values that Teenage Halloween embraces, as they deliver upbeat numbers about self-acceptance and empowerment served youthful exuberance and a twist of whimsical irony. Just this week they announced a new release, entitled Eternal Roast.
Becker missed both July