GUITAR SETUP COURSE
Guitar tech Joseph ‘Soxy’ Price has toured as a guitar tech with Soundgarden, Sugar Ray and Nina and repaired/built guitars for Ian Moss, Brett Kingman, Phil Cebrano, Pete Robinson, Glenn Proudfoot, Joe Camilleri and many others. And you can bask in his knowledge when he gives a talk Fitzroy Town Hall on Thursday July 11 as part of the Push FReeZA Summits 2013. He’ll be talking about how to do a basic guitar setup in 40 minutes.
ROCK DUNGEON RETURNS
The Rock Dungeon is back due to public popular demand. Although no longer in a Dungeon as such, nevertheless the spirit, essence, vibe, heart and soul of what Rock Dungeon means and represented remains. It’ll be on every Friday night on the third floor of CBD Nightclub in the City, featuring regular live bands some weeks. Entrance is $10 if bands are playin , $5 if not. This week features Pirate acoustic shredding metal from Citrus Jam at midnight.
MARON INTERVIEWS IGGY
Are you familiar with comedian Marc Maron‘s WTF Podcast? Maron usually interviews comedians but sometimes he’ll have a musician on such as John Fogerty, E of Eels, Thomas Dolby, Dethklok’s Brendon Small, Tommy Stinson of The Replacements and Guns N’ Roses. Anyway, recently he reached his 400th episode, and to celebrate he scored an interview with the one and only Iggy Pop. And you really have to get to wtfpod.com or iTunes to check it out. Iggy talks a lot about the early days of the Stooges, hanging with Bowie, Nico, the Sales brothers. It’s a really great interview and I highly recommend it.
REGIONAL ROULETTE AT THE BENDIGO
Regional Roulette comes home to the Bendigo Hotel, Collingwood on Friday July 5. What better way to celebrate laying waste to regional towns across this land than to lay waste to Collingwood? The line-up is Dreadnaught, Frankenbok, Heaven The Axe and Abreact. Doors at 8pm, $15 entry, all tickets on the door.
STAR-STUDDED LED ZEP TRIBUTE
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Led Zeppelin’s hugely influential album Houses of the Holy, some highly regarded musos including Ash Naylor (Even), Danny Leo (King of the North), Stephen Hadley (Paul Kelly Band) and Bruce Haymes (Renee Geyer Band) are performing the album live in full at The Yarraville Club on Saturday July 13. Houses of the Holy is still ranked as one of the top albums of all time and has numerous accolades from the driving classic and US single Over The Hills and Far Away to the sexy singalong D’yer Mak’er and the more sparsely laid tunes like The Rain Song, it’s an album still ripe 40 years on.
NEW CHIMAIRA OUT AUGUST 3
The mighty Chimaira release Crown of Phantoms on Friday August 2 on 3Wise Records in Australia/NZ. I’ve heard it and it’s fucking amazing. This is the first album by the band’s new line-up featuring Emil Werstler and Matt Szlachta (guitar), Jeremy Creamer (bass), Austin D’amond (drums) and Sean Z (electronica) backing up founding vocalist Mark Hunter. Call it a reboot if you must, but know this: this album finds Chimaira kicking back hard against any preconceived notion that a Rob Arnold-less Chimaira couldn’t cut it. Gone are the clean vocals of The Age Of Hell, and in its place is aggression, power and diversity. This kind of thing can be a bit dodgy – witness the recent splintering of Queensryche into two versions, or the time Henry Rollins replaced the entire Rollins Band with Mother Superior. But Hunter and co have totally pulled it off.
JOEY JORDISON UNVEILS SCAR THE MARTYR
Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison has unveiled details of his new project, the brutally-named Scar The Martyr. Recorded at Sound Farm Studios in Des Moines, Iowa, Scar The Martyr’s as-yet-untitled debut album was produced by Rhys Fulber (Fear Factory, Rob Zombie, Mindless Self Indulgence, Front Line Assembly), and it’ll arrive later this year via Roadrunner Records. Jordison plays drums and bass on the album, as well as rhythm guitar on all but two songs. it was written by Joey and lead vocalist Henry Derek, and joining them in the studio were keyboardist Chris Vrenna (Nine Inch Nails), as well as guitarists Jed Simon (Strapping Young Lad) and Kris Norris (Darkest Hour). “With this project, I focused my efforts on writing for the better of the song,” Jordison says. “I wasn’t worried about flash or persona…It’s all about writing a good solid song. I’m writing music that people can grasp and hold on to…something that resonates. If you don’t have that, then you have nothing.”
