POISON, CINDERELLA, DOKKEN, and SLAUGHTER rocked the PNC BANK Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ on Saturday night. Check out REVIEWS for the full briefing.
Fear not, Texas, the Tattoo The Earth tour is coming your way. San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas are among the cities included in a week's worth of new dates added to the itinerary, which was first announced earlier this week. The tour, which boasts SLIPKNOTt, SLAYER, SEVENDUST, COAL CHAMBER, and others, will also hit Pontiac, Michigan and Mercedes, Texas. In total, 14 of rock's heaviest hitters (including Sepultura, Nashville Pussy, (hed) pe, Downset, Puya, and others) will be spread across two stages on the tour, with a host of tattoo artists, body piercers, and henna artists in between. Among the men providing the ink the for tour will be Sean Vasquez (who has tattooed Howard Stern as well as members of the Sex Pistols and Kiss) and Paul Booth (who has worked on members of Limp Bizkit, Pantera, and the Deftones as well as The Undertaker of the WWF). The tour will also play host to some special musical guests along the way. Tattoo The Earth's first date, July 15, will see the tour join up with Stone Temple Pilots and the KUFO radio show in Portland, Oregon. Then, on July 20, METALLICA will top the Tattoo The Earth bill for one night only at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
FOREIGNER will be the subject of a new "Behind The Music" for VH1. The scheduled air date is September.
THE BLACK CROWES are label-less no longer, as the Southern-fried rockers have just inked a recording deal with V2 Records, the home of such acts as Moby, Stereophonics, and Underworld. The Crowes, who will kick off a joint tour with former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page on June 24 in Tinley Park, Illinois, have been free agents since splitting from Columbia Records last October. Columbia had teamed with The Black Crowes' longtime label, American Recordings, to issue the band's most recent studio effort, "By Your Side," which has only sold some 259,000 copies to date, according to SoundScan. "We appreciate all the interest from the other labels," guitarist Rich Robinson said in a statement, "but we're especially happy to be at V2. Let's face it, you can't be hurt by having [label founder] Richard Branson's private island and personal residence there available to us." In February, The Black Crowes and Jimmy Page issued a concert double LP, "Live At The Greek," as an Internet-only album available through Musicmaker.com.
THIN LIZZY are working out dates for their tour that will cross North America starting in August and then head to Europe. The final lineup has not been announced, but you can bet that Wharton, Sykes and Gorham will be on the bill with some cool guests.
KID ROCK is planning to launch his own headlining tour beginning on August 2 in Evansville, Indiana. Kid Rock and METALLICA's Summer Sanitarium prowls the highways and byways from June 23 through July 22, and Kid and his merry band of misfits have headlining dates lined up through early September. Kid has yet to select tourmates for the trek, though his spokespeople say that it's likely that Kid's DJ and musical right-hand man UNCLE KRACKER will get a set on the tour to promote his debut album "Double Wide" (which was produced by Kid Rock).
