“Sometimes getting onstage is the thing that makes you realize it’s not for you,” the Darkness‘ Justin Hawkins concedes during a recent chat. He’s not speaking from experience. “I had the opposite feeling, actually,” the frontman remembers. “Our first gig was in August 2000. It was that long ago. And we were opening a night — I […]
Foreigner kicked off their farewell tour Thursday night with a hit-packed, 13-song set at Atlanta’s Ameris Bank Amphitheatre. “It was fabulous, a sold-out crowd in Atlanta for our first night – it couldn’t have gone better,” bassist Jeff Pilson tells UCR. “The show went off without a hitch. We had done a couple of days of production […]
Poison mastered the art of escapist party metal on their first two albums, but they took care to revisit their hardscrabble roots on “Fallen Angel,” released as a single on July 6, 1988. The Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, quartet — singer Bret Michaels, guitarist C.C. DeVille, drummer Rikki Rockett and bassist Bobby Dall — had graduated from hand-to-mouth hustle to […]
The Darkness will celebrate the 20th anniversary of their star-making debut album Permission to Land with a deluxe reissue, aptly titled Permission to Land … Again. The collection arrives on Oct. 6 and will be available as a five-LP set, a four-CD/DVD set, a two-CD set and digitally. The band is previewing the set with a […]
MSG Sphere, the massive $2.3 billion entertainment space in Las Vegas, lit up its exosphere for the first time on Tuesday. The first message displayed on the giant venue said, “Hello World.” From there, the Sphere showed off an incredible array of eye-catching visuals, including fireworks, the American Flag and a rotating planet Earth on […]
Jethro Tull has announced a 40th-anniversary deluxe edition of their 14th album The Broadsword and the Beast, featuring demos, rough mixes, live recordings, studio sessions and new mixes from Porcupine Tree founder Steven Wilson. The collection arrives on Sept. 1 and will be available as a five-CD, three-DVD “Monster Edition,” a three-LP “Vinyl Edition” and digitally. You […]
The best solo albums are more than just mere solo albums. They’re mad dashes toward freedom and expression, statements of purpose from voices who have been silenced too long and declarations of independence from creatively stagnant artists who have something to say outside of their stifling groups. In our look at 10 Declarations of Independence: […]
While our friends across the pond may try to argue otherwise, rock ‘n’ roll is an inherently American creation. Many of the most successful artists in the genre’s history were born and bred in the U.S.A. But who is the greatest American rock band of all time? Assembling a list of the Top 50 American Bands of […]
Elton John found himself in the south of France in 1983, scheduled to shoot a promotional video for his song “I’m Still Standing.” Directed by Russell Mulcahy, the video was shot in Cannes and Nice on the Cote d’Azur, and choreographed by Arlene Phillips. But the colorful location, which yielded an equally bright clip, didn’t […]
Peter Gabriel has released another song from his upcoming album i/o, “So Much.” It’s the seventh track from the album; each song arrived during 2023’s full moons. “I was trying purposefully not to be clever with this,” Gabriel said of “So Much” in a press release. “I wanted to get a very simple chorus but one which […]