RichRock
Queensrÿche with new singer Todd LaTorre performed New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31, 2012) at Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. Check out video below.
Setlist:
01. Queen Of The Reich
02. Speak
03. Walk In The Shadows
04. The Whisper
05. En Force
06. Child Of Fire
07. Warning
08. The Needle Lies
09. Prophecy
10. Road To Madness
11. I Don’t Believe In Love
12. My Empty Room
13. Eyes Of A Stranger
Encore:
14. Take Hold Of The Flame
15. Jet City Woman
16. Silent Lucidity
17. Empire
Click Here to view more videos.
Announced last month, Def Leppard will play its multiplatinum 1987 album ‘Hysteria’ in its entirety for Viva Hysteria!, which will begin March 22 at The Joint at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. The band’s stay follows Hard Rock residencies from Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses.
Vegas.com: What do you think it was about that album that continues to attract fans today?
(Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen) “Mutt Lange is a genius. He said we can do an ultimate rock album or we can do a rock version of ‘Thriller,’ where we have seven hit singles. But to do that, you have to put the extra effort in. The attitude when the album came out, a lot of people didn’t like it. They thought, oh this is too pop or they didn’t understand the crossover because it’s a perfect hybrid between rock and pop. If you look at Mutt Lange’s track record, his biggest successes are for example, Shania Twain. He definitely brought country to the masses. He successfully fused rock, pop music with country, and I never thought I’d see the day. I remember being in Japan and hearing Shana Twain when I was going up and down in an elevator. That for us, like I said, it was the perfect hybrid of pop and rock that was actually acceptable. A lot of rock fans didn’t like it at first, but by the end of that year everyone had the record. You couldn’t really escape the whole thing. It was pop music but done rock. We kicked our ass on it. It was very different from anything that had come before it actually.”
Has performing those songs changed for you over the years?
“I guess a little bit. ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ took on a whole life of its own, the stripper pole anthem if you like. Wherever you play that song every girl actually turns into a stripper, it’s really interesting. Again, that’s how that song became successful… So I guess all the songs take on something a little different after a few years… They’re not exactly like they were on the record. They certainly take on their own lives. It’s really interesting. It’s just wonderful to be part of one of those classic albums.”
Screamer Magazine: (New Queensrÿche vocalist Todd LaTorre) “This is a rebirth of a legendary band that deserves this chance again and that’s how I feel as a fan! I think I can speak from a different perspective than anybody here because this has been my favorite band since I was 14 years old. And I met them 20 years ago, when I was 18 years old. I drove to a record store and they signed my ‘Warning’ cover album–I still have it. So I’m able to look at things from both sides, which I feel gives an objective point of view.”
(Drummer Scott Rockenfield) “Most of it was geared around wanting to do better business and watching what our business has been doing, as well as trying to address some issues that began early in 2012. I mean, things had been building for a while, but in a nutshell, we wanted to address those things and it wasn’t accepted very well, and that started a sort of chaotic steam roll of a lot of negative stuff going on, which cultivated in the very end and escalated to what happened in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It had been building for a while, to be honest, and one of those things where we just finally decided to sit down and really address some of these issues and talk about ways we could do better business together, and that required us to have to make some decisions. We wanted to move on with some employees that were working with us and to just address a lot of issues that were on the table for us. And, like I said, once we opened up those conversations, it didn’t go very well, and so we had to make some decisions based around that and so that’s what we did. We just decided that it was best for us to move on; we didn’t see eye to eye anymore on those business decisions, so we wanted to keep doing what Queensrÿche is good at, which is making music and playing shows for the fans that want to hear what we do. So that’s what we did. The timing was good, we moved on, we found Todd, he fit the role. He’s got a great personality and all our chemistry together is really great and here we are.”
(Guitarist Michael Wilton) “The ultimate decision, though, is going to be how the fans feel and how the fans react and how this is played out in the marketplace. We’re doing pretty good numbers right now and we are the majority of the band, and to be honest, I think the fans are going to be psyched.”
METAL SHOP Wishes You A Kick Ass Christmas!
Blabbermouth.net: On August 16, 1986, German metal queen Doro Pesch was the first woman to front a heavy metal band (WARLOCK) at the Monsters Of Rock festival in Castle Donington, England, the most important European rock meeting of the ’80s. Doro recounts the experience in the video below.
Blabbermouth.net: Bob Nalbandian, founder and publisher of the esteemed early ’80s heavy metal music fanzine The Headbanger, has struck a deal with Tokyo-based company Japanime Publishing to release all 11 issues of the Xeroxed ‘zine as ebooks. Never before has the fanzine — which featured early interviews of local and international heavy metal bands, including the very first profiles of then-unsigned Los Angeles bands METALLICA, SLAYER and MEGADETH — been available for mass distribution until now.
The first ebook will include an all-new introduction and reminiscence by Nalbandian, along with the entire contents of The Headbanger issue #1, which was released in May/June 1982. The issue features now-legendary all-female New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band GIRLSCHOOL on its cover and a review of the group’s debut U.S. show at the Whisky on April 25, 1982; colorful recaps of live performances by then-local L.A. bands RATT and STEELER; and no-holds-barred commentary on “new” albums by MOTÖRHEAD, IRON MAIDEN, RAINBOW, and the first “Metal Massacre” compilation. As a bonus, the ebook also includes the original full-page “Los Angeles Metal Report” that Nalbandian and his Huntington Beach metal comrade Pat Scott wrote for the March 1982 issue of Ron Quintana’s nationally distributed fanzine Metal Mania. It was through this “Report” that headbangers living beyond the smog of the Sunset Strip were to read the first words ever published about a then-unknown Orange County/L.A. garage band … named METALLICA!
Issue #1 of The Headbanger is now available worldwide in the Apple iBookstore and the Amazon Kindle store.
Blabbermouth.net: Swedish hard rockers EUROPE celebrated the 30th anniversary of their appearance at the Swedish rock talent contest Rock-SM this past Thursday, December 13 by performing the song “In The Future To Come” at Hovet in Stockholm during the Scandianvian leg of their “Bag Of Bones” tour. Fan-filmed video footage of the performance can be seen below.
In 1982, EUROPE singer Joey Tempest’s then-girlfriend entered FORCE (as EUROPE was originally known prior to changing its name) in the Rock-SM contest. Competing against 4000 bands, they performed two songs, “In The Future To Come” and “The King Will Return”, and won the contest which resulted in a record deal with Hot Records. Tempest also won the individual award for “Best Lead Singer” while EUROPE guitarist John Norum was honored in the “Best Guitarist” category.
From the 1987 Hysteria ‘In The Round’ World Tour, the Def Leppard concert book below is slightly over-sized (Approx: 12″ x 10″), but in good condition (slight wear on the cover). Beautiful full-color photographs.
From the 1996-1997 KISS ALIVE WORLD TOUR, the first with the original members (Gene, Paul, Peter, Ace) since 1979, the KISS concert book above is over-sized (Approx: 14″ x 11″), but in good condition (slight tear at the bottom of the cover). Awesome full-color photographs.
Before Queensrÿche’s ‘Anarchy-X’ became the killer opening track on ‘Operation: Mindcrime‘ (1988), it almost became another song on their previous release.
METAL SHOP listener James Kocher in Micanopy, Florida discovered this YouTube gem (view below), a track written for the ‘Rage for Order‘ (1986) album, but never actually released.
According to Wikipedia, Queensrÿche wrote and recorded at least three complete songs 
that did not make the final ‘Rage’ track list, but are available on various demos. ‘From the Darkside’ is a slow atmospheric piece with lyrics and concepts later revisited for ‘Mindcrime’. ‘The Dream’ is a fast heavy metal tune and the unreleased title track ‘Rage for Order’ also has elements that ended up on ‘Mindcrime’, mainly the intro which became ‘Anarchy-X’ and some lyrical concepts. The song ‘Rage for Order’ was played live during the tour promoting this album and is available on bootleg audio and video.
In a posting on his official Facebook page, new Queensrÿche vocalist Todd La Torre wrote “‘Queen Of The Reich’: Yes, people do stare speechless, because they are shocked to hear the song performed well, a song that ‘broke out’ this legendary pioneering band. Shame on anyone to deny the music that garnished fans in the first place and still resonates 30 years later.”
He may be right, but as a long-time Queensrÿche fan, I’m offended. There are plenty of great (younger) singers that can belt out those classics better than Geoff Tate can today. Regardless of who you side with in the split, Tate made those songs famous. Anyone else fronting the band now is just facilitating the memories. -Rich Rock