Sex Pistols now go digital in Guitar Hero. Forget Stink, the band gets hip on your Xbox!!
September 26, 2007
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Sex Pistols now go digital. Forget Stink, the band gets hip on your Xbox!!
I have to admit that this kind of shows the Sex Pistols are really hip. It appears they are going to be a in video game but Johnny’s Rotten’s most recent rivals, The Police, are stuck only touring around.
THE SEX PISTOLS
RE-RECORD ‘ANARCHY IN THE U.K.’
FOR GUITAR HERO(tm) III: LEGENDS OF ROCK
Famous for Kick Starting a Musical and Cultural Revolution, Original Members of
The Sex Pistols Enter the Studio for the First Time in 30 Years
SUNNYVALE, CA - September 25, 2007 - Activision, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) announced today that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees The Sex Pistols, who famously turned down the award, recently returned to the studio to re-record “Anarchy in the U.K.,” which will be included in Guitar Hero(tm) III: Legends of Rock as a master track. Now, fans can perform their own live version of the punk anthem in the next installment of the #1 best-selling music and rhythm video game franchise.
The Sex Pistols were an obvious choice for Guitar Hero, having established themselves as the definitive punk band of the 1970s. Unable to locate the original multi-tracks for inclusion in the game, Activision invited the band back into the studio to re-record a couple of songs including “Anarchy in the U.K.” Original members John Lydon on vocals, guitarist Steve Jones and drummer Paul Cook re-teamed with producer Chris Thomas, utilizing the original analog sound desk (circa 1969) that was built for George Martin at Air Studios, London, England in order to maintain the classic sound.
Thirty years ago this fall, the song was first included on The Sex Pistols’ only studio album, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” which will be re-issued on vinyl on October 29, 2007, in its exact original format, including poster and Submission 7″. The single ‘Anarchy In The UK’ will also be re-issued on vinyl on October 1, along with three other classic singles throughout October. Celebrating this milestone, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will be sponsoring the historic Sex Pistols show at The Brixton Academy in London taking place on November 8, 2007.
John Lydon stated that “Re-recording them [the songs]–what a stress you put on us but we rose to the occasion I think…admirably!” Adding that, “a bit of anarchy in a video game is alright by me.”
“It was great for Guitar Hero to, in a way, get us back in the studio. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out but it actually turned out great and I think everyone held their own,” said Steve Jones. “I like it [Guitar Hero] because my friends’ kids like it. And I like what kids like.”
“Guitar Hero fans have been requesting more punk rock in the game since its first iteration,” said Tim Riley, Activision worldwide executive of music. “We are honored that The Sex Pistols went into the studio after 30 years, so that we could have a song from the most renowned punk band of all time in the game.”
“We are proud to have joined forces with such a legendary and influential band as The Sex Pistols for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” said Kai Huang, president and co-founder of RedOctane. “We are very excited to partner with them on their 30th Anniversary and expose them to an entirely new generation of fans through the game.”
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will include explosive new content and features including a multiplayer action-inspired battle mode, grueling boss battles, a host of exclusive unlockable content and visually stunning rock venues. Expanded online multiplayer game modes will also allow axe-shredders worldwide to compete head-to-head for true legendary rock status. For the first time ever, Guitar Hero fans will also be able to thrash and burn with new wireless guitar controllers available for each platform. The game will feature a star-studded soundtrack including master tracks by such legendary artists as Guns N’ Roses, The Rolling Stones, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam as well as original songs by guitar icons Slash and Tom Morello. The sequel also will offer a vast array of downloadable content including songs from some of the most popular European bands.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, published by RedOctane® and developed by Neversoft, is rated ‘T’ for Teen by the ESRB and will be available October 28, 2007. For more information about the Guitar Hero franchise, please visit the dedicated community site:www.guitarhero.com.
About Activision, Inc.:
Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and leisure products. Founded in 1979, Activision posted net revenues of $1.5 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007.
Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Scandinavia, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan and South Korea. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s World Wide Web site, which is located at www.activision.com.
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. In this release they are identified by references to dates after the date of this release and words such as “will,” “will be,” “remains,” “to be,” “plans,” “believes”, “may”, “expects,” “intends,” and similar expressions. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, sales of Activision’s titles, shifts in consumer spending trends, the seasonal and cyclical nature of the interactive game market, Activision’s ability to predict consumer preferences among competing hardware platforms (including next-generation hardware), declines in software pricing, product returns and price protection, product delays, retail acceptance of Activision’s products, adoption rate and availability of new hardware and related software, industry competition, rapid changes in technology and industry standards, protection of proprietary rights, maintenance of relationships with key personnel, customers, vendors and third-party developers, international economic and political conditions, integration of recently acquired subsidiaries and identification of suitable future acquisition opportunities, limitations on our ability to issue stock and options and foreign exchange rate changes. Other factors that could cause Activision’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include, without limitation, the further implementation, acceptance and effectiveness of the remedial measures recommended or adopted by the special sub-committee of independent directors established in July 2006 to review Activision’s historical stock option granting practices, the board and Activision; the outcome of the SEC’s formal investigation and the derivative litigation filed in July 2006 against certain current and former directors and officers of Activision relating to Activision’s stock option granting practices, the possibility that additional claims and proceedings will be commenced, including additional stockholder litigation, employee litigation, and additional action by the SEC and/or other regulatory agencies, other litigation (unrelated to stock option granting practices),. , and the risks identified in Activision’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and recent reports on Form 8-K. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Activision as of the date of this release, and Activision assumes no obligations to update any such forward-looking statement. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and may cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.
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Nightwish interview with Tuomas Holopainen
September 26, 2007
Nightwish interview with Tuomas Holopainen by Christopher Alo
When it comes to lineup changes in successful bands it is always a gamble, especially when it comes to the lead vocalist position. In our little world of hard rock and heavy metal, you can probably count on one hand the number of bands that have successfully transitioned from one singer to the next. When the hugely popular Nightwish sacked original vocalist Tarja Turunen by slipping her a note after a show, many figured they would never recover. But after an exhaustive search, they have a new vocalist and a stellar new album in Dark Passion Play. Tuomas Holopainen, who is the keyboardist and main composer behind Nightwish talks about the exciting and somewhat scary new time for the band.
Now if you haven’t been following the story, the saga of Nightwish has been a bit of a soap opera of sorts for the last two years. As previously mentioned Tarja was unceremoniously and literally given her walking papers following a show and starting the next day, every female hard rock singer under the sun has been rumored to have scored the illustrious gig. In actuality, the position was handed over to the talented and Swedish born Anette Olzon, but that was kept under wraps for quite a long time.
“We needed to keep Annette a secret for a few months”, states Nightwish main man Tuomas Holopainen. “This was never to tease the fans or the media. It was not a publicity stunt of any kind. We just wanted to not reveal her before we would have something to play for the people. We were just thinking, if we reveal her identity in February, people will judge her simply on what she has done before. We really thought it would be the fairest towards her so that when we announce her that we would have some new material. But keeping it a secret was like some CIA secrets.”
“Every time we would fly somewhere, she would stay in the back of the plane”, he continues. “We wouldn’t acknowledge each other. She always stayed at different hotels in Helsinki; we were never seen in public. When we recorded the vocals, we did it in a countryside studio, it was really secret. I even said in many interviews we were going to record the vocals abroad, it was a white lie so to speak. I really didn’t enjoy that time, it was annoying. It was especially hard for Annette because there were only two people in the world she told, her husband and her brother. We didn’t want to take any chances. It was such a relief to finally reveal her.”
Apparently Anette almost didn’t get the job at all. While she was one of the chosen few under consideration for the vocal spot, she told the band that she did have a small child at home. She was quickly rejected before cooler heads prevailed and eventually she won the job.
“Yeah absolutely, I turned her down once in February of 2006. We were impressed with her voice and she seems like a nice girl, but then she told us that she had a four year old son. I told her immediately, we were not going to take the chance. I said to her sorry, but good for us she was very stubborn and convinced us that it would be no problem.”
But was there someone else in mind then? Or would the band simply resume the search for the elusive lead singer?
“Well the thing was it was February 2006 and we decided that we would make the decision no later than January 2007 so we still had demos coming in all the time.”
As mentioned earlier, every imaginable female singer from the hard rock and metal genres was rumored to have been Tarja’s replacement. The press in Finland had an absolute field day falsely reporting one lady after another of assuming the mantle.
“It was pretty much everybody, Sharon from Within Temptation, Simone from Epica, Floor from After Forever. We even heard Amy Lee from Evanescence at some point. Yeah, Sarah Britghtman, it was hilarious, especially in Finland. They kept saying, we have a source that says, this will be the new singer. In the end, the media ate their own credibility because nobody believe anything, it became like a public joke.”
But did the band ever consider snatching one of these more well known singers? Or was the idea of getting an unknown more enticing?
“We didn’t care about the nationality, we didn’t care if she was famous or not, we were just looking for the right girl. We just wanted the right personality and the right voice. We never approached anybody either. Everybody that was mentioned, they all have their own bands, we weren’t into anything like that. We were just checking out the demos and relying on that.”
Stepping into the role of fronting one of Europe’s most successful and most beloved bands must surely be a daunting task. But according to the man who matters most, their new singer is taking it all in stride.
“Day by day, she is getting better and better in the role”, says Tuomas. “In the name of honesty, I have to say when we made the decision; nobody was like 100% about anything. We only had met her twice, we had only known her for like five days, and there is only so much you know about a person. Everybody was a little concerned, but now we have been together for like six months, so the feeling is really, really good. We love her voice; it fits perfectly to the new songs as well as the old songs. She has a really charming personality. She is the most ordinary person, and I say this in a good way. There is not the slightest bit of dramatic elements that could annoy anybody, nothing like that. She is 36, she’s been singing all her life, and she’s had ups and downs in her life, so she’s a very reasonable young lady who can take things as they come. At this point, when there are really big boots to fill, you need someone with a good sense of humor and a good sense of self esteem and she really has them both.”
On the new album, Dark Passion Play, Nightwish make no bones about having sacked their former singer and have even dedicated a song to her, “Bye Bye Beautiful”, which is bound to stir up controversy for sure.
“Yeah it is, it’s kind of like a farewell song to Tarja. I hope no one gets offended by this song because it’s never meant to be a song about hatred. It goes through those feelings about what happened, it’s about frustration. It’s about a thing that just needed to be done in the situation where nobody in the end was innocent. It was made in a really good spirit, at least that was the intention, it’s not called “Bye Bye Ugly One”, and it’s called “Bye Bye Beautiful.”
The listener is instantly drawn into the mesmerizing music contained within from the very first track on the new release. “The Poet and the Pendulum”, which opens Dark Passion Play is a huge sprawling epic that clocks in at a whopping 13 minutes. It almost would have seemed to be easier to break it up into smaller parts, at least as far as the listener is concerned.
“But the story that I had in mind is so long that I knew from the beginning it had to be one”, responds Tuomas. “I knew it’s going to take a long and heavy song to tell this story. The fact that we put it as the first track on the album was pretty much us just avoiding cliché’s. Usually you put the longest song at the last; we wanted to avoid the cliché’s give a little bit of shock to the listener immediately. Again in the name of honesty, it’s kind of like a show off, we can do whatever we want musically. We are still here, we are strong and we do things in our own way.”
While the revamped Nightwish has an astonishingly good new album on store shelves, and their singer has been with them for 6 months, the ultimate test is still at hand. Metal bands all live and die on just how good they are in concert and Nightwish has yet to play a single note in public with their new vocalist. But they are firmly up for the challenge as they plan on touring from now until the fall of 2009.
“It’s been almost two years since the last show, so everybody is just counting nights till the first show. Everybody is anxious to get on that tour bus and start touring. It’s going to be pretty hard, especially for her being the new person in the band. The tour will last until the fall of 2009, so it’s about two years. But it’s also the thing that we love from the bottom of our hearts; it’s the love of my life, personally. I have nothing better to do; I don’t want to do anything else. Sometimes you will be really pissed, or really tired, but that’s part of the job. A job shouldn’t always be just fun, but I think we will manage. But I think we have learned from some of our past mistakes so we can take care of each other be a bit better. We can just talk about stuff and just take care of each other.”
Within Temptation interview with Sharon den Adel
September 26, 2007
Within Temptation interview with Sharon den Adel by Christopher Alo
I must admit, it was a difficult assignment to interview Sharon den Adel, the beautiful raven haired vocalist for Within Temptation. Her astonishing looks are almost secondary to her wonderful personality and down to earth persona; it all makes her, well, enchanting. But with tape-recorder and microphone in hand, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. I spoke at length to Sharon about the new album, The Heart of Everything, and their thoughts regarding playing for North American audiences.
While Within Temptation have been recording albums for years and touring the globe, their presence in North America was non-existent. That changed earlier this year when Road Runner released their new album and brought the band over for their first North American tour. But the band kept their expectations low so that they wouldn’t be disappointed.
“We didn’t expect anything really”, states Sharon. “When you come over to a big country like the US, we didn’t expect a lot of people to know us, because this is kind of an introduction tour, you know? Our album wasn’t out officially yet, and we didn’t have any expectations, just like every time we go to a new country. The way we look at it is if you don’t have any expectations, there is no way you can be disappointed. We had a very welcome reception, which has been really nice. They knew us better in some places than in others, but there were always a few people that came especially for us. Some of them drove a lot of miles to see us even if we only played for forty minutes, which was really amazing. We also met a lot of people who had never heard of us and were really surprised about our music. We are over here to win hearts”, she laughs.
Lately fans on this side of the pond have been lucky to see many bands from Europe, but how do the fans in North America compare to the rest of the world?
“They are more like the fans from the southern part of Europe, like Spain, Portugal or Italy. People they express themselves in a different way. From the first moment you start playing, they start going wild, and it’s the same thing in America. I didn’t expect it, I expected a more reserved reaction until they would get warmed up, which is the case in most of northern Europe. But that only happened in the big cities like New York or Los Angeles, where people are more used to bands playing there. In the smaller towns, people were enthusiastic from the moment we started playing. Everyone was so enthusiastic. I underestimated that, but it was nice to know that so many people did know our songs. They did come to see us, even though we did play for such a short while.”
Their stage time for their last tour in the states was cut short due to the fact that they were in the support slot, something that they haven’t done back home for quite some time. Does that make it feel like starting at the beginning again?
“Yeah, it’s like the second time around actually”, she laughs. “You can never go back to that point in time again of when we were starting. It has your good sides and bad sides because technically, the equipment is not what we are used to. But on the other hand, the intimacy of the venues gives you that rock and roll, plug and play feeling. That was something that we missed, so this brought that back again. It s really nice and we enjoyed it a lot really. Some people are surprised because in Europe we do bigger big venues and festivals. In Holland we have a saying, “Eating different foods makes you hungry”, Sharon says laughing. “That means having the two different worlds is nice, it adds diversity and we got that intimacy back again in America.”
I’ve been lucky enough to see Within Temptation several times in Europe where their stage show is adorned with huge backdrops, props and exploding pyrotechnics. But their touring in North America sees them going back to basics. Yet even with the changes, they seem to relish the return to no frills in sweaty rock clubs.
“Well the stage is something that is an extra and when we can do it, we will do it. Of course when you are going on tour where the venues aren’t that big and when you are playing with four bands, there is not much space. Of course, it is an adjustment, but first it is all about the music. You would love to do the stage show everywhere in every town, but it’s all about the music. If you could do something extra for the fans, it’s always nice, but it’s something that maybe will happen in the future. If it’s possible to play bigger venues in the future maybe we could do something like that.”
On the Heart of Everything, Sharon does a duet with singer who’s no stranger to playing high energy shows, Keith Caputo from Life of Agony. The native New Yorker is now a part time resident in Holland and appears on the single and video for the future classic, “What Have You Done”.
“Many years ago we saw Keith play at a Dutch festival with Life of Agony”, explains Sharon. “It was really, really bad weather, because it always rains in Holland. It was raining and storming and usually everybody always look for shelter, but most people just stood there and they were so captivated by the band and by Keith’s vocals. We said we didn’t care about the rain; we were going to stay right where we were and we did. We looked back at that and that was always in our mind.
“When we wrote this song, the first way was just my vocals”, she continues. “When we did the demo, Robert and I were signing the song together, it had more balls I think”, she laughs. “It has more aggression I think and we said OK, this needs to be a duet. We needed some energy that would fit my voice and also the song. We said we always liked Keith, and we said lets play him the song and see if he likes it. So we sent it to him, and he lives in Holland for a big part of the time because he has a side project with a lot of Dutch musicians. We got in contact with him through them and he liked the song and two weeks later we were recording it.
“His voice totally fit my voice, which we didn’t know of course, but we hoped it would. The cherry on the cake was that he was a very nice person. Most times when you like bands, they are not always the nicest people”, she says laughing. “You never know how people are personally when they are in their own surroundings. He was very relaxed and just a very nice guy.”
Our first Ministry interview with Paul Raven and SIN QUIRIN
September 26, 2007
- The obvious question first, where does Ministry the band go from here after this last album?
- While compared to doing an album or tour, how much more involved is it for Al to be involved with an entire score for this upcoming movie next year? Is this the sort of work we can expect from Al with future projects?
- With politics going steadily downhill, what does the band like to see to make government work effectively in the US?
- Being the last album, does the band feel they have gone over the top considering the recent reviews being posted? Or do you even care what is said?
- With 13th Planet, Al Jourgensen’s label, are you hoping to do more digital download product? Are you excited by this type of direction for the music industry?
- What are some of the highlighted tour plans to support this last album?
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September 26, 2007
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