State Champ Radio genre rock
Page: 44
Chubby Checker, whose “The Twist” was a global smash in 1960, has been eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since the first class was inducted in 1986, but he was never even nominated until this year. Despite having been ignored for decades, he made it in his first time on the ballot.
So did first-time nominees Bad Company, Joe Cocker and Outkast, as well as Cyndi Lauper and The White Stripes, who had each been nominated once before, and Soundgarden, which had been nominated twice before. These seven acts were all inducted in the performer category.
The inductees were announced by Ryan Seacrest on ABC’s American Idol on Sunday night (April 27).
Trending on Billboard
There are six other inductees this year in other categories. Salt-N-Pepa and Warren Zevon are set to receive the musical influence award; Philly Soul producer Thom Bell, English studio pianist/organist Nicky Hopkins and studio bass guitarist Carole Kaye (who was part of the fabled Wrecking Crew of top L.A. studio musicians) will receive the musical excellence award; and producer and label executive Lenny Waronker will receive the Ahmet Ertegun Award.
Sadly, several of these people didn’t live to see their inductions. Hopkins died in 1994 at age 50; Zevon in 2003 at 56; Chris Cornell of Soundgarden in 2017 at 52; and Bell in 2022 at 79.
Checker had to wait even longer for induction than Cher, who was finally inducted last year, 59 years after Sonny & Cher’s breakthrough smash “I Got You Babe.”
With Outkast and Salt-N-Pepa both being inducted this year, this is the sixth consecutive year that one or more rap acts has been in the induction class.
With Lauper, Salt-N-Pepa, Meg White of The White Stripes and Carol Kaye being inducted this year, this is the fourth consecutive year that four or more female acts were in the induction class.
Bell won the first Grammy Award ever presented for producer of the year, non-classical, in 1975. By coincidence, Waronker was among the other nominees in the category that year. Waronker was also nominated for record of the year that year for producing Maria Muldaur’s classy and sexy “Midnight at the Oasis.” Waronker’s many other hits as a producer include Gordon Lightfoot’s Hot 100-topping “Sundown,” Rickie Lee Jones’ “Chuck E.’s in Love” and Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” which Dawes performed as the opening song on this year’s Grammy telecast.
Carol Kaye, 90, is this year’s oldest inductee. Checker and Waronker are both 83, but will both be 84 by the time of the Nov. 8 induction ceremony.
All of the artists who were induced in the performer category have landed top five albums on the Billboard 200. Three of them reached No. 1: Bad Company (Bad Company, 1974), Outkast (Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, 2003) and Soundgarden (Superunknown, 1994). Three more reached No. 2: Chubby Checker (Your Twist Party, 1962), Joe Cocker (Mad Dogs and Englishmen, 1970) and The White Stripes (Icky Thump, 2007). Lauper climbed as high as No. 4 twice, with She’s So Unusual in 1984 and True Colors in 1986.
Both of the artists who are receiving musical influence awards made the top 10. Salt-N-Pepa reached No. 4 with Very Necessary in 1994. Zevon hit No. 8 with Excitable Boy in 1978.
Lauper won the Grammy for best new artist in 1985. She’s the sixth artist who was a past winner of that award to go on to a Rock Hall induction.
Outkast won the Grammy for album of the year in 2004 for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. André 3000 was nominated again in that category at this year’s ceremony for New Blue Sun.
Two of the inducted acts are duos – Outkast (André 3000 and Big Boi) and The White Stripes (Jack White and Meg White).
The other seven nominees in the performer category were denied admission to the Rock Hall – this year, anyway. Oasis and Mariah Carey were both passed over for the second year in a row. Both were surprising snubs – Oasis is reuniting for a global tour in 2025; Carey’s profile, never low, has been boosted in recent years by her status as the uncontested Queen of Christmas. Of the other passed-over artists, Joy Division/New Order were previously on the ballot in 2023; this was the first time on the ballot for The Black Crowes, Billy Idol, Maná and Phish.
The voters showed no love for brother acts this year. Oasis includes Liam and Noel Gallagher; The Black Crowes includes Chris and Rich Robinson.
Maná was vying to become the first rock en español act to make the Rock Hall. Joy Division/New Order was vying to join the short list of two related acts being inducted in tandem, following Parliament/Funkadelic in 1997 and The Small Faces/Faces in 2012.
Phish, which won this year’s fan vote, has never landed a Hot 100 hit, but the band is a powerhouse live attraction, as evidenced when it played the Sphere in Las Vegas in April 2024.
Idol was a mainstay of early MTV – as was Lauper, who did get in. In an interview with Vulture, Idol said of his guitarist Steve Stevens, “Because of our special relationship, if I get in, they will induct him as well.” This would have echoed Pat Benatar’s induction three years ago, where the Rock Hall inducted both Benatar and her husband and musical partner, Neil Giraldo. But it’s academic, as Idol didn’t make it this year.
The 2025 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction will be live on Saturday, Nov. 8 at the Peacock Theater at L.A. Live in Los Angeles. The 2025 ceremony will once again stream live on Disney+, with a special airing on ABC at a later date and available on Hulu the next day. The 2024 ceremony aired on New Year’s Day.
Here’s the full list of 2025 inductees:
Performer Category
Bad Company
Chubby Checker
Joe Cocker
Cyndi Lauper
Outkast
Soundgarden
The White Stripes
Musical Influence Award
Salt-N-Pepa
Warren Zevon
Musical Excellence Award
Thom Bell
Nicky Hopkins
Carol Kaye
Ahmet Ertegun Award
Lenny Waronker
Los Angeles police have released video from the shooting of author Jillian Lauren, the wife of a Weezer band member, during a chaotic backyard confrontation that culminated in a volley of gunfire.
Lauren’s wounds were not life-threatening in the April 8 shooting in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock, where the 51-year-old wife of Weezer bass player Scott Shriner emerged from her home with a gun as city police and the California Highway Patrol searched the area for three people who fled a car wreck.
Lauren — listed by police as Jillian Lauren Shriner — was released on a $1 million bond on suspicion of attempted murder pending further investigation. She is scheduled to appear in court April 30.
Police released the excerpts from body camera recordings, surveillance video and audio of 911 dispatch conversations on Friday (April 25). The video clips show officers peering over a high wooden fence into a yard and shouting over the noise of a surveillance helicopter at a woman to put down her gun or risk getting shot. The fence obscures from the cameras what is on the other side.
“Ma’am, we’re trying to help you. Put the gun down,” a voice says. “You’re going to get shot. It’s the police.”
An officer indicates that the woman has cocked a gun — “Oh, she racked it” — immediately before the sound of at least six shots rings out.
In a separate segment of silent surveillance video from Lauren’s backyard, she can be seen exiting the home barefoot and carrying a pistol in her right hand. Another segment shows Lauren from behind, apparently raising a gun that is briefly visible. Dirt kicks up near her feet, and she turns and walks toward a doorway to the house.
Further body camera video shows Lauren lying prone in the middle of a residential road as police place handcuffs behind her back, while noting that she has a wound on her arm.
Lauren’s published works include two bestselling memoirs, 2010’s Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and 2015’s Everything You Ever Wanted.
Weezer is a Los Angeles-based band, beloved especially for their 1994 record unofficially known as the “Blue Album,” with songs including “Say It Ain’t So.” Shriner joined the band in the early 2000s.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Fans from all around the world can tune in to Phish’s three-night concert series as part of the rock band’s spring tour, slated for Friday (April 25), Saturday (April 26) and Sunday (April 27).
The concert series livestreams from Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT during each evening on Live Phish. Read on for details on how to stream on Live Phish.
How to Watch Phish: Live From the Hollywood Bowl
Live Phish subscribers can livestream Phish Live from the Hollywood Bowl for $14.99 (regularly $29.99) per concert. If you’re not subscribed, you can sign up starting $9.99 per month. However, if you only want to livestream the concert, it’s priced at $29.99 per evening. Alternatively, you can watch all three concerts starting at $77.99 ($25.99 each) for non-subscribers.
Powered by Nugs.net, Live Phish features livestream concerts, a catalog of past shows going all the way back to 2002, exclusive archive footage and bonus interviews, music streaming, discounts and other benefits. Learn more about Live Phish here.
Live Phish
Phish: Live From the Hollywood Bowl
April 25, April 26 and April 27 at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT each evening.
Want to attend the Phish concert in person? There are still last-minute tickets available via Vivid Seats (get $20 off purchases of $200 and over with code BB30), StubHub and GameTime (score $20 off ticket orders of $150 and over with code SAVE20). Prices vary depending on the city and seats available.
Moreover, you can get $150 off when you spend $500 with promo code BILLBOARD150, or $300 off when you spend $1,000 with promo code BILLBOARD300 at TicketNetwork.com.
Meanwhile, those who want to watch internationally can access the streaming service with a VPN, such as ExpressVPN or NordVPN.
Taking place on Friday (April 25), Saturday (April 26) and Sunday (April 27), Phish: Live from the Hollywood Bowl livestreams from Los Angeles with a start time of 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT each evening. You can watch the event live starting at $14.99 each on Live Phish.
Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.
Over a month since ZZ Top announced drummer Frank Beard would be sitting out a number of tour dates over an unspecified “health issue,” it’s been confirmed that his absence will now extend to the band’s forthcoming Australian tour.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
In a statement issued on Thursday (April 24), promoters Live Nation explained that Beard will not be joining his bandmates on the forthcoming trek, “as recommended by medical personnel.”
The Texas trio revealed on March 15 that Beard would be absent from the group’s current Elevation tour due to the need to undergo an unspecified health procedure. “Shelter Music Group, ZZ Top’s management, has announced the band’s drummer, Mr. Frank Beard, has temporarily stepped away from the current tour to attend a health issue requiring his focus in the near term,” a social media post from the band read.
Trending on Billboard
“Beard, along with fellow ZZ Top members Billy F Gibbons and Elwood Francis, presently on the Elevation tour since March 5, have engaged fellow Texan and longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer, John Douglas, for the interim.”
Douglas has long maintained a close relationship with both Beard and his bandmates, having previously sat in for the drummer during a Paris performance in October 2002 when he underwent an emergency appendectomy.
“Beard’s continued physical therapy has shown to be very effective in dealing with the issue that caused him to leave the recent US leg of the tour,” Live Nation’s statement continued. “While cheered by the positive news, band and management believe that his total recovery must be priority #1.
“Beard’s attending physicians have suggested more physical therapy over a longer period would potentially achieve better and longer lasting results, and this will now be his focus.”
Beard has been the drummer of ZZ Top since 1969, when he took over from co-founder Dan Mitchell. Alongside vocalist and guitarist Billy Gibbons, Mitchell and bassist Lanier Greig had founded the band that same year.
Following Grieg’s replacement by Billy Ethridge, Dusty Hill assumed the role of bassist in 1970, with their lineup remaining unchanged for 51 years until Hill’s death at 72 in 2021. Elwood Francis has since served as the group’s bassist.
The group will embark upon their first Australian tour since 2013 on Saturday, April 26th. The ten-date tour will conclude in mid-May, with a handful of New Zealand tour dates to be followed by an additional North American trek in June. The band’s 51-date trek will run through until October.
More than 52 years since the release of their last record, the surviving members of English blues-rockers Faces are in the process of preparing a new album.
Word of the forthcoming LP was shared by Faces drummer Kenney Jones in an interview with The Telegraph. The article itself notes that the band have teased an album for four years now, with Rod Stewart confirming its existence in 2021, and again claiming in 2024 that “We haven’t finished it yet, but we’ll finish it this year, I promise.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
In his latest interview, Jones revealed that he and his bandmates have recorded “about 11 tracks” at RAK Studios in London. Jones also confirmed that musician and television personality Jools Holland also contributed to one track. “Not all of them are going to be right [for the album],” he noted. “But most of them are good.
Trending on Billboard
“I can’t see it coming out this year,” he added. “But I can see it coming out next year. Everyone’s doing different things. We do little snippets [of recording] here and there. Then all of a sudden, The Stones are out [on tour] again, Rod’s out again…”
First formed in 1969 as the result of a merger between members of Small Faces and the Jeff Beck Group, Faces existed for just six years before guitarist Ronnie Wood left to join the Rolling Stones, and Stewart continued his ongoing solo career.
The group would release four albums throughout their career, with 1971’s A Nod Is As Good As a Wink… to a Blind Horse becoming their most successful, hitting No. 6 on the Billboard 200. The record would spawn the single “Stay with Me,” which peaked at No. 17 on the Hot 100, and would be followed by their final studio release, Ooh La La, in 1973.
While founding bassist Ronnie Lane would pass away in 1997, keyboardist Ian McLagan would also pass in 2014. Though a series of reunions would take place in the years since their initial dissolution, Faces have been considered something of a going concern since their performance of “Stay With Me” at the 2020 Brit Awards.
Stewart is currently scheduled to perform in the Sunday evening Legends Slot at the 2025 Glastonbury Festival, with a series of Las Vegas residency dates also set to run until October.
Peter Criss, the co-founding drummer of rock veterans KISS, has announced the release of his first solo album in almost two decades.
News of Criss’ forthcoming LP was announced via a short video from fansite KissFAQ, where band historian Julian Gill shared details of the record.
“I have an announcement,” Criss tells fans in the video. “I have my new rock and roll album to [share with] you KISS Army guys coming out in the fall, and I really hope you like it, man. And I wanna say God bless to each and every one of you.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Gill then took over with the reporting, noting that the record is a “hard rock, kick-ass album” that features the production work of Barry Pointer, while Criss is joined by guitarists John 5 and Mike McLaughlin, bassists Billy Sheehan and Matthew Montgomery, and pianist Paul Shaffer. The record also features the talents of backing vocalists Dennis and Sharron Collins, and Cathryn Manning.
“I was honored to listen to this album at Peter’s studio with him last night, and it was absolutely amazing to hear this new music,” adds Gill. “It was vibrant and powerful.
Trending on Billboard
“I’m so excited for it to be released, and I think KISS fans are gonna love this album. Peter’s drum sound is absolutely massive and his vocals are powerful. Barry Pointer’s production is stunning, and Peter’s got an incredible group of musicians and background vocalists behind him.”
The as-yet-untitled studio album will be Criss’ first solo release since 2007’s One for All, which itself arrived 13 years after his previous solo release. Criss had previously touched upon a new solo album back in 2017, revealing that he had a “half-finished rock album” whose composition could be traced back to before his 2008 diagnosis with breast cancer. However, Criss explained at the time that his retirement from the touring circuit would hopefully result in its completion.
Criss initially departed KISS in 1980, having performed his last show with the band in December 1979. He would later rejoin the band in 1996 as part of their original lineup reunion, and following a brief departure in 2001, would rejoin the band until his final exit in 2004.
While former KISS members Ace Frehley and Bruce Kulick would make guest appearances with the band in their final years, Criss did not take part in any additional shows with the band following his departure, and has not performed live since his retirement from touring in June 2017.
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” is No. 1 on Billboard’s Top TV Songs chart, powered by Tunefind (a Songtradr company), for March 2025, topping the tally following a synch in NCIS: Origins.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Rankings for the Top TV Songs chart are based on song and show data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of March 2025.
“Free Bird” appears in the 15th episode of NCIS: Origins’ inaugural season, premiering on March 31 on CBS. The new series is a spinoff of CBS’ long-running NCIS franchise and was renewed for a second season earlier this year.
Trending on Billboard
In March 2025, “Free Bird” earned 12.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 2,000 downloads, according to Luminate. One of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s signature tracks, the song peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1975.
Billie Eilish’s “When the Party’s Over” follows at No. 2 on Top TV Songs, a byproduct of its feature in the latest season of Invincible. Heard in the seventh episode of the third season (March 6), the song is one of a pair of entries on the latest chart from the Amazon Prime Video animated series, ahead of Nine Inch Nails’ “Every Day Is Exactly the Same” at No. 8 (episode eight, March 13).
“When the Party’s Over” notched 16.1 million streams and 1,000 downloads in March 2025, while “Every Day Is Exactly the Same” earned 2 million streams and 1,000 downloads. The former peaked at No. 29 on the Hot 100 in 2019, one of Eilish’s breakthrough tracks, while the latter reached No. 56 on the chart in 2006 and led the Alternative Airplay tally for four weeks that year.
Mondo Cozmo’s “Shine” ranks at No. 3 on Top TV Songs, buoyed by a synch in the eighth episode of season three of Reacher (March 27), scoring 320,000 streams and 3,000 downloads. The latter metric drove the song onto the Rock Digital Song Sales chart for the first time, entering at No. 8 on the April 5 survey and rising to No. 2 on the April 12 list. The song was a one-week No. 1 for the band on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart in 2017.
And Severance, which wrapped up its second season in March, boasts four entries on the latest Top TV Songs, led by The Alan Parsons Project’s “Sirius” at No. 4 (1.2 million streams, 1,000 downloads).
See the full top 10, also featuring music from Daredevil: Born Again and School Spirits, below.
Rank, Song, Artist, Show (Network)1. “Free Bird,” Lynyrd Skynyrd, NCIS: Origins (CBS)2. “When the Party’s Over,” Billie Eilish, Invincible (Amazon Prime Video)3. “Shine,” Mondo Cozmo, Reacher (Amazon Prime Video)4. “Sirius,” The Alan Parsons Project, Severance (Apple TV+)5. “Fire Woman,” The Cult, Severance (Apple TV+)6. “Staring at the Sun,” TV on the Radio, Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+)7. “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Billie Holiday, Severance (Apple TV+)8. “Every Day Is Exactly the Same,” Nine Inch Nails, Invincible (Amazon Prime Video)9. “Look Alive,” Hana Vu, School Spirits (Paramount+)10. “The Windmills of Your Mind,” Mel Torme, Severance (Apple TV+)
Shane Boose says that, if a piece of music can be described as “alternative” or “indie,” he’s probably going to enjoy it. “My favorite band of all time is Radiohead,” Boose, who records as Sombr, tells Billboard. “And I’m a big fan of Jeff Buckley, Phoebe Bridgers, The 1975. I listen to a ton of alternative music — it’s my genre.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Those influences help explain why Sombr’s two fast-rising hit singles, “Back to Friends” and “Undressed,” have not only exploded on streaming services as crossover pop hits, but have also minted the 19-year-old singer-songwriter at rock and alternative platforms that have been starving for fresh new talent. On this week’s Hot 100, “Back to Friends” leaps up 14 spots to a new peak of No. 56, while “Undressed” jumps 12 spots to No. 84; meanwhile, “Back to Friends” hits the top 10 of the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart for the first time, bumping up to No. 9 with “Undressed” close behind at No. 13.
Sombr has been on the road over the past few weeks opening for Daniel Seavey in the U.S. — watching each day as his streaming totals grow (through Apr. 17, “Back to Friends” had earned 40.7 million official on-demand streams, while “Undressed” had earned 19.5 million streams, according to Luminate) and his crowd sizes swell.
Trending on Billboard
“They 100 percent break my brain,” he says of the streaming totals. As for the crowds, “You don’t usually get to see it happening in real time, increasing every show, but being able to see that has just put it into perspective. When I’ve had moments in previous years, they’ve never been like this. And I’ve never gotten to visualize it while it was happening in real time.”
Boose grew up on the Lower East Side and attended the prestigious LaGuardia High School, where he studied vocals while tinkering with GarageBand and Logic in his bedroom. “I made the first few songs in a more shoegaze vein, and most of those songs aren’t even out,” he says. “And then I made the song ‘Caroline’ after listening to Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago album, and I’d like to think that’s the first good song I ever made.”
Released in mid-2022, “Caroline” is indeed a sparse, wrenched folk song that Boose posted to TikTok before going to bed one night, and woke up the next morning to find thousands of reactions. He dropped out of high school, signed a deal with Warner Records in early 2023, then spent roughly two years trying to get lightning to strike for a second time with a string of singles, to little avail.
Sombr, who still writes and produces all of his songs, says that he never got impatient while awaiting his breakthrough following his major label signing. “I was just making music,” he says, “and I’m a really hard worker. I like to think that, if you really put in the hours and manifest what you want, it will happen.” On the day that he made “Back to Friends” in his bedroom, he played the finished chorus back, and felt that, with this song, it was finally going to happen for him.
Released last December, “Back to Friends” is a swirl of shakers, dramatic piano chords, fuzzed-out vocals full of post-hookup anxieties and harmonies that lob out rhetorical questions on the chorus. Along with March’s “Undressed,” a ghostly warble-along with an equally outsized chorus, Sombr has reinvented his sound over the course of two songs, moving on from the hushed singles released post-“Caroline” and toward slick, slightly swaggering alt-pop.
“I think they gave me a platform to make more upbeat music,” he says of the two tracks. “Before ‘Back to Friends,’ all my music was very ballad-y — there was nothing with a beat. I was so tired of that. I feel like this is a lot more free, as far as the music I want to create. And I wanted my show to be more exciting. I didn’t want to just do ballads forever.”
After wrapping up his tour with Seavey last week, Sombr will next hit the road with Nessa Barrett, joining for a month-long European run that kicks off on May 26 in Dublin. Earlier this week, however, Sombr announced a fall headlining tour across North America that will start on Sept. 30 — and thanks to the surging momentum from “Back to Friends” and “Undressed,” pre-sale tickets apparently sold out within seconds. (“The response has been insane,” Sombr posted on Instagram. “I hear you all. I am working on upgrades and new dates. Stay posted.”)
And while Sombr says that a proper debut album is “definitely on the horizon,” he’s trying to savor this singular moment. “The last show in New York, it was the loudest it’s ever been, and I got it in the pit,” he says before letting out a quick laugh. “It’s getting wild, and I love it. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
David Thomas, the howling lead singer of long-running Cleveland-bred post-punk rockers Pere Ubu has died at 71. The band announced the news on its Facebook page on Wednesday (April 23), revealing that the leader of the group — as well as their equally noisesome precursor, Rocket From the Tombs — had died after an unspecified “long illness.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The tribute added, “On Wednesday, April 23 2025, he died in his home town of Brighton & Hove [in the U.K.], with his wife and youngest step-daughter by his side. MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be ‘thrown in the barn.’”
Trending on Billboard
The group noted that Thomas had been working on a new album with his band, aware that it would be his last. “We will endeavour to continue with mixing and finalising the new album so that his last music is available to all. Aside from that, he left instruction that the work should continue to catalog all the tapes from live shows via the official bandcamp page,” they said, adding that the singer’s autobiography was “nearly completed” and that they will finish it for him. They ended with a quote from Thomas, which they said, “sums up who he was better than we can”: “My name is David F–king Thomas… and I’m the lead singer of the best f–king rock n roll band in the world.”
David Lynn Thomas was born in Miami on June 14, 1953 and began his career in rock as the lead singer of the short-lived proto-punk Cleveland band Rocket From the Tombs after a stint writing for the Cleveland Scene alternative weekly newspaper under a variety of aliases, including Crocus Behemoth. Though they reveled in obscurity during their original one-year run from 1974-1975, and never released an album, the band’s distorted, frenzied sound — inspired by Detroit punk godfathers the MC5 and The Stooges — was a precursor to the worldwide punk revolution that exploded in the U.S. and U.K. in the mid-1970s.
After the band’s split, two members, guitarist Gene “Cheetah Chrome” O’Connor and drummer Johnny “Johnny Biltz” Madansky, went on to form legendarily shambolic Cleveland punk band the Dead Boys. Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner teamed up to launch the artier, spikier Pere Ubu, whose name wast a riff on the outré 19th century French play Ubu Roi.
The avant garde group inspired by the sound collage techniques of musique concrète released its debut single, “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” in late 1975 on Thomas’ indie label, Hearthan Records. After a handful of follow-up singles, their debut album, The Modern Dance, dropped in 1978, signaling a purposeful deep-dive into the noise pool from jump on album-opener “Non-Alignment Pact,” which begins with 20 seconds of ear-piercing tones. During a period when such soft rock air bubbles as Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” and America’s “Tin Man” were topping the charts, Thomas’ unhinged howl and saxophone/keyboard player Allen Ravenstine’s free jazz strangulated stabs and otherworldly synth tones were an astringent antidote to mainstream AM radio fluff.
With a three-guitar attack combined with Thomas’ yelping vocals and his very un-punk like insistence on wearing suit jackets and a tie on stage, the band cranked out a series of influential, though little-heard-at-the-time albums over the next four years. The LPs included 1978’s classic, Dub Housing and 1979’s New Picnic Time, experimental, chalkboard-scratching noise bombs that helped inspire future acolytes from Sonic Youth to the Pixies and Gang of Four. With a constantly rotating group of players surrounding Thomas — co-founder Laugher left after the band’s first few singles and died in 1977 of pancreatic cancer — the band released three more albums, 1979’s New Picnic Time, 1980’s The Art of Walking and 1982’s Song of a Bailing Man before breaking up.
Thomas continued his experimental journey on a series of solo albums with his bands the Pedestrians and and Wooden Birds in the 1980s, before reforming Pere Ubu in 1987 for the recording of The Tenement Year, which leaned in a distinctly more pop direction (at least compared to the band’s earlier work), followed by 1989s’s Cloudland. Pere Ubu continued into the 1990s and early 2000s, releasing a string of albums including 1995’s Ray Gun Suitcase, 2002 St. Arkansas and their 19th, and final, studio effort, 2023’s Trouble on Big Beat Street.
In between Pere Ubu projects, Smith stayed busy with solo albums, Rocket From the Tombs reunions and experimental theater projects.
Check out some of Smith’s joyful noise below.
Sammy Hagar‘s guitar playing on his upcoming single “Encore. Thank You. Goodnight.” was divinely inspired. That is, if you are one of the many who believe that his late Van Halen bandmate Eddie Van Halen was our greatest six-string god.
“About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came. We were in a room like this, [with] a bunch of people around. It was just like he’d been gone. It was not like he was passed, but he had just been out of my life and we hadn’t seen each other for a while,” Hagar told Ultimate Classic Rock about the inspiration for the song back in 2022. “He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, f–k it, man. Here, let’s go!’”
Hagar described huddling in a corner of a room with Van Halen — who died in Oct. 2020 due to complications from throat cancer at age 65 — and watching the guitar guru play him a lick that sounded just like “the last lick that Eddie Van Halen showed me, when I went back for the [2004] reunion tour and when he was a mess. I said, ‘Eddie, show me your newest s–t,’ because every time I’d be around him I’d say, ‘Show me your newest s–t.’ He’d say, ‘Oh, check this out!’”
Trending on Billboard
In the dream, Hagar said Van Halen showed him “this harmonic thing… he slid up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick.” The next morning, the veteran rock singer and guitarist said he got up and wrote the new song, which he titled, in part, “Thank You” because he’d used “the f–kin’ lick that he showed me in the song.”
And while the track came together too late to be included on Hagar’s 2022 Crazy Times album with his band the Circle, on Instagram earlier this week Hagar said he “can’t wait” for the world to finally hear his tribute to his late bandmate. Hagar took over as VH’s lead vocalist from 1985-1996 and again from 2003-2005, and like his predecessor, original VH singer David Lee Roth, had a sometimes contentious relationship with EVH. “I can’t wait for the world to hear this very special song Joe [Satriani] and I wrote as a long overdue thank you to Eddie Van Halen for the music, the good times, and the dream that inspired this track, ‘Encore, Thank You, Goodnight.’”
The post describes the song that also features Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff and former VH bassist Michael Anthony as “inspired by a dream and brought to reality through introspective lyrics, powerful chords and rhythmic guitar and drums.”
