Ultimate Playlist #8: The Damned – Smash It Up

Smash It Up

From The Damned’s 1979 album Machine Gun Etiquette (released 30 years ago this month) came Smash It Up. You may recognize it from the movie Batman Forever, where it was covered by The Offspring.

Top 10: Collaborations

Sometimes, when two bands love each other very much… an awesome song is born!

Musink Festival Bands Announced

Musink 2010 Poster

Next years Musink Festival in California will feature THE CULT, THE DAMNED, THE BUZZCOCKS, FACE TO FACE and THE HEAD CAT.

The Head Cat is the  Rockabilly Side Project of Lemmy (of Motorhead) Featuring drummer Slim Jim Phanton (of The Stray Cats) and guitarist Danny B. Harvey (of Lonesome Spurs and The Rockats)

Top 10: Cover Versions

Covers, some are good, some are bad and some are just plain terrible (Atreyu’s attempt at Bon Jovi classic “You Gave Love A Bad Name” for example), but i have compiled a list of the 10 most awesome covers ever recorded.

Black Stone Cherry – Glasgow Barrowlands – 17/10/09

The first show to sell out on Black Stone Cherry’s autumn tour was at the Glasgow Barrowlands, and I just happened to be there.

Openers The Parlor Mob, were… pretty average, they didn’t really do anything special and the crowd just didn’t seem into it.

Next up were Duff McKagan’s Loaded, and this set was very special to me. you see, the night before the show, i tweeted to Duff asking him to play new rose (The song by legendary punk band The Damned, also performed by Guns N’ Roses with Duff on Vocals) and before the gig my dad and I started speaking to the Loaded bassist ( really nice guy BTW) and turns out, Duff got my tweet and it was added to the setlist, needless to say i was over the moon, what made it even better was the absolutely fasntastic set that Loaded played, featuring songs such as Flatline, Dark Days, Sick and covers of Attitude by The Misfits, It’s So Easy by Gn’R (not to mention New Rose).

Then, the headliners took to the stage, straight into opener Rain Wizard, which sounded even better than on the album. Then during second song Backwoods Gold, the lights went out, as guitarist Ben Wells said, because “they were rocking so hard!” So the band played in the dark for the rest of their set, it really added to the atmosphere. Chris Robertson, Lead vocalist and guitarist looked overwhelmed with awe and gratitude as the fans basically sung every word of the set, the highlight was Peace Is Free, where he didn’t really have to sing at all. Their superb set included songs from their self titled debut album, Folklore & Superstition and even tracks from the re-release of  that album, plus they even threw in little snippets of Sweet Home Alabama, by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Voodoo Child by Jimi Hendrix. Black Stone Cherry are an unbelievable band and deserve every bit of praise they have ever got.

£15 a ticket for two awesome bands and one… not just as awesome, is fantastic value. This is the kind of thing that stay with you all your life, I know i wont ever forget it.