Monthly Archives: August 2020

Power Trip’s Riley Gale dead at 35 – Music News

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The thrash metal band’s frontman sadly passed away, aged 35, on August 24, his family has confirmed.

Riley’s bandmates Blake Ibanez, Chris Ulsh, Nick Stewart and Chris Whetzel have paid tribute to their “brother” and said they will “never forget the great works of music, charity, and love that he left behind”.

In a statement posted on the Dallas group’s social media pages, they wrote: “It is with the greatest of sadness we must announce that our lead singer and brother Riley Gale passed away last night.

“Riley was a friend, a brother, a son. Riley was both a larger than life rock star and a humble and giving friend. He touched so many lives through his lyrics and through his huge heart. He treated everyone he met as a friend and he always took care of his friends. We will celebrate Riley’s life and never forget the great works of music, charity, and love that he left behind. You, the fans, meant so much to him, please know how special you are. If you have a memory of Riley please share it, no matter how small, as we remember him.”

The ‘Firing Squad’ vocalist’s family have asked for privacy and for donations to Dallas Hope Charities in lieu of flowers.

They added: “Please respect our wishes for privacy during this time.

“In lieu of flowers please send donations to Dallas Hope Charities.”

Riley formed Power Trip in 2008, in between an office job and studying at University of North Texas.

The band have released two studio albums, 2013’s ‘Manifest Decimation’ and ‘Nightmare Logic’, and they were said to be working on a new record.

Power Trip have supported the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Anthrax, Suicidal Tendencies, Opeth and Hatebreed, to name a few.

Riley’s cause of death is unknown at the time of writing.



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Nicki Minaj wants jury trial to examine Tracy Chapman song lawsuit – Music News

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Nicki Minaj is pushing for a jury trial to determine the outcome of the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against her by singer Tracy Chapman.

The rapper was hit with the court action in October 2018, after New York DJ Funkmaster Flex obtained a copy of the song Sorry, which featured Minaj’s ex, hip-hop legend Nas, and contained a sample of Chapman’s 1988 track Baby Can I Hold You.

Minaj had previously insisted she did nothing wrong, arguing the sample falls under the fair use category of copyright law and requested the case be dismissed.

However, she has since decided to seek a jury trial to clear her name.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, in her latest legal filing, Minaj admits she had initially planned to leak the track to Funkmaster Flex, teasing the exclusive in a direct message via Instagram.

Sorry debuted on air a week later, and subsequently made its way to the Internet – prompting Chapman’s ire, but Minaj claims it didn’t come from her.

“At the time I sent these messages, I intended to send Flex a copy of Sorry to play on his radio program,” she testified.

“That day, however, I had a change of heart. I never sent the recording,” she told the court.

Flex also testified that he had obtained Sorry from one of his ‘bloggers’, not from the star or her recording engineer, who had been in the studio with the rappers at the time, and when Minaj heard the news, she warned him: “You can only play official album material sir.”

As a result, Minaj’s attorney Peter Ross argued the evidence: “in many instances directly contradicts Chapman’s story”, which “leaves open many possibilities as to ‘who done it (sic)?'”



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Liam Gallagher ‘not interested’ in a collaboration with rival Damon Albarn – Music News

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The ex-Oasis frontman was asked by his Twitter followers if he’d be up for teaming up with his former band’s biggest Britpop rivals Blur’s lead singer, but the ‘Some Might Say’ hitmaker was less than impressed.

When one follower pleaded: “collaborate with damon that’d be celestial bumbaclart etc (sic)”, Liam replied: “Nah not interested.”

Another Twitter user then suggested Liam should record a song with Damon’s cartoon band Gorillaz, to which he quipped: “Music for nerds and hipsters.”

The interest in a collaboration between the pair comes after Liam recently insisted he has never warred with Damon over a girl, after Noel Gallagher blamed the famous Oasis versus Blur feud on their falling out.

Noel claimed that the war between the two iconic bands in the 90s was caused by his estranged sibling, and Damon, 52, fighting over an unnamed woman.

But Liam soon shot down those claims, saying he and the ‘Song 2’ hitmaker – whom he jokingly called “Dermot Oblong” – have always been pals, and insisting it was Noel who started the feud with his infamous remark in which he wished Damon and his band mate Alex James would “get AIDS and die”.

Liam – who has been locked in a fierce feud with Noel since Oasis split in 2009 – tweeted: “Just for the record me and Dermot oblong never fell out over a girl or boy we always had the craic think things turned nasty when Noel Gallagher wished he Dermot caught AIDS and die not Rkid’s finest moment as you were LG x (sic)”

The ‘Shockwave’ hitmaker also denied Noel’s claim there was “a lot of cocaine involved” in the spat, as he insists he never partook in the illegal substance whilst spending time with Blur.

He added: “And I’ve never done cocaine with any of that lot out of blue Rkid you and your witch need to up yer game (sic)”

In Noel’s original comments, the Oasis songwriter-and-guitarist said: “Liam and Damon were sh****** the same bird and there was a lot of cocaine involved. That’s where the germ of it grew from.”

What’s more, Alan McGee – who signed Oasis to his Creation Records label – backed up Noel’s claims in quotes reportedly taken from a new book.

He said: “There was a situation with a girl. That created the Britpop war. Damon s****** somebody close to Liam. It was one of many women Damon was friendly with.

“Then he got off with her for a one-night stand and that created the rub. They were all goading each other after that.”

Liam has also responded to Alan’s claims, insisting he will “get slapped” if he doesn’t “keep [his] f****** mouth shut”.
He tweeted: “And as for you McGee you f****** wasp keep your f****** mouth shout about me or you’ll get slapped as you were LG x (sic)”



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Noah Cyrus pays tribute to late grandmother – Music News

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Noah Cyrus has paid an emotional tribute to her late grandmother Loretta Jean Palmer Finley, who passed away last week.

Noah’s sister Miley, 27, confirmed 85-year-old Loretta’s death in a post on Instagram over the weekend, but the younger Cyrus sibling did not immediately post her own tribute.

However, on Tuesday, the 20-year-old took to social media to honour the grandparent she called “Mammie,” telling fans that she was confident she was in heaven with the husband she lost to cancer more than three decades ago.

“Its taken me a few days to muster up something to say (sic),” Noah wrote next to a picture of Loretta as a young girl. “i lost my grama Mammie who was an angel before she gained her wings Wednesday night. there’s no woman or man that i will come across in this lifetime that has the heart my mammie had.

“Her dedication to God was more than i can explain through an instagram post. in a time so hard like this, the one thing keeping my mind somewhat at ease is that i know she’s finally met our Lord and Savior whom she worked so hard to praise his name every day of her life.

“Mammie lost her husband due to cancer when she was 50… she never loved again.. never wanted to… to this day she was still waiting to be reunited with her Glenmore in heaven. you made it home mammie… you made it to your paradise.”

The Make Me (Cry) hitmaker went on to tell her followers she was sure her grandmother would be “waiting at the gates” of heaven ready to hug her and the rest of her family when they passed on, but her “heart breaks” that she won’t hear or hug her until then.



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Van Morrison calls on musicians and industry to get full-capacity gigs running again – Music News

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Van Morrison has called on fellow musicians and industry folk to “speak up” to get full-capacity gigs back up and running again.

The ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ hitmaker is playing reduced capacity shows at Camden’s Electric Ballroom and The London Palladium in September, as well as The Virgin Money Unity Arena – the UK’s first socially-distanced music venue at Newcastle Racecourse – this month.

But the 74-year-old music legend has bemoaned the lack of effort from his fellow musicians and promoters in working to get normal shows back amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Morrison wrote on his website: “As you know, we are doing socially distanced gigs at Newcastle Upon Tyne’s Gosforth Park, Electric Ballroom and The London Palladium. This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs, this is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums. This is also not the answer going forward. We need to be playing to full capacity audiences going forward.

“I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this.”

Morrison insisted it only appears to be musical theatre legend Andrew Lloyd Webber and himself who are pushing for full-capacity concerts to resume, while he insisted it’s not “economically viable to do socially distanced gigs”.

He added: “Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and myself appear to be the only people in the music business trying to get it back up and running again.

“Come forward. It’s not economically viable to do socially distanced gigs. Come forward now, the future is now.”
Sam Fender played the first gig at The Virgin Money Unity Arena, and despite being sceptical at first, he admitted it was a “fantastic” experience.

The 26-year-old singer/songwriter played two homecoming shows at the outdoor venue in north east England, where audiences had their own viewing platforms which held five people and were spaced two metres apart, and he was pleased to “have [his] job back”.

He said: “I was like, ‘Of course I’ll do it. I don’t care what capacity we will do this in, in what format. I want to be on a stage with my band playing to some people.’

“Because I want my job back! I think everyone wants their job back.

“But obviously I was sceptical. It was like playing in front of the biggest human cattle market. But it was fantastic. Of course it’s not going to have the same vibe as a gig where there’s a mosh pit and then people having to go to the emergency room.”



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Iggy Pop’s cockatoo Biggy Pop named founding patron of Australia’s Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital – Music News

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The 73-year-old rock legend’s pet – which he adopted 12 years ago – has been given the role by the animal medical facility in New South Wales and explained that he accepted the appointment because of how devastated he was by the Australian bushfires earlier this year, which saw 180 million birds and three billion native animals in Australia, including kangaroos, die in the widespread blazes.

The Instagram-famous bird – who has more than 80,000 followers on the social media app – said: “I’m a bird, and a real wild one, and I have many cockatoo cousins in Australia.

“I was so distressed to hear that 180million birds died in the catastrophic bushfire crisis that killed over 3billion native animals in Australia.

“Being Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital’s founding patron means I can connect with and support my friends and relatives in the magical land of Oz.

“My dad Iggy has visited Australia many times including to perform twice at Byron Bay Bluesfest. He told me it’s a really cool place where people care for nature and love music, dancing, art and creativity. It sounds like my kind of place.”

In a video announcement, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ hitmaker Iggy said: “About 12 years ago, a roadside vendor in a remote part of Florida stuffed Biggy, who was very young, into a tiny cafe alongside some chickens, by the side of the road.

“He seemed [to] be in peril of a bad future. So we decided to take care of him, responsibly. And we have. He gets, and gives a lot of love.”

Dr. Stephen Van Mil, the founder of Byron Bay Wildlife Hospital, added: “When we heard that Iggy cares as much about wildlife as we do, it made perfect sense for Biggy Pop to be our founding Patron.

“We are over the moon and truly honoured that he’s the bird to help us spread the word.”



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BBC – Music – Review of Rumer

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On Boys Don’t Cry, the follow-up to her million-selling 2010 debut Seasons of My Soul, Rumer has recorded versions of tracks written by men in the 1970s. It doesn’t quite have the subversive qualities that Tori Amos’ similarly themed 2001 album Strange Little Girls had – with the possible exception of her take on Neil Young’s A Man Needs a Maid, where the sense and meaning of the original are somewhat altered by its being performed by a woman in 2012.

Often, with its covers of songs by Todd Rundgren, Hall & Oates, Stephen Bishop, Paul Williams, Clifford T Ward, Gilbert O’Sullivan and Jimmy Webb, Boys Don’t Cry feels like Rumer’s deep immersion in the pantheon of arcane US and UK MOR rock prompted her to construct an alternative canon of commercial tunesmiths requiring critical rehabilitation. In almost every instance she inhabits the songs to such an extent that they feel like her own compositions, even when the titles at first seem inappropriate.

Williams’ Travelin’ Boy is one of two tracks here by a songwriter formerly covered by Karen Carpenter, whose voice Rumer’s resembles to an uncanny degree. Not for nothing did she recently receive the approbation of Richard Carpenter to go along with her plaudits from Elton John and Burt Bacharach. 

The object of the project was, she says, to make a record that described the solace and anguish she’s experienced since achieving success and fame. Hence all the songs – including Travelin’ Boy, Ward’s Home Thoughts From Abroad and Flyin’ Shoes by Townes Van Zandt – about rootlessness and longing to be home. 

It goes without saying that Rumer’s performances are uniformly technically flawless and models of restraint. Boys Don’t Cry works superbly as a companion piece to Seasons…, the harmonic richness of the music and lush chord sequences showing exactly where her allegiances lie: Be Nice to Me is Rumer doing Rundgren doing Laura Nyro doing Bacharach, and Travelin’ Boy suggests an album’s worth of collaborations with the composer of Rainy Days and Mondays would be no bad thing. 

Boys Don’t Cry posits Rumer as a throwback, albeit a glorious one, to a bygone era, when the songwriting verities of the Brill Building were transposed to LA’s Laurel Canyon. Fabulous stuff.



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Burna Boy hails himself a ‘spiritual’ musician – Music News

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The ‘On The Low’ star doesn’t like his releases to be compared to one another and says each album is about immortalising a period of his life.

He explained: “This is the mistake people make, I’m not a modern-day artist, I am a spiritual musician.

“I do not put projects together and release them so they can be compared to each other.

“I release them because that is how I am feeling in that part of my life.

“Making that project and pouring it all in there, just makes that time of my life immortal.”

The Nigerian hitmaker recently released his fifth studio album, ‘Twice As Tall’ – which features the likes of Chris Martin and Stormzy – and he says there was no other person suited to the role of executive producer than his pal, Diddy, because he “understands the need for a bridge to be built between every black person” in “every continent in the world”.

Burna added to TIDAL’s Check In series: “There’s no other person I could think of at that time that could bring to life the vision I already had, especially because he’s someone that also understands the need for a bridge to be built between every black person in every continent in the world, so this is just kind of setting that pace.”

In a press release for the record, the Grammy-nominated singer stated that the record is about “the struggle for freedom”.

He said: “‘Twice As Tall’ is the album about a period of time in my life. It’s the album about the struggle for freedom. It’s the album about life in general, real life, good times, bad times, happy times, sad times, great times.”



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BBC – Music – Review of Sugar

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The music and influence of the pioneering Minneapolis hardcore band Hüsker Dü was investigated brilliantly in Michael Azerrad’s 2001 book on the 80s alternative underground, Our Band Could Be Your Life. But for Bob Mould, Hüsker Dü was his life – and going on the stories, tales of financial penury, addiction and interminable band squabbling, it was a pretty miserable existence

His work with Sugar – the power trio he formed in 1992, four years after Hüsker Dü’s demise – feel like an attempt to wash away the angst of the post-punk years, to try on a sunny expression and see how it felt. And while Sugar were themselves short-lived, their music, particularly that collected on excellent debut album Copper Blue, sounded like salvation.

Copper Blue hit it big, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and scoring NME’s 1992 Album of the Year. In part, this was down to timing. The alternative rock movement that Hüsker Dü helped usher in was booming, thanks to the stratospheric success of Nirvana’s Nevermind. But Copper Blue also contains some of Mould’s brightest, most brilliant writing.

Subject-wise, it is not exactly light: the Pixies-esque A Good Idea is the tale of a man who drowns his lover, and The Slim recounts the death of a friend from AIDS. But the arrangements froth with melodies, gold-plated choruses stretch out a mile, and an expanded instrumental palette – witness the synthesisers and harpsichords that adorn the lilting, 60s-tinged Hoover Dam – mean each song comes out gleaming with a rare lustre.

This generously expanded edition brings with it a wealth of extra material, including numerous B sides (including a fine solo mix of the breezy, acoustic If I Can’t Change Your Mind), a four-track BBC session and, on a second disc, a live set from the Cabaret Metro in Chicago.

Those that adore Copper Blue are also directed towards the following year’s Beaster EP, songs from the same sessions but of a darker hue. Similarly reissued in expanded form it presents proof that, even on sunnier days, Mould still had angst to burn.



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Katy Perry: ‘Pregnancy has affected my voice’ – Music News

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Katy Perry’s pregnancy weight gain has forced her to change her singing voice by “a couple of keys”.

The Teenage Dream singer has been busy promoting her new album Smile, which will be released on Friday, and in an interview with The Associated Press, the 35-year-old, who is engaged to actor Orlando Bloom and close to giving birth to a baby girl, explained being pregnant has had a small effect on her famous vocals.

“It’s interesting having 45 extra pounds just kind of like sitting on you; 30 of that is just right here on my lung capacity,” she told the publication. “It’s not been too challenging, but I’ve definitely had to change a couple of keys. But I think that’s just because of the physical intensity of it.”

Reflecting on her comeback record, three years after her album Witness flopped, Katy described it as “a record full of hopefulness and resilience and a little bit of joy and some fun,” adding that she has been working very hard to promote it.

“I’ve been so active. I’ve been doing the most,” the Roar singer insisted. “I go to the opening of every Zoom link. I am a mom on the move. I am promoting. Do not say that I did not work hard! I worked hard for this moment! I worked hard! Created a life; I worked hard! I do my part!”

Elsewhere in the interview Katy discussed her postponed wedding plans.

“We have ideas but anyone that makes plans in 2020 is just a little LOL (laugh out loud). There’s bigger things going on in the world,” she said. “I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, how sad is it that I had to postpone or cancel or whatever.’ It’s so many other horrible things going on. What we’re hoping for is just a safe, healthy baby. That’s the next thing on the calendar that we can look forward to.”



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