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Red Hot Chili Peppers Join Long List Of Bands That Almost Broke Up

Posted 6/27/11 11:18 am EST by in Breakups, red-hot-chili-peppers


flea

By Zachary Swickey

Flea, the rambunctious bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers has revealed through an interview with Spinner that he recently thought about quitting the band and leaving his tighty-whitey stage antics behind him.

He said he asked his compatriots for a two year sabbatical in order to regroup his thoughts. “We’ve been going really hard for a lot of years with small breaks here and there, but never a major break,” Flea said. “And I just felt like I wanted to take two years away just to really look and see if the band was something we should be doing.”

Flea attributes his friendship with lead singer Anthony Kiedis, which dates back to childhood, as an inspiration and big reason for his decision to continue making music. “I said, ‘Together let’s do this, let’s make this album, I love you, and let’s f**king rock.’ And as cliché as that might sound, I think for us as a band, and for he and I, both of us, we decided to do it.”

As most RHCP fans are already aware, the group plans on releasing their new album, I’m With You, on Aug. 30, their first with new ex-Warpaint guitarist Josh Klinghoffer – who replaces John Frusciante, who left the group in 2009.

The near-breakup experience of the Red Hot Chili Peppers seems to be a rite of passage that almost every band faces. Some almost breakup in between every album they create. Here are some more groups that claim they almost didn’t make it for a variety of different reasons. Read More...

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MTV's Musical March Madness: Foo Fighters Vs. The Damned Things, Dave Matthews Band Vs. Disturbed

Posted 3/14/11 10:30 am EST by in Music


It's MTV's second annual Musical March Madness! MTV News took the 64 biggest names in rock, split them up into four regions, assigned them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 64, so over the next few weeks, fan voting will determine who will emerge as this year's champion. It's all about the fans, and the artist with the most passionate fan base will score the awesome Musical March Madness trophy!

On Sunday night (March 13), the NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket was revealed to the world. For hoops fans, it was one of the strangest in recent memory, as there were a number of teams who were considered locks that probably don't belong there (we're looking at you, Clemson and Illinois), while a handful of deserving clubs with superior pedigrees ended up on the outside looking in (the selection committee seemed to underrate the ACC this year, as both Virginia Tech and Boston College should have made it but did not).

Meanwhile, the 2011 MTV Musical March Madness bracket is finally here as well, with far fewer controversial choices embedded within it. The voting for this year's tournament kicks off with the Midwest region, which features some of the tournament's heaviest hitters (including defending champs Coheed and Cambria). Voting for all of the first round match-ups will go until Sunday night (March 20), and we'll reveal the next round of match-ups next Monday (March 21). Let's get to the action!

(1) Foo Fighters vs. (16) The Damned Things
Foo Fighters come into the bracket partially based on legacy (they have been one of the most consistent rock bands of the past decade, delivering hit after hit and sold-out stadium after sold-out stadium) but mostly based on the anticipation over their new album Wasting Light (which just had its first video premiere on MTV last week). Meanwhile, the Damned Things are a pack of upstarts looking for an upset, hoping to galvanize fans of hard music as well as the followers of their individual source bands (including Anthrax, Every Time I Die and Fall Out Boy). Can they upend one of the biggest names in rock? Only you can decide!

(8) Dave Matthews Band vs. (9) Disturbed
Though Dave Matthews Band have decided to take most of 2011 off, they still command a ton of respect and remain one of the most successful touring bands in the world. In the opposite corner stands Disturbed, one of the few bands from the nü-metal era to not only survive but also evolve into a modern rock juggernaut. Will DMB score a victory for jam enthusiasts, or does Disturbed simply rock too hard? You make the call!

Check out the Musical March Madness bracket and be sure to check in on photos of some of the biggest bands in the tournament.

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Spotted: Dave Matthews Stays Extra Cool At 'Just Go With It' Premiere

Posted 2/9/11 12:30 pm EST by in Music


Every day a multitude of stars wander through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with our intrepid correspondents. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.

Dave Matthews continues to make a name for himself as the leader of one of the most popular touring bands in the universe, but in the past few years he has spread his wings a bit as an actor. His roots go deep, as he worked a lot on stage before his band took off, and his film work continues to grow and evolve. Though some of his roles have been gimmicky, his roles in the film "Because of Winn-Dixie" and on the television show "House" were both complex and convincing. But a bunch of his credits come from Adam Sandler comedies (he has been in both "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" and "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"), and Matthews appears in the forthcoming "Just Go With It" (which opens on Friday, February 11). The film had its New York premiere on a chilly red carpet on Tuesday night (February 8th), where Matthews chatted alongside fellow co-stars Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker and Nicole Kidman (who plays Matthews' wife). In the meantime, the Dave Matthews Band is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and though they won't be touring, they will be hosting a series of events over the summer to commemorate the occasion.

Matthews wasn't the only star in the field, as "Glee" star Chris Coolfer paid a visit to "The Late Show With David Letterman" in New York, while Janet Jackson hit the stage in Jakarta, Indonesia. Click here for these photos as well as the entire "Spotted" archive, which features over 500 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Eminem, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Jay-Z, the Jonas Brothers, Mariah Carey and Kanye West!

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Coming Back To The Dave Matthews Band

Posted 11/10/10 5:00 pm EST by in Music


The year was 1998. I was 16 years old, and though my music taste erred more on the side of punk and metal, there were a series of holes that allowed for the jam universe to sneak in. I was still a few months away from being eyeball-deep in Phish bootlegs, but I had already embraced the Dick's Picks series of Grateful Dead live tapes, and I had also become an enthusiastic follower of Dave Matthews Band. I had never thought much of the songs DMB managed to get on the radio (they seemed like a slightly funkier Hootie and the Blowfish to me at the time), but a friend had put me on to their already-vast well of live shows, which allowed for a lot of exploration and fusion jams.

I went to my first DMB show in 1998 at the Meadows Music Theater in Hartford, Connecticut. The band had just released Before These Crowded Streets, an album that was at times much darker and more complicated than anything they had done before (though I hated the single "Don't Drink the Water," a stance on which I later softened). The show was killer, as they blew through some great tunes from the new album as well as older stuff that had morphed into far more interesting iterations than their recorded versions would suggest (this was especially true of the gorgeous, ever-evolving "Seek Up").

I became a regular at DMB shows, hitting up the Hartford shows every summer (they usually did two or three at a time) and trading recordings online (and this was in the pre-high speed era, which meant that I actually traded tapes and CDs via the U.S. mail, a practice that now seems utterly absurd). But somewhere along the line, I drifted away from the Dave Matthews Band. I became less and less interested in their studio albums and found that the shows had become more and more unruly (a strange development for a band that was usually so laid back). In general, my tastes simply shifted (this was around 2001; I also stopped listening to Phish and the Dead around the same time). On Tuesday, the band released their umpteenth official live recording Live in New York City, which captures a show at Citi Field in New York from only a few months ago. On a whim, I decided to give it a spin and see if they still had the magic. After all, how could something I was once so devoted to be all that alien to me now?

Yes and no. The set contained within Live in New York City is heavy on songs from the era when I last listened, and a lot of the jamming still sounds strong (even without late member LeRoi Moore). I found that I still love the songs I used to love (I had forgotten how lovely a song "The Stone" is) and was amazed that I still recognized the "Dixie Chicken" reference at the end of "Crash Into Me." But the stuff that drove me away was still there: I still have no use for "Stay (Wasting Time)" (which is apparently still one of the band's signature songs) and nine minutes of "Warehouse" is still eight minutes too many of "Warehouse." But hey, "Ants Marching" is still pretty swell.

Strangely, I realized that the Dave Matthews Band are the rare jam group who rely on the strength of their songs as opposed to the jams. The extended plays are almost uniformly excellent, but they really rely on the big moments when the chorus comes back in and the melody takes over from the jam (Phish, for example, rely on this a lot less, if only because they aren't nearly as good with melody as Mr. Matthews).

So what did I learn? I still don't feel as strongly as I did about the Dave Matthews Band as I did 12 years ago, but a good song is still a good song no matter how much time has elapsed.

That's my story, so how about yours? Have you tried to come back to a band you used to love? What were the results? Why did you drift in the first place? Share your story in the comments!

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Dave Matthews Band Start Dreaming: Wake-Up Video

Posted 9/27/10 8:30 am EST by in Wake-Up Video


Back when the Dave Matthews Band first made a splash on the national music scene, who would have thought that they would eventually blossom into the stadium-packing powerhouse they currently are? Not only did DMB develop a rightfully-earned reputation for being a killer live act (blending together elements of rock, jazz, funk and borrowed bits of rhythmic influences from around the world), but they also managed to become a modern rock radio-ruling juggernaut with a boatload of big singles and a healthy dose of chart-topping albums. Their rise to the top of the commercial ladder began on this day in 1994, when their first studio album Under the Table and Dreaming was released.

Produced by Steve Lillywhite, Under the Table and Dreaming managed not only to capture the band's effervescent live presence but also harnessed Matthews' impressive skills as a songwriter. People flocked to Under the Table and Dreaming because the melodies were sweet and easy and the choruses were begging to be shouted out loud. Tracks like "What Would You Say" (the first single and the hit that gave them a foothold on radio and MTV), "Satellite" and "The Best of What's Around" had an easy energy, buoyed by Matthews rugged acoustic guitar work, a steady rhythm section and the clever interplay between the violin and saxophone (provided by Boyd Tinsley and the late LeRoi Moore, respectively).

The band never stopped grinding out hits. Their follow-up album, Crash, was an even bigger hit, spawning singles like "Crash Into Me" and "Too Much." And despite occasional solo albums and side projects, they've managed to stay together (they had a chart-topping album in 2009 with Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King). But it all got started with Under the Table and Dreaming, which contained one of the band's biggest hits and also a live staple in "Ants Marching."

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50 Cent May Join Eminem, Dave Matthews Band In Scrapped Album Hall Of Fame

Posted 7/19/10 3:00 pm EST by in Music


Putting together an album can be a grueling experience, especially for rappers. Nailing the delicate chemistry required to match the music to the concept can be psychologically taxing, and at the end of the day, all you have to go by are your thoughts and inspirations. Many artists compare crafting an album to child birth, and while it is a joyous occasion, there is plenty of pain, discomfort and change involved any time anybody steps into a studio.

So it's always a little bit remarkable that some artists will leave entire albums behind for the sake of some other project. 50 Cent is the latest such artist to shelve a nearly-complete album, as he revealed that he thinks he might leave the experimental Black Magic behind in favor of a more traditional hip-hop album. He told Rolling Stone Brasil that he was going to put out another album before he got around to Black Magic, though there aren't any formal release dates for any of 50's upcoming projects.

Tellingly, he compared himself to Eminem, who shelved Relapse 2 in favor of the chart-topping Recovery late last year. There are plenty of other artists who have left fully-formed work behind in favor of other projects. Here are the best (and most notorious).

Dave Matthews Band
When the platinum-selling jammers wrapped up the touring cycle for their third studio album Before These Crowded Streets, the Dave Matthews Band settled into the studio with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite to start work on their fourth album. But once the initial recordings were made, the group decided they weren't happy with the new material and left the album behind. They ended up teaming up with producer Glen Ballard to craft Everyday, a departure from their normal sound that centered around Matthews' baritone electric guitar. The Lillywhite recordings made their way online (they became known as The Lillywhite Sessions) and became popular with fans. Since some of those songs (including "Grey Street" and "Grace is Gone") became live staples, the group ended up revisiting many of the Lillywhite tunes for their fifth album Busted Stuff.

Beach Boys
After the success of the Beach Boys' hit "Good Vibrations" in 1966, troubled genius Brian Wilson set out to craft an album he described as "a teenage symphony to God." Read More...

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M.I.A. Joins The Pantheon Of Absurd Album Titles

Posted 5/12/10 5:15 pm EST by in Music


M.I.A. is one of the music world's most colorful personalities, and her fashion sense, visual flair penchant for melding together disparate styles of electronic music into a rugged stew have kept her in the conversation since she first dropped her debut album Arular back in 2005. She just let the world know the title of her new album, and it's worthy of a double-take. The record, which will hit stores in July, will be called /\/\/\Y/\. Sure, it sort of spells out her name (her government moniker is Maya Arulpragasam), but it's mostly just a bunch of slashes with a "Y" tossed in there for good measure.

In fact, it immediately ascends onto the list of these confounding album titles that are either bizarre, uncomfortable or simply unpronounceable.

Limp Bizkit, Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water
For a band whose signature song was called "Nookie," Limp Bizkit crammed an awful lot of words into their chart-topping third album. Though everybody assumed that the phrases "chocolate starfish" and "hotdog flavored water" referenced some sort of truly heinous sex act, it was never actually clarified by Fred Durst. (It's probably safe to assume the same of their upcoming album Gold Cobra.)

Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King
Sure, it's a loving tribute to late DMB saxophonist LeRoi Moore, but like the Bizkit album before it, Big Whiskey has way, way too many words in it. Still, like Chocolate Starfish, it managed to top the charts, proving that the lengthy name of your album doesn't necessarily disqualify you for success.

John Frusciante, Various Albums
The former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist has floated in and out of that band for nearly two decades, and in between funky jams with Anthony Kiedis, Chad Smith and Flea, he put out a steady stream of bizarre solo albums with even weirder titles. Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt is a monster of nonsense (especially considering the song title "Your P---y's Glued to a Building on Fire"), as are Shadows Collide with People and To Record Only Water for Ten Days.

Prince, "Symbol"
The Purple One had a bit of an identity crisis once the '90s rolled around. His second album with the New Power Generation was titled an unpronounceable symbol — a symbol that Prince later used as a name, which is why he was known as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" for a while. It's a shame, because "Symbol" contains some great mid-period tunes like "7" and "Sexy MF," but it's damn-near impossible to sort.

Fiona Apple, When the Pawn...
Apple's legendary sophomore album (which remains grotesquely underrated) was known as When the Pawn... but actually had a title that was over 400 characters long. It's an eight line poem that Apple wrote in response to letters she read about herself in Spin magazine. She held the record for the longest album title ever recorded until 2008, when Chumbawumba (no, seriously) put out an album that had an 865 character title (perhaps one for each copy sold).

Aerosmith, Honkin' on Bobo
Who is poor Bobo, and why are we honkin' on him? And why did Aerosmith record a bunch of blues standards in the first place? These are the questions the Hard Rock Monks meditate on, never coming to any conclusions but getting pretty spacey in the process.

What are your favorite over-the-top album titles? Let us know in the comments!

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Slayer, Megadeth Dusting Off Old Albums For 'Carnage' Tour

Posted 4/26/10 5:15 pm EST by in Music


They say that everything old will eventually become new again. That's true for Slayer and Megadeth, two metal giants who first ascended to stardom in the heaviness-happy 1980s and who are headed out on tour together on a bill called the Carnage Tour (split up into two legs: Canadian Carnage and American Carnage). In addition to ear-shredding riffage from their most recent albums (Slayer's underrated 2009 slice of savagery World Painted Blood and Megadeth's epic 2009 release Endgame), the two powerhouses will also run through two of their classic albums top-to-bottom. Slayer will roll through their 1990 classic Seasons in the Abyss (a crossover hit that established band classics like "Dead Skin Mask" and the title track) while Megadeth will tackle 1990's Rust in Peace (guitarist Dave Mustaine's post-rehab album that featured the hit "Hangar 18").

It's not only the 20th anniversary of the release of those albums, but the Carnage tour will also commemorate the last time the pair toured (that would be the Clash of the Titans tour, which also featured Anthrax and Alice in Chains). Unlike many aging rockers, both Slayer and Megadeth still absolutely cook live (Slayer are especially savage), so the Carnage tour should be a fantastic headbanging night.

The "play a whole classic album in its entirety" gimmick has been done countless times before by everybody from Sonic Youth to the Pixies to Jay-Z, but it's one that always seems to work. In fact, here are a few summer tours that should dip their toes in the full-album waters. (And for the record, if they were to recruit Anthrax and Alice in Chains for Clash of the Titans II, Anthrax would have to Persistence of Time and Alice in Chains would have to do Facelift, both of which came out in 1990.)

Paramore
They'll be moving the country on the Honda Civic Tour this summer, which also features Tegan and Sara and New Found Glory. They probably wouldn't have time for such a stunt, but their most recent album Brand New Eyes is so well-constructed and paced that it would make for a remarkable front-to-back performance experience.

Dave Matthews Band
Since DMB usually rely on extended jams and more free-form movement, playing through a whole album seems antithetical to their whole aesthetic. But just because they're playing through an album doesn't mean they can't extend the songs on one of their classic albums. The varied, flowing, moody Before These Crowded Streets would make the most sense, but it's also hard to argue with the group playing through Busted Stuff or their classic breakthrough Under the Table and Dreaming.

Pearl Jam
The veteran Seattle warriors are heading through North American and Europe this spring and summer, and while they recently celebrated the anniversary of the release of their classic debut Ten, Peal Jam should pay homage to their legendary 1994 album Vitalogy, which has always gotten short shrift. Read More...

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The Most Environmentally Unfriendly Moments In Rock History

Posted 4/22/10 12:45 pm EST by in Music


Musicians have been conscious of the environment since long before the first Earth Day in 1970, and many artists (including Jack Johnson and Pearl Jam) have taken active steps to help improve the environment and decrease their impact on the Earth while out on the road. (Touring, on the whole, is an incredibly destructive force that soaks up gasoline, releases poisonous gasses into the air and leaves a trail of trash wherever tour buses tend to roll.) But even though those artists are tree-friendly, there have been a handful of moments in rock history that could be considered Earth un-friendly.

The CD Longbox
When compact discs first hit the market back in the 1980s, they came housed in narrow foot-long cardboard boxes that then held the plastic CD case. Theoretically, they were meant to slide into the same sort of racks that held vinyl records (which were slowly being phased out) and also helped to prevent shoplifting. Though they usually had full-color artwork, they were almost always thrown away because it was impossible to store them anywhere. They were finally discontinued in 1993 over environmental concerns, but if you go to your local landfill and dig deep enough, you can probably still spot something like this.

Woodstock '99
When Woodstock was resurrected for a 30th anniversary version in 1999, it put thousands of people in the middle of upstate New York and let them destroy farmland, swim around in overflowing Port-A-Potties, leave piles and piles of trash behind and, in the end, light everything on fire. Read More...

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MTV News' Musical March Madness: Phish Vs. MMJ, DMB Vs. Them Crooked Vultures

Posted 3/23/10 12:10 pm EST by in Music


It's Musical March Madness! The sprawling bracket — both a parody and a tribute to the NCAA basketball tournament, masterminded by MTV News' James Montgomery — takes the 65 biggest names in rock, splits them up into four regions, assigns them seeds and puts them up against one another in a single-elimination series of match-ups in a winner-take-all contest. We're leaving it to you to decide an actual champ in this field of 65. Over the next few weeks, we will present a series of polls that will allow you to vote for the match-ups presented in MTV News' Band Bracketology. You vote for the winners, we'll keep advancing the seeds and, in the end, we'll have some sort of champion. What will the winner receive? Little more than our esteem (as well as that of the fans) and some Internet bragging rights.

The voting in the South region is already heating up, so let's get to our next two opening round match-ups.

(3) Dave Matthews Band vs. (14) Them Crooked Vultures
A cluster of rock veterans going head-to-head here, and DMB's constantly evolving sound and vision goes up against the supergroup composed of Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. That's a lot of rocking experience in a single power trio, but DMB have seven studio albums, a ton of live recordings and legions of devoted followers behind them. Will that stand strong against the power of the underdog Vultures?

(6) Phish vs. (11) My Morning Jacket
The jam kings are probably ranked a little too low (though they did score a higher seed than the University of Vermont), and they've got some stiff competition with the also jam-centric My Morning Jacket. My Morning Jacket probably have the better records (they put out the best Prince album the Purple One never made in 2008's Evil Urges), but Phish host their own three-day festivals. Who will reign supreme?

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