illegal wood?

Gibson Guitars was recently raided by police on claims of illegal wood usage. The American police is investigating the company for allegedly using illegal wood to make its instruments. The company states that "Gibson is a chain of custody certified buyers that purchases wood from legal suppliers who are to follow all standards."

This whole issue makes me wonder if there's such thing as illegal wood use? I personally have never heard of anything like that before. Gibson has always made outstanding guitars so this might be the reason why they sound so good lol.

Do you guys think this is a big deal considering there's a lot more bigger problems in today's world to deal with?

I hope this doesn't effect Gibson's quality in guitars.

our saviour Epitaph

In a time period where neon/crunkcore/electro/pop bands are being labelled as apart of the "punk scene", it leaves little room for the bands in the "scene" who have been around for a long time that don't adapt to these ridiculous changes. With all these older bands not doing as sucessful anymore thanks for kids only accepting the new trend, it makes us wonder whats going to happen to these bands since they're all getting dropped from their record labels or are now free agents with no where to go. Luckily the long time popular record label Epitaph is still around to support. The label is founded/operated by the god fathers of punk rock, Bad Religion. The were originally known as a punk rock label but they've expanded over time without losing their roots though. Recently the label has signed the bands Thursday, New Found Glory, Every Time I Die, and Story Of The Year. All of those bands were previously popular but have faded as the scene evolved to something ridiculous and they did decided to stick to their guns instead. Epitaph has saved the careers of these amazing bands at tough times like these which is why to me they're considered our saviour of the "scene".

Just this week, the label picked up another great band who is running into the same problems with today's music. They signed the band Alkaline Trio. I'm personally excited to hear another reason from them and i'm glad they're now on a label that cares about music regardless of popularity.
Have a listen to Alkaline Trio here if you've never heard of them:


What do you guys think of today's current music trends?

Digital Tattoos

A digital tattoo interface is perfect for people who want a tattoo but don't want anything permanent. It seems silly to do but it's doable now. The crazy part of it is that it powers itself by converting the glucose and oxygen found in blood into electricity.

You can read the full article HERE.

Would you considering getting something like this or just stick to the real thing?

Kill Hannah robbed

Kill Hannah's van and trailer with over $120,000 in gear and merch inside were stolen from outside of their hotel in Philadelphia.
You can see the band's Twitter post about it HERE.

With all the recent thefts that have been hitting bands lately, what do you think should be done to help prevent terrible situations like these? Something definitely needs to be done whether it's different methods, security, or whatever. Lets hear your thoughts.

In case you've never heard of Kill Hannah before, check this out:

no more Steven Tyler

After a countless amount of years and albums, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has quit the band. Joe Perry wants to still continue on with the band though.
Is there even a point to this? In my opinion, Steven Tyler was the band and Aerosmith will now just be a cover band of itself.
What are your thoughts?

Here's the full article of the story - http://www.nme.com/news/aerosmith/48286

punk's not dead?

I recently read that Jim Lindberg, the singer of punk rock band Pennywise, has recently quit the band after being the original singer for 20 years. Even with losing a valuable part of Pennywise, the band has stated that they will continue to write new music and perform. I'm not sure how i feel about this considering Jim was the heart of the band. I grew up listening to this band and would always goto their concerts back in the day. The amount of energy and power that Jim brought feels irreplaceable for that band.

If any of you guys were fans of this band, what do you all think of this situation?

This was one of my favourite songs by them that got me into the band:


Here's an article about Jim Lindberg leaving the band:
http://www.epitaphblog.com/?p=2440

another supergroup

When you take members of 3 talented/respected/popular bands, you end up forming one supergroup. Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age), John Paul Jones (Led Zepplin), and Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) have all joined forced to for the band Them Crooked Vultures. There's been a lot of buzz about them among the industry and music zines. Check out a fan filmed live video here:

Their debut album is expected to be out at the end of October and you can already tell that this is going to be a highy anticipated album!

Just to brighten the day some more, here's a pretty entertaining Belly Flop Remix clip:

Who doesn't enjoy seeing a belly flop? come on! lol =)

People still buying CDs

I normally never look at weekly Sound Scans for album sales but I was curious this week just to see how CDs are selling these days. I find it crazy how Michael Jackson's albums (yes multiples) are still dominating the charts and selling a ridiculous amount. His "Number Ones" best of album sold 80,774 copies this week. It's obvious that his death played the main part of all his albums selling but even after about 2 months from his death, he's still selling albums like crazy.

It's great to see how bands on indie labels are album to sell just as well as major label artists as well. Cobra Starship's new album, Hot Mess, had impressive first week numbers with 45,205 albums sold. That's a great number considering it's a non-major label artist and people tend to not really buy CDs these days.

Check out this link to see what other albums are selling and what not - http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/sales/salescht.cgi

newnewnew + some laughs

I was browsing around Youtube earlier today and found the new Paramore single finally released a music video for it. It looks like the band went into a darker and claustrophobic direction with this video. I applaud the band for trying something new and looking into different directons with their career. With any band, progression is important and really shows the amount of talent you have if you can pull it off well. I personally think this song and video is great!
Have a look:


Aside from the music, I also found a clip i've been laughing about for a while. Any of you guys fans of the TV show Kenny VS Spenny? If you've never heard of it, do yourselves a favour and make an effort to watch it! It's one of the funniest shows to come out of Canada. The basic concept of the show is 2 guys going head to head in each episode competing in ridiculous challenges that end up being hilarious. The loser ends up being humiliated in someway.
The video i'm laughing at is one of the main characters, Kenny Hotz, getting harrassed in public. If you know the type of person Kenny is on the show, then you'll likely know what to expect from him in any situation!
Check it out:

pimp my microphone

Remember that blog i wrote about Vince Neil? Well, I was looking at his stage equipment recently out of curiousity and one thing that caught my attention was the customized Sennheiser microphones he uses. These are probably the most fancy microphones I've ever seen! Have a look at these:




Pretty awesome huh?!

Speaking of Sennheiser, they're actually doing a tour across North America at the moment promoting their headphones. They'll likely have giveaways and what not too when they make it to your town. Check out all the info here - http://www.sennheisersoundtour.com/facebook

from reality to the gaming environment

The Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchise are a popular part of pop culture these days. The games are a huge outlet for promotion/advertisement and have helped gain popularity for many bands. People every where are developing massive hand cramps from button mashing the plastic guitar.
Many who are against the games have problems with people wasting their time thinking they're rockstars by mastering a fake guitar when they could be dedicating that effort towards a real guitar. With that being said, now both worlds can meet up in the middle and compromise. Someone has modded a real guitar to work on the Nintendo Wii version of Guitar Hero. The Guitar is connected with the Wiimote and is plugged into an amp.
Check out this video to see it in action:


Hardcore Guitar Hero and Rock Band gamers can only hope that one day their plastic guitars can be plugged into an amp and work in reality.

80s hair metal flashback

Remember an era of guys with crazy/huge/long hair, women's/gaudy clothing, and eyeliner? Sounds a lot like the trend going on these days but it's not quite what i'm talking about. The only other time period would be the 80's where "hair (glam) metal" dominated the scene. One of the biggest bands in that scene was Motley Crue, who were known for their crazy antics and hits songs like "Girls Girls Girls". It's a good time to reflect on this wild band that continues to tour, write music, and influence a new generation of bands. As well as having their songs continue to carry on to this time period's mainstream and towards future eras too.

I just found this video of Vince Neil on MTV's Cribs recently that I found to be interesting:

Motley Crue - Vince Neil's MTV Cribs

It's insane how much money there was in music back in the day which is nothing like it is these days. The term "broke musician" is the only reality that comes to mind with bands of today, even with bands who seem to be making it.

What do you all think of Motley Crue?

the cover song

From doing a bunch of browsing online recently, i've noticed that theres a ridiculous amount of cover albums and bands randomly releasing cover songs these days. Even covering newer songs of current artists / hits. I remember when bands would just cover a song from back in the day that really inspired them and made an impact on the band's career/life. These days i'm seeing rock covers of stuff like Soulja Boy and Pussycat Dolls just to gain quick attention. As i've said in my earlier blogs, it's pretty evident that the state of the music scene we're in right now is becoming a complete joke.

I think these 2 bands did an amazing job covering these lame songs though hahaha:





Hopefully those 2 bands will get more attention for their actual songs and not these covers though (i.e. Alien Ant Farm)

I'll end this on a funny note... A 53-year-old man has been arrested for the second time for stalking Miley Cyrus.
http://www.nme.com/news/nme/46543
Enjoy. lol

a nostalgic moment

With everyone complaining about how shitty music is these days, it makes for a good time to reflect on bands you listened to in the past. With that being said, it's good to see a lot of bands coming out of hiatus to help improve the state of the music industry. Over the past year we've had bands like No Doubt, Blink 182, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Get Up Kids making a comeback. These were some of the bands that influenced the new generation of bands, but somehow these new bands got lost along the way and stumbled upon certain tricks to get by (i.e. vocal effects and using tracks to play their instruments for them). I actually found a pretty funny article where The Get Up Kids apologize for inadvertently creating the neon emo fad that's currently dominating the scene. have a look at it here - http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4137393-if-this-is-the-world-we-helped-create-then-i-apologise-the-get-up-kids-get-back

Back when i was growing up, i would listen to a lot of NOFX and 311. Those were bands with great songs and worked hard to get to where they are. If you haven't listened to these bands before, you should step into my nostalgic music 101 class =)
Check them out here:



You Wouldn't Believe

burn burn

Our Lady Peace's new album, "Burn Burn", just recently came out and it's been 4 years since they've put out an album.

Has anyone listened to it yet? I still need to get to a record store to pick it up.
After hearing the first single, "All You Did Was Save My Life", i could already tell that i was going to love the new album. This band never seems to disappoint with putting out hit singles and great songs.
Check out their first single off that album:

an evolved concert experience to the worse

I was recently checking out Paramore videos on youtube from their No Doubt tour and it reminded me of how the concert experience has changed over time as technology evovled.
Before i get into this, I just want to say that Paramore is such a talented and hard working band putting out real music. They're keeping this new generation of music genuine unlike all the new auto-tuned neon bands sweeping the nation. This band is the real deal and i don't see any legitiment reason to show any hate if any. Not all mainstream music is a disaster.
Anyways... It seems like there's no appreciation of one's self memory of a concert someone attended, which to me it seems like a lack of experience since you're too busy playing around with technology instead of actually putting your focus on the show and enjoying it. It bothers me a lot to see a shit load of cameras constantly flashing for photos or pointed straight up in the air in record mode for the entire set. It seems like people are more concerned with needing evidence of said show they just attended to look at afterwards instead of actually enjoying the show as it happens and using their own memory as the evidence. Leave the picture taking and video recording to the professionals who have press passes. It also bothers me to see people constantly on their phones texting/Twittering/AIMing/whatever instead of watching the concert you paid money for. What's the point of even attending a show if you're just going to be on your phone the whole time? Even if you dislike the band on stage, you should at least show some respect. I'm sure musicians get annoyed with people playing around on their phones as they're performing.
All of the best concert moments of my life never involved technology at all. I gave my full attention to the bands on stage and i came home to amazing memories that will be with me in my brain forever that no one else will have any sort of experience with, which makes it something extra special that you can keep with you forever and can make for great concert stories.

Do yourselves a favor, put your camera away and keep your phone in your pocket. You'll enjoy the concert a lot more!

Ohh and while on the topic of Paramore, check out their new song called "Ignorance" that they've been playing live on the No Doubt tour. Dont worry, you can't really see a bunch of annoying cameras in this video i found hahaha...

From White Stripes to Dead Weather

The other day I came across a band called The Dead Weather that happens to be the side project of Jack White. I had no idea he was doing something else outside of The White Stripes and apparently he plays drums in this band. There’s also members of The Kills and Queens Of The Stones in the band as well. I had a listen to their song “Treat Me Like Your Mother” and it’s not bad. Have a listen to it here:

autotune/gimmicks - 1 , musicial talent - 0

I recently attended the Vans Warped Tour thanks to recieving free tickets. I haven't been in a few years due to being busy with my previous summers, so I was actually pretty stoked to re-live some enjoyment from my near past!
After looking at the band line up, I realized that I've never heard of half of these new bands that were going to be playing the festival. I decided to check them out on Myspace and first thing i noticed was the amount of gimmicks plus bright neon colors that are being used. Hopefully their music would be a lot better than their image, which didn't happen to be the case. Where did all of this horrible "scrunk" scene come from and is this what kids like these days? I'm glad the tour wasn't just those types of bands, so my day for sure wouldn't be entirely bad.

My Warped day started off with seeing the brightest rainbow of a line up ever of kids waiting to get inside. It was a sea of neon colors and in your face shirt designs. I guess no one wears basic band shirts anymore. Also the hairstyles have gotten more ridiculous now. The last time I went to Warped Tour like 3 years ago, it was mainly mohawks and reverse mullet (or "emo" as the common term thrown around) hairstyles. Now you have huge hair in random colours that stick out in every direction looking like a huge atrocity that's striving for attention. On top of that, the amount of boys using makeup (an excessive amount of makeup i might add) seems to outshine the girls attending the show. I guess they never got the memo that wearing loads of makeup all day to a sweaty outdoor music festival in the blistering heat isn't the smartest idea.

I finally get in and made a list of bands to watch. I had plans on checking out Bad Religion, Hit The Lights, Bayside, Gallows, A Day To Remember, Alexisonfire, NOFX, InnerPartySystem and Less Than Jake. I was also planning on walking around and randomly checking out all these newer bands out of curiousity.
After checking out random acts like Breathe Carolina and Attack Attack, I can't believe the amount of bands that use live-autotune on this tour! They don't even hide it too by even leaving it on inbetween songs when chatting with the crowd. The crazy thing is that the audience eat it up and don't seem to give a shit. Just when i thought things couldn't get any worse, I stumbled upon Brokencyde and the Millionaires. These people don't even play any instruments other than their iPods spitting out generated beats. Even the lyrics are terrible and shouldn't be heard by all the little 14 year old girls due to the misogynistic content, as well as encouragement of drug abuse and sexual content. It pains me to see that these "bands" on the smaller stages have a much bigger crowd than bands like Bad Religion and Bayside. Other than all the lame bands i ran into on this tour, it was great to see the majority of the bands on my list who can actually play real music. I hope Warped Tour isn't going into this whole "crunk-neon" phase for next year as well because I definitely wouldn't pay money to attend this year. This festival isn't nearly the same as it was before. One more thing, I picked up a pretty sweet shirt that says "Fuck You And Your Neon Shirt" in the most basic way without any sort of fancy design. It's good to know that other people associated on the tour feel the same way as me.

After my Warped 2009 experience, it makes me worried about the state of the music industry we’re in now. Like all fads, they always fade away in the near future but this time it’s a little different. The amount of popularity of the whole excessive use of autotune and fake playing instruments has skyrocketed in such little time. It seems like everyone is using it now and those bands are the ones dominating in popularity which is putting on a hurt on real bands that want to write/play real music. Do people not care about integrity anymore? It seems like any kid with Garageband on their computer can start a band now with no musical talent at all. Do yourselves a favour and boycott these newer fake bands.

-LouderLoudest

LouderLoudest invades

Hey everyone,

While Hipflasks is on a leave of absence, I'll be here taking over the blogging.

My main background and interests are music / bands / the industry, so be on the look out for music related blogs!

-LouderLoudest

TOP 5 VIDEOS: JULY 8TH

she's single for a reason


this just looks really fun


breaking news


ninja prank


and the magic missile


enjoy!