Music news you might’ve missed
Did you hear about Yelawolf’s ESPN interview? What about Dave Grohl breaking his leg? Or the guy from 5 Seconds of Summer getting burned? Vaguely? Saw something on Facebook, you think? Yeah, we hear you. Can’t keep up with all the news. Who has the time?
Lucky for you, we do and we get paid to consume the Internet. We might as well put all that browsing to use. Behold the by-product of that surfing: A convenient compilation of all the recent music news in one place. Keep reading for more on the stories above, plus bits on Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Lil Wayne, Sprite’s Obey Your Verse campaign, plus a video of a dude catching a flying beer in midair.
MELLA YELA
First up making news is my man Yelawolf, who brought an insanely energetic show to Brooklyn Bowl on Friday. How energetic? Well, let’s just say his set inspired some fans to bump into one another. On purpose. I know, right? Kooky.
Anywho, during a candid yet sort of awkward interview that aired Friday (and caused him to trend on Google for a few minutes), the rapper fielded a litany of questions from Dan Le Batard and his dad (?!) on an episode of “Highly Questionable,” the show Dan hosts on ESPN with Bomani Jones.
Wearing a Slumerican shirt, Yela waved off a question about his beef with Machine Gun Kelly, saying, “Really? Next question, dude. C’mon,” but spoke candidly about how he embraces alcoholism as an escape, and because he’s not a fan of sobriety.
After the MGK question, things got even more awkward when Le Batard’s dad queried the rapper about his love life and what he did for Valentine’s Day. “I feel like I’m in a Walt Disney movie right now,” Yela muses after a few beats.
Definitely worth watching.
THE FOO FIGHTERS’ BIG BREAK
Surely you’ve heard about this one by now, but if not, here you go: Dave Grohl is earning accolades the world over for breaking his leg at a festival in Sweden and then finishing the set. From the looks of the grainy (yet not gruesome, thankfully) video posted below, Grohl was about to kick into a solo before he suddenly ran out of stage and took a plunge that later sent him to the hospital and scratched two dates.
Grohl shared an X-ray of his fractured fibula on Twitter with the caption: “Thank you Gothenburg. That was amazing.”
Trivial aside: As admirable as his tenaciousness is, the Foo Fighters frontman is not the first performer to break a leg onstage at a gig. That distinction (as far as we know) belongs to Ami Shalev of Monotonix, who suffered the same fate onstage in Florida back in 2010.
5 SECONDS OF BUMMER
On a semi-related note — in that it happened onstage at a concert across the pond just a day later — Michael Clifford, frontman for 5 Seconds of Summer (clearly this band’s moniker wasn’t inspired by life in Las Vegas), sustained what we can only assume will be at least a partially disfiguring injury, judging from the pic of his bandaged face he shared on Twitter, when he came to close to the pyro.
Trivial aside: If anybody feels Clifford’s pain, you can bet it’s James Hetfield, who experienced a similar misfortune in Montreal in 1992.
METALLICA ANTHEM
Speaking of Hetfield and company, Metallica was tapped to perform the national anthem at Game 5 of the NBA Finals at the behest of Bay Area ballers the Golden State Warriors. This sort of thing is old hat for the band by now; in 2013, the San Francisco Giants enlisted two Metallicats (Hetfield and Kirk Hammett) to rock the “Star-Spangled Banner” before a game at Candlestick against the Dodgers. Trivial aside: Santana got the same honors for Game 2.
GUNS N’ PLEASE GET BACK TOGETHER!
Onetime Metallica tour mates Guns N’ Roses are back — not together, silly — back in the news. Sorta.
During a drum podcast, Steven Adler, the outfit’s original timekeeper, wished aloud (no doubt verbalizing the innermost desires of us and every other GNR fan on the planet) that the original lineup of Guns would get back together, noting that his yearlong sobriety has helped him repair his relationship with Slash.
While the odds of a reunion are remote, what with a new album from the guitarist and tour plans from GNR’s current incarnation, you can always hold out hope, especially given Duff McKagan’s recent praise of playing with Izzy Stradlin. Dear, metal gods, if you’re listening…
From the sound of it, all this metal chatter would amount to meaningless minutiae to Ginger Baker, the curmudgeonly rhythm commander of Cream, who reportedly hates metal with a passion.
Our friends over at Blabbermouth alerted us to a Forbes piece in which Baker asserts, “These people that dress up in spandex trousers with all the extra makeup — I find it incredibly repulsive, always have.”
The quote isn’t too surprising coming from Baker, who, if you’ve seen the continually captivating doc “Beware Mr Baker,” is clearly more of a punk than a metalhead.
A LIL MISUNDERSTANDING
If you’re like Mr. Baker and metal’s not necessarily your bag, here’s a little rap news for you: On Saturday night at a show in Oakland, Lil Wayne set hearts racing by leaking word that he’s linked up with Jay Z. Not so much it turns out.
Everybody assumed that the rapper’s comments referred to him inking a deal with Roc Nation. Turns out, Weezy merely meant that he’s jumped on board Hova’s Tidal wave, his manager told TMZ.
Nearly three decades after Kurtis Blow threw shade at 7-Up on behalf of Sprite, the beverage maker is still in the rap game, continuing to capitalize on the culture of hip-hop. The soda shillers have crafted a cleverly coined campaign called Obey Your Verse, in which quotes from revered rhymers such as Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Rakim are prominently featured on cans of pop, giving new meaning to the term hip-pop.
Apparently there’s 16 different cans in the limited collection. We haven’t seen the full list of who else will be featured on the Sprite cans, but the list of deserving artists is lengthy: Big L, Big Pun, Pac, Em, NWA, UGK, OutKast — hell, the options are virtually endless. We hardly envy the person presented with the task of narrowing it down.
THE ANSWER IS YES!
You probably won’t see Slum Village spotlighted on a Sprite can anytime soon, unless there’s an underground series slated. But here’s the next best thing: a stream of “Yes!,” the Detroit act’s superb new record on SoundCloud. More than half of the cuts on the new 12-track album reportedly contain soulful contributions from the late, great J-Dilla. We’re listening to it as we type this, and all we can say is yes, friend, yes, indeed!
CLOSE CALL FOR YG IN L.A.
Sounds like Keenon Jackson, the 25-year-old rapper known as YG, is fortunate to be doing well after being shot three times last week in Los Angeles. According to TMZ, which broke the story, the musician was at a recording session when an altercation was sparked outside the studio. The incident was reportedly captured on tape.
You can go ahead and file this next one under Crap You’ll Probably Never See Again. Gawker posted this clip with the headline: “Cool Guy Does Cool Thing.” Um, yeah, that’s pretty accurate, only we’d have added “insanely” as a modifier to “cool.” Press play on the clip and you’ll see what we’re talking about, a dude named David Achter de Molen, the frontman of a band called John Coffey, being propped up by the crowd and turning, as if on cue, just in time to catch a flying cup of beer, which he then takes a drink from and tosses. Nuts, right? Astounding! I mean, who tosses a perfectly good beer?!
Our lil’ buddy Squish just broke the @GWR for Most High Fives in an Hour!!! Go SQUISH! #bonnaroo #highfivefriday pic.twitter.com/Dg1hIE1kJy— Bonnaroo (@Bonnaroo) June 13, 2015
I’VE GOT FIVE ON IT
The Gawker crew could’ve recycled that headline to apply to a precocious little dude named Squish (something tells us that may not be his given name, but you never know), who set a Guiness World Record for giving the most high fives in a hour. Going up high a record 2,392 times, Squish earned the title at Bonnaroo. An impressive feat for the young man (almost as impressive as the dude who claims to have seen Iron Maiden 230 times).
We weren’t at Bonnaroo, but we’re gonna guess that roughly 2 billion times that number of high fives were handed out at the festival when the annual two-hour Superjam went down. After Zach Galifianakis and Jon Hamm offered up a hearty rendition of “We Are the World,” a parade of musicians — including the dude from Bleachers, Chance the Rapper, Karl Denson and more — piled on to purvey a provision of ’80s tunes picked out by Derek Vincent Smith of Pretty Lights.
Read more from Dave Herrera at bestoflasvegas.com. Contact him at dherrera@reviewjournal.com.
