Los Angeles’ Hotel Cafe is a 165-person capacity venue, a seemingly unlikely place to find a world famous rocker with millions of record sales under his belt. And yet last Thursday it hosted noneother than Chris Cornell for an “intimate” sold out performance. As expected, YouTube has amateur footage of songs from the setlist, which included “Euphoria Morning” and Audioslave’s “Doesn’t Remind Me”, as well as covers of The Beatles’ “A Day In The Life” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Of course, the track that stands out the most for me was “Call Me A Dog”, a song from the Temple Of The Dog album. The project, a tribute to the late Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood, reformed somewhat during a recent Pearl Jam concert in L.A. The solo acoustic performance above (audio quality trumps video quality) is naturally much more subdued and somber, which helps to remind us all that Cornell is a gifted songwriter, even despite his misguided dalliance with Timbaland. With a reworked rock version of Scream in the planning, the former Soundgarden frontman might just earn back the respect of fans who balked at his attempt to mimic Justin Timberlake.

In other news, Timbaland’s upcoming Shock Value 2 album features vocal contributions from Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and Chris Daughtry. Yeah, you read right…

-GS

[Gary Suarez is going hungry. He usually manages WHOLLY DIVER (a Dio tribute site) and the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

After years of mis-management, losing a key songwriter / founding member, and a string of mediocre but decent enough albums, things were looking up for Sevendust. They weathered the storm of the nu-metal fallout to emerge unscathed by the critical backlash to beset pretty much every other band to whom that term ever applied. They’re set with their own label imprint through WMG’s Independent Label Group, they have a new album coming out a mere year after the last one, and they signed on to headline one of the side-stages at this Summer’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Tour. Yes, Sevendust were poised for a new start; and now they go and fuck it it all up.

Click to read more…

Next didn’t do much for me and Alpha did even less; so the news that Chris Daughtry will do a guest spot on the new Sevendust album, Hope and Sorrow, would seem to signal the official end of my interest in Sevendust. Yes, they now join Metallica, Megadeth, Aerosmith, AC/DC, and whatever band Vinnie Paul is playing with this week in my “Who gives a shit anymore?” pile. If working with some dip shit from American Idol is what gets the dudes in Sevendust off these days, then we were clearly headed down divergent paths anyway; Bon Jovi basically plays country these days, so I understand that sometimes bands I enjoyed in my youth and I are just going to have irreconcilable differences.

I’m sure at least one of our fine readers will accuse me of being close minded, and yet another will call me a hypocrite for ever liking Sevendust when I so openly loathe Korn; to those people, all I can say is “Your mother sucks cocks in hell.” Sometimes I have an itch for melodic pop metal that requires something a little more substantial than “All Day I Dream About Sex” but a little less weighty than “Stinkfist.” So blow me.

Anyway, it looks like there’s finally gonna be a new Dark New Day album this year. Maybe that’ll cure my jones for something cool n’ catchy.

-AR