UPDATED:

L.A. Guns is one of the most successful and influential bands in the history of metal, an act who music is rivaled only by Black Sabbath and Metallica for its importance to the history of the music we love. So of course, it makes complete sense for there to be two versions of that band, one featuring a guy who is clearly a poor man’s stand-in (or a “Dj Slashba,” if you will) for the band’s namesake, and another which switches vocalists so often that even the members of the band aren’t sure who’s performing with them at any given concert.

And because the world has so great benefitted from having two versions of L.A. Guns, and because the members of those two bands make so much money and sell so many records competing with one another, Great White has now decided to get in on the act: vocalist Jack Russell recently announced the formation of “Great White featuring Jack Russell” while his former bandmates soldier on simply as “Great White.” And if that doesn’t seem like a sound plan to you, well, hey, guess what? It’s cool, because the Great White that doesn’t feature Jack Russell says Jack Russell can’t just start another band called Great White.

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Tosh.0 is a terrible television program that desperately tries, and fails, to be The Soup. And I guess the recently turned its sights on metal, producing the below video. It starts with host/missing Winklevoss triplet Daniel Tosh making a string of painfully unfunny observations all based around the oldest and lamest clichés about metal. Then he interviews the teenagers from this popular viral sensation, and then he makes a joke which, as Metal Insider points out, seems to be a really, really tasteless reference to The Station fire.

So check it out if you’re really, really bored at work today, or if you need definitive proof that the people keeping this show on the air must be dummies.

-AR

Admit it: this picture makes you SO FUCKING HAPPY.

Recently, my friend sent me a YouTube link to a Bee Gees cover group. Excuse me, tribute band. That is the proper way of addressing them, as Mark Wahlberg taught us in Rock Star. I don’t like the Bee Gees. I don’t like disco. Disco is kind of terrible. Disco blows dogs for quarters. Disco is never amazing, especially not when KISS attempt it. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement. But my friends aren’t totally clueless to what I listen to, so I gave it a shot. It turned out it was a heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band. Okay, it was a little bit awesome. Weirdly enough, it worked. I only like thin-voiced men screeching when accompanied by equally high-pitched guitars, and that’s basically what heavy metal “Stayin’ Alive,” was. I turned it off about halfway through because, well, I still have my limits, but it kind of makes you stop and go, “Huh!” Metal just makes everything sound better.

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Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we told you that Great White vocalist Jack Russell needs a colostomy bag now ’cause he has a perforated bowel, which basically means his intestines ripped open and shit starting spilling into places it ain’t s’posed ta spill? Well even though that colostomy bag is only supposed to be a temporary situation, it’s bad enough that Russell can’t participate in an upcoming Great White tour. That news might disappoint aging former cheerleaders who let the quarterback knock ‘er up at senior prom ’87 and have wished they’d had the pregnancy “taken care of” ever since, but Great White are true professionals, and those dicks ain’t gonna suck themselves, so the show must go on.

The solution? Our number one homegirl, Allyson B. Crawford at Bring Back Glam, reports that Great White have hired Jani Lane to fill in on ten upcoming tour dates — at least one of which will feature Warrant as a support act. Warrant. The band that Lane has either quit or been fired from at least ten thousand times now. Awk-ward.

If I’m not mistaken, this will be Lane’s first gig since being released from a brief prison term for DUI. I don’t know if the man who apparently forever regrets having written “Cherry Pie” is still drinking (I’d wager he is), and I don’t know if Great White are still using pyro (I wouldn’t be surprised if they are), but if both of those things are the case, let’s just hope that Jani’s breath doesn’t cause any unfortunate incidents.

Here’s a video Ms. Crawford posted of Jani performing while not three but apparently nine sheets to the wind. This dude makes Vince Neil look like a classy dude who always stays on key and is never winded.

And here are tour dates, in case you wanna witness this sure-to-be-hilarious spectacle:

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How does Great White still exist? If The Station Fire wasn’t a career-ending scandal, what is? Would Jack Russell have to go around throwing babies at brick walls or something? Or do you still think aging housewives would re-live their glory days by going to see him and whomever the fuck else is in Great White these days play “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” and, uhhh… I don’t even know what this band’s other hits are. (I like hair metal, and I always thought that Great White were pretty weak.) But I’d think that, at this point, going to a Great White show would be akin to getting into a car being driven by Vince Neil, or having unprotected sex with Tommy Lee, or agreeing to be the new member of any version of L.A. Guns: a bad, bad, bad, terrible, horrible, atrocious, bad idea. I would only agree to doing so if I were promised I could stand right next to the exit, with one foot out the door, and that no pyro of any kind would be used.

But some people don’t let thoughts like this linger in the mind. And so Great White does still exist, in some form or another, although they may be on hiatus for awhile — according to Gunshy Assassin, Russell recently “suffered a perforated bowel… which meant crap starting leaking into his abdomen.” Yucky. Doctors have fixed the problem and Russell is now pooping normally again, thanks to the aid of a colostomy bag that his surgeons think “will just be temporary.”

That’s terrible, and under any normal circumstances, I’d feel bad for Russell. Then again, The Station Fire. So, y’know. Life’s a bitch.

-AR

So Rocklahoma, the once cock-rockalicious festival, may be a wash this year, but it seems that there’s already a new fest to grab ahold of the Aquanet and let us relive our youth gone wile: Rock N America, which take place from July 23 to July 25 in – get this – Oklahoma. Huh.

The line-up basically plays like a who’s who of who shoulda been playing Rocklahoma this year: Scorpions, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Warrant, Dokken, Great White, Enuff Z’Nuff, Bullet Boys, Faster Pussycat, and the Tracii Guns/Jizzy Pearl version of L.A. Guns are all the bill. More bands will be announced soon; in my imagination that will include whatever is passing for Skid Row these days, Vince Neil, Adler’s Appetite, Beautiful Creatures and/or Bang Tango, and the other version of L.A. Guns. But who knows.

It is worth noting that the fest will take place at the Zoo Amphitheatre, which a) has a smaller capacity than the giant open fields of Rocklahoma and b) isn’t just a cool name from some venue, but, rather, is called the “Zoo Amphitheatre” because it’s actually at the fucking zoo. So unless it’s always been Chip Z’Nuff’s dream to play for a crowd of zebras, this isn’t going to be quite the event that Rocklahoma was for these bands.

Still, you should visit the Rock N America website, even if you’re not really interested in attending the show, because, well, it’s like the shittiest website of 1994 and is consequently pretty hilarious.

-AR

[via Bring Back Glam]

What do Twisted Sister, Great White, Kix, Nelson, Danger Danger and Anthrax all have in common?

They’re all playing this year’s Rocklahoma Festival.

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First Maynard, now this.

Look: I fucking love Vegas. I was there for New Year’s once and I think I had pretty much the best fucking night of my life.

But part of what’s so fun about that town is how friggin’ ridiculous everything is; it can’t be taken seriously at all, and if you try to take it seriously, you’ll probably just give yourself an aneurysm. As a place to go spend a couple of days drunk and act like a total dip shit, I think Las Vegas is just swell – but I think if I had to live in there, I’d kill myself.

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Apparently the YouTube link I posted Monday of raw, fan-filmed footage of the carnage of 100 people dying in a nightclub at a Great White show in 2003 got yanked due to a copyright claim. But thankfully MetalSucks commenter LiquidMan666 tipped us off to another site with the video, and this version is embeddable. Though the video and audio quality are lower, it’s better than nothing.

Guys, let MetalSucks get serious for a moment if you can believe such a thing. If you ever attend concerts in small clubs you MUST WATCH THIS RIGHT NOW. I implore you. After you see the club go up in a blaze in a minute flat and a pile of 20 or so people crushing each other to death at the doorway as their bodies get burned to a crisp, you will never think about concerts in the same way again.

Let’s just say that at the Exodus / Goatwhore / Arsis / Warbringer concert Axl and I went to on Monday, I made sure I knew where each and every “Exit” sign was. And now, the video.

-VN

Warning; this is gruesome, and not for the faint-hearted. Raw video, shot by a fan in attendance at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, has surfaced of the pyrotechnics-induced fire at a Great White show 5 years ago this month. Lawyers and dollar signs are still being flung around in the news to this date all this time later, but let’s take a moment to remember the bloody travesty that occurred that day.

Watching this video is like a mini-version of watching the twin towers fall. It’s gut-wrenching. It starts innocently enough with the opening chords of a song; seconds later three streams of pyro ignite and the audience responds with riotous applause. About 27 seconds in the camera catches a glimpse of leftover flame on the right of the stage, and within 10 seconds the room is full of smoke and the cameraman sneaks to the back of the room. The band stops and Great White frontman Jack Russell exclaims, “Oh, Wow. That’s not good.” All hell breaks loose.

The fire alarms squeal, and it’s a mad dash of manic pushing and shoving for the exits. Screaming, panic, shouting, chaos. Thankfully this cameraman gets out alive and films the ensuing chaos from the outside. Torturous screams from the bowels of hell can be heard from outside the club which now has black smoke pouring out of every edifice. Crying, running, screaming, pandemonium. By a minute and a half in the whole place is a fiery furnace of death with people still attempting to push their way out the door. A smoke-covered woman exclaims, “Oh my God, I’m bleeding!” Cries of “Where’s my friend??” are everywhere as escapees anxiously look on in search of their friends. A man carrying a comatose friend on his back screams “I need a medic! I need a medic! Give me a medic!”

This is bloody. It’s gruesome. It’s real. It’s what happened. 97 folks died.

Watch the video here. (embedding is disabled)

-VN