(from DougORama.net)

King’s X frontman and bassist Doug Pinnick is truly a metal warrior. At 61 years old he’s still battling it out in the trenches, be it with his main band or one of his myriad side projects, touring all over the country and writing music day in and day out. Even more impressively he’s happy as a clam, extremely humble, and grateful for all his success: “Living month to month like the average person isn’t fun, but hey, that’s quite a life. No one ever guaranteed that I would be rich doing what I do. I’m lucky enough to do it and be able to continue to do it and get paid for it. That’s great. I don’t think a lot about what I do or where I’ve been.”

Anyone who’s seen King’s X live knows how positive and inspiring Doug is, and thankfully he was the same way when we chatted on the phone last week. We talked about the upcoming King’s X “First Church of Rock and Roll Tour,” the meaning behind its name, Doug’s side projects (he’s working on a new solo record and a project with Eric Gales), the future of making a living as a musician, and what keeps him going in life on a daily basis.

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Axl tried to explain to me the other night why so many bands moved their release date from today to yesterday, for a rare Monday U.S. release date; something about not wanting to compete with Taylor Swift? Whatever the reason, I don’t understand it and apparently after all that neither does Axl… maybe one of you can clarify.

One of said releases is King’s X’s Love Live in London DVD/CD, which you can order here. I’ve already expressed my enthusiasm for this release, but I just can’t contain my excitement for it: King’s X are just so much fun live and I cannot wait to watch this DVD at home. So while you’re mulling over purchasing the new Daath, Firewind and Kylesa releases this week — ’cause in the end they still all come out this week — add this live DVD/CD combo to the list to make your money-spending decision that much more difficult. Check out the trailer above then dare to claim you’ll be as fit at age 60 as Doug Pinnick is.

-VN

That yer Uncle Vince is a big King’s X superfan must be pretty well-known ’round these parts by now, because any time Ty Tabor so much as farts my inbox erupts with a cavalcade of “didjahear???” emails on the matter. Which is just fine by me, because Ty Tabor lays some pretty delicious-smelling farts. I hear that the three members of King’s X actually fart in three-part harmony during rehearsals. True story.

The latest is the forthcoming double-disc King’s X Live CD/DVD Live Love in London, recorded in January 2009 at the Electric Ballroom in London (duh) and featuring all the King’s X classics both new and old that we all love so much. The set won’t be officially released until October 25th, but we’ve got our first taste of it in the form of the audio portion of “Alright,” one of my favorite latter day King’s X jams. It’s streaming over at Guitar World and can be pre-ordered here.

I loved the rawness of King’s X’s last live record, 2004′s double-disc Live All Over the Place; the band kept the editing to an absolute minimum, so what you heard on that record was actually what was played, flubs, messups and all. Sounds like Live Love in London is gonna be more of the same; no cheesy overdubs here. Alright!

-VN

It took almost five hours on the highway in rain that wasn’t so much pouring as it was bulleting down to get from Boston to New York. And guess what? Totally worth it. Because it was all for Accept.

Vince has already covered King’s X, and no offense to him or our other intrepid site leader, but meh. I chose meeting up with friends I haven’t seen for awhile and gorging myself on Korean food and Shoju over watching King’s X. (I recommend the kimchi pancakes at Miss Korea over on Korean Way. They taste nothing like kimchi, which might be why I liked them.) I caught the last few songs, and while I enjoyed watching Doug Pinnick do his thing, the music was just too prog-y for me.

But Accept, oh my good godding fuck, Accept. Okay, they were always a band I thought I’d never see live. When they got back together, I was excited, but I mean, what’s Accept without Udo and his goblin screech? It was a restrained sort of excitement. But in the past year, hearing their new stuff, watching recent footage from shows, and actually getting to talk to Wolf (pshh, jealous?) psyched me up to the point where, as another well-known screecher Brian Johnson is wont to say, I “[couldn’t] stand still.”

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Of the five or so times I’ve seen King’s X live over the years they’ve only ever played precisely one song from Dogman, their landmark (and my personal fave) album: “Dogman.” Until last night, when their current support tour with reunited German metallers Accept rolled through NYC’s 9 Dollar Beer House BB King’s and the band dug deep into the Dogman catalog to whip out three additional songs from the aforementioned masterpiece: “Pretend,” “Complain,” and “Pillow.” It was a great day to be a King’s X fan, and the nearly-packed room most certainly showed their appreciation. Those songs, mixed in with modern day classics (“Pray,” “Go Tell Somebody”) and the usual staples (“What Is This?”, “Over My Head” complete with audience singalong) made for an awesome hour and 15 minutes of King’s X music. There’s not much more we could’ve asked for from an act that wasn’t even the headliner, but we did anyway and were treated with a non-obligatory encore; “We Were Born to Be Loved,” complete with the always impressive end-section jam out.

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Event – “Under My Skin” (mp3)

Event – “Make Your Way” (mp3)

The great purge of 2010 has begun — of my CD collection, that is. I’m preparing to move once again, and although I’ve still got three months to think about it, the experience of having to pack up my entire CD collection into boxes, carry them down a flight of stairs, load them into a truck, drive said truck across town, then carry everything up two and half more flights of stairs (in addition to all of my other furniture)… the experience still sticks with me from two years ago when I last moved. I have a lot of CDs. It was fucking brutal, and it made me re-think why the fuck I still hold onto this archaic form of music storage device.

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In no particular order…

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I love playing ths game. The famed Metallica + GN’R + Faith No More run would have to be close to the top of my list. Soundgarden supporting Spoonman. Motley Crue supporting Too Fast For Love. King’s X on the Dogman tour, for sure… check out this performance [sent in by Shane Gillis] of the title track from that incredible record, filmed on the short-lived Jon Stewart show no less.

If you had a time machine that could take you back to any one specific tour (but ONLY one), who would you go see?

-VN

As I mentioned earlier, Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree (and King’s X!) this past Thursday. Porcupine Tree was good, if not spectacular… they’re all great players, they write good songs, have an excellent sense of composition and are certainly quite accomplished; but at no point during the performance was I at all wowed.

Except when I realized that “Time Flies,” Movement IX from the first disc of the band’s new record The Incident, is a dead rip-off of Pink Floyd’s “Dogs” (from the Animals record, a personal favorite of mine). Now, Steven Wilson has certainly never been shy about his love of Floyd, and even if not for that it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s heard Porcupine Tree’s music before that the band bows down in the alter of Floyd. But YO, this is like, too similar for comfort. Check it out:

Porcupine Tree – “Time Flies”:

Pink Floyd – “Dogs”:

I’m not crazy, right? The staccato-strummed acoustic guitar, the keyboard swells leading into each chord change, similar vocal melodies, the verse that starts “and after a while…”. The only real difference is that the P-Tree riff is in 3/4 instead of Floyd’s 4/4. Sorry Steven, you rule at producing Opeth and you’re a talented musician, but for this you get a big, fat, epic FAIL.

-VN

Kip and I went to see Porcupine Tree in New York last Thursday. Personal preferences not withstanding, I think the winner of the night was definitely opening act King’s X — after the show, many people mentioned being way more impressed by King’s X than Porcupine Tree and were left having wished they’d caught the band’s whole set. Not me; I insisted on being there for the whole thing, despite Mr. Wingerschmidt’s preference of blazing pre-show.

How this band has remained so fresh and vital for so long is beyond me. Doug Pinnick is 59 fucking years old and still has the pipes of a choir boy (like 6 or 7 octaves worth!) and the optimism and good will of someone in his 20s. While the band jammed behind him Pinnick gave one of the most inspirational speeches I’ve ever heard about how so many people are unhappy with their lives because they aren’t doing what they’re meant to do, how if music is your calling don’t let anyone discourage you, be true to yourself, work hard even if your music never leaves your bedroom, just be yourself and be happy. Imagine 2 minutes of this spoken by a guy who basically sounds like a reverend. It was beautiful.

Also beautiful was the band’s performance of “Lost In Germany,” which I’d never heard them play live before, from their self-titled 1992 record. Here they are playing it back in 1998 when Doug was a fresh 47 years old. That Ty Tabor riff! A classic.

-VN

Live music videos are hit or miss; either they capture the live spirit and energy of the band in all their glory or they come off as cheap, completely sucking the life out of potentially great bands. This week we’ve got three brand new live music vids that run said gamut.

File The Haunted’s new one for “Moronic Colossus” — the first single from their recently released record Versus (read David Bee Roth’s review) — as a big fat win. That The Haunted chose to stick with the live audio rather than laying the studio track on top of live video like most bands do is a testament to how virgin-tight and crushing this band is in the live setting. Big ups!

On the other side of the spectrum we’ve got a live video for “Pray” by King’s X, a good song — and an excellent live band — whose video is a total snoozefest guilty of precisely the pratfalls The Haunted avoided with theirs. Oh well. I still love this band and will go see them pretty much any time they roll through NYC.

Squarely in the middle we’ve got a new one from Suicide Silence which does a stellar job of being completely “meh.” This whole band is meh. I know Axl likes ‘em, but I just don’t see it; what I see is a scenecore/deathcore band who admits to liking Korn. I guess the video does a good job of making these guys look awesome live (footage from this past summer’s Rockstar Mayhem run), but to thee I say: studio audio! Fail.

I suppose you’d actually like to WATCH these videos rather than read my boring analysis of them, eh? Click on through to the other side.

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Sometimes it’s nice to go to a show just to rock the fuck out, and last night’s King’s X / Extreme show at New York’s Irving Plaza was just that (other than the abysmally embarrassing “Rock Band Fantasy Camp” opening act). No schmoozing, no interviewing bands, no worrying about guest list comps — just buying a ticket and rocking it solo, the old fashioned way. I only ran into one person I knew all night, and no fewer than 5 random people commented on my Saigon Kick t-shirt (I mean, if ever there was a show to wear it at, it’s this one, right?). Both bands stormed through sets that mixed material both old and new and proved why they’re still around and vibrant 15+ years after their heyday in the spotlight.

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Of all the crazy, trippy shit King’s X have done, “Flies and Blue Skies” from 1993′s ahead-of-its-time Dogman is one of the most immediately haunting and creepy songs the band ever released. Ty Tabor’s trademark pedaled arpeggios and Doug Pinnick’s butter-smooth voice roll over a surreal-feeling 3/4 beat like something out of a really frightening and confusing dream, the kind where you’re kind of somewhere you know but it isn’t really that place and then a bunch of weird things happen and you’re kind of somewhere else and you’re wandering around and not really sure what to do but you know you have to do something. Or I’m just really stoned right now.

King’s X – “Flies and Blue Skies”

-VN

Extreme and King’s X released details yesterday about a U.S. summer tour that had been rumored for weeks called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp,” so named for a bizarre scheme to incorporate wanna-be musician wankers with too much money as the opening acts with other famous musicians. But never mind that — this is an awesome lineup; in addition to King’s X being one of my favorite bands of all time and never having seen Extreme, the two bands have both been known for bringing a funky element to their metal and should compliment each other quite well.

The Fantasy Camp consists of “campers” jamming and writing with “counselors” during the day and performing as the opening act later that night. Lame? Absolutely. But where there is money there’s a way. As long as it keeps my ticket price down.

Camp packages start at $1,999 (!!!!) and go up to $9,999 (!!!!!!!!!!), the latter of which “allows campers to live on the road like a rock star for five full days.” Lame, lame, lame, lame. Out-of-work musicians desperately in need of money “Counselors” include the following:

Gilby Clarke (GUNS N’ ROSES)
Elliot Easton (THE CARS)
Earl Slick (DAVID BOWIE, JOHN LENNON)
Dave Ellefson (MEGADETH)
Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE)
Mark Slaughter (SLAUGHTER)
Chris Slade (AC/DC)
Mark Hudson (Grammy Award-winning writer/producer, AEROSMITH)
Kip Winger (WINGER)

Tour dates after the jump.

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King’s X’s MySpace page bills them as “American Rock Royalty.” An exaggeration? Perhaps, but even if King’s X aren’t American rock royalty they sure deserve to be, having put out consistently awesome music over their 20+ year career that has now reached its 15th album, the appropriately named XV.

The band has posted the album’s lead track “Alright” on their MySpace page. XV doesn’t drop until May 20th, but DjAjar.com has the leak. Having listened to the album, I like what I hear. It sounds like a mix of all eras of King’s X — the groovy early material, the hard edge of the early-mid ’90s stuff (self-titled and Dogman) and the experimentation and vocal harmonies of the Tapehead era and beyond. If you love King’s X, as I do, you’ll like it. And if you don’t, you’re a poo-poo face.

Pre-order the record at Amazon.

-VN

Buried in a montage of video interviews conducted by OnTrackMagazine at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, CA this past January was in interesting bit with King’s X vocalist/bassist Doug Pinnick. King’s X are one of my favorite bands of all time, and Pinnick — though I haven’t met him (yet!) — seems like one of the most down-to-earth dudes there is. Some interesting tidbits from the interview:

On the illusions and expectations fans have of King’s X being rockstars: “I live from month to month, like everyone else.”

On his time in California during NAMM: “Me and Mick Mars are gonna start writing some tunes together. I’m gonna be hangin’ with him for four or five days… Mick called up and said ‘Come on out, man! Come and write some tunes with me! Let’s do a little writing collaboration and sell tunes to other bands and stuff.’ So I said, why not? Make a little extra money and keep going.”

Anything Pinnick puts his name on I’m willing to check out, and I’m curious what Mick Mars’ writing style is like sans-Nikki. How’s that for a collabo to look forward to in 2008?

-VN

A wise man (Chuck Klosterman) once said, “If you are the kind of person who talks about music too much, there are two words that undoubtedly play an integral role in your workaday lexicon: ‘overrated’ and ‘underrated.’ This is because those two sentiments pop up in 90 percent of all musical discussions.”

So true. Fortunately for King’s X they fall into the “underrated” category. Seriously, someone pay attention: King’s X’s prolific career has taken them through many twists and turns, but somehow they’ve survived them all as the ultimate road dogs, and they continue to tour and put out quality new music every two years or so. Their musicianship — and influences on generations of bands to come — is unmatched. Dogman might even be one of my Desert Island 5 albums.

Anyway, the following footage was recorded by yours truly at a King’s X show at BB King’s in New York City, I believe in 2003. For the classic “Over My Head” from Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, Doug Pinnick was the minister of rock and the audience his choir as the crowd sang the whole thing. It was a really, really cool moment. that I happened to catch on film. Check it out.

-VN

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Seriously dudes… this band is fucking sick. They channel the spirit of Pink Floyd and Dream Theater, but are neither as trippy as Floyd or masturbatory as Dream Theater, yet somehow manage to rock harder than both. If Ty Tabor from King’s X went off and formed a band with Mike Portnoy it’d probably sound something like this. I was sitting around stoned with some friends last night, and this song came on accidentally on my iTunes; “Shallow” from the album Deadwing. It had been so long since I listened to the Tree that I had completely forgotten about their awesomeness. Enjoy this as you sip your morning coffee.

-VN

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