L.A. Guns (the Tracii Guns version) were just the first signing in an apparent change of direction for Steve Vai’s formerly shredtastic Favored Nations label. According to a press release, the new Jibboom imprint of Favored Nations has just wrapped up negotiations with comedian / That Metal Show co-host Jim Florentine. Florentine is perhaps best known for his characters Special Ed and Bobby Fletcher on Comedy Central’s cult-favorite TV show Crank Yankers, so unsurprisingly his first release for the label — Terrorizing Telemarketers Vol. 5 — will be in the vein of Crank Yankers / Jerky Boys style prank call recordings.

I’ve now lived without a TV for over four years so I haven’t seen That Metal Show. Our own Corey Mitchell didn’t like it all, but judging by the comments on that post most of you seemed to dig it. As if you needed an invitation… please share your thought about That Metal Show / Jim Florentine with us in the comments section.

Here’s a clip of one of Florentine’s calls. I’m not sure whether this appeared on Terrorizing Telemarketers Vol. 1-4 or whether it’s new, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what’s in store for Vol. 5.

-VN

Let’s play a little game. Which of the following does not belong?

• Steve Vai
• Petrucci/Rudess
• Allan Holdsworth
• L.A. Guns
• Eric Johnson
• Marty Friedman
• Vernon Reid

See what I did there? I didn’t even put the obvious choice last, but it’s still just as fucking obvious that L.A. Guns stick out like a boner in gym shorts on the shred-heavy roster of Favored Nations, the label owned by Steve Vai. But apparently Favored Nations will release a new L.A. Guns album come April.

For anyone keeping track, this is the version of L.A. Guns that actually includes the band’s namesake Tracii Guns, not the Phil Lewis-led version that claims the other guys are imposters.

If MetalSucks ever receives a prestigious award the first band I’ll thank will be L.A. Guns (both versions) for providing us with excellent headline fodder throughout the years.

-VN

Rocklahoma, the three day hair metal festival that’s taken place in – doy-hickey – Oklahoma the past few years, was really successful in its first two incarnations – so successful that there were rumors of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest headlining the 2008 edition of the fest. But this past summer’s third running of the show was an epic failure, with embarrassingly  low attendance, despite a line-up that included Anthrax, the “they’re so hot right now!” Anvil, Overkill, Twisted Sister, Ratt, and Skid Row.

Now our pal Allyson at Bring Back Glam has posted a press release announcing that AEG live, “the world’s largest producer of music festivals,” has been put in charge of “revamping” the fest for the 2010 version.

Click to read more…

If there’s any justice in the world, The Red Chord’s excellent new album, Fed Through the Teeth Machine (read my four out of five horns review here), will cement Mike “Gunface” McKenzie’s status as one of his generation’s great guitar gods while introducing his truly unique playing to scores of new fans. Now The Red Chord’s sole axe slinger, Gunface really steps up his game on Teeth – the riffs and solos on this album are easily some of the year’s very best.

That being the case, I was very, very excited to have the opportunity to e-mail some questions to Gunface earlier this week. He follows bassist Greg Weeks and vocalist Guy Kozowyk as the latest member of The Red Chord to humor me by answering some truly idiotic (and hopefully a few intelligent) questions (I’m sure we’ll get to drummer Brad Fickeisen sooner or later). After the jump, get Gunface’s thoughts on the creation of Fed Through the Teeth Machine, writing solos, his various side projects, the value of the Death Star, and more.

Fed Through the Teeth Machine is out October 27 on Metal Blade.

Click to read more…

We make fun of L.A. Guns quite a bit, mostly because, well, they’re really worth making fun of. For one thing, they’re one of those bands where there’s actually two different versions of the band touring around, claiming to be “L.A. Guns;” the version that doesn’t feature founding guitarist/namesake Tracii Guns hired a dude named – no shit – Stacey Blades as their guitarist. Plus, Tracii is the “Guns” in “Guns N’ Roses,” but quit the band before they got signed, and has spent most of his career trying to prove that he could have been Slash, if given the shot. And they’re one of those bands that claims they were never hair metal even though there’s really no other way to categorize them. So, yeah, they’re pretty silly.

They’re also one of the better hair metal bands of their era, even if they never made it that big in the scheme of things. On Friday night during some drunken rambling about Kix and Love/Hate and whatever other wussy bands crossed our Peroni-soaked brains, a friend and I started reminiscing about the song “Over the Edge” from Hollywood Vampires. I don’t know how the song holds up in the whole pantheon of songs that were cool when you were a kid but aren’t cool anymore, but I still have fun listening to it from time to time.

All I could find for a embedded video was this rip from the Point Break soundtrack. Since Swayze just died, I figured, y’know, fuck it.

-AR