The more I hear from this album, the more I like it.

What album? Why, the forthcoming Queensryche self-titled album, that is….

There was an official premiere of another song from it, “Where Dreams Go To Die,” last night on Seattle’s KISW 99.9, but it was at 11 p.m. Pacific time and I was quite asleep by then…but I heard the song earlier this morning and an official Century Media YouTube clip popped up. Have a listen.

My thoughts? Wow, this is totally badass. It sounds better than pretty much everything I’ve heard from the band at least since 1994′s Promised Land. The twin-guitar harmonies, the vocals…this sounds more like classic, real Queensryche (sort of like Rage for Order meets Promised Land) than what they’ve done since then. And if what I’m hearing is correct, this song was actually written by lead guitarist Parker Lundgren. I’ve said before that I thought it would be intriguing to see what he brought to the table, and he delivered. Man, did he ever. I can hardly wait to hear the rest of it.

I just can’t get all worked up about that.

A comment from My Kind of Country, about a Rodney Crowell-Emmylou Harris show in which Crowell didn’t play any of the Diamonds and Dirt hits:

Funny that there’s no mention here of Rodney Crowell’s songs from his commercial heyday–”After All This Time,” “She’s Crazy,” etc.–Does he actually give a concert and skip over his string of #1 hits?

It sure looks that way, but I for one can’t get too het up over it. Radio played the shit out of those songs and continues to do so, while all his other stuff gets practically ignored anymore — not just the brilliant stuff from The Houston Kid and the two albums that followed it, but also the music from the albums after Diamonds and Dirt. I didn’t not like all those songs, but the only one I really, actively liked was “She’s Crazy for Leavin’.” To be fair, most of that had to do with their being overplayed, though. Still, though, I would gladly trade any of them for “Telephone Road,” “Earthbound,” or this lost gem from 1989′s Keys to the Highway:

“Look for me, where the four winds blow…”

More blog later, but for now…

…in memory of Ronnie James Dio, July 10, 1942 — May 16, 2010…

Not a bad list at all.

Howie Abrams and Sacha Jenkins’ top-10 vocalists in the history of metal:

1. Ronnie James Dio (Black Sabbath, Dio)
2. Rob Halford (Judas Priest)
3. Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden)
4. Eric Adams (Manowar)
5. Geoff Tate (Queensrÿche)
6. King Diamond (Mercyful Fate, King Diamond)
7. Tom Araya (Slayer)
8. John Bush (Armored Saint/Anthrax)
9. James Hetfield (Metallica)
10. Max Cavalera (Sepultura, Soulfly)

I thought it was pretty well-rounded, anyway. The only quibble I have is the inclusion of Tom Araya. Confession time, maybe: Back when I was dipping my toes into the metal pool, I bought Slayer’s Reign in Blood. I had heard a lot of good things about it and was curious to see how it sounded. Suffice it to say I was not really impressed by it, and Tom Araya’s vocal style was pretty much the beginning and end of the reason for that. It had pretty awesome guitars and all (RIP Jeff Hanneman), but Araya’s…how to put this….half-chant-half-yell just never did anything for me. I would probably have replaced him with Dave Mustaine or Lemmy Kilmister if it had been my list to make. I would guess both of them rank in the top 20…at least I would hope they do, at any rate.

And, yeah, despite his recent crowning as the Eternal Supreme Douchebag of the Metal Universe, Geoff Tate deserves his place on this list. Dude can’t hold a note to save his life anymore, but he was damn near untouchable back in the day. While I am 100 percent behind Queensryche with Todd La Torre — and while I do think Eddie Jackson, Michael Wilton, and Scott Rockenfield are master musicians in their own right — it was Geoff Tate’s vocals that drew me to the band’s music as much as the musical arrangements themselves.

I was quite amused at some of the comments about who should have been included. One commenter suggested the inclusion of Aaron Lewis because of his covers of songs from metal bands like Stone Temple Pilots and Shinedown. Yes, really. I do like both of those bands, but I certainly never thought of them as metal. Another suggestion was Paul Rodgers — and while I think Paul Rodgers is great, the closest he’s ever gotten to metal is Paul Kossoff’s 1957/’63 Fender Stratocaster, which is now played by Iron Maiden guitarist Dave Murray.

I do wonder, though, how the list would look if they just included more current bands like Kamelot or Symphony X, or perhaps just took into account certain bands’ non-original lead singers…

This is such a great observation.

From a commenter at Saving Country Music, on the latest from Blake Shelton:

What really makes me mad though, is how many classic country names Blake drops on this album…the fact that he is talking about all these people that supposedly nobody listens to just makes me hate him even more.

I don’t hate Blake Shelton as a person, but I am — to say the least — not a fan of his attitude toward old country music and his opinions of the genre’s evolution. I said my piece on that here.

But this…this really is a whole new level of hypocrisy. Name-dropping Hank Jr. and covering Conway Twitty and George Jones, among others, but hey, I thought nobody listened to or bought that tired old shit anymore. Apparently the new, better way of respecting the people who came before you is to name-drop them in shitty wannabe rap songs (see also: “Dirt Road Anthem”) as opposed to incorporating their sounds into your own music.

But hey, on the bright side, George Strait’s new album hits the stores on Tuesday.We’re pretty much guaranteed not to have any shitty wannabe rap on it.

It doesn’t have to be like that.

Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French, on playing new music:

People always say, “Why don’t you do new material?” If you play new material, that means you’re taking some standard out. More people are going to be upset over the removal of a standard than will be made happy by a new song.

Well, such might be true for some bands, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be true for all of them, even Twisted Sister. I seriously wonder how many Twisted Sister fans would be ticked off if “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was taken out in favor of a new song. If you’re making good new music, why not play it? I suppose a lot of acts, Twisted Sister included, are happy being nostalgia acts.

And that’s all fine and good, but I don’t see what’d be so wrong about swapping out some of those overplayed songs for new stuff if the new stuff is good. And the last new song I heard from Dee and the guys was actually really good. He’s still sounding great, and the rest of the band still has it too. Going back to one of my favorite examples, I doubt you’d see many real Queensryche fans who’d be mad if they swapped out “Silent Lucidity” and/or “Jet City Woman” for a couple of the songs from their forthcoming self-titled album. (For the record, I’ve heard from sources I trust at The Breakdown Room and elsewhere that said album is really good, perhaps the best thing they’ve done since at least 1994′s Promised Land.)

And the same goes for Accept. Of course, Mark Tornillo and the guys do play “Balls to the Wall,” “Fast as a Shark,” “Princess of the Dawn,” and “Restless and Wild” right along with “Teutonic Terror” and “Stalingrad.” But I haven’t heard of anyone being unhappy with that.

Of course, the above-mentioned bands are both special cases as they’re both forging on without their iconic original lead singers. But you can still insert pretty much any classic metal band with its original frontman that’s still making new music — Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and the list goes on. (From what I understand, Anthrax’s Worship Music is one of the best things they’ve done in years as well. Same is true of Megadeth’s last couple of albums and Metallica’s Death Magnetic.)

So yeah, there might be a few bands that are comfortable with being a nostalgia act, but I don’t see why they all have to be. Some of ‘em are making their best music in years, and the genre would be a lot poorer without it.

So guess who agrees with me…

…here?

…if you have one set of people playing on the record and another set of people playing the songs live, then it’s not so much a real band as it is a “singer” and his supporting cast (and of course I use the term singer here in a very loose sense).

None other than Todd La Torre himself:

It’s not Queensryche. The guys that play on the record are not the guys that you see onstage and aren’t the guys that wrote the songs. It’s a revolving door dude, it’s not Queensryche.

Yep, that’s pretty much the long and short of it. I was also very glad to see this addressed:

 …he’s (Geoff Tate — ed.) in the now. Ok, great, but sorry, the fans wanna hear “Queen Of The Ryche”, they wanna hear those classics.

I’ve been thinking about that ever since Tater went on record with his disdain of the stuff on the EP and The Warning. What the hell were the fans supposed to do, be happy with hearing “Get Started,” “All the Promises,” and all the rest of the crap he had been foisting on fans since Chris DeGarmo left for the remainder of Queensryche’s run instead? Granted, I know Tate can’t sing that stuff to save his life anymore, but that’s largely his fault and falls under the heading of “refusing to deliver on a professional level anymore.”

And speaking of that…I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Tater’s opinion that the sound of Dedicated to Chaos and Kings & Thieves was a worthy direction for Queensrÿche to be going doesn’t really matter. Why?

Because the great majority of Queensrÿche fans obviously didn’t agree with him. Empire sold 3.5 million copies. Operation: Mindcrime and Promised Land both went platinum. Every album after that sold less, as Tate took the band further from its roots, to the point that Dedicated to Chaos probably didn’t sell as many copies total as Empire sold in its first couple of days. Seriously, how much further did the Tates think the band was going to go in the direction it was headed? Said direction was quite clearly unsustainable and something had to give. And Geoff Tate quite obviously was not interested in giving the fans what they wanted. He had to go.

And this isn’t just my opinion. This is an objective fact. Look at it like this: If your company is making and selling something that no one’s buying, you either adapt or you go out of business. Tate was selling the product no one wanted and he was quite obviously unwilling to adapt, so there was only one logical thing left to do — fire him and get someone who was going to help the company give the customers what they had come to expect. This is pure, objective FACT, and what it all boils down to at the end of the day, no matter how he and his water-carriers screech about the singer being the band.

And the sales figures for Tate’s latest, Frequency Unknown, bear this out yet again — 5,500 copies in its first week, some 2,500 fewer copies than Dedicated to Chaos sold in its first week. Which isn’t surprising, since it’s by and large more of the same thing Tate’s been trying to sell to Queensryche fans since about 2006…

Monday music musings.

I would like to thank Eric Church for giving me yet another exhibit to submit whenever I talk about how I think artists who downplay the concept of genres do so solely to further their own ends:

I happen to feel that genres are gone in music. I just think that with the digital age, whether it’s satellite radio, terrestrial radio, Pandora, whatever, there are no more genres….

Wait, what? No more genres with satellite radio? That sound you hear is me rolling my eyes at Church’s ignorance on display here. If anything, satellite radio in general only serves better those of us who still think the concept of genres still has some utility, because it carves music up into categories even more than terrestrial radio does. And the same goes for Pandora, albeit not to the same extent. If you want to hear real country music and not ’80s-rock retreads, it’s going to be a lot easier to do that on satellite or Pandora than it is pretty much anywhere else.

And speaking of ’80s rock retreads, we have this, from reality-show hack Tate Stevens…

The Jason Aldeans, the Brantley Gilberts–they’re bringing that rock element to country music. It broadens the whole thing, which is awesome. So you’ll hear some guitar tones and sounds that are like that ’80s rock–late ’70s, ’80s, the Journeys, the Foreigners, that kind of REO Speedwagon sound. I love that stuff.

(Good grief, what it is with jackasses named Tate?)

So, here we have these people who cut their teeth on Journey and Foreigner instead of Ricky Skaggs and George Strait making “country” music, and Tate Stevens apparently thinks this is a good thing. I really don’t know what to say here that I haven’t already said before, but that it strikes me that Bob McDill’s mid-1990s lament is still just as valid as it ever was, even if the people perpetrating this fraud never tried their hand in other genres before. And I find this especially distasteful in the wake of George Jones’ death.

But Holly Gleason distilled all the arguments about old vs. new country right down to their essence here:

Do we need old school country music? Hard to say. But you listen to the processed, bulked up steroidal arena country, then put on “When the Grass Grows Over Me.” Feel the difference and decide which has the most immediacy, the most charisma, the most punch to the stomach. It won’t take but a bar or two.

Yes, indeed.

(h/t Country California)

In memory of George Jones…

…who died this morning at 81, and whose question still has yet to be answered.

Sunday music musings.

So, how many of you from San Antonio or South Texas have heard? Heard what? Well…

A. KKYX is now broadcasting on FM as well as AM. They recently put up a signal at 104.9. Not too powerful, it mainly covers the north side of town, but hey, classic country on FM! Not only there, but also…

B. …on 92.5 and 93.3, as Clear Channel brought back the legendary K-BUC. I wasn’t here when that station was on the air, so I don’t know if it’s as good as it once was. I’m going to guess the answer is no, as they’re playing music from the ’90s and early 2000s as well. But that’s okay, because I really like what I’ve heard on there so far, which includes a good amount of stuff from the ’70s and ’80s.

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I’ve often said that people who listen to bad music seem to like to inflict it on the rest of us. We got another example of it today, on the IH-10 frontage road at DeZavala, as some dude in a Toyota Tundra with his windows rolled down subjected us to Luke Bryan. Seriously. It’s not that I think pop-country is bad by default; it’s just that it used to be a whole lot better.