Dave Grohl, Josh Homme, John Paul Jones Unveil Supergroup

Them Crooked Vultures make their debut with a post-Lollapalooza set.
By James Montgomery


Dave Grohl (file)
Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Officially, Lollapalooza ended Sunday night in Chicago's Grant Park, with dueling sets from the Killers and Jane's Addiction. Unofficially, it ended very early Monday morning, across town at venerable rock club the Metro, with a surprise show by Them Crooked Vultures.

To the unfamiliar, the Vultures might seem like an odd choice to close out Lolla weekend ... until you realize that they're made up of Foo Fighters frontman/ former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age mastermind Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones. And their gig at the Metro was their world premiere.

According to some reports, the Vultures actually turned down Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell's request to replace the Beastie Boys as headliners at the festival, opting to debut in front of some 1,100 super-psyched fans at the Metro, rather than 75,000 in Grant Park (tickets for the gig were announced via Foo Fighter/ QOTSA fan clubs). Meaning that, in a lot of ways, this was the most sought-after ticket in town.

Taking the stage just after midnight, the Vultures — Grohl on drums (of course), Homme on guitar and vocals, Jones on bass and keys and frequent QOTSA contributor Alain Johannes on guitar — ripped through 12 songs in 80 minutes, all taken from their upcoming debut, which may or may not be called Never Deserved the Future, and may or may not be hitting stores on October 23 (early "promo" videos touting both those facts were revealed over the weekend to be hoaxes perpetrated by QOTSA fans).

The songs, with appropriately Homme-ian titles like "Scumbag Blues," "Mind Eraser (No Chaser)," "Caligulove" and "Interlude w/Ludes," sounded pretty much how you'd expect, given the band's pedigree. They rocked, hard — Chicago Tribune critic Greg Kot described them as "fresh, invigorating and just plain nasty" — delving off into psychedelic, reverb-filled excursions and exploring proggy territory, "both of the old-school Yes variety, and the more modern Tool flavor," according to the Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis.

It's not known if Monday's Metro performance was a one-off event for the Vultures — there have been whispers of a full-blown tour, but a spokesperson for Homme had not responded to MTV News' request for comment at press time. Nor was it clear whether or not they'll have an album out in October.

Early Monday, a Crooked Vultures Twitter account, which had previously posted links to the band's official-looking Web site and the Metro's online ticketing site — posted a link to what appears to be the group's first bit of official merchandise: a Deserve the Future T-shirt. Cost: $30.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1617950/20090810/foo_fighters.jhtml

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Lady Gaga's Born This Way Will 'Grab All The Monsters,' Akon Says

'She is amazing when it comes to just taking things to the next level,' label boss says of Gaga's 2011 release.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Kelly Marino


Akon
Photo: MTV News

Earlier this year, Akon teased that Lady Gaga was working on "crazy" new tracks for her forthcoming Born This Way album. Now, Gaga's label boss has a few more details to share about the hotly anticipated LP, due in 2011.

"Well, Gaga and her follow-up, I've definitely heard [it], and what I can really tell you about it is the fact that I'm excited — and I'm hard to excite," he laughed to MTV News about the release. "I'm really hard to excite, 'cause my big question was like, 'Wow, how are you going to outdo yourself on this one? Do you realize how big you are? Do you know how big you really are? How are you going to outdo yourself?' "

"If I was going to compare it to her previous work, I would definitely say it's a notch up," he said. "It's like she's slowly taking you on to this journey down this road. If she were to just drastically do it, she probably would have lost everybody from the first album, but once the sound was created and established, now we can use that as a tool to grab all the monsters and walk them down this graveyard. It's crazy. It's amazing."

What are you expecting from Gaga's next album? Let us know in the comments!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1652537/20101117/akon.jhtml

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New Led Zeppelin On The Way? Jason Bonham Hints At 'Jam' Sessions With Jimmy Page -- But Not Robert Plant

Drummer admits he doesn't know what will come of 'new material.'
By Chris Harris


Jason Bonham
Photo: Larry Marano/ Getty Images

On Friday morning, mere hours before he was due to take the stage with classic rockers Foreigner at Detroit's GM Renaissance Center, drummer Jason Bonham — the son of late Led Zeppelin kitman John Bonham — told Jim Johnson and Lynne Woodison of local rock station 94.7 WCSX that he'd be an ex-member of Foreigner as of September 1. But that's not the only thing he said.

Much to the delight of Led Zeppelin fans everywhere, Bonham revealed that he's been meeting up with Led Zep guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones in recent months and that they've been "trying to do some new material and writing."

It was the first time since Led Zeppelin announced they would re-form for a single performance (which happened late last year at London's O2 Arena, in honor of the late Ahmet Ertegün, who signed the band to Atlantic Records in 1969) that anyone connected to the band has confirmed publicly that new music could be on the horizon for the iconic rockers. While the bandmembers have stopped short of definitively ruling out such a reunion, singer Robert Plant insisted in the wake of last year's show that he intended to focus on promoting and touring behind his critically lauded album with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, Raising Sand.

Not that Bonham knows what — if anything — will happen with the new material he's been working on with Page (who collaborated with pop singer Leona Lewis on an uneven version of Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" at the Olympic closing ceremonies in Beijing on Sunday night) and Jones. He said he just shows up and takes his seat behind the kit.

"I've been over [to England] a couple of times," Bonham said. "I've been working with Jimmy and John Paul and trying to do ... some new material and some writing. I don't know what it will be, but it will be something. At the moment, all I know is I have the great pleasure to go and jam with the two guys and start work on some material. When I get there, I never ask any questions. If I get a phone call to go and play, I enjoy every moment of it. Whatever it ends up as, to ever get a chance to jam with two people like that, it is a phenomenal thing for me. It's my life. It's what I've dreamed about doing."

He said it's still too early to tell what will become of these "jam" sessions, but admitted that the "possibility of doing something is in the cards. I really felt it was in the cards from the moment we walked offstage at the O2." Bonham also explained that, before there could be a Led Zep LP, "lots of politics [would need to] get ironed out," but added that recording with Zep is "something I've always wanted to do."

Bonham noticeably didn't mention frontman Plant's name during the discussion. A spokesperson for Page's management had no comment on the matter, and a spokesperson for Jones' management could not be reached by press time.

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1593468/20080825/led_zeppelin.jhtml

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Usher Remembers Being A 'Pizza Face' On 'When I Was 17'

'I had really, really bad acne ' he admits in Saturday's episode.
By Mawuse Ziegbe


Usher on "When I Was 17"
Photo: MTV News

He's known as one of the smoothest R&B sensations to grace the stage, but when Usher was 17, he grappled with a far less flattering image.

"I went through this phase where I had really, really bad acne," the singer admits on the latest episode of "When I Was 17," premiering Saturday at 11 a.m. Usher, who was 17 in 1995, reveals with a grin that his nickname was "Pizza Face."

"His acne was so horrible," recalled one of Usher's more blunt friends, Keith. "His face was so jacked up."

Music mogul and producer Jermaine Dupri remembered how the entertainer's spotty complexion led him to shy away from the spotlight.

"He didn't want to go out. He wanted to stay in," Dupri says. "He was a little ashamed of what was going on with his face."

The singer went to extreme, and ultimately unsuccessful, lengths to disguise his breakouts.

"As a dude, you're not gonna put makeup on your face, right?" Usher said. "I tried that, it didn't even work."

He may have experimented with cosmetics and spent a few more nights at home but the multiplatinum star didn't let his acne hold him back from wooing the ladies. "I was 17, so I would still try to talk to girls [and] get past it," Usher reasoned.

He even had some smooth lines to drop when he wanted to draw attention away from his skin. " 'Don't look at that, look at my eyes, baby. I'm trying to say something real serious to you right here,' " Usher recalled, reenacting his complexion-deflecting dating moves. "I know I have pizza face, I don't care."

In the end, his skin cleared up and the singer said it was just a matter of riding out a rite passage that many teens are forced to endure.

"This is something that all 17-year-olds have to deal with," Usher said. "You can't run away from it."

— this week featuring B.o.B, Usher and Ne-Yo — premieres Saturday at 11 a.m. on MTV

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1647586/20100911/usher.jhtml

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