For the first time in more than a decade Cleveland rap crew Bone Thugs-N-Harmony are a quintet.
Stanley "Flesh N Bone" Howse, 34 who has spent the last 10 years in prison for brandishing an AK-47 at a friend was released Monday, July 13 from a California penitentiary.
All hiphop.com reports that Howse was greeted by friends and family including crew members Krayzie, Layzie (a.ka. his brother Steven Howse), Bizzy and Wish Bone.

“It feels amazing, refreshing, exciting [and] I'm so happy for him to finally come home to his family and friends and fans,” Bone Thug’s longtime manager Steve Lobel told AllHipHop.com. “Flesh is a very great, loving, talented, creative individual. We have a lot of memories together. Hopefully we can have more.”

The group which recently reunited with troubled member Bizzy Bone is now back to full strength and is already in the studio working on their follow-up to the gold selling Strength & Loyalty from 2007 which featured only Krayzie, Layzie, and Wish Bone.

The album is expected to be released on Interscope through hip hop producer Swizz Beatz's Full Surface label.

After being ousted from rehab/rock supergroup Velvet Revolver, troubled singer Scott Weiland fell back into the waiting arms of his former bandmates in 90's Grunge kings Stone Temple Pilots and the band hit the road.

As expected the reunion tour has been quite successful but also met with its share of bumps without including Weiland's November DUI arrest.

So far the tour has been met mostly with good reviews for the rest of the band, Robert and Dean DeLeo on bass, vocals and guitar respectively and drummer Eric Kretz. As usual Weiland has been the wildcard with both critics and fans noting nights when he mumbled incoherently and seemed disinterested and/or impaired and other nights when prowls the stage as the golden grunge god of yore.

Monday night at U of A's stately E.J. Thomas Hall, both the band and Weiland were in a happy place as they played a two hour set filled with the band's many 20th century hits.

The band played Cleveland a scant two months ago, so their quick return to Northeast Ohio is a bit of a surprise and surely had the folks at Live Nation quietly gnawing their collective fingernails wondering if they had saturated the local STP market. While their worst fears were allayed as the crowd was healthy, there were chunks of empty seats on all three levels of the venerable concert hall but the folks that showed up were definitely not feeling saturated.
Weiland sporting a burgundy fedora, jeans, two scarves, sport jacket, sunglasses and Rolling Stones T-shirt (most of which would eventually come off to reveal his still very thin, wiry frame) started the show of a bit slowly with a low energy take on the power ballad Big Empty which like much of the set became a group sing along.

Weiland whose early set banter suggested that he thought he was in Cleveland made several references to his childhood days spent in Chagrin Falls and even briefly wore a jersey from the Kentston school district he attended as a teen. Weiland whose banter, like his singing got better as the evening progressed also admitted he was a Notre Dame fan (drawing many boos from the crowd) and praised former Fighting Irish/Browns quarterback Brady Quinn(drawing a mixed reaction).
Local references always help warm up a room. But the crowd, a mixture of folks who were probably flying the flannel during the band's hey-day and younger fans who were likely dipping into their older siblings CD collections, didn't need much encouragement to sing/shout along to the string of hits that included Wicked Garden, the churning Big Bang Baby and the still taut single Vaseline.

During their commercial heights S.T.P. got a bad critical rap and was lumped in with the wave of grunge also-rans such as Candlebox (also reunited), Bush, Seven Mary Three and others that would pollute the airwaves for the next few years and make piles of money for their record companies. Truthfully, STP's massive selling debut Core still sounds too much like a Mainstream Grunge Blueprint when compared to the Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains records by which it was preceded (not to mention the Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Melvins, Tad and others that proceeded the Seattle stars).

That album also contains many of the band's most enduring hits and almost half of its contents made the set list.

But the band also dipped into personal favorites such as Lounge Fly and Lady Picture Show and Too Cool Queenie from the band's last and least popular album of new material Shangri-La Dee Da . There were also few apparently spontaneous and seemingly out-of-place funk jams between tunes, perhaps a preview of the band's possible recording future.
Playing in front of a huge video screen showing mostly abstract images save a car chase from Bullitt, the 40 year old Weiland's patented stiff, herky-jerky stage movements have gained a bit of extra stiffness but he was pretty energetic, using the entire space and even walking into the crowd during the metal-flavored Down. A few times his vocal fastball seemed to have lost a bit off its top end, but mostly his Vedder/Morrison-esque growls and wails were intact as was his trusty bullhorn and he seemed to empty his lungs on Plush despite having most of the audience singing the song just as loud as he.

Tim McGraw has been a country music superstar for more than 15 years and mainstream pop star for a decade taking the mantle of crossover king from the semi-retired Garth Brooks and racking up a string of country and pop chart topping albums and sell out tours alone and with his crossover superstar wife Faith Hill.
One of the ways McGraw has topped both charts is he’s not afraid to cross-pollinate his music mixing in crunchy rock, slick soul and big pop ballads with his neo-traditional country and contemporary honky-tonk.

Wednesday night at Blossom McGraw and his longtime band the Dancehall Doctors wowed and wooed a near sellout crowd of screaming women who wish they could touch his chiseled body and urban cowboys who would love to drink a beer with him.
McGraw’s superstar status doesn’t stop him from bucking the fairly codified country music system by using his touring band in the studio and recording tunes with rappers and rockers. While many artists have stopped playing soon to be released songs in concert because of camera phones and Youtube, McGraw opened the Blossom show with a solid new song, Still from his next album due in the fall and played three more new songs.

McGraw isn’t a particularly animated performer preferring to let his (usually) tight pants and tighter shirt carry much of the visual load. But the singer, wearing loose cargo pants and a tank top, and oozes charisma and gives his nine band mates-some who have been with him for 20 years- plenty of room to elicit their own screams from the audience.

McGraw whipped out hit after hit, spanning his career from 1993’s still politically incorrect Indian Outlaw through to his recent hit If You're Reading This, about fallen soldiers.

In between he hit showed his soulful side with a cover of Eddie Rabbit’s Suspicion, revisited his daddy issues on the new ballad You Had To Be There and on the new rootsy rocker Southern Voices he named checked a slew of southern icons including Dale Earnhardt, Hank Williams Sr., Rosa Parks and Billy Graham.

Blossom is one of the final stops on McGraw’s Live Your Voice tour, but given their energetic performance it seems neither he nor his band seem ready to leave the road.

A: We are DEVO.

McDonald's had made an enemy of D-E-V-O and their L-A-W-Y-E-R-S.
The Akron born band is suing the Burger Behemoth over a happy meal toy given away last spring as part of an American Idol related promotion. The toys were little plastic figures with outfits that correlated to various musical genres including Disco Dave, Rockin’ Riley, Soulful Selma and this little slice of copyright infringement dubbed New Wave Nigel.

Gee, that little guy's hat sure looks like one of DEVO's patented (and copyrighted and trademarked) Energy Domes, doesn't it?
The band sure thinks so and are turning loose their legal team on Mickey D's

Gerald Casale, Devo bassist and energy dome creator had this to say about the suit:

“This New Wave Nigel doll that they've created is just a complete Devo rip-off and the red hat is exactly the red hat that I designed, and it's copyrighted and trademarked," Casale told the Australian Associated Press.

"They didn’t ask us anything. Plus, we don’t like McDonald’s, and we don’t like American Idol, so we’re doubly offended,” he said.

The doll also sports an orange jumpsuit and plays a song that Club Devo.com says sounds like a mutated version of Doctor Detroit
( which is a crappy song)

I have to appreciate the love Alicia Keys showed a few of the R&B girls groups the early 90s at the '08 B.E.T. Awards held Tuesday night.
After performing her current hits Superwoman and Teenage Love Affair (with a band!) Keys brought out SWV. to perform their hit ballad Weak followed by a fully reunited Envogue who performed Hold On and then the surviving members of TLC (Chili & T-Boz) came to give us a little bit of Waterfalls out and get a little love from an artist and from the crowd, most of whom actually seem to remember the groups.

I'd embed the Youtube video here but Viacom doesn't play when it comes to copyright infringement, so instead you'll have to go to B.E.T.'s web site and search around a bit. Conversely, you could just wait a couple of days because I'm sure there will be several "encore" presentations of the show.

They all looked and sounded pretty good (though T-Boz who suffers from Sickle Cell Anemia seemed less energetic than usual) and it was a nice flashback and show of respect, especially for us Gen X-ers who used to dance to their music in the clubs back in the day.

Ahh, memories…

In a recent Saturday Night Live skit, resident goofball Andy Samberg plays singer/songwriter Jack Johnson as host of a talk show called “The Mellow Show” where he talks about being mellow to fellow mellow artists Dave Matthews and John Mayer and laments the passing of his many pets including a mini-gortex wearing iguana who died of neglect and “extreme mellowness.”

It’s the kind of silly/funny parody of the Hawaiian-born, ex pro-surfer’s image and music that should make both his detractors and fans chuckle and obviously Johnson has a sense of humor, as the skit is the featured video on his web site.

Tuesday night at Blossom, though his two hour set of tunes drawing from his five full length albums was very, very mellow, the near capacity crowd was in no danger from the (surely mellow) Grim Reaper. The mostly 18-30 crowd with a healthy heaping of older yuppies danced, sang a long and generally worked harder on having a good time under the pavilion and on the overstuffed briefly rain soaked lawn, than the object of their musical affection.

Johnson's triple platinum and counting Curious George soundtrack is officially named Sing-a-longs and Lullabies For the Film Curious George, but the first three words could be the title and description of just about all of Johnson's albums and concerts. His music is fairly narrow in range with unhurried tempos, gently rhythmic guitar strumming, gentle melodies that never reach for highs or lows but simply float around in a comfortable midrange so anyone can sing. Johnson seldom raises his voice above a friendly speaking level and his occasional guitar solos are like his singing, smooth, melodic and unfussy.

Johnson’s four piece band took the stage casually, looking like they had just stepped out of the audience (dude, it’s part of the appeal, he’s a regular cat just like you and me!) opening with the lightly funky groove of Hope from his 2008 album Sleep Through The Static, arguably his most musically mellow and lyrically serious collection to date. Switching between acoustic and electric guitar Johnson’s setlist bounced back and forth between two basic song formats. There is the midtempo, gently funky and/or reggae flavored groove found in songs such as Good People, Sitting, Waiting, Wishing and the crowd favorites Bubble Toes, Banana Pancakes and Staple It Together which featured a fun melodica duel between keyboardist Zak Gill and opener Money Mark. On the other end of Johnson’s (mellow) musical spectrum are the (more) soothing slower songs such as Losing Keys, Go On and Breakdown.

Through it all Johnson swayed (gently) back and forth keeping the banter to a minimum. Easily the hardest working man onstage was Gill whose grandmother drove up from Columbus to see him. Gill danced, frequently stood and body jammed, provided vocal harmony, animated accordion and added some swing to Johnson’s reserved grooves with his comping on the keys.

On the Blossom grounds fans could register to vote and volunteer and environmental organizations such as Surfrider Foundation and Climatecounts.org where fans could learn about the three “R's” (reduce, reuse, recycle) and other environmental concerns.

On and offstage Johnson comes across as a truly groovy, caring and yes, very mellow dude. The kind of guy who, if you walked up to him on the street, called him an expletive and kicked him in the nethers, he’d probably ask if you felt better and offer to talk about your anger issues and ways to channel your negative energy over a cup of chai tea at the nearest coffee house.

And, even if one finds Johnson’s music boring-as many folks do- it’s difficult to actively dislike the guy. His music is so inoffensive, safe and polite that a nonfan is more likely to forget their actually listening to it than be upset by his soothing sounds.

American Idol's biggest winner to date and budding country music superstar Carrie Underwood is bringing her slick country sounds to CSU's Wolstein Center on Tuesday, September 23 with opening act Little Big Town.

Tickets for the really big show go on sale Saturday, June 21st and will cost you $55, $45, $35.

P.S.
So Carrie Underwood, one of the hottest country/pop stars in the country is headlining the 10-15,000-ish seating Wolstein Center, but New Kids On The Block who haven't been the hottest anything in 20 years are banking on filling the 20,000 seat Quicken Loans Arena?

I'm not hatin' on the NKOTB reunion, I'm just saying….20,000?

Bad news for lovers of 80/90's hair rock,

The concert by Cinderella (whose look was more hair metal than their straight-forward rock sound), Warrant and Lynch Mob at the Time Warner Cable Amphitheater in Cleveland on July 19 has been canceled.

Aparently Tom Keifer, Cinderella's gravelly voiced lead singer (finally) had a hemorrage in his left vocal chord that has made it impossible for him to sing anytime soon.

‘‘Consequently, and most regretfully, the upcoming Cinderella tour has been cancelled.’’ quoth the presss release.

Yikes! Get better Tom.

Refunds are available at point of purchase.

Goodness how times have changed.

A quarter century ago British metal pioneers Iron Maiden’s American tour drew picketers across the country and piles of the band’s albums were burned by Christian activist groups offended (and perhaps a bit frightened) by the band’s macabre image and subject matter.

But in 2008, an Iron Maiden concert has become a family outing evidenced by the generations of metal heads that gathered at Blossom Thursday night to bang their heads to the band’s string of classic and hit metal tunes.

A impressive array of familial configurations could be seen rocking to the Maiden. There were toddlers likely attending their first concert (and likely getting their first whiff of marijuana smoke) with their dads; fathers and tween-aged daughters discussing the bands guitars; large families exiting their SUV’s all decked out in Maiden gear and even a women stretching her authentic 1983 tour shirt’s stitches to the breaking point as it tried to cover her very pregnant belly.

The sextet’s latest tour, dubbed Somewhere Back In Time, coincides with the release of yet another DVD and CD compilation and is visually based on the bands’ 1985 Powerslave tour and features music from their 1980 debut through 1992’s concept album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

The band of mostly pentagenarians (save singer Bruce Dickenson who turns 50 in August) still performed with the energy they did back when protesters were declaring Number of the Beast a danger to the spiritual welfare of our nation’s children. The band is also still having fun onstage, constantly smiling at each other while working through their rock poses ripping through hot versions of classic Maiden tunes including the set opening twofer of Aces High and 2 Minutes to Midnight both from Powerslave.

Dickenson wearing awful “ripped” leather pants, a camouflaged shirt and a wool cap was the talkative host, shouting his standard audience request to "scream for me O-Hi-O!,” riffing on the amount of cows in the state, and praising the audience for giving the band its most enthusiastic response in the states in years.
"Many of you were not even born when many these songs were written, which is excellent.’ Dickenson said before a double shot of Revelations and a shout-a-long The Trooper from 1983’s Piece of Mind.

Naturally, their early MTV/radio hits, Run To The Hills and Number of the Beast received huge ovations and inspired much air guitar/bass/drums from the crowd, but the band also played their magnum opus and fan favorite, the 13 minute Samuel Taylor-Coleridge inspired Rime of the Ancient Mariner complete with expertly timed pyro and colorful explosions.

While hardcore fans may quibble with the setlist (three songs Seventh Son of a Seventh Son?), many of the songs such as 1992’s Fear of the Dark seem to be chosen in part because they are packed with sing-a-long moments and Dickenson constantly encouraged the crowd to participate and they happily obliged.

By the time Eddie, the band’s sinister zombie-like mascot and accidentally brilliant marketing tool made his obligatory appearance during the set ending Iron Maiden both the band and fans had worked themselves into a sweaty, fist-pumping metal fervor.

Yes, times sure have changed. Iron Maiden's strong, energetic performance before an equally energetic and appreciative crowd proved that the old 20th century bon mot about families that pray together could easily be modified for the 21st century to “the family that headbangs together stays together.”

Iron Maiden Setlist - Blossom Music Center 7/12/08

Intro. Churchill's Speech
1. Aces High - From Powerslave (1984).
2. 2 Minutes to Midnight - From Powerslave (1984).
3. Revelations - From Piece of Mind (1983).
4. The Trooper - From Piece of Mind (1983)
5. Wasted Years - From Somewhere in Time (1986).
6. The Number of the Beast - From The Number of the Beast (1982).
7. Can I Play With Madness - From Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988).
8. Rime of the Ancient Mariner - From Powerslave (1984).
9. Powerslave - From Powerslave (1984).
10. Heaven Can Wait - From Somewhere in Time (1986).
11. Run to the Hills - From The Number of the Beast (1982).
12. Fear of the Dark - From Fear of the Dark (1992).
13. Iron Maiden - From Iron Maiden (1980).
Encore
14. Moonchild - From Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988).
15. The Clairvoyant - From Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988).
16. Hallowed Be Thy Name - From The Number of the Beast (1982).

Personnel
Bruce Dickinson - Lead vocals
Dave Murray – Guitar
Adrian Smith – Guitar, backing vocals
Janick Gers – Guitar, backing vocals
Steve Harris – Bass, keyboards, backing vocals
Nicko McBrain – Drums, percussion
Michael Kenney – Keyboards

Due to production delays the first two weeks of british rock band Coldplays North American tour have been changed.

For North East Ohioans that means that instead rocking with the band on July 6
they will have to wait to Viva La Vida with Chris Martin and the gang until Tuesday, October 21.

Tickets will be honored on the new date