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  • Metallica's James Hetfield only attended freshman and sophomore years at California's Downey High School and says he felt like "a misfit" the whole time, but he gamely showed up at its Hall of Fame induction ceremony a few days ago and gave a fantastic speech that was like a pep talk for music-loving kids who don't fit into the Glee paradigm. As video posted on Music Radar demonstrates, it was actually better than his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction speech, although that one ended with the singer/guitarist hoisting Lars Ulrich off his feet in a massive bear hug.

    "I hated high school," Hetfield said at Downey (strong opening, sir!). "I was a misfit, didn't fit in, didn't want to fit in. ... Music was a savior and I was able to climb into other people's heads and records. Instead of hanging out at school I went home and practiced guitar." His first ax was an SG he bought off the guitarist in the school's jazz band (ha!) and his takeaway message for the teens in attendance was

    Read More »from Metallica’s James Hetfield Gives Awesome Speech at Cali High School
  • What's up with artists of the '90s covering artists of the '90s lately? Weezer performed "Paranoid Android" and Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland dropped by The Tonight Show to cover the Lemonheads' "Into Your Arms." The performance comes from the May 26th episode of Leno, but everyone had pre-Memorial Day weekend senioritis so it went virtually ignored until now. Weiland does a pretty good job with the one Lemonheads track that was arguably more popular than their Simon & Garfunkel cover, though Scott does get a little lounge act on the vocals.

    Given Weiland's past struggles with narcotics, it's probably wise that he didn't perform a song off the Lemonheads' junkie epic It's a Shame About Ray. Still, we've always assumed that "Into Your Arms" was a drug ode in disguise, where Evan Dando didn't fall into the arms of a lover but whatever illegal substance he was dabbling in at the time. "I know a place where I can go when I'm alone" and "I know a place that's safe and warm

    Read More »from Scott Weiland Evidently Likes the Lemonheads
  • The Wall Street Journal conducted a pretty awful video interview with Lady Gaga that included the question, "Let's talk creative, because when you sit down on the piano at a show, you're playing that piano" and a reference to "a lot of Auto-Tunes." OK, so the Journal is not Creem. But since it is a business paper, the reporter did get in one timely query about the 99-cent Amazon special that helped propel Gaga to her record-breaking 1.1 million opening week. Cheap albums? Lady Gaga is totally down. Is her album worth more than 99 cents? Her full reply:

    "No. I absolutely do not [think so], especially for MP3s and digital music. It's invisible. It's in space. If anything, I applaud a company like Amazon for equating the value of digital versus the physical copy, and giving the opportunity to everyone to buy music. It also wasn't really 99 cents, because Amazon paid the difference on all of those purchases as part of their promotional campaign for one of their new services, so. I think

    Read More »from Noted Economist Lady Gaga Says Digital Music Is Nearly Worthless
  • This is an actual conversation taking place in millions of American homes this afternoon:

    Mom: Hi honey. How was school?
    Child: Fine.
    Mom: That's good. Who are the Strokes?

    Thanks to the powers of syndication, a nation of housewives were exposed to the garage rock stylings of the Strokes this afternoon when the New York rockers made their debut on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Yes, Ellen reportedly loves the Strokes, even though her record label skews much younger and poppier. Julian Casablancas and crew played "Gratisfaction" for what has to be their unlikeliest audience ever. Angles came out two months ago, so this must be the second wind of album promotion. We hope your mom enjoyed it. Be sure to point out which one dated Drew Barrymore.

    Read More »from The Strokes Performed On Your Mom’s Favorite Talk Show
  • Six-piece rock band N.E.D. don't get to rehearse as often as other fledgling indie acts... because its members are sort of busy saving women's lives. The group, whose name stands for the encouraging diagnosis No Evidence of Disease, is made up of gynecological cancer specialists from locations as far-flung as Anchorage and New Orleans. They met up to play for the first time at a conference in 2008, released an EP the following year, and are currently promoting their debut full-length Six Degrees, which is due June 21st. Did we mention Yeah Yeah Yeahs' frontwoman Karen O is a big fan?

    "As if being a doctor wasn't admirable enough, the members of N.E.D. are saving lives by day and spreading the message of healing through their music by night," Karen O tells The Amp. "These are doctors playing music to heal, heal themselves and their audience, that's a type of healing to which I can deeply relate. I hope to help their music raise awareness for women's health as much as it does the

    Read More »from Meet Karen O’s Favorite Band of Gynecologists, N.E.D.
  • Everyone's dad loves Neil Young, right? Perfectly timed for the arrival of Father's Day in two weeks -- as well as the upcoming A Treasure live album -- Neil Young decided to revamp his official store, and we must admit, it's pretty fun. This is no dull Amazon.com experience. Keeping with Young's love of cutting edge technology -- he practically jumped onboard the Blu-ray train when you were still rewinding those VHS tapes -- the new online store is a virtual marketplace similar to a five-and-dime you'd see in old Westerns. (It's so Flash-driven that most parents probably don't sport sufficient computer hardware to handle the site, but there's an HTML version too.)

    There's a tour of the grounds where Young has hidden allusions to his career, so that's like Where's Waldo in After the Gold Rush, but the highlight is what's actually inside the rockin' bodega. There's a bunch of albums including his massive Archives, a dozen shirts (the red The Hitchhiker tour shirt is especially nice),

    Read More »from Neil Young Makes Father’s Day Shopping Fun
  • Who's Number One: Lady Gaga's extremely aggressive campaign to get her music heard everywhere from CVS to FarmVille has netted her a 1.1 million opening week for Born This Way. According to Nielsen SoundScan's figures -- which count 440,000 copies of the album sold for 99 cents on Amazon's MP3 store -- Gaga is a record-breaking monster. Born This Way earned the highest sales week since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005, makes Gaga the fifth woman to ever crack a million sales in a single week, and is only the 17th album to move a million in a week since SoundScan started tracking data in 1991. Lady Gaga is also, however, the first to have her album sold for less than a buck its opening week in a mind-boggling PR gamble. The Amazon haul represents 40 percent of her sales, meaning Lady Gaga literally went Number One the cheap way. Billboard's counting all the sales equally, but her final tally really should come with an asterisk.

    Who's Bummed Out: Brad Paisley, whose 153,000 opening week

    Read More »from Who Charted? Lady Gaga Sold 1.1 Million* Copies of ‘Born This Way’

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