Blog Posts by John Kordosh

Happy Tuesday, readers! We hope everyone had a good Labor Day, what with the hot dogs and Michelob Ultra and such.

And, if you live in neighbouring Canadia, we hope you had an excellent Labour Day!

We've got a new video of an old song this week: Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart." The song, inspired by the Nikki Sixx heroin overdose that stopped his heart, originally appeared on their Dr. Feelgood album in 1989. The video, however, is from their 2011 tour, and--according to the Crue--"documented the whole tour, top to bottom (the good, the bad and the ugly) and as we were looking through all the amazing footage, we thought how cool it would be to cut together a 'best of visual' for the fans who made this tour happen. This one is just for the fans, from us."

It seemed that the days of the supergroup--the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, or the Blind Faith--were well behind us, readers, but this week Framed welcomes a group that may be the absolute apex of supergroupdom: SuperHeavy.

This most amazing of groups, which includes Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, Damian Marley, and A.R. Rahman, first got together, it seems, back in 2009. Their goal was to "write songs which have meaning."

Since that wasn't possible--hey, look who's in it!--they went another route and, now, excitingly, their debut album is due to drop, as they say, in September. We're sure it'll be boffo, but let's look at the members of SuperHeavy to better understand their greatness!

Last week, we featured an obscure Finnish band, and this week we welcome one of the greatest bands in history to our blog: the Kinks.

Coming out of England during the British Invasion, the Kinks established themselves as one of the most articulate and humorous bands of the rock era. The roll call of their hits - including "You Really Got Me," "All Day and All of the Night," "A Well Respected Man," "Till The End of the Day," "Sunny Afternoon," "Lola," and many, many more - is staggering. Their latter-day work on Reprise, with albums like Face To Face, Something Else, and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society - remains, arguably, the most impressive string of LP releases in history.

Here at Framed, we like bringing you the biggest stars, of course, but we also like to feature lesser-known acts of great worth. We couldn't find any this week, but we do have Lovex, a wildly entertaining band out of Finland.  (Note: Finland is in Europe, which is in Canadia.)

So who are Lovex, anyway?

This week's very alliterative Framed features Foo Fighters, the great alt-rock band who've seen six of their seven albums chart in the U.S. Top 10. Fronted by the likable Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters have shown that it's still possible to rock in this, the modern era.

Our video is "Walk," which premiered just last month and hit #1 on the Billboard Rock Songs chart. In it, a terminally-frustrated Grohl deals with all manner of idiocy--not Framed, other idiocy!--and is eventually tazed by the cops.

Framed is all about alternative rock--everyone knows that!--so it's with some pleasure that we welcome the great Smashing Pumpkins to our blog this week. The controversial Pumpkins, who've placed five albums in the U.S. Top 10, played their farewell concert in 2000... and then reunited in 2006 to great acclaim and even more success.

This week's video, "Owata," is from their self-released 2009 album, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. In a word, it's a dull and meandering wrestling video, wrestling being one of Billy Corgan's inexplicable loves. The Pumpkins themselves don't appear in the video--really, a 12-minute short--but it does feature real female wrestlers like Cheerleader Melissa and Shelly Martinez.

One of the great talents to come out of the 1980s was Sting, who--along with his back-up band, the Police--topped the charts with thoughtful, literate songs about prostitution and obsession.

And Sting has, if anything, only gotten better as a solo artist. His forays into a wide variety of genres have been nothing but delightful to folks who are fans of such forays. In fact, he's won an impressive 11 Grammys since going solo.

We welcome everyone to Framed, "The blog that has no catchphrase" and "The Official Technology Partner of the Arizona Diamondbacks." Hola!

This week we're pleased to feature Chris Brown's second appearance in Framed. Although all of his four albums have charted in the U.S. Top 10, Brown is perhaps now best-known for pleading guilty to felony assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2008. The episode has tainted the career of the talented singer/dancer, although he seems to be on the comeback trail with four awards at the recent BET Awards.

And it's not just Chris in this week's video: "Next 2 You" also features our favorite Canadian human, Justin Bieber. Bieber, who appears in our blog about every three seconds, sings and dances "amid destruction," according to our friend, Wikipedia--and, boy, if that doesn't make you want to watch it, we don't know what will.