Nirvana Pictures

Fricke’s Picks: Zen Tricksters

Dead Ahead Before there was a jam-band scene, there were the Zen Tricksters, a Grateful Dead-inspired New York band, founded in the mid-Eighties, whose grip on the Dead’s canon was well-regarded even while the real thing was still around. Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay was in the Dead for most of the Seventies, and the pairing of her Southern-gospel alto and the Tricksters’ roots-and-groove interplay on Donna Jean & the Tricksters (Heart of Gold) is a warm, perfect fit, especially in the early-Seventies Boz Scaggs-style R&B of “All I Gotta Say” and “No Better Way.” The production will be too crisp and clean if your idea of nirvana is a ‘74 Dead soundboard. But this record is built for comfort and camaraderie, the old Bay Area way.

Published: 2008-03-14 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Fricke's Picks

Slash Says Actual Rock Stardom Interferes With Fake Rock Stardom

Shockingly, the ability to rock doesn’t necessarily translate to rocking Guitar Hero. First we watched comedian David Cross beat Dinosaur Jr. god J Mascis at the game, and now comes news that Rolling Stone cover star Slash has spoken out about his problems adapting his sick guitar skills. “I’m not great at it,” the Guitar Hero III star admitted. “And a lot of that has to do with the fact that it’s hard for me to get rid of thirty years — whatever it is — twenty-some-odd years of playing in a certain way and then all of the sudden become accustomed to pressing some buttons and stuff. I have these little things that I’m so used to doing that when I’m playing Guitar Hero it sort of screws me up.” And if you thought Rock Band, the game going head-to-head with Guitar Hero III when they both hit stores in the fall, sounded good before, here’s even more info: Nirvana’s Nevermind will be fully downloadable and playable on the game after it’s released. And Guitar Legend, a sort of Guitar Hero title for mobile phones, will feature the band’s “Heart Shaped Box.” Photo: Getty

Published: 2007-08-02 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

No Doubt Sue Activision Over Use of “Band Hero” Avatars

Photo: Winter/Getty In September, Nirvana fans were shocked to learn that the Kurt Cobain avatar in Guitar Hero 5 could be used to sing any other song on the game’s track list, from Bon Jovi to Bush. Now No Doubt have made a similar discovery about their own avatars in Band Hero — and they’re taking swift legal action. The band filed a lawsuit against the game’s maker, Activision, today, for fraudulent inducement and breach of contract, among other complaints, in which they argue the group was t

Published: 2009-11-04 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: No Doubt, Rock News, Video Games

'Live at Reading' DVD shows Nirvana at its artistic peak

Music & nightlifeA review of Nirvana's "Live at Reading," a concert film released for the first time in 5.1 Surround Sound, recently remastered under the supervision of the remaining members of the band. A highlight: Kurt Cobain — unshaven, unwashed, beautiful — calling out his devotion to his wife Courtney Love and their then-12-day-old daughter.

Published: 2009-11-01 Provider: Seattle Times

Phish Tease Fans With Halloween Cover Options: Nirvana, MGMT

Photo: Phish.com It’s tradition for Phish to cover another artist’s classic album in its entirety on Halloween — and for fans to furiously debate which LP the band will choose in the weeks before the big show. This year, the Vermont quartet is playing along by teasing its devotees with a gallery of album covers on the official Festival 8 Website. Records that won’t be performed in Indio, California, at the end of the month are being figuratively killed off the band — stabbed with a knife or an a

Published: 2009-09-30 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Rewind: The Week in Rock Daily

Photograph by Matthew Drazin Trent Reznor began his Wave Goodbye tour in New York, where he played all of The Downward Spiral and was joined onstage by a bat-like Peter Murphy of Bauhaus. Plus, Taylor Swift took the stage in NYC and Them Crooked Vultures rocked London. Kurt Cobain and Nirvana joined the Guitar Hero franchise, plus news broke about the band’s legendary 1992 Reading performance coming to DVD. Madonna unleashed the track list for Celebration, and Foo Fighters announced a best-of s

Published: 2009-08-29 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Nirvana’s “Bleach” Returns as 20th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s Bleach, Sub Pop Records will reissue the band’s 1989 debut album with as an expanded CD/double vinyl collection on November 3rd. Additionally, the reissued Bleach will feature an unreleased bonus live album called Live at Pine Street Theatre, recorded at the Portland, Oregon venue on February 9th, 1990. Both Bleach and the Pine Street show have been digitally remastered from the original tapes by Jack Endino, who produced Nirvana’s debut LP. Check

Published: 2009-08-14 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Breaking: Foreign Born

Who: Sunny L.A. indie-pop quartet Foreign Born are mostly native Angelenos, but lead singer and guitarist Matt Popieluch spent his formative years in Hong Kong with his banker father. “I spent my time longing for America,” Popieluch says while rolling in the band’s van to a gig. “But that’s where I discovered grunge. [The birth of] my first band was closely tied to the release of [Nirvana’s] Nevermind.” After shifting to San Francisco for college, he met future songwriting partner Lewis Pesacov

Published: 2009-07-15 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Videos, Breaking, Podcasts

Concert review | Scottish Vaselines captivate Neumo's crowd

Music & nightlifeConcert review: The Vaselines, the band championed and covered by Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, played to a packed Neumo's crowd, in Seattle on May 12; review by Andrew Matson.

Published: 2009-05-13 Provider: Seattle Times

News Ticker: The Killers, Steven Tyler and Vern Gosdin

Photo: Winter/Getty In a new NME interview, the Killers’ Brandon Flowers complained that American audiences haven’t embraced the band like Europeans have. “[In America], people are still so obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, those sorts of bands, that nobody else is allowed [to grow],” Flowers reportedly said. “It’s not just us; there are a lot of great bands that have been held down or confined by the influence of these people that we’ve put up on pedestals. I’m tired of it, you know? I j

Published: 2009-04-30 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Morning News Roundup

Ex-Nirvana Drummer Chad Channing Steps Out as Songwriter on Before Cars’ “Walk Back”

In the mid-1990s, Chad Channing was in the studio at Soundhouse Recording in Seattle with Jack Endino, who was mastering a record for Channing’s band the Methodists. “We were taking a break, walking to a store, and Jack told me he’d always thought the stuff I’d written was really cool,” Channing said. “From then on, he was always telling me to do my own stuff.” Some 15 years later, a record full of Channing’s “own stuff” — Walk Back, by his new band Before Cars — will be released by Flotation Re

Published: 2009-04-28 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News

Weekend Rock List: Nirvana Songs

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty This week marked the 15th anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain, and Rolling Stone is honoring the late Nirvana leader with a special page, Remembering Kurt Cobain, as well as a rock lost dedicated to Nirvana songs. Whether they appeared on the band’s three studio albums, Incesticide, B sides, imports or the countless bootlegs, tell us your favorite tracks by the grunge trio and on Monday we’ll reveal the readers’ list. Until then, here’s handful of Rock Daily

Published: 2009-04-10 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock Lists