You may have heard our interview with Duff McKagan a couple of weeks ago and I asked the obligatory question about whether Axl would ever realize that continuing on without the original members of the band is the rock equivalent of New Coke and decide to bow to public opinion and return to the original recipe, Classic GNR if you will. Duff, having answered this particular query a billion times since it’s the only thing that any Rock DJ with a limited attention span and access to Wikipedia can than think to ask, myself included, gave the political, noncommittal answer of “You never know. Anything is possible.” And thousands of GNR fans all over the city gnashed their teeth and ran their meaty fingers through their almost non-existent hair in anticipation. Well, Duff may think about changing that canned response, and while I’m at it, those GNR fans should probably give up hope on those stringy tufts of formerly full bodied follicles and shave that crap, because Axl just made sure to torpedo any chance at a reunion by calling Slash a “cancer.” Axl talked to AOL Music’s spinner.com and the interviewer asked him the same hackneyed question I dumped on Duff and got a far more pointed response.

Rose said, “It’s highly doubtful for us to have more than one of the alumni up with us at any given time. I suppose Duff could play guitar on something somewhere but there’s zero possibility of me having anything to do with Slash. In a nutshell, personally I consider him a cancer and better removed, avoided — and the less anyone heard of him or his supporters the better.” Axl went on to say that Slash’s guitar work is kind of sucky these days and that he seems more interested in being “a whore for the limelight

But Axl, never one to stop burning bridges when there still gas in the tank, didn’t stop with Slash. Axl said he’s cool with Izzy Stradlin, but he was kind of unreliable and playing with Steven Adler would only bring lawsuits. Axl apparently still stinging after Adler successfully sued to get his cut of the royalties on records he played.

It seems to me if every time you threw a party someone freaked out on tainted acid, tore up the lawn and threw it at the band, knocked over your garage and lit it on fire or raped a couple of the other guests in attendance, eventually you’d realize that you suck at throwing parties and you should just give it up. But not Michael Lang, Woodstock promoter who is planning yet another set of anniversary shows.

Berlin and New York will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the original 1969 festival on August 15th and 16th. They’re hoping to snag some of the original participants that performed at Yasgur’s Farm back in ‘69, including Santana, the Who, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, as well as current acts.

If you were looking for a missing link between the era of hair metal and grunge I would provide you two bands. One being Guns and Roses, who looked hair metal while singing songs far darker than Kip Winger’s mind could ever conceive. The other band is Jane’s Addiction. Jane’s had some of that arena rock bombast while being a band comprised primarily of junkies and f-ups. Their music became a means to get completely loaded and pass out in puddles of other people’s vomit, which is why Jane’s broke up about 5 seconds before a scene exploded that would have seen them as gods. Most people look at Jane’s today and see a band of shirtless dirtbags and unintelligible quasi-hippies and not the fusion of punk, metal and funk that was early Jane’s. And their reunion and tour with Nine Inch Nails this year will probably be of little help because they’re going to be staging elaborate shows for festival crowds and not tearing faces in clubs like the old days. Well, if you want to glimpse their former glory, or for you old timers relive it, Jane’s Addiction will be releasing a collection called “A Cabinet of Curiosities,” which will be comprised of 3 CDs and a DVD in a wooden box.

The first disc is all unreleased demos from 1986 and 1987. The second has more demos, but also unreleased live tracks and beloved rarities covers of the Grateful Dead, the Stooges, and Led Zeppelin, as well as a version of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey” that they did with Ice-T. There’s also a live song called “Bobhouse” that consists of the lyrics to Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” over the music from Bauhaus’ “Burning From the Inside”. And the third disc is a full live show in December 1990.

The DVD will include Soul Kiss, the notorious Jane’s documentary previously unavailable on DVD. It’ll also feature the “Mountain Song” video that MTV banned and various music videos and home movies.

Good news! Rob Zombie is promising that H2 is going to blow away his reimagining of the horror classic Halloween, which to me is a little like saying “this Yugo is going to blow away that Pacer up on blocks and dripping transmission fluid.” A couple of 8 year olds with a camcorder and a half dozen My Little Ponies could make a movie that blows Zombie’s Halloween away.

But my editorial not withstanding, Zombie just started filming and he posted a message over at his Myspace page and he says “we made it through the first three days. Everything is going great. This film is going to blow away my last trip to Haddonfield. Ultra-gritty, ultra-intense and very real.” He also dropped a sneak peak of Laurie moments after being wheeled into the ER up on his Myspace as well.

You know that horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach when you first heard St. Anger? You know how you dropped your head in shame for falling for the hype once again and believing Lars when he said that “This next album is the hardest, craziest thing we’ve done since Ride the Lightning dickweeds”? You know how every ping of that coffee can drum was like a kick to the cute long-eared puppy dog that is your psyche? You know how you were so pissed at Metallica for creating that album that you just wished they’d do the honorable thing and let the entirety of the metal community give Lars the soap and sock treatment from Full Metal Jacket, or at the very least break up? Well, you almost got your wish. No, not the mass bludgeoning of Lars Ulrich with a bunch of tube socks and a Costco box of Irish Spring. The breaking up part. After St. Anger the band nearly collapsed in on the weight of their tear soaked t-shirts and coffee can drums and it was only a life line in the shape of the craggy, saggy faces of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that kept them from breaking up. Lars says, “The big turn around was when the Rolling Stones called us in the summer of 2005 and asked if we would play with them in San Francisco. We showed up at HQ four or five days before the gig. There was no film crew, no producer, no psychiatrist, no minders, no babysitters, none of that s**t. We didn’t have to sit down and talk about how we were feeling and all of that horses**t. That set the tone for the next three years and it’s been great.”

An update on the story I had yesterday about Faith No More reuniting. I told you how most of the band would reform (including Mike Patton) but would only tour in Europe. As I told you yesterday, the rumor seemed unlikely considering the time and effort over the past few years that Mike Patton spent telling his former band mates just how many wieners they could eat (the answer being all of them). And as I also told you yesterday, someone would probably pop up in the next few days to tell us that the whole rumor is crap and that we could go ahead and finish any of the wieners that Patton’s ex-band mates didn’t finish. Well, Mike Patton’s publicist was asked about the Faith No More reunion rumor AND… he confirmed it. Yes, apparently Faith No More is reuniting. Unfortunately he also confirmed the sucky part of the story, that they have no plans to tour the states.

Seven years past from the break-up of Rage Against the Machine to its eventual reunion and in that time Zach de la Rocha released one song protesting the Iraq war on the internet for free. Outside of that he was completely silent. During the worst years under Bush, during the greatest attacks on the civil liberties of we the people, during the Patriot Act and Scooter Libby Zach apparently had nothing to say and wasn’t motivated to protest. Then only after Bush’s power had dwindled to almost nothing and the country had already moved on to looking for somebody, anybody to fill those butt cheek prints marking a graveyard for countless farts stored in the cushion of the Oval Office desk chair, Zach chooses to patch up the rift with his old band and take their own brand of socially aware, quasi Marxist rap-rock back out on the road. So, considering that he couldn’t be motivated to act for the past 8 years, what has finally brought Zack out of civil disobedience retirement? What has caused him to pick up a placard and protest again? Some tents in the desert. Zach de la Rocha plans to go to Phoenix to join a march denouncing Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “systematic persecution” of migrants and Latinos on February 28th. Now don’t get me wrong. The segregation of the county jail into Latinos and non-Latinos and the way that illegals were shackled and paraded through Sheriff Joe’s tent city to be harassed and attacked by inmates aren’t exactly what I’d consider to be ethical, moral or maybe even legal policies, but THIS is what it takes, Zack? I get that you have some empathy being Latino yourself, but I mean… THIS? There’s a chance that you saw a video a couple weeks ago of Iggy Pop shilling for an insurance company in England. I nearly used it as a blog story at the time, but without seeing the video of Iggy prancing around shirtless and talking about how much he loved his insurance company, there wasn’t much to the story. I guess I could have tried to turn it into a “Iggy sells out story” but the fact of the matter is that 1) Iggy sold out a long time ago when he started doing crappy movies like Crow 2 and allowing “Lust for Life” to be used to sell cruise tickets and 2) Out of all the musicians that have “sold out” over the years, few are more deserving than Iggy since he and the Stooges influences generations of punks without getting much in return aside from broken beer bottles. So that’s why I decided, no video, no sellout, no story. Well, turns out there’s a story here after all. Turns out Iggy’s charisma isn’t limited to music and movies. Apparently he’s a decent pitchman as well and his commercials over in the UK turned out to be pretty successful. People actually started signing up for the insurance called Swiftcover. But having Iggy, a beloved and respected singer, as a pitchman may have been a bad move on Swiftcover’s part because it turns out they refuse to insure musicians. Musicians who applied for cover were told their occupation made them ineligible. A Swiftcover spokesman said musicians are excluded because they and their passengers might have high claims for loss of future earnings if they are injured. When one musician who was rejected said, “When I asked what Iggy Pop did for a living if I was being rejected as a musician, they said they did not know his personal life and he was not one of their policy holders.” Now since Iggy claimed in the ad that he was covered and that has turned out to be a blatant lie, Swiftcover is being investigated by Brickbiters for Truth, or whatever their advertising regulation committee is called.

Eat it Brits. And while I’m at it, screw you Oasis. You guys think you’re badass because you have two brothers that fight all the time and occasionally punch each other on stage? Big freakin’ deal. Frankly both of the Gallagher brothers deserve to be beaten far more often… by men with sticks… sticks shaped like bats… stick shaped like bats that are actually axes… axes that cut like chainsaws. In short I think the Liam and Noel should be hacked to bits by Leatherface. But barring an actual dismemberment at the hands of a lunatic wearing a flesh mask, you ain’t got nothin’ on the Kings of Leon. First up, Oasis only has two brothers. Kings of Leon has three. And a cousin! That’s right, the whole band is related and apparently hates each other. More so, they don’t get in their little punch-ups on stage in front of the crowd so everyone thinks they’re all edgy and dangerous. That’s because when they sock each other they mean it. It’s not just some lame attempt to get some headlines and mommy and daddy’s love. They save their brawling for backstage, 30 seconds after getting an award and in front of Bono and David Hasselhoff. Yes, apparently there was a tussle immediately following Kings of Loen accepting their Brit award Wednesday night. Immediately following their winning Best International Group (which is also crap you Limey twits, they’re American not international. You are the ones who are international. You swap that award with whatever brickbiting hacks you gave Best Rock Act to and then you slap that band for Messin’ With Texas.) But right after their poorly allotted award, the guys walked backstage and started punching the crap out of each other with U2 and Hasselhoff throwing 20s down on the outcome. Security grabbed them and shoved them in their dressing room where they no doubt used their new award to bludgeon each other in peace.

A couple of things could have been the cause. In the past they’ve fought over lead singer Caleb’s drinking, but at the Brits bassist Jared’s girlfriend apparently got pissed when she say Jared talking to the members of a female band going to far as to throw a glass of water at her. Later that evening, had a throw down in front of the guests at the backstage bar.

Nine Inch Nails fans probably know the named Josh Freese. He is probably the band’s best known past drummer. He left NIN last year to do his own thing and that thing is apparently done. But Josh is a bit of an innovator, just like his former lead singer and he has taken the Reznor/York model of pay what you want to the next level. Depending on what you want in return for Josh’s new album called Since 1972, you could either pay 7 dollars for the music or you could pay 75 thousand dollars and get a little more. There are a variety of price levels in between.

$15 gets you CD/DVD and a Digital Download. $50 gets all that, a T-shirt and a thank you call from Josh. $250  and you can go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory. $500 and you can meet Josh in Venice, CA and go floating together in a Sensory deprivation tank and then have dinner at Sizzler. For $1,000 Josh washes your car OR does your laundry….or you can wash his car. Plus, you can get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse. For $5,000 Josh will write a song about you and make available on iTunes, give you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland and Stone from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on “Since 1972.” For $10,000 Twiggy Ramirez and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe’s Chicken n’ Waffle then to “Club 33″ (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above the Pirates Of The Caribbean) and at the end of the day you drive away in Josh’s Volvo station wagon. It’s all yours….take it. Just drop him off on your way home though please. And finally for $75,000  you can go on tour with Josh for a few days, have Josh write, record and release a 5 song EP about you and your life story, take home any of his drumsets, take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL’s Lamborgini, Josh will join your band for a month…play shows, record, party with groupies, etc…., take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robin’s place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna.