YouTube Music of the Week

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Thanks to RawStory.com for the following...

America's finest rock poet Bruce Springsteen (no offense, Bob Dylan) and the greatest guitarist of the last 20 years Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave team up with The E Street Band on the Boss' classic protest song, inspired by the character Tom Joad from the film version of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-c6GphpAeY

And, as a bonus, Henry Fonda's famous "I'll be there" speech from John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yer4L1Uhayc
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"Waterloo Sunset"
The Kinks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDoDaCYrEY

And for the Def Leppard cover version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7-TbC_Pr-4
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Last but not least:

"Born This Way"
Lady Gaga
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw

Def Leppard Developing Cartoon Series

http://www.billboard.com/news/def-leppard-developing-cartoon-series-1004054683.story

Def Leppard Developing Cartoon Series
Dean Goodman, Reuters
December 21, 2009

Def Leppard is getting animated about its career.

The British metal group has entered a wide-ranging deal with music publishing company Primary Wave, which is developing various marketing and branding opportunities.

Among them is a cartoon TV show, said Primary Wave CEO Larry Mestel. The project is still in the early stages, and has not been pitched to the networks, but it will depict the five members of the group in a fictional, adventurous setting, he said.

Primary Wave is also developing what Mestel called "unusual" videogame and cell phone applications.

Additionally, the company will administer Def Leppard's music publishing, a task previously performed by Sony/ATV. The copyrights will continue to be owned by the songs' various composers.

Def Leppard toured North America this past summer with Poison and Cheap Trick. There are no recording or touring plans in the works, a band spokesman said.

The group is now a free agent after fulfilling its contract with Universal Music. Its last album, "Songs from the Sparkle Lounge," debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 in May 2008 -- its best start since "Adrenalize" opened at No. 1 in 1992. In the U.K., it debuted at No. 10, its best showing for a studio album since "Slang" reached No. 6 in 1996.

Coolest Las Vegas Concert of the Summer 2009

Def Leppard, Poison & Cheap Trick

Memorial Day Weekend
Saturday 09/05/09 at 8:00 PM
MGM Grand Garden Arena

For More Info:

http://www.livenation.com/edp/eventId/405101/?c=adb-lasvegas-defleppard-b

Sometimes a picture captures an era...

Robalini, wearing a Members Only jacket & Def Leppard t-shirt, circa 1989 Santa Barbara...

Farewell, Quiet Riot

http://www.slate.com/id/2178720/

Farewell, Quiet Riot
By Jody Rosen
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007

Kevin DuBrow, the lead singer of Quiet Riot, who died Sunday at age 52, will be remembered as a guy who was in the right place at the right time, with the right song. The place was the Sunset Strip; the time was late summer, 1983; the song was "Cum On Feel the Noize," a raucous party tune originally recorded by British glam-rockers Slade, which Quiet Riot inflated into the anthem that first took pop-metal to the top of the Billboard charts. Quiet Riot distilled the pop-metal formula, toning down the darkness and nihilism of progenitors like Black Sabbath while preserving the decibel levels, adding poodle hair, spandex, gratuitous guitar histrionics, lots of salaciousness, and, above all, melody. Other, better bands—Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi—would ride the tide to superstardom, but Quiet Riot got there first, when "Cum On Feel" propelled the band's third album, Metal Health, to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200, for one week exactly, in November of '83. That success was due in no little part to DuBrow's vocals, a raspy yowl, and to his bug-eyed stage presence—more in the Alice Cooper-lunatic tradition than the Robert Plant sex-god vibe that others would exploit. "Cum On Feel" was DuBrow's supreme moment. (And, let's be frank, it was more Slade's triumph than his.) But Quiet Riot's originals were a blast, too. Watch this vintage performance of "Metal Health," with DuBrow stalking the stage in a striped shirt and tight leopard-print pants. "I want it louder/ More power/ I'm gonna rock ya 'til it strikes the hour," Dubrow sings, a goofy but not inaccurate boast.