Jeff Giles

What made the Red Hot Chili Peppers want to put out 18 unreleased songs between next month and January? According to drummer Chad Smith, the answer is simple: “They’re just really good songs and they just need to come out.”

Legendary songwriter Harlan Howard once famously noted that all any musician really needs is three chords and the truth — and for proof, look no further than the work of YouTube user Chad Neidt, whose ‘One Minute Mashup’ series proves just how easy it is to connect many famous bands’ biggest hits.

Billy Corgan has been at this whole “rock star” thing long enough to know that when you say something that could possibly be construed as controversial or offensive, the press is going to run with it — so we have to at least give him credit for reacting to the brouhaha over his “I’ll piss on Radiohead” quote with the equivalent of a goodnatured shrug.

We told you a few weeks ago that the Red Hot Chili Peppers would be releasing a slew of new tracks over the next six months, but we weren’t sure how or when they’d be unleashing all that music. Now, thanks to a press release from the band, we can give you some of the details.

A sold out Radiohead concert ended before it began on Saturday (June 16) when the stage collapsed, injuring three people and killing one, now identified as the band’s drum technician, Scott Johnson.

A stimulant called Benzo Fury is being blamed for the death of one attendee and the hospitalization of two others at Scotland’s RockNess Festival over the weekend. Those incidents, combined with a bus accident that ended in two deaths on Friday (June 8), marred a weekend featuring performances from Mumford and Sons and Deadmau5.

Red Hot Chili Peppers are nothing if not deliberate in the studio — they’ve taken at least three years between each album since ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik,’ and their two most recent releases, ‘Stadium Arcadium’ and ‘I’m With You,’ were preceded by four- and five-year waits, respectively. Fans have probably been prepared to wait until 2016 for new material from the band — but the Peppers have some sur

By pretty much all accounts, the musical divorce between Skid Row and Sebastian Bach in the mid ’90s worked out pretty well for everyone — the band has moved on with singer Johnny Solinger, who’s logged over a decade in the position, and Bach has pursued an eclectic solo career, while dabbling in reality TV. But there are still plenty of people who’d like to see a reunion — including Bach himself.

If you caught the ‘Saturday Night Live‘ season finale last weekend, you know it ended with a high school graduation sketch that doubled as a thinly veiled sendoff/full cast dance party in honor of Kristen Wiig, who’s leaving the cast after seven years. The fun continued in an epic after party featuring musical guests the Foo Fighters, and thanks to footage uploaded by folks who were lucky enough t

Up until now, if you wanted to play a guitar with Zakk Wylde‘s signature bullseye graphic on it, your only choices were to either buy an Epiphone or paint the logo on your own instrument. If neither of those choices appeal to you, good news: Zakk has teamed up with Gibson to create the axe known as the Zakk Wylde Les Paul Custom Vertigo.

Rock heavyweights Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam have been tapped to co-headline Atlanta’s Music Midtown festival in September. The news follows the announcement that the same two bands are headlining Florida’s 2012 DeLuna Festival during the same month.

As you may have heard, Axl Rose put a rest to months of speculation yesterday (April 11) when he issued a rather sternly worded open letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame saying he would not be attending this weekend when Guns N’ Roses are honored — and requested that he not be inducted in absentia. Today, the Hall responded with a few words of its own.