This week in New Reviews, we have not one but three new albums from Prince: LOtUSFLOW3R, MPLSoUND and Elixer by his protégée Bria Valente. First, LOtUSFLOWER finds the Purple One embracing his inner-guitar god. “Whether it’s the spare funk of ‘Wall of Berlin,’ the metal grind of ‘Dreamer’ or the hazy cover of ’Crimson and Clover,’ the music kicks into high gear when Prince starts soloing, delivering one epic face melter after another in a style halfway between David Gilmour’s and Eddie Hazel’s,” Gavin Edwards writes in his three-star review. “The drawback is that when he isn’t playing guitar, the music on this disc is oddly muted.”

Even better is the three-and-a-half star, funky MPLSoUND. As Edwards writes, “Five of MPLSoUND’s nine songs sound like lost B sides from assorted classic Prince albums (Dirty Mind, 1999, Controversy, etc.); these days, even a really good Prince song usually reminds the listener of a better, earlier one.” And Rounding out the collection is Elixir, which mustered a two-star rating. “Prince has touted Elixer as a quiet-storm album in the Sade mode, but most of it is just generic pop ballads.” Still, it’s hard to complain when all three albums have been packaged together at the low price of $11.99 exclusively through Target (or $77 if you joined Prince’s new membership-based LOtUSFLOW3R Website. (more…)

Photo: Loccisano/Getty

The Allman Brothers leave the Beacon and schedule a summer trek with Widespread Panic, the Hold Steady map out five June dates after the release of their live CD/DVD A Positive Rage and Grizzly Bear celebrate the release of Veckatimest with a summer on the road. Full dates for all three tours, after the jump. (more…)

The Breeders‘ limited-edition EP Fate to Fatal comes out April 21st, and as Rock Daily reported in our preview, the Deal sisters shot the video for the title track at an usually athletic location: a St. Louis roller derby. Now we’re happy to bring you Skate to Fatal, the making-of video that takes you behind the scenes of the harrowing shoot. Click above to hear a glimpse of one of the four tracks that’ll appear on the disc (the others include Bob Marley cover “Chances Are,” the Mark Lanegan-featuring “The Last Time” and “Pinnacle Hollow”) and watch the ladies in action.

So how did the Breeders wind up with skaters in the first place? Here’s the story, straight from Kelley Deal: (more…)

When Rolling Stone hit Austin’s South By Southwest Music Festival a week ago, we handed Semi Precious Weapons‘ outrageous frontman Justin Tranter a Flipcam and a simple set of directions: film yourself doing what you do before, during and after gigs and hand over the footage. We wound up with two days’ worth of video — 250 different clips featuring the outrageous singer bathing, high-kicking, hanging with Perez Hilton, Juliette Lewis, Sylvain Sylvain and Rachael Ray, baring his nipples, hopping onstage at the Japanese punk showcase, breaking his heel, applying eyeliner, showing off his dance belt and greeting the glam-rock band’s fans. It took days to sift through the footage (and remove the bits that wouldn’t get past the censors), but we’ve finally done it: click above to watch 48 wild hours in the life of Semi Precious Weapons at the music industry’s biggest annual event. (more…)

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

After a successful one-night-only reunion concert last year, the members of ’70s supergroup Bad Company will once again come together, this time for a run of summer 2009 shows. According to a press release, the band’s founding members — singer Paul Rodgers, guitarist Mick Ralphs and drummer Simon Kirke — are all on board for the 10 shows that kick off June 17th in Hollywood, Florida and conclude July 4th in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Doobie Brothers will join Bad Company on the tour.

In August 2008, the three remaining members of Bad Company (bassist Boz Burrell passed away in 2006) reunited for the first time in nearly a decade to perform at the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida. A DVD of that sold-out show, Bad Company – Hard Rock Live, will be released on August 8th. “It’s great to be back with Paul and Simon,” Ralphs said in a statement. “We made great music together and had the time of our lives doing it. I’m really looking forward to getting back out there this summer.” (more…)

Photo: Cultice/Fox

When Rock Daily first saw the trailer for The Osbournes: Reloaded, which debuts tonight on Fox, we dismissed it as a “debacle” that paints the legendary Black Sabbath singer as a clown — a show unbefitting the Prince of Darkness. We may have predicted the show would get canceled after a handful of airings, but what we didn’t see coming was that the new Ozzy Osbourne family variety show would be at the center of a fight about constitutional rights down in Florida. The Fox affiliate in Panama City, WPGX Fox 28, has opted not to air the show, claiming the program is “unsuitable and contrary to the public interest,” the city’s News Herald reports.

“This is more of an MTV thing,” WPGX general manager David Cavileer told the News Herald. “They are reporting it to be a variety show. There is worse stuff than this out there. This show in my market does not serve my public in Panama City. I did not feel it was appropriate.” Cavileer added that the Osbournes show would follow American Idol, a series that attracts a lot of young viewers (and we’d add also features a difficult-to-understand star — cough, Paula). Instead, WPGX will broadcast a repeat episode of The Simpsons. However, viewers down in the panhandle are now complaining that the station heads have no right to decide what they can or can not watch and are even threatening to boycott the affiliate. (more…)

The 1967-68 outtakes on The Place and the Time (Sundazed) were first released as bonus tracks on 2007 reissues of Moby Grape’s Columbia LPs, including withdrawn versions of 1967’s spectacular Moby Grape and ’68’s Wow. Here, on one CD, these rarities — among them rowdy audition tracks and Moby Grape outtakes — are a dynamic alternate portrait of the star-crossed San Francisco band at work, fusing pop, soul, blues and country with psychedelic zeal.

Photo: Getty

Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo will release a live CD and DVD documenting his in-store performance at the Fingerprintz record store in Long Beach, California, according to the official Weezer site. Recorded in December 2008 while Cuomo was promoting his Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, the set features a mix of Weezer songs played to a small crowd, with 150 members of the audience joining Cuomo for an encore jam. Both formats will be released April 28th, with the DVD featuring an interview between Cuomo and Rushmore actor/Coconut Records man Jason Schwartzman.

Cuomo and Schwartzman will also team up on April 11th when they plot an Alternative Radio Countdown Takeover on Sirius Radio and play new material they’ve been working on. And here’s where things get strange — stranger than the Red Album cover, the Alone II cover and even that train conductor costume Cuomo wore to Fingerprintz: Actor Rainn Wilson, or The Office’s Dwight Schrute, joins Cuomo on the Weezer leader’s new material. Wilson was in The Rocker, so it kind of makes sense. Plus, maybe Wilson can inspire Cuomo to break out those Green Album-era glasses again. (more…)

Photo: Bedder/Getty

“It’s just like playing a three-hour show,” said the Dead’s Bob Weir, backstage at New York’s Angel Orensanz theater, “but it’s broken up by cab rides.” Weir wasn’t joking. To unofficially kick off their spring reunion tour, the Dead had grand plans to play a free concert in a large outdoor venue in New York City, possibly Battery Park. When both the weather and city paperwork scotched that idea, the band did the next best thing. On March 30th, the Dead played three free, back-to-back shows in the city like Prince did in L.A. Saturday night; the roughly 4,100 free tickets were distributed to fans by Internet lottery. (Check out photos of all three gigs.)

And what a long, intermittently strange day it was, beginning with Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and touring guitarist Warren Haynes playing “Friend of the Devil” on The View. (The band is longtime friends with co-host Whoopi Goldberg.) At 5 p.m. the men did a rare acoustic-trio set at the intimate Angel Orensanz, a former synagogue on the Lower East Side. The show focused on American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead classics like “Dire Wolf,” “Cumberland Blues” and “Casey Jones,” but the highlight was a largely instrumental, 20-minute version of “Bird Song,” the three men weaving guitar lines in and around each other. (more…)

Photo: WireImage

• U2 will set single-day concert attendance records in three cities with their 360° Tour. With 82,000 tickets at Jersey’s Giants Stadium, 72,000 for Boston’s Gillette Stadium and 65,000 for Chicago’s Soldier Field nearly instantaneously selling out yesterday, second shows were added to each market, Fox Business reports.

• Unearthed demos of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s greatest hits will be released June 2nd via Crosby, Stills & Nash Demos, Reuters reports. Among the tracks coming out of CSN’s stocked vaults are early versions of “Almost Cut My Hair,” “Déjà Vu” and “Love the One You’re With.” Nash recently treated RS to an acoustic set.
• Rancid will release their first album in six years, Let the Dominoes Fall, on June 2nd. The album was recorded at the Skywalker Sound Studio with Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewitz serving as producer. Booker T plays organ on the track “Up To No Good,” one of the album’s 19 tracks.
• OutKast’s Andre 3000 took the Stankonia interlude “Cruisin’ in the ATL” a little too seriously and was arrested for speeding in his native Georgia. According to TMZ, Andre 3K was pulled over after going a blistering 109 mph in a 65 mph zone. After taking a dapper photo surely good enough for our Rock Star Mugshot Gallery the Love Below rapper was released on $1,200 bail.

Photo: Getty

Despite reports that Rihanna wasn’t helping the Los Angeles district attorneys prepare their case against Chris Brown, the “Umbrella” singer’s lawyer, Donald Etra, reiterated to Us yesterday, “She will do everything that the law requires her to do… nothing has changed.” A district attorney spokeswoman backed up Etra’s statement, saying, “We deal with her attorney, who says she is a cooperating victim.”

Brown still hasn’t entered a plea after being charged on March 5th with a pair of felonies for assault and making criminal threats. Brown will be arraigned on the charges next Monday, April 6th. Last month, after reports surfaced that Brown and Rihanna had reunited at Diddy’s Florida mansion following their alleged February 8th incident, lawyer Etra still said, “At this point, she is willing to do anything that the law requires her to do. If subpoenaed, she will testify.” (more…)

Photo: Natkin/WireImage

Jason Newsted’s 15-year stint playing bass for one of heavy metal’s biggest acts came to an end nine years ago, when he exited Metallica for “private and personal reasons and the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love.” On April 4th, when Metallica are inducted into Cleveland, Ohio’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Newsted will be there to accept rock’s highest honor, and he’s even agreed to reunite with drummer Lars Ulrich, frontman James Hetfield and guitarist Kirk Hammett (along with current bassist Robert Trujillo) for an impromptu set he promises will include “at least one song about Satan.” (Revisit the band’s career in Metallica: Through the Years in Photos.)

Since splitting the band to form the short-lived Echobrain, Metallica fans have wondered whether Newsted has ever regretted leaving the band. With less than a week to go before the Rock Hall, Newsted tells Rolling Stone the answer is absolutely not.

“I tell you very honestly, 1 billion percent, I have never regretted leaving Metallica,” Newsted says. “It was the right thing for everyone. It was the right thing to do for the camp, that’s it. I’ve never told anyone that I wanted to go back or anything like that, not once. (more…)

Photo: Kravitz/FilmMagic

Like Billy Corgan? Want to be in Smashing Pumpkins? No, these aren’t trick questions. The band — essentially just Corgan at this point — will be holding an open call for drummers on April 10th in Los Angeles. Interested parties should send background info (presumably a brief bio), photographs (presumably of themselves) and performance links via e-mail to pumpkinsdrummer@gmail.com.

The Pumpkins announced the departure of longtime drummer Jimmy Chamberlin in a late-afternoon press release on Friday, March 20th while much of the music press was either in Austin at South By Southwest or hitting the bars for happy hour. On the 24th, Chamberlin blogged about the split, writing, “I can no longer commit all of my energy into something that I don’t fully possess. I won’t pretend I’m into something I’m not. I won’t do it to myself, you the fan, or my former partner. I can’t just, ‘Cash the check’ so to speak.’ ” Chamberlin was Corgan’s longest-running musical partner, playing on all Pumpkins albums except Adore; he even performed on Zwan’s Mary Star of the Sea. (more…)

On April 4th, Metallica will march into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when they’re inducted alongside Run-DMC and Jeff Beck. But tonight on Fuse, the band charts its journey to the Rock Hall in a new special called Metallica: In Their Own Words (it airs at 9 p.m.). The doc mixes brutal onstage footage with the band’s reflections on its lengthy and prolific career. Click above to check out a clip from the show, where frontman James Hetfield and drummer Lars Ulrich muse on staying on the road for 20-plus years. (Get reacquainted with the band’s career in Metallica: Through the Years in Photos.)

“When people talk about longevity they go right to the Rolling Stones,” Hetfield says. “No disrespect, they’re not doing what we’re doing, it’s that simple,” Lars Ulrich adds. Hetfield continues, “They’re not head-banging, they’re not playing 100-miles-an-hour songs.” (more…)

The Allman Brothers Band’s return to New York’s Beacon Theatre came to a triumphant end over the weekend, riding the success of 15 shows, over 100 songs played, and a guest list that rivals that of The Last Waltz. The Brothers moved into the recently restored venue March 9th and the critically acclaimed run is already being called the band’s best in their 20-year history of playing the historic landmark.

Over the course of the month, Rolling Stone was there for almost every note, from opening night to the final notes of Saturday’s “Statesboro Blues” encore. When our coverage last left the hallowed hall, bluesman Buddy Guy and jam legends Trey Anastasio and Page McConnell of Phish had set an incredibly high standard for the ensuing guests to live up to — a standard that was more than matched by the impressive list that followed. (more…)