“Guitar Hero: Van Halen” Due December 22nd: Full Track List
For those Van Halen fans who still had a glimmer of hope that despite Rock Daily’s news that Guitar Hero: Van Halen was a David Lee Roth-only affair, somehow Sammy Hagar songs would make the game, we’re sorry to report that the game’s final track list has been revealed — and it’s all Diamond Dave.
However, the 28 Van Halen songs on GH:VH represent the best of the band’s first era, with hits like “Jamie’s Cryin,” “Panama” and “Ain’t Talkin About Love” alongside more obscure tracks like Women and Children First’s “Loss of Control and Fair Warning’s “Hear About It Later,” MTV reveals. Other artists on the game’s on-disc track list include cuts from Blink-182, Weezer, Foo Fighters and the Clash.
As Rock Daily previously reported from the E3 Expo, both Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony are excluded from the game, replaced by Roth and new bassist Wolfgang Van Halen. At the game’s onset, players will take the guise of Van Halen’s current incarnation, but can unlock the spandex era of VH with the big hair and tight pants throughout the gameplay, even though Wolfgang wasn’t even alive at the time when the band recorded half the songs here. When performing the non-VH songs, players will assume Guitar Hero’s more traditional characters and not Van Halen, so performing Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” as David Lee Roth is sadly not an option.
Guitar Hero: Van Halen is due out December 22nd, giving consumers a pretty awesome last minute gift-buying option for Christmas. Here’s the full track list:
Van Halen Songs
“Ain’t Talkin Bout Love”
“And The Cradle Will Rock”
“Atomic Punk”
“Beautiful Girls”
“Cathedral” (solo)
“Dance The Night Away”
“Eruption” (solo)
“Everybody Wants Some”
“Feel Your Love Tonight”
“Hang ‘Em High”
“Hear About It Later”
“Hot For Teacher”
“Ice Cream Man”
“I’m The One”
“Jamie’s Cryin”
“Jump”
“Little Guitars”
“Loss Of Control”
“Mean Street”
“Panama”
“Pretty Woman”
“Romeo Delight”
“Running With The Devil”
“So This Is Love”
“Somebody Get Me A Doctor”
“Spanish Fly” (solo)
“Unchained”
“You Really Got Me”
Other In-Game Tracks
Alter Bridge - “Come To Life”
Billy Idol - “White Wedding”
blink-182 - “First Date”
Deep Purple - “Space Truckin”
Foo Fighters - “Best Of You”
Foreigner - “Double Vision”
Fountains of Wayne - “Stacy’s Mom”
Jimmy Eat World - “Pain”
Judas Priest - “Painkiller”
Killswitch Engage - “The End Of Heartache”
Lenny Kravitz - “Rock And Roll Is Dead”
Queen - “I Want It All”
Queens of the Stone Age - “Sick, Sick, Sick”
Tenacious D - “Master Exploder”
The Clash - “Safe European Home”
The Offspring - “Pretty Fly For A White Guy”
Third Eye Blind - “Semi-Charmed Life”
Weezer - “Dope Nose”
Yellowcard - “The Takedown”
"G.I. Joe" set to storm weekend box office
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Get ready for a slew of military metaphors in box office reports this weekend.
"G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," the first pure action release in several weeks, will open at No. 1, unencumbered by a single mainstream review.
In an unusual gambit generally reserved for obvious stinkers, Paramount decided that critics likely would bash the film and perhaps dent moviegoers' must-see interest. Yet prerelease tracking is strong, and "Joe" seems headed for an opening of $45 million-$50 million.
Its core support will come from male youngsters, although its unclear if the coveted demo will be able to help Hollywood end four weeks of year-over-year box office declines.
"'G.I. Joe' is tracking well, so maybe it will get people interested in going back to the movies. But right now, the interest is pretty low," said an industry observer.
Two other films are opening in theaters on Friday. Sony's Nora Ephron-directed "Julie & Julia" -- about famed TV chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and a woman (Amy Adams) who blogs about preparing her recipes -- is also tracking well with a narrow swath of prospective patrons; older females should make a $20 million debut reachable.
But the weekend's third wide opener is tracking much more softly. The R-rated horror thriller "A Perfect Getaway," which Universal will distribute on behalf of indie producer Relativity's Rogue Pictures unit, might get away with $5 million-$7 million through Sunday.
The most-scrutinized holdover performance will be Universal's "Funny People," which opened at No. 1 last weekend with a sub-par $22.6 million. A (modest) 50% drop would see "People" potentially nab the weekend's bronze medal.
Meanwhile, the industry's year-to-date box office performance has taken a battering from the recent weekend downticks -- the result of comparisons with year-ago frames stuffed fat with "Dark Knight" sales.
Just three weeks ago, 2009 was pacing ahead of the same portion of last year by a healthy 6%, putting admissions (the number of tickets sold) on course for an annual uptick as box office sales exceeded the roughly 4% increase in average ticket prices. After the latest year-over-year decline -- which saw the last session off a hefty 25% from the year-earlier tally -- domestic box office now is up only 4% at $6.13 billion, according to Nielsen EDI.
Hark! Bob Dylan Christmas album coming
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Bob Dylan is set to release an album of Christmas songs this holiday season, according to the Web site BullyPulpit.com.
It said at least four songs have already been recorded for the album including, "Must Be Santa," "Here Comes Santa Claus," "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The sessions have taken place at Jackson Browne's studio in Santa Monica, Calif., it added.
A source close to Dylan told Reuters that the project is "a possibility," and more information will be revealed in two or three weeks.
Dylan joins a music business tradition of Jewish artists who release Christmas-themed albums, including Neil Diamond and Phil Spector. Irving Berlin, who wrote the yuletide classic "White Christmas," was also Jewish. Dylan did go through a "born again" Christian phase from 1979-1981, releasing three gospel-style albums including the Grammy-winning "Slow Train Coming."
His most recent album, "Together Through Life," was released in April, entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 and has sold more the 300,000 copies to date according to Nielsen SoundScan.
Aerosmith postpones concert after Tyler's fall
STURGIS, S.D. – Aerosmith's Steven Tyler suffered head, neck and shoulder injuries in a tumble from the stage at a South Dakota show, a concert spokesman said Thursday, and the audience thought it was part of his hip-shaking act until he didn't get up.
Tyler, 61, fell several feet while entertaining the crowd by dancing around as the sound crew replaced a fuse that blew during the song "Love in an Elevator," said Mike Sanborn, spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the Wednesday night concert. An amateur video showed him spinning around before falling off the stage.
A concertgoer said Tyler's head was bleeding and he was holding his shoulder after the fall, but it wasn't immediately clear how seriously he was hurt. The frontman was airlifted to Rapid City Regional Hospital, Sanborn said, the only major hospital in western South Dakota. A hospital spokeswoman would not confirm whether Tyler was there, and a representative for Aerosmith's publicity firm said the company was gathering information about the accident.
The band's next concert, which was scheduled for Friday in Winnipeg, Manitoba, was postponed. On June 28, Tyler hurt his leg at a concert in Uncasville, Conn., and the band had to postpone seven shows in July. Tyler also battled pneumonia before the tour began in June, while guitarist Joe Perry fought a knee infection.
Tyler, whose performances often include swaying and grinding on microphone stands adorned with scarves, was dancing on a catwalk Wednesday night that was connected to the main stage.
"He does a lot of dancing on the stage and he does a lot of stuff with his mike stand. He put his stand down and twirled around and stepped backwards off the stage," Sanborn said.
Many in the crowd were surprised and thought it was part of the act, said Jessica Kokesh, a University of South Dakota journalism student who covered the concert for the Rapid City Journal.
"We thought maybe he stage-dived into the crowd, but he didn't get back up," Kokesh said. "I thought he was falling back to crowd surf."
Tyler landed on a couple of fans, Sanborn said, and security rushed to help him. Sanborn did not immediately return a call Thursday evening about exactly how high the catwalk was. The crowd cheered when Tyler got up.
"There was like a big sigh, a collective 'Whoa' from everybody," said Chuck Baker, 53, of Denver, who was about 20 rows from the stage when Tyler fell.
The rocker was taken backstage, where a physician attended to him. Later, Perry told the audience the show would not go on.
"It was an unfortunate end to an extraordinary evening," Sanborn said.
Backstage, Jake Cohen was in the VIP area and didn't see the fall, but said he saw Tyler afterward.
"When they took him out, he was bleeding from his head and holding his shoulder," said Cohen, a salesman for Tyler's Dirico Motorcycles line.
Tyler, known for hits such as "Walk This Way" and "Dream On," attended Sturgis last year to promote his motorcycle line and was back this year to do that again and play at Buffalo Chip.
He was known for heavy drug and alcohol abuse in the 1970s and early 1980s. Every member of the blues-rock five-piece went to rehab in the mid-1980s, and the group staged an improbable comeback with the MTV generation. They were also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Grammy-winning group was scheduled to play its next five shows in Canada. According to a Ticketmaster Web site and the band's Twitter page, the first of those shows was postponed and there were no further details. An official with Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, where the band is supposed to play Tuesday, said she hadn't heard anything about a possible cancellation there.
John Hughes defined a genre and a generation
LOS ANGELES – "Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.
"Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. And what we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us."
Those are the opening lines from "The Breakfast Club," voiced by Anthony Michael Hall, accompanied by Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)." And even though it's been nearly a quarter-century since John Hughes' seminal high-school drama came out, I still know them by heart. I probably still know the entire movie by heart. Any self-respecting child of the 1980s does.
"The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles" may not qualify as the greatest movies ever, but we're talking favorites, the ones that still engage you no matter how many times you've seen them.
And so the news that Hughes died of a heart attack at 59 Thursday will, for many, strike the same sort of cultural chord that Michael Jackson's did: It prompts more than just a passing feeling of nostalgia but an active longing for a happier, more prosperous time. As both a writer and director, Hughes defined not just a genre but a generation.
His movies didn't exactly represent high school as it was (seriously, who ever went to a blowout bash at a mansion like Jake Ryan's in "Sixteen Candles" or got away with as much as Ferris Bueller?) but rather, high school as we wished it could have been — funnier, weirder, sweeter, full of kids who have just the right zinger or poignant thing to say:
"Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?"
"How about a nice, greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray?"
"Blane? His name is Blane? That's a major appliance, that's not a name."
"I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek."
After watching "The Breakfast Club" with me on cable for the millionth time when I was a chubby 13-year-old, my mom suggested that we go to the video store and rent the teen-angst movie of her generation: "Rebel Without a Cause." I would like it, she said — they were similar. And she was right in that they both captured the frustrating feeling that nobody understands you when you're young, that your problems are unique and insurmountable. Hughes took that raw energy and made it ironic and idiotic, self-referential and self-deprecating.
Every teen movie that's come out since the mid-1980s owes a debt to John Hughes. He was that influential. Some acknowledge this willingly, as director Nanette Burstein did with last year's "American Teen," which was essentially a documentary version of "The Breakfast Club." Bill Paxton has said that of the dozens of character roles he's played over his lengthy career, he's still best known as Chet, the bullying older brother from 1985's "Weird Science." And "Some Kind of Wonderful" (which Hughes wrote) plays a pivotal part in the recent romantic comedy "He's Just Not That Into You."
Others have parodied him endlessly in such varied settings as raunchy Kevin Smith comedies, the spoof "Not Another Teen Movie" and the animated TV series "Family Guy." (In the episode where Peter goes undercover at Meg's high school as Lando Griffin, he walks across the football field and defiantly thrusts his fist in the air at the end, just as Judd Nelson did in the last image of "The Breakfast Club.")
Granted, Hughes' work dwindled once the 1990s arrived and he lost his insight, his edge. His scripts for "Dennis the Menace," "Beethoven" and "Flubber" can't exactly compare with the ones he wrote for "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Home Alone" and "Planes, Trains and Automobiles."
But if it weren't for Hughes, there would never have been a Brat Pack, that clique of sizzling young Hollywood actors who dominated the 1980s after "St. Elmo's Fire" (a Joel Schumacher film, but one with clear links to Hughes).
Imagine the career trajectories of Hall, Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy and Jon Cryer without him. Or just try to think of Macaulay Culkin without conjuring the image of him slapping his hands to his wholesome face in horror.
And so there's nothing wrong with wallowing in some unabashed '80s nostalgia upon the passing of John Hughes. As Ferris Bueller himself might have said at a time like this, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
'80s teen flick director John Hughes dies in NYC
NEW YORK – Writer-director John Hughes, Hollywood's youth impresario of the 1980s and '90s, who captured the teen and preteen market with such favorites as "The Breakfast Club," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Home Alone," died Thursday, a spokeswoman said. He was 59.
Hughes died of a heart attack during a morning walk in Manhattan, Michelle Bega said. He was in New York to visit family.
Jake Bloom, Hughes' longtime attorney, said he was "deeply saddened and in shock" to learn of the director's death.
A native of Lansing, Michigan, who later moved to suburban Chicago and set much of his work there, Hughes rose from ad writer to comedy writer to silver screen champ with his affectionate and idealized portraits of teens, whether the romantic and sexual insecurity of "Sixteen Candles," or the J.D. Salinger-esque rebellion against conformity in "The Breakfast Club."
Hughes' ensemble comedies helped make stars out of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy and many other young performers. He also scripted the phenomenally popular "Home Alone," which made little-known Macaulay Culkin a sensation as the 8-year-old accidentally abandoned by his vacationing family, and wrote or directed such hits as "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Pretty in Pink," "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" and "Uncle Buck."
"I was a fan of both his work and a fan of him as a person," Culkin said. "The world has lost not only a quintessential filmmaker whose influence will be felt for generations, but a great and decent man."
Devin Ratray, best known for playing Culkin's older brother Buzz McCallister in the "Home Alone" films, said he remained close to Hughes over the years.
"He changed my life forever," Ratray said. "Nineteen years later, people from all over the world contact me telling me how much 'Home Alone' meant to them, their families, and their children."
Steve Martin played lead character Neal Page in the 1987 hit "Planes, Trains & Automobiles."
"John Hughes was a great director, but his gift was in screenwriting," Martin said. "He created deep and complex characters, rich in humanity and humor."
Other actors who got early breaks from Hughes included John Cusack ("Sixteen Candles"), Judd Nelson ("The Breakfast Club"), Steve Carell ("Curly Sue") and Lili Taylor ("She's Having a Baby").
Actor Matthew Broderick worked with Hughes in 1986 when he played the title character in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
"I am truly shocked and saddened by the news about my old friend John Hughes. He was a wonderful, very talented guy and my heart goes out to his family," Broderick said.
Ben Stein, who played the monotone economics teacher calling the roll and repeatedly saying "Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?", said Hughes was a towering talent.
"He made a better connection with young people than anyone in Hollywood had ever made before or since," Stein said on Fox Business Network. "It's incredibly sad. He was a wonderful man, a genius, a poet. I don't think anyone has come close to him as being the poet of the youth of America in the postwar period. He was to them what Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan Age.
"You had a regular guy — just an ordinary guy. If you met him, you would never guess he was a big Hollywood power."
As Hughes advanced into middle age, his commercial touch faded and, in Salinger style, he increasingly withdrew from public life. His last directing credit was in 1991, for "Curly Sue," and he wrote just a handful of scripts over the past decade. He was rarely interviewed or photographed.
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler falls from stage in SD
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was airlifted to a hospital after falling from stage during a concert at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in western South Dakota.
Tyler, 61, fell while entertaining the crowd by dancing around after the sound system failed during the song "Love In an Elevator," said Mike Sanborn, spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the outdoor concert.
Tyler was on the stage's catwalk when he fell backward onto a couple of fans in the middle of what was a record crowd, Sanborn said. Security rushed to help him and the crowd cheered when Tyler got back up.
"He was good natured about it," Sanborn said. "He was in good spirits when he got in the helicopter. He was talking and joking with the physician."
"It was an unfortunate end to an extraordinary evening."
Tyler suffered minor head and neck injuries and a shoulder injury, but it wasn't immediately clear how serious that was, he said.
Tyler was taken backstage and around 12:15 a.m., Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry came out to tell the audience Tyler was being taken to the hospital and that the show would not go on.
It happened about halfway through the performance, Sanborn said.
"He does a lot of dancing on the stage and he does a lot of stuff with his mike stand. He put his stand down and twirled around and stepped backwards off the stage," he said.
Sanborn said Tyler was attended to on site by a physician and flown to Rapid City Regional Hospital, the only major hospital in the region.
Jennifer Horton, the hospital's vice president of public relations and marketing, said early Thursday that Tyler wasn't in the hospital directory. Under the privacy laws, that means the person is either not there or chose not to be included in the directory, according to the hospital's Web site.
Tyler attended Sturgis last year to promote his Dirico Motorcycles line and was back this year to do that again and play at the Buffalo Chip.
Fans were disappointed the concert was cut short but hoped Tyler was OK.
Lance Yellow Robe, who said he was 8 eight feet from the stage when Tyler fell off, told the Rapid City Journal "you could kind of see it coming because he was dancing all over the stage.
"I hope he's OK," Yellow Robe said. "I could care less about the concert being canceled."