Marillion Unplugged...again.

British progressive rock veterans Marillion have been busy with a new all-acoustic studio record called "Less is More" (or as the band is marketing it, "L>M"). The band has done the unplugged thing several times, most memorably in 2005 when they toured as an acoustic three-piece "Los Trios Marillos". That was the last time this writer saw them, at the Bowery Ballroom.

The track list:
Go
Interior Lulu
Out of This World
Wrapped Up In Time
The Space
Hard As Love
Quartz
If My Heart Were a Ball (it would roll uphill)
It's Not Your Fault
Memory of Water
This is the 21st Century
and...
a Hidden Track.

Pre-orders are now available on the band's official site, and the first track, a re-working of 1993's "Hard as Love" is available on the band's official MySpace page. The album will be released Oct. 2 with another European tour to follow. As of this writing, no U.S. dates are planned.

Alice in Chains: The Triumphant Return

This may be a little behind schedule but here's the video for the first single from the newly resurrected Alice in Chains featuring lead singer William Duvall. It's completely awesome--and I had my doubts at first. Crank it!

Dream Theater and Zappa Plays Zappa: Freakin' at the Beacon

On Sunday night, Dream Theater brought their 2009 edition of the Progressive Nation Tour to the Beacon Theater. The Beacon is a classic old vaudeville house on the Upper West Side, and where I saw DT play all of Metallica's Master of Puppets at a memorable show in 2002.

DT played a strong headlining set, opening with two large-scale songs from the new record and closing with 20-minute epic "The Count of Tuscany". In between were classic songs from various eras of the band, with an emphasis on cuts that have lyrics written by lead singer James LaBrie. Since the six-song Black Clouds and Silver Linings does not have a LaBrie lyric credit, one can only speculate that the set list may have bee designed to compensate.

Highlights included a sing-along on "Hollow Years" (which featured keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess playing a solo on his iPhone!) and a stellar "The Dance of Eternity." More "Metropolis" music dominated the encore, where that Images and Words track evolved into a three-way shredfest on the front of the stage, featuring the guest guitar of tour-mate Dweezil Zappa and

The biggest shock of Zappa Plays Zappa's set was not the appearance of Mike Portnoy on the drum kit, but the Dream Theater drummer's remarkable vocal performance on the legendary (and somewhat pornographic) "Bobby Brown Goes Down." This dominated a fine set that included "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and a free-flowing jam on "Willie the Pimp." Dweezil is starting to look like his dad without the facial hair, and has that same loose-but-controlling style of leading his crack six-piece band.

BigElf brought their swirly keyboard-driven psychedleia to the stage, combining a sense of theater with riffs that owe a lot to Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge. Portnoy came out and sat in on drums on one song. The show started at 6pm with opening act Scale the Summit: four lads who can play very fast progressive noodle-metal, with good riffs. Give these boys a singer and a sense of self-editing and they might be the next...Symphony X.

Fire good. Virtual fire...weird.

That Gene Simmons. He thinks of everything.

I'll probably have to pay Tongue Tax for using the Kiss bassist's name on this blog. However--news!


Kiss are the flagship band on the first "Virtual Concert Lighter" for smartphones. The application is available for $.99 from the Spark of Blue Online Store along with other applets. Future applets will feature The Who and Poison.

Basically, this plays a film of an actual lighter on the screen of your IPod Touch or IPhone. It will even move back and forth as you wave your "lighter" in the air when they play "Beth."

Notes:

• Unfortunately, this application is useless for lighting cigars, so real lighters will still be manufactured.
  
  
• Requires no butane or flint. What fun is that?
  
  
• No word yet on whether you can parts-hack the IPhone to get a bigger flame, the way we used to before Rush concerts.
  
  
• Fish will never record an album called "Raingods with IPhones."
  
  
• Cannot be combined with Binaca for that "minty blowtorch" effect. (Which almost got us thrown out of a Clapton concert when we were kids. Foooooooompf!)