Let’s start out with Pulse Of Radio‘s exclusive interview with Kim Thayil of Soundgarden! The Seattle band releases its long-awaited collection of rarities and non-album tracks on today, titled Echo Of Miles: Scattered Tracks Across The Path. The 50-track, three-disc set contains seven never-before-released songs, including the newly recorded track “Storm,” along with original B-sides, instrumentals, covers and demos recorded throughout the band’s career. The collection was curated by guitarist Kim Thayil, who told us the size of the project grew over the years: “As we moved along in our recording career, we produced more and more of such material, until by the time (1994 album) Superunknown came out, we realized we just had a lot. We had a lot of instrumentals and covers we had recorded, movie soundtracks, B-sides for various EPs and singles. We knew that we had at least an album’s worth of material. When everything was gathered together and counted, it turned out we had three albums’ worth of material.” The first disc is subtitled “Originals” and features Soundgarden-written B-sides plus the previously unreleased “Storm” and “Kristi.” ”Covers” is the theme of disc two, featuring Soundgarden takes on songs like the Beatles‘ “Come Together,” Black Sabbath‘s “Into The Void,” the Rolling Stones‘ “Stray Cat Blues,” Devo‘s “Girl U Want,” the Doors‘ “Touch Me” and the Stooges‘ “Search And Destroy.” Disc three is called “Oddities” and includes an assortment of instrumentals, remixes and demos. Soundgarden plans to work on a new studio album sometime in 2015. A remixed version of the band’s first full-length outing, 1988′s Ultramega OK, is also in the pipeline to arrive next year…..This is rather interesting: Blink-182 singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge‘s side project Angels And Airwaves took home the Best Animated Film award from the Toronto International Short Film Festival last week for Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker. The film was made to accompany Angels And Airwaves’ forthcoming album, also called The Dream Walker. Both will come out December 9th, with the short providing visuals and more of an in-depth look at the story outlined in the album. DeLonge told Rock Sound the story is “about two brothers who are orphans, one of which goes into a coma. The main character — Poet — believes he can reach his brother in the dream world.”….Ya know, I think I have to agree with this. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has declared the public have “had it” with super-sexy videos. Corgan told the London Evening Standard, “I have a strange sense that people have had it with pop. I can’t compete with somebody who’s doing porn. The person who does porn for their video is going to sell more records than me. So how did we compete back in the day and how do we compete now? It’s the same. You have to be truer than false, realer than fake, and you have to bring something that only you can bring.” Corgan’s comments echoed those of Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, who recently said about “exhibitionist” pop stars using sex to sell records, “Maybe they should just be making porn films. Maybe they’re in the wrong game.” Corgan announced on Nov 19th he’s recruited Rage Against The Machine drummer Brad Wilk and Killers bassist Mark Stoermer for upcoming shows in support of the new Pumpkins album, Monuments For An Elegy. Four songs from the Dec 9th release – “Tiberius,” “Being Beige,” “One And All” and most recently, “Drum And Fife” — have surfaced. Lou Brutus will be on the hotLine with Mr Corgan tomorrow. The band is currently in rehearsals….The David Mallet-directed video for the title track ofAC/DC‘s Rock Or Bust can be seen here. Hard to believe David has directed the band’s videos for 24 years! That’s loyalty! That’s the thing I love about AC/DC. They ARE LOYAL! Loyal to family, friends and even bandmates who are acting like middle-aged crisis guys (but are in their 60′s!) Hopefully, things will get sorted out, good or bad, with Phil Rudd so this black spot on the band can be erased and they can avoid all the unending questions about the drummer. I mean, if you had a job, and you didn’t go to work for 10 days, wouldn’t you be fired right now? That’s NOT including that you were suspected of trying to have someone offed and you had a drug charge placed against you. FIRED! So, yes, Angus and the boys are loyal to the core. Come on, Phil, get your SH^T together!……Celebrating the BIG 5-0 today down in Florida is Tony Rombola of Godsmack! And Happy 44th to Chad Taylor of Live
