Rock News

BROADWAY OPENING SET FOR GREEN DAY'S 'AMERICAN IDIOT'

The stage musical version of Green Day's American Idiot album will open on Broadway at the St. James Theatre on April 20th, according to The New York Times. Preview performances will start on March 24th, with ticket information yet to be announced. The show premiered at the Berkeley Rep in northern California last September, where it enjoyed a sold-out eight-week run that broke all box office records for the theatre. Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement, "Experiencing American Idiot onstage in Berkeley was incredible. (Director) Michael Mayer was able to bring life to the characters . . . and Tom Kitt's musical arrangements are breathtaking. We're so proud that the show is coming to Broadway!"


MUSE SMASHES ANOTHER CHART RECORD

Muse's current single, "Uprising," has smashed another rock radio airplay record, spending its 18th consecutive week at Number One on the Alternative Rock chart. That breaks the record for longest run at the top in the chart's history, which was previously held by Foo Fighters. That band's "The Pretender" logged 17 weeks in the Number One position back in late 2007.

Muse bassist Chris Wolstenholme told us that "Uprising" started out sounding very different from its final version: ["Initially when Matt (Bellamy, guitars/vocals) brought the idea in, it kind of sounded to me like it could have gone down a very kind of electronic or synth-y kind of road. But we, you know, we talked about it and we thought, you know, instead of thinking along those lines, it would be a bit cooler to maybe think more along the lines of glam rock. And we really wanted to keep it real, you know. We wanted to keep it as a piece of music that was played by the band. You know, we wanted the power of the song to come from us as people and as players."]


COUNTDOWN CLOCK APPEARS AT DISTURBED WEBSITE

A countdown clock has surfaced at the official Disturbed website, with the clock apparently timed to end next Tuesday (January 12th). The letters "D.O.D." appear above the clock, which could possibly stand for "Decade of Disturbed." There's no indication of what will happen next week, but it seems likely that some sort of new release will be announced, most likely a retrospective DVD of the band's history that has been in the planning stages for a while.


Singer David Draiman told us during last spring's Music As A Weapon tour that the group planned to film some shows on that trek for just such a DVD: ["We already have a bunch of footage that's been amassed, and we're trying to do a full-blown production shoot of one or more of these actual live performances. And there is definitely plans for a DVD in the works. I don't know necessarily that it will be specifically a Music As A Weapon DVD. I think that it's going to be more of a 'Decade of Disturbed,' so to speak."]