Dear Sacred Grounders, Myspacers, Facebookers, tweeters, Living Colour fans and beautiful humans of all colors, shades, shapes and sizes...
As many of you know, Living Colour have a brand new record just out : The Chair In The Doorway. It's been getting rave reviews from the press and fans. We think it's now time radio started to pay attention in order to help further get Corey, Vernon, Doug and Will's music in as many ears as possible. If you're up to the task, please call or email your favorite rock radio/satellite station that you're listening to and request the first single "Behind The Sun" or any new Living Colour. Tell them that you tune in regularly and want to be hearing new music from Living Colour, one of America's greatest rock bands ever, on their airwaves.
You can find station request lines and request emails at almost every station's website. Help spread the word on Living Colour and let's get them back to their rightful place on rock radio!
PEACE N LOVE AND ALL THAT GOOD STUFF!
LIVING COLOUR To Release ‘THE CHAIR IN THE DOORWAY’
Due September 15 On Megaforce Records
World Tour To Commence Fall 2009
New York/London — Living Colour will release their first new studio album in five years entitled The Chair In The Doorway on September 15 via Megaforce Records. The legendary downtown NYC rock band, who exploded out of CBGB’s in the late ’80s, landing all over MTV, the cover of Rolling Stone and stadium stages around the world with their Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum debut album Vivid, are back and “fierce” as ever.
Original members Vernon Reid, Corey Glover, Will Calhoun and (since 1993) Doug Wimbish gathered at Sono Studios outside of Prague in The Czech Republic during the fall of 2008 and spring of 2009 to write and record what would become The Chair In The Doorway. The results stretch from the modern soul anthem “Behind The Sun” to the politically-charged, heavy rock of “DecaDance” to the sacred steel blues of “Bless Those.” The artwork for The Chair In The Doorway was compiled from thousands of contest entries by fans from around the world.
“We feel like this is the best record we’ve made yet and we couldn’t be more excited to be releasing it with the legendary Megaforce Records,” says guitarist Vernon Reid. “Some of our favorite bands were or are Megaforce artists, Metallica, Bad Brains, Anthrax, Black Crowes, so it’s an honor to be part of a label with a great legacy.”
Living Colour will announce plans for a world tour shortly. With dates set to begin in September, it will include their first North American tour in four years along with performances in South America, Europe, Australia and Asia.
Having helped to pave the way for a number of contemporary African-American artists to follow in their wake, ranging from Rage Against The Machine to Lenny Kravitz to Ben Harper, with a multi-dimensional sound that drew equally from Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, Talking Heads and Ornette Coleman, the success of Living Colour broke down the color barriers in rock music. Guitarist and founding member Vernon Reid also founded the Black Rock Coalition to use his influence to further this cause.
Discovered by Mick Jagger who produced their first demo and later offered them an opening slot with The Rolling Stones, Living Colour would go on to create a repertoire that includes a multitude of classic songs, including “Cult Of Personality,” “Elvis Is Dead,” “Open Letter To A Landlord,” “Glamour Boys” and “Love Rears Its Ugly Head.” With The Chair In The Doorway, the fifth album of their storied career, Living Colour expands the scope of their timeless body of work and, in the process, proves vital as ever.
Track listing:
1. Burned Bridges
2. The Chair
3. DecaDance
4. Young Man
5. Method
6. Behind The Sun
7. Bless Those
8. Hard Times
9. Taught Me
10. Out Of Mind
11. Not Tomorrow
2CD package features all the 17 songs from their concert at the legendary New Morning, Paris in July 2007.
Description:
From the highly acclaimed DVD The Paris Concert, this Double-CD package features all the 17 Songs from their intense concert at the legendary New Morning in Paris in July 2007. The Masters of Groove deliver all their greatest hits and two groundbreaking versions of "Crosstown Traffic" and "Papa was a Rolling Stone". A treat for all connoisseurs of Living Colour's groundbreaking music.
Track Listing/Features:
* Type
* Middle Man
* Funny Vibe
* Song Without Sin
* Nova/Wall
* Sacred Ground
* Memories Can'T Wait
* Papa Was A Rolling Stone
* Glamour Boys
* Crosstown Traffic
* Go Away
* Either Way
* Ignorance Is Bliss
* Drum Solo
* Flying
* Love Rears Its Ugly Head
* Cult Of Personality
We are writing/recording material for the new album titled "The Chair in the Doorway". We would like fans, non-fans, and photographers to participate in this process by submitting original images conveying your interpretation of "The Chair in the Doorway"
The image could become artwork for the next Living Colour album!
Please join the Flickr group :
http://www.flickr.com/groups/thechairinthedoorway/
Vernon: "I did a press junket for CollideØscope with Corey and whenever something was going wrong Corey would always say "the chair in the doorway". It was just one of these things he would say and I looked at him and said 'you know that thing you always say, that's going to be the title of our next album.' I don't know what that means but that's it. What I like about "The Chair In The Doorway" is that it is a concrete image and a very real thing but……Why is there a chair in the doorway? What does it mean? It's completely abstract, while being a contract, a physical manifestation of what it is."
Proof of ownership will be required prior to finalizing agreements with Living Colour.
Finalists will be appropriately notified.
LIVING COLOUR IN THE AREA!
Spectacular performance at the New Morning in 2007. Recorded in High Definition.
For their millions of fans aroud the world, Living Colour needs no introductions: Vernon Reid, Will Calhoun, Doug Wimbish & Corey Glover are among the leading New York musicians who helped break down the doors leading to a renewed musical landscape in the 80s. They're one the very few groups - if not the first & only - that can be coined as authentic sons of Jimi Hendrix. This is obvious in the intense concert these masters of groove gave at the New Morning in 2007. A treat for all connaisseurs who are aware of the fact that Living Colour's groundbreaking music is the most impressive when it is performed in the intimate heat of a club!
Track Listing/Features:
Pre-Order Now - Available October 28th!
Living Colour recorded live at a benefit for CBGBs at the famed NYC institution on August 19th, 2005. Their original mix of rock, funk, punk and even reggae made Living Colour a household name. They still bring the magic and this live recording proves it. Anchored by Corey Glover on vocals and Vernon Reid on guitar, this CD spans their career and includes the hits "Glamour Boys" and "Cult of Personality," as well as timely songs like "Open Letter to a Landlord," "Terrorism" and "Sacred Ground." This is a pristine live recording, direct from the soundboard.
Track Listing/Features:
MVD is donating a portion of sale to the Hilly Kristal Foundation for Musicians and Artsits
Living Colour - CBGB's The Bowery Collection: Live, August 19, 2005
2008 MVD Audio
Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Living Colour was one of those few bands that could stop me dead in my tracks whenever they were doing something, and though I can't prove it, I'm 50% certain my wife and I stayed at the same hotel as Corey Glover in New York the year this was recording was taken and we (possibly) ran into the man and his significant other in a mutually fruitless effort to find a cab. Forget trying to find a cab in NYC on St. Patty's Weekend, folks, words to live by... We made eye contact longer than you normally might with people on the street and like the time I made eye contact with Chuck Billy of Testament in Virginia (that was valid since I was waiting in his hotel to interview Greg Christian and Alex Skolnick), there was this "Hi there, glad you recognize me, but please don't bust me" look to both men's eyes. If that wasn't Corey, the yuk's on me, but I was again stopped in my tracks, literally this time.
Prior to that, I'd seen Living Colour live in 1990 on their Time's Up tour, and what really socked me out about them was how much improv they threw into their performance, so much that familiar songs took on new life. I recall "I Want to Know" and "Desperate People" being played mostly to script, but even the newer material Living Colour was debuting in that show was jacked up, sonically-explosive and guttural to the point Corey Glover bellowed his guts out and Vernon Reid crushed more strums-per-second than perhaps anyone I've ever seen in a live capacity. Then-bassist Muzz Skillings was a mad dog on bass and drummer Will Calhoun smashed his skins as if under a clinical microscope and being given marks thereafter.
Toss in a few Bad Brains covers scattered through their set including "Sailin' On," which sent a tidal wave of approving roars throughout the crowd, and Living Colour put on one of the most devastating sets I personally have ever seen. Only Sonic Youth managed to outdo their cerebral electricity spewage and aural territorial coverage, and one of the lasting images I had of Living Colour was that they were meant for the stage. It's a damn shame they cashed their chips in ahead of their time with a decade's layoff before reuniting earlier in the new milennium.
Although there's already a Living Colour CBGB's recording in existence (Live at CBGB's Tuesday 12/19/89), it's great to have a second visit with the anti-glamour boys circa 2005, if for nothing else to hear what Living Colour still has to give at this point. The answer to that is a heck of a lot, since CBGB's The Bowery Collection: Live, August 19, 2005 is simply massive, almost too much for the deceased rock hub to contain.
The idiom "blowing the roof off" is used so often in describing music performances, but honestly, Living Colour blew that damned club at least to a few new plaster cracks. The audio capturing this excitable concert certainly took a beating because Living Colour simply goes berserk in CBGB's right on the first step of the almost double-timed "Type," to where Living Colour is so adrenalized to kick this show into gear they lose the core tempo of the song, instead opting to just ride the vibe. They slide back long enough into calypso grooves on the bridges, while Corey Glover recites the choruses instead of sings, as if giving his audience a more dramatic, open-mike delivery for them to savor. The cheeky part to this is right after Vernon Reid sends waves of guitar frizzle fry just through one song, the energy level is so amped Glover tells everyone "I'm getting too old for this!"
Perhaps he's right since a Living Colour gig isn't your prototype entertainment show. They hoist all of the influences that made Vivid a veritible classic such as jazz, funk, metal and punk, and they run like hell with it, shooting strictly from the hip from song-to-song. How they've managed to stay healthy and still passionate in their delivery is remarkable considering the complicated and wonderfully noisome din (most cats couldn't pull a song like "Time's Up" so long after it was recorded, but Living Colour nails the shit to a cross) they're required to reproduce onstage. It wouldn't be surprising if these guys never truly duplicated a performance because this one alone is instinctual and painfully loud. Painful as in gimme more painful.
Even as Living Colour tinkers and dallies with sample loops, sequencers, jam splashes and daydreamish scats between songs (even teasing the audience with a fake intro sample for "Love Rears Its Ugly Head" before vaulting into the punishing "Ignorance is Bliss" -- the former song makes its appearance afterwards, fret not) the time biding may wear slightly thin, but all of it is anticipatory for the next eruption yet to come and the one thereafter.
Corey Glover seizes the opportunity to chat randomly with the crowd and dote all over the importance of CBGB's in its day, at one point issuing the sadly incorrect exclamation "CBGB's will never die!" in closure of the set. It's almost poetry to hear him thank the late Hilly Kristal for giving Living Colour one of their first places to play while noting the already-exposed fate of the club in 2005, then begin his soulful solo wails leading into "Open Letter to a Landlord." The fact he starts giggling in the midst of his expelled nostalgia and then says "You know the fucking song, we can leave, fuck it!" before Living Colour hammers out "Landlord" poignantly creates its own endearment. Likely those who were in attendence this night won't ever forget this moment. In the grand perspective of rock history, the gesture is minimal, but for the sake of CBGB's, it might rank along with the early halcyon eighties performances by the Ramones, Talking Heads and Patti Smith, particularly when Glover lets the crowd sing "Landlord's" choruses; for once, said interaction comes off natural instead of fabricated.
On this performance, Living Colour whisks out a couple of tunes from their last studio album Kaleidoscope, "In Your Name" and "Sacred Ground," the latter of which is likewise used in tributory fashion to the club. Otherwise, expect a generous heaping of Vivid tunes with "Middle Man," "Funny Vibe," "Glamour Boys" and of course their signature "Cult of Personality," the latter of which is one of the most booming and uplifting set closers you'll ever hear.
Never ones to avoid causing a ruckus, they dedicate "Terrorism" to GW Bush and Tony Blair, playing the drawn, hypnotic opening licks in the way Killing Joke and The Exploited probably would before the song pounds aggressively to finish with oodles of sonic grandeur extolled from Vernon Reid. Brutal, yet funky, with a return to the platform these guys never should've have abandoned. Just hearing Corey Glover whisper "I don't want my babies living with terrorism" says it all...
That's the exact point to Living Colour in the 2000s. They're family men with plenty of road mileage behind them--even with a long hiatus--but push comes to shove, these guys were the embodiment of a heavy rock porridge with dashes of Bob Marley, Bad Brains and Curtis Mayfield. A little shaky in spots of their otherwise brilliant career, Living Colour's relevance alone is the reason to pick up CBGB's The Bowery Collection: Live, August 19, 2005. All it needed was "Elvis is Dead" to make it one for the ages.
Rating: ****
Posted by Ray Van Horn, Jr
Hey Folks,
Greetings from Prague (actually just outside Prague).
I'm actually in the studio right now with the band (they're tracking "Bless Those" at the moment), and have time to give you an update on the sessions (actually, it's the last day here).
Right now, there are about 11 songs recorded (in varying states of completion; I believe 4 are close to finished).
There are plans to record more (there's maybe another 8 or so songs they want to look at), but that's where we are now.
I can't give too much away, but this is shaping up to be a killer record!
I can say this; there are no covers on it, for the metal lovers; you're covered... this will probably be the heaviest, hardest rocking Living Colour record ever! Also, and the band may get me for saying this, there are also at least two bonafide potential big singles (I'm not saying titles because they may change)
The band has never played better and tighter (maybe because we've never recorded while on tour) and there will be some surprises, as well... what are they?
Well, you have to wait and see...
If you're wondering; there's a good possibility that you'll hear some of the songs on the next leg of the tour (starting tomorrow in Budapest). Actually, at Doug's show last night, there was a snippet of one of new songs played (yeah, we can be sneaky bastards ;p).
Speaking of last night, not only Will played, but the entire band played two songs (but not new ones).
Stay tuned... you may even be shocked by a preview of sorts...
Peace Y'all,
Diamond
AVAILABLE NOW!
