She was and still remains, America’s favorite bad girl.  Sizzling hot, her unforgettable single, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” is a featured attraction for the intensely vivid musical, “Rock of Ages”, although it’s been implied, Pat Benatar would like to hit with a few of her more gnarly songs, like “Love is a Battlefield” or “Hell is for Children”. She’ll definitely get the chance as she teams up with Journey for a nationwide tour.

She isn’t coming alone.  The four time Grammy winner will be accompanied by husband, Neil Geraldo, who will be accompanied by his steaming guitar and his unstoppable talent.  Just in case the fantastic duo and the legendary rock group, Journey, don’t leave their audience screaming in their seats and passing out from over-exposure to raw, unchained music, the air-splitting rock band, Loverboy, will be there to make sure the rafters are blown apart and that temperatures are rising.

Hailing originally from Calgary, Alberta, Loverboy got a slow start in the United States, but that changed quickly once they signed up with Colombia Records of Canada.  With four platinum albums under their belt and over two hundred shows, appearing with bands such as ZZ Top, Cheap Trick, Kansas, and Def Leppard, the American record labels must be squirming in their sears for not snapping up the group when they could.

Journey has been revamped and Internationalized over the years, with a number of musicians replacing the various band members, but they still have that awesome golden lead guitar, Neal Schon, alumni of one of the untouchable icon of classic rock music, Santana, as well as the sterling tones of bass/ vocals original member, Ross Valory.

It will be an extraordinary line-up.  With hit singles like “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend” and “Turn Me Loose”, Loverboy has that snap your fingers, get out there and dance beat of the rolling eighties.  Journey never disappoints with their incredible vocals, and versatile musical arrangements that sometimes verge on hard rock but that always have the soaring overtones of unmistakable classical rock music.  And Pat Benetar?  You decide.  She’s hard.  She’s wicked.  She belts.  She’s rock at its best and she knows it.

Want to attend one of “The Ten Hottest Summer Package Tours of 2012,” as proclaimed by Rolling Stone magazine? Then you need to remember what it’s like to curl your tongue, paint your face white, and get ready for some real head-banging! KISS and Motley Crue have just wrapped up their own individual headlining tours to join together onstage and give metal fans what they love. And it all starts this weekend!

The tour, which is being called exactly that — “The Tour” — will kick off this Friday, July 20 in Bristow, Virginia; and from there the two bands will travel around to 43 different states in just over two months, wrapping up the tour in Hartford, Connecticut on September 23, 2012.

KISS has been promoting the tour with three pre-tour dates that have taken place the last few months, while Motley Crue has put on their own pre-tour performances in June and July. Come Friday though, the two will join together to put on a show that’s going to be “like Elvis on steroids,” according to Paul Stanley, the KISS guitarist.

While Motley Crue hasn’t put out a new album since Saints of Los Angeles in 2008, KISS will be releasing their latest studio effort, Monster, in October. All original members of Motley Crue will be there; as well as Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Eric Singer, and Tommy Thayer for KISS.

Fans of The Killers can put down their beaten-up copies of Sawdust and Day & Age that they’ve been listening to for the past four years, because the band is finally coming out with a new album! Battle Born, the fifth studio effort for the band is about to be released on September 18; and if any fans were disappointed with the pop sound of Day & Age, they’ll be happy to know that the band has returned to their more original sound.

The first song off the album, “Runaways,” was released last month and the slowed-down melody and poetic lyrics are more reminiscent of “When You Were Young” than it is either “Human” or “Spaceman,” two singles released off their 2008 album, Day & Age. To get the first listen of the new “Runaways” track, you can find it here. The newest album will also reunite the band with producer Stuart Price, who worked extensively with the band on their past two albums, Sawdust and Day & Age.

But a new song and a new album just isn’t enough after four years of silence, and The Killers are aware. It’s for this reason that the band will also embark on a tour to promote Battle Born, although no dates or venues have yet been set. Until then, fans are going to have to appease themselves with the new rocker song “Runaways,” and wait for more singles to be released until the album release date.

As if Bob Dylan adding more dates to his fall tour this year wasn’t exciting enough, it’s now been announced that Mark Knopfler will also be joining him!

Mark Knopfler first became known for being the lead singer and songwriter for the British band Dire Straits. But after the band broke up in the mid-90s, Knopfler struck out on his own, releasing six solo albums. Now that he’s joined this album with Bob Dylan, he will be performing some of his own songs off of his newest album “Privateering” which is to be released on September 3.

But don’t be fooled. While having Mark Knopfler along for the ride will certainly bring one more exciting element to the show for fans, they’re all there to see Bob Dylan — and it’s no wonder why. Dylan will be performing some of his most famous songs, and fans may even get a chance to hear new material from his 35th studio album, which is rumored to be out later this year. Another new song Dylan is said to be performing on his fall tour has a name that is not yet known to the public, but it’s one that is highly anticipated. The song is 14 minutes long and pertains to the Titanic. The song is also said to be included on his new album that’s to be released this fall.

The tour that Dylan is currently on is appropriately called the “Never Ending Tour” and has been on since June 1988. You can find a full listing of tour dates here.

Don’t let the name fool you.  This heavy metal band is one of the most versatile groups on the scene.  If you think rock and roll music has gone downhill in the face of hip-hop and mainstream be-bop, you haven’t been listening to Metallica.  They may have raised the incidental whiplash incidence rate for head bangers, rocking down to “The More I See” and, “Enter the Sandman”, but such numbers as, “Fade to Black” and “Justice for All” can only be defined as classical rock at its best.

Metallica has an understanding of the rock and roll scene that’s difficult to find among the Johnny-come-lately hopefuls to this get-down era of music pleasure.  It’s really no wonder as these sixties born musicians grew up in a time period when rock was sweeping through the air waves.  With Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, and Led Zeppelin as his guide, guitarist and singer, James Hatfield, shapes the spirit and creativity of the heavy metal group.

Have you ever wondered where those astonishing finger-picking sounds come from?  That would be Robert Trujillo, who more often than not, throws his pick away to finger pluck his way into one of the most exciting bass guitarists in rock and roll history, even playing for a while with the infamous or famous; however you wish to perceive him, Ozzy Osborne, in the mid-nineties.

Lars Ulrich has been listening to the sounds of Ritchie Moore and mind-blowing all-time great Deep Purple since he was ten, driving him into his love affair with percussion instruments.  After eighty million albums sold worldwide, Metallica has gone through a lot of collective and individual changes, but Ulrich remains the beat that leads the band.
Kirk Hammet, lead guitarist, joined Metallica in 1983, replacing Dave Mustaine and smoking down the crowds with his first “Kill ’em All” tour debut.  Never one to limit his instrumental knowledge, Hammet’s self-education has included Blues, jazz and classical styles.

The group is back on tour, burning up the International scene with box-office sell-outs in Mexico City and Canada, with a twentieth anniversary celebration of “The Black Album.”

Concert tickets are also available for the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but if you’re ready to rock down with the hottest heavy metal group on the scene, you’d better buy your ticket early.  They’re going fast.

It’s time to rock and roll. The summer is never complete until you’ve put on your dancing shoes and kicked into the festive, free spirited celebration of a live concert. And what could be livelier than Motley Crue lining up a tour with get-down, hard-rock beat of KISS?

This heavy metal band, formed in Los Angeles in 1981 is still kicking out the big beat, hammering the heart strings with a style and sound that has captured an International fan club. The Motley Crue has been described over the years as the world’s most notorious Rock Band, which hasn’t bothered them in the least. Their notoriety has brought them eighty million album sales worldwide, with twenty-five million in the U.S.

Asked in July of 2011 during an interview with Examiner.com if the group would be putting out another album, Vince Neil, lead singer for the Crue said, “I’m sure we’re due for one. All of us have been writing individually, I write, Nikki’s been writing, and Mick as well, at some point here, we’ll pull all of our ideas together as we always do, and then we’ll start sorting through it at that point.”

The point is just around the corner. With the VIP packages for their tours going fast, and in some places, already sold out, it should be enough inspiration for the group to put out a brand new album. In fact, they’ve already put together a single, called, “Sex”, which is breaking out on the air waves in major cities.

Motley Crue has been featured on a quite a few VH1 countdown shows. For Greatest Air Guitar Song, they ranked number seven, with “Dr. Feelgood,” while “Live Wire” scorched the sound waves as the number 17 Greatest Metal Song of All Times. Mötley Crüe was ranked tenth on MTV’s list “Top 10 Heavy Metal Bands of All-Time” and ninth on “VH1’s All Time Top Ten Metal Bands”.

Packing hard their anarchistic message in an arena where life is gritty and dirty and rock and roll is king, Motley Crue remains today the spirit of rebellion. Don’t let your summer get you down in mundane waves of traffic jams and work routines. Shrug off your cares and your worries, forget about the staid affairs of your neighbor’s cat, and spend some time jamming down with the best–where music is a live wire that grabs you where it counts and heavy metal is king.

Get your Motley Crue tickets today and experience the fire in person!

As Radiohead was preparing for a show in Toronto’s Downsview Park last Saturday, a drum technician for the band, Scott Johnson, was working on stage when it collapsed around him, killing him in the process and injuring three other crew members. On Thursday the band announced on their website that due to the accident, several of the band’s European tour dates would be postponed until at least July 9.

Understandably, the band and the rest of the crew need time to grieve and recover, but the band says that there are elements of the show that need to be taken into consideration as well.

The announcement regarding the cancelled dates was posted on the band’s website said, “This show was unique and will take many weeks to replace. The collapse also caused serious damage to our backline, some elements of which are decades old and therefore hard to replace. Whilst we all are dealing with the grief and shock ensuing from this terrible accident there are also many practical considerations to deal with and consequently we have to try and reschedule.”

A total of seven dates were cancelled in all, including the dates from June 30 — July 9. The band also announced on their website that dates for the new shows will be announced today; and that arrangements will be made for those who cannot attend the rescheduled shows.

Radiohead’s drummer Phil Selway released his own statement regarding his technician’s death saying Scott was “a lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny; a highly skilled and valued member of our great road crew. We will miss him very much.”

It may not be the first time she’s visited the Land Down Under but when Macy Gray heads there this fall, it will be the first time in 12 years that she’s been there. And fans know that after that long of a wait, she’s going to bring something really special!

That she will with her latest, and sixth, studio album, Covered, which features iconic songs originally performed by Radiohead, Metallica and the Eurythmics. Some of the songs choices, such as that by Metallica, prove just how unique and truly adaptable Gray’s voice is to any singing style or genre. While Gray will only make a total of four stops in Sydney, the Gold Coast, Brisbane, and Melbourne, it’s just the start of a tour that will put the singer back on the map after taking a brief hiatus. More dates have not yet been announced, but fans eagerly await the next countries and venues she’ll be visiting.

Gray is going to be very busy in the coming months. In addition to promoting her album and going on tour, she’ll also be promoting her new movie “Paperboy,” which also stars Nicole Kidman, and which had its huge launch at the most recent Cannes Film Festival.

Gray made her huge debut on the music scene with her first album “On How Life Is,” which contained her massively successful hit, “I Try.” She’s the mother of teenagers and recently revealed that while it’s not easy being a touring singer and mother, an open communication with each of her children makes it all worth it in the end.

Blondie and Devo were both two of the biggest acts in music during the 80s. And while both have taken hiatuses and been busy doing their own things, the two have now joined together on the Whip It To Shreds tour to bring fans an act so big, they had to wait twenty some-odd years for it. The tour starts out in Woodinville, Washington on September 7 and will take the two groups around on 12 different concert stops throughout the United States on September 26 in Chicago, Illinois.

Blondie has had a bit of remake after their hiatus and the band now include originals Debbie Harry, Clem Burke, and Chris Stein; as well as newcomers Leigh Foxx, Tommy Kessler, and Matt Katz-Bohen. Along the way of the tour they’ll be performing hits from their most recent album, Panic of Girls, which was released last year. Debbie Harry said when talking about the show, “We can’t wait to get out on the road with Devo. It’s going to be an incredible show and we’re excited to share it with our fans.”

Devo is undoubtedly just as excited to be bringing fans their newest music from their 2010 album, Something for Everybody, an album that they’ve been heavily promoting while on tour since its release. The name of the tour comes of course, from Devo’s biggest single, “Whip It.” On the tour original Devo members Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, as well as Gerald and Bob Casale will all take the stage, as well as Jeff Friedl, who’s along for this tour.

When joking about the tour Mark Mothersbaugh said, “We are looking forward to performing alongside Blondie and swapping costumes backstage.”

It’s been nine years since they released their last album and eight since they’ve taken their act on the road. But the announcement was made on Monday that Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse will be going on tour this fall; and they’ve fit all the big stops into just a few months.

The tour beings on June 4 in Windsor, Ontario and will take the band to over 30 different stops throughout Canada and the United States. Neil Young and Crazy Horse — the band that is made up of Ralph Molina, Billy Talbot, and Frank “Poncho” Sampedro — haven’t performed together since 2004 when they closed out their Greendale tour. That tour was to promote the album of the same name that was released in 2003, but Young and the band promise to make up for that. Not only did they release their newest album “Americana” yesterday, but in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, they also promised that another one will be coming later this year.

Los Lobos will be opening for Neil Young and Crazy Horse until the November 19th date at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario. Picking up from there on November 23 in Montreal, Quebec at the Bell Centre, Patti Smith will take over as the opening act. For a full listing of tour dates and venues, you can check out the Neil Young tickets page at StubPass.com