The News Review:

- Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
- A review of key box sets
- Chris Cornell brings diversity to Belly Up

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
bit-tech.net – Nov 21, 2007
Even that much is owed only to my hillbilly origins in the depths of rural Derbyshire. So being a bit of a guitar newcomer and only having tried Guitar Hero before a handful of times (and having been trounced on every occasion) I was a bit anxious about reviewing the game. After all there are folks here who can nearly manage a perfect score and who play regularly in Heavy Metal bands. Call me shallow but I just didn?t want to look like the office newbie if I could at all help it. Unfortunately that?s not something that I could really prevent because the hype for the game is so big that as soon as the guitars arrived in the office everyone crowded into the meeting room with me ? baited breaths steaming against the plate glass. I booted up the Xbox 360 plopped the disc in the tray and set about strapping the guitar over my shoulders. I took a breath and got ready to make a tit of myself because when you get down to it that?s what this game is all about… A fretboard appears and coloured dots fly out of the horizon and towards the players with each colour tied to a button on the guitar-controller’s neck. When the dots reach the bottom of the screen players have to press it on the controller and strum at the same time. It sounds complex but in reality it?s very simple and since the notes flying towards the player correspond to the beat and pace of the music the illusion formed is quite strong ? it actually feels like you?re playing the guitar. The on-screen background is filled with footage of your virtual band too so that if you?re especially unimaginative then you can fool yourself into thinking that you are actually a rock star. The difficulty of the game is thankfully pretty scalable and ranges from Easy which is challenging but possible for people like me through the more mainstream Medium and Hard up to the finger-burning Expert mode which even our resident thrash-metaller has trouble with. Enough with all this introduction nonsense though ? the actual reality is that the game is incredibly well known and even those who haven?t played it will at least know how it works or have.

A review of key box sets
Houston Chronicle – Nov 21, 2007
Harris deserves credit for including the curiosity and by cut two she’s on to sturdier stuff — a duet with Gram Parsons. It’s a nice transition because Harris says she found her voice singing with Parsons. Lots of wonderful music follows. There are 78 songs in all with two discs of Harris’ personal favorites and two discs featuring previously unreleased material collaborations and songs that appeared on tribute albums. The set’s fifth disc is an entertaining DVD with nine performances dating back as far as 1975. Songbird is a valuable companion to a two-disc anthology released by Rhino in 2001 that focuses on Harris’ hits. These performances are less well know but just as compelling… Rather than depict Holiday in her glory this collection morbidly depicts the declining arc of her career when years of drug abuse and illness had ravaged her voice and she struggled through her sets — including tracks from her appearance at the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958 and her last performance at the Storyville club in April 1959 just three months before she died at age 44 of cirrhosis of the liver under police guard in a Manhattan hospital. Gans Associated Press Writer————Various Artists Heavy Metal (Rhino)Heavy metal is a style to be reckoned with and Rhino manages a respectable chronicle of the genre’s birth and various incarnations in a four-disc box set simply titled Heavy Metal. Banging your head through roughly 25 years and 70 tracks of boot-stomping angst — from Iron Butterfly to Sepultura — may not be good for your health but it’s a fun ride. Focused heavily on the years between punk and grunge when metal ruled the airwaves there are some scattered gems tracks you’ll think are not worthy and of course those that have been overlooked. (The inclusion of Dio-era Black Sabbath’s Neon Knights as opposed to anything they recorded with zzy sbourne will seem sacrilegious to some). The souped-up psychedelic blues that marked metal’s birth is here (Uriah Heep Deep Purple Hawkwind) along with the glam-infused arena rock of Alice Cooper and Kiss; the stripped-down approach of early Iron Maiden Judas Priest and Motorhead; progressive metal courtesy of Rush and Queensryche; shredding thrash from Metallica Slayer and Anthrax.

Chris Cornell brings diversity to Belly Up
Aspen Times – Nov 21, 2007
But other than that I didn’t know if it was John or Paul or George” said Cornell who also identified tis Redding’s performance in the concert documentary “Monterey Pop” as another seminal influence. “Paul McCartney sang ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and nobody thought there was anything wrong with that. Music was supposed to change and you were supposed to embrace diversity. “Three bands on an indie-metal tour that didn’t seem to interest me. “Cornell’s experimentations didn’t end with the disbanding of Soundgarden. In 1999 he released a solo album “Euphoria Morning. ” Two years later he formed Audioslave which featured three-quarters of hard-rockers Rage Against the Machine (everyone but singer Zach de la Rocha).