Vie’s Verses – In Honor Of Hard Rock Hideout’s Fifth Anniversary
Hard Rock Hideout celebrated its fifth anniversary this week. Considering that the average life span of a rock music blog/website is just over 2 years, this is an amazing feat. For the last five years, Hard Rock Hideout has been providing the greatest news, reviews, and information on all of our favorite hard rocking bands, as well as presenting plenty of information on fresh new bands that deserve some attention. I would like to dedicate this edition of Vie’s Verses to what I feel is the greatest hard rock site on the web – Hard Rock Hideout – with a look back into the hard rocking year 2006, the year that HRH launched.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years prior. One of the greatest composers the world has ever known, and clearly a predecessor (albeit centuries early) to rock and roll, there was a memorable celebration for the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.
ITunes celebrated 2006 in style, capturing their one billionth download. That’s 1,000,000,000 songs that were downloaded through ITunes. I would call that a most successful venture. It would be nice to know how many of those downloads were heavy metal songs. I wonder if there is a statistical breakdown by category somewhere.
U2 cleaned up at the Grammy Awards behind How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. The band took home five Grammy awards that evening, including album of the year and song of the year.
MTV celebrated their 25th anniversary. That harkened back to the days when MTV actually showed music videos. Many of my favorite metal bands were discovered through MTV, specifically Headbanger’s Ball, which I watched religiously throughout high school. Every Saturday night at 11 you could find me glued to the tube waiting to discover the next great metal band.
We lost two great musicians in 2006. Both Pink Floyd’s original lead singer Syd Barrett and the Godfather of soul, James Brown, passed away that year. Both of these legends are still missed.
The hit British music show, Top Of The Pops, which featured some great metal artists such as AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and Faith No More, aired their final episode. The show ran for 42 years (1964 until 2006), one of the longest running music programs in television history.
Some great hard rock bands formed in 2006, including Hell Yeah (Vinnie Paul’s latest band) and rookie sensation Cage The Elephant. Other great hard rock bands decided that it was time to quit the scene, including Cold (most notable for their big hit “Stupid Girl”) and System Of A Down. Cold would reunite in 2008, System Of A Down in 2011.
There were also some great comebacks/reformations that year. Alice In Chains returned the scene with a brand new singer and high hopes. Josh Todd and Keith Nelson reformed Buckcherry (with a brand new supporting cast) and released one of the band’s strongest albums ever in 15. The song “Crazy Bitch” tour up the charts and put Buckcherry back on the hard rock map. Everclear sans everyone except lead singer/guitarist Art Alexakis reformed and released Welcome To The Drama Club.
What other great albums were released in 2006? Papa Roach unleashed their best album ever in The Paramour Sessions. Pearl Jam put out their self titled album, one of the band’s best efforts since the early days of Pearl Jam. Audioslave unleashed their final disc in Revelations. Chris Cornell would go on to reform Soundgarden while the remaining members would put Rage Against The Machine back together. Paul Stanley released his first official solo album, Live To Win. Heavy metal legends Iron Maiden blessed us with A Matter Of Life And Death which would debut at #9 on the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S. The band celebrated their first top ten record by performing the album in its entirety during their 2006 world tour. Fan reactions to that decision were mixed. The Red Hot Chili Peppers released Stadium Arcadium, which would go on to sell 7.9 Million units.
Some notable debut albums were also released that year. Black Stone Cherry put out their self titled debut, which still sounds amazing to this day. And one of my all time favorite records was released. The Red Jumpsuit Aparatus came out with their debut record Don’t You Fake It. This is an album that renewed my faith in both rock music and modern rock bands.
2006 was a great year for music and for music fans. A lot of grand things took place that year, but nothing was grander than the debut of a little rock website known as Hard Rock Hideout. To Rob Rockitt I say “Thank You.” For the last five years you have put out a must read site that I visit daily. I would be hard pressed to find another hard rock site that compares. I hope there are many more years to come.
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Looking forward to another five years!
Long Live Hard Rock Hideout, Rob Rockitt and Ryo Vie \m/
Hard rock 4 ever !!