Tag: ZO2
0 ZO2’s Paulie Z Gets Lead Role In Sci-Fi Rock Musical “Europa”
You’ve seen him on TV, now see him live on stage in his theater debut as the lead role in Europa The Musical! Europa is a science fiction rock musical set on the ice moon of Jupiter, Europa. The action takes place at a dive bar called Rocky’s and surrounding settings. Europa harbors a secret. The only question is who will discover it first. Paulie will be playing the lead role of Stone: an ex-con with something to prove.
The show will run on April 16, 18, 19 and 20 at the Kraine Theater in NYC. There are a limited number of seats so be sure to get tickets fast. Click here to order your tickets now. You can also check out Europa on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/EuropaTheMusical
0 New Song From ZO2, “Heart of Confusion” – FREE Download!
ZO2’s new song “Heart of Confusion” will be available for purchase in a few days, but as a special holiday gift to their fans, Paulie, David and Joey would like to send you the song for FREE. That’s right, FREE! All you have to do is simply re-sign the ZO2 mailing list and you will then recieve a free copy of “Heart Of Confusion”through e-mail. The reason for this is so that the band can have a nice new organized mailing list for the new year.
Visit http://www.zo2.com/mailinglist3.html to resign the mailing list and receive your free song!
0 Video – ZO2 – No Way Out
Check out ZO2’s “No Way Out” video below. “No Way Out” is on the band’s latest album, Casino Logic.
5 Get A Free Download of ZO2’s “Painted Lady”
ZO2 is giving away a free download of their new song “Painted Lady”. Get it while you can. You can download the free song at this link!
0 STEEL PANTHER ON IFC’S ZROCK
SHOW AIRS SUNDAY JULY 19 AT 11PM
Steel Panther will be featured as the arch rivals in a Battle of the Bands on the Z ROCK comedy series that follows three friends leading a double life: by night they’re a hard-partying rock band and by day they’re a kids party band. Z ROCK is (kinda) based on the true story of the band Z02 (brothers Paulie Z and David Z, and lifelong friend Joey Cassata) and gives a satirical look at the dark underbelly of the rock n’ roll dream.
Z ROCK airs Sunday at 11pm EST on IFC with repeats Tuesday at 10pm and Saturday at 7pm! For more information on the show visit www.ifc.com/zrock and for the most up-to-date news on Steel Panther head over to www.SteelPantherRocks.com!
1 New ZO2 CD – Casino Logic in June!
The wait is over! ZO2 brings you their highly anticipated third CD, Casino Logic, available on Tuesday, June 9th!
Featuring the single, “Painted Lady”, co-written by Spin Doctors’ Chris Barron, Casino Logic is packed with 11 brand new hard rocking songs. “Red Line Highway” cranks it up and puts the pedal to the metal. “Show Me” brings back the heyday of crowd participation arena rock. The ballad, “Stronger”, will have you singing along and waving iPhones with the lighter app. “No Way Out” features the Blues Traveler himself, John Popper.
ZO2 will be coming to your town this summer as they tour in support of their new CD release. Keep on eye the tour calendar at http://www.zo2.com or http://www.myspace.com/zo2.
Can’t get enough of ZO2? Tune in to the IFC Channel on Sunday, June 7th for the the second season of “Z Rock”. Season 1 of “Z Rock” will also be available in stores on June 9th! To pre-order Casino Logic and season 1 of “Z Rock”, visit http://www.amazon.com.
0 ZO2 Ungagged! *”Z Rock” Announcement*
ZO2 has posted the following on their blog tonight:
It was a long and uncomfortable wait but the wait is over! ZO2’s finally been cleared to announce the confirmation of the second season of “Z Rock” on IFC!
Filming will begin in the new year and the second season is scheduled to air this summer.
At this time, IFC has discussed plans to rebroadcast the first season of “Z Rock” in its entirety in March to lead the second season’s premiere. In the meantime, keep an eye on IFC’s Tuesday night “Automat” schedule to catch repeats of episodes from season one.
Stay tuned for the latest information on ZO2’s antics on and off the set!
0 ZO2 Is Heading to Cable TV
Patrons of Arlene’s Grocery, the Lower East Side nightclub, have long known Paul and David Zablidowsky and their good friend Joey Cassata as ZO2, a shaggy-haired, heavy-metal trio whose set usually precedes the Monday night karaoke party. They might also know that in 2004 the band realized a dream when it was tapped for a 40-date tour, opening for Kiss and Poison.
But even the most ardent ZO2 fans may not realize that to make ends meet — even after that big break with Kiss — the three musicians moonlighted on Saturday mornings as a sought-after children’s birthday party act called the Z Brothers. Had there been T-shirts for their dayside tour crisscrossing the metropolitan New York region, they would have listed dates playing for the children of Robert De Niro, Michael J. Fox, Chazz Palminteri and Al Roker, the “Today” weatherman.
With their Jekyll-and-Hyde repertory — Wiggles by day, Judas Priest by night — it was probably inevitable that television would come calling. And on Aug. 24 at 11:30 p.m., IFC will unveil “Z Rock,” a 10-part comedy series based heavily on the real-life adventures of ZO2 and the Z Brothers.
In the show the band members play fictionalized versions of themselves, exaggerating their actual experiences — including a pitched rivalry with other New York-based children’s musicians — pursuing the recording contract that long eluded them.
“Television is what radio used to be,” said David Zablidowsky, 26, who plays bass and who, like his older brother, Paul, is known professionally only by his first name and last initial. “If you’re anybody, you’re on television now. That really is the way to get your music out there.”
Viewers inclined to watch the series with their young children, beware: IFC likes to refer to itself as “always uncut,” and “Z Rock” is no exception. It features plenty of topless groupies and simulated sexual acts, between, among others, the band members and some of the young mothers seen doing the hokeypokey at the daytime shows. Which raises a question: Just how true to life were some of those scenes?
“There were always hot moms,” Mr. Cassata, 30, the band’s drummer, said wistfully over a recent lunch of steamed broccoli and seared tuna, alongside his bandmates at a theater district restaurant.
Paulie Z, 28, interjected: “They were all wealthy, good-looking and in shape. I don’t speak for anyone in the band but myself, because I don’t know what skeletons are in their closets. But I definitely took advantage of some of the nannies.”
Like the dialogue in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “This Is Spinal Tap,” much of that in “Z Rock” is improvised, though with the players working off highly detailed outlines. For the three band members, who had never previously acted, the approach proved a blessing. Most of the situations in which their characters are placed by the show’s writers and producers — who include Mark Farrell, a former producer of “Curb” — are adapted from tales the band told in hours spent sitting around a table.
“They created a world that was familiar to the guys,” said Lynn Lendway, who manages the real-life ZO2 with her husband, Bob Held. “Then they said, ‘Speak the way you speak.’ ”
For a supporting cast the producers surrounded the musicians with stand-up comedians and improv players, including Lynne Koplitz (who plays the band’s dedicated if addled manager, Dina); Greg Giraldo (as a powerful record producer, who delivers an endlessly profane reprimand to Paulie Z after the band is late for his son’s birthday party); and Jay Oakerson (as a club manager who repeatedly propositions Paulie, who is straight).
Among the many musicians playing fictionalized versions of themselves in cameos are John Popper of Blues Traveler (who agrees to sign the Z Brothers, not ZO2, to a recording contract, but only after Dina sleeps with him); Dee Snider of Twisted Sister; and Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors. Joan Rivers plays Joan Rivers, but reimagined as Dina’s aunt.
Where fiction and reality diverge most sharply in the series, Mr. Cassata said, is in the TV band’s propensity for being “very self-sabotaging.”
“It seems on the show like we’re reckless, but we’re not in real life,” he said. “We never put the ZO2 career in jeopardy. That stuff is definitely artistic license.”
The show is but the latest milestone in the rocky seven-year history of ZO2.
The band’s roots are in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where the Zablidowsky brothers were raised by their mother, Doris, who worked in a hospital cafeteria, and their father, Marty, the manager of an electronics warehouse. Marty was also a guitarist who played in a rock trio, called Z, that included his brother.
“I honestly didn’t know any kids’ songs,” Paul said, “because we grew up listening to Black Sabbath.”
Among the brothers’ earliest memories were making cardboard cutouts of guitars and records. At some point in elementary school, their mother took the boys to a Sam Ash music store to buy their first guitars.
While in high school, the two brothers began writing their own music, which they infused with elements drawn from a variety of influences, including Def Leppard, Grand Funk Railroad, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Guns N’ Roses and, more than anything, Kiss. The brothers’ first break came in 2001, when David answered an open call for a bass player in a blues act. While he didn’t win the job, he wound up getting much more: Mr. Held, the producer who conducted the audition, encouraged him to front his own band.
Eventually the brothers approached Mr. Cassata, whom Paul had played with in a cover band; in short order Mr. Held agreed to produce an album. It was called “Tuesdays and Thursdays,” and was financed entirely by the band’s earnings from its children’s-party business.
Mr. Held, who knew Paul Stanley of Kiss, eventually got the album to him; Kiss liked it so much that ZO2 was invited to tour with it in the summer of 2004.
The band drew standing ovations from Kiss’s audiences, but the months that followed served as a reality check. No one else in the music business came calling, so Mr. Cassata returned to his job as a medical-records assistant at a hospital, and Paul returned to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, where he had first drawn notice as a performer for children, and to the birthday-party circuit. The following winter, David, who had found some success as a bass player, went on tour with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, a sprawling rock group known for, among other things, reworking holiday songs.
Still, it was the band’s birthday-party work that helped get it to the small screen. A parent in the audience at several parties in 2005 was Brian Stern, an agent in the television division at the William Morris Agency.
He later caught ZO2 in a show at the B. B. King Blues Club in Times Square; before long Mr. Held was pitching him versions of what would eventually become “Z Rock.” In approving the series, Debbie DeMontreux, a senior vice president of IFC, said she could relate to it, at least to the kid-musician part. (The mother of a preschooler, she has attended her share of birthday parties.)
With their series about to begin, and with a second album (“Ain’t It Beautiful”) out on Riker Hill, a label created by the band’s management, ZO2 is readying a fall tour of clubs and small theaters. But the band won’t be playing any furnished basements or living rooms.
“Fortunately, we don’t need to anymore,” Mr. Cassata said. “It was a means to an end.”
Article Courtesy of the New York Times
5 Jay Jay French supports Obama (Update – Video Added!)
Jay Jay French wants to rock. He also wants Barack.
So the guitarist from the heavy metal band Twisted Sister had re-recorded the band’s anthem “I Wanna Rock,” which has now become “I Want Barack.”
French, a lifelong liberal Democrat whose mother campaigned for John F. Kennedy, says Obama has energized an entire new generation of voters who previously felt left out of politics.
“He has excited so many people,” said French, who founded Twisted Sister in 1973. “He has given sincere hope to people who have been out of the arena for years.”
French plays guitar on the track, which features Paulie Z., the singer for the band Z02, on vocals and lead guitar. They call the band “Jay Jay French and Friends” and stress that it is not a Twisted Sister project; that band’s members are split on who to support in the election.
The Obama camp had no immediate comment on the song.
It’s not the first ode to Obama from the rock world. Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am has recorded and released two music videos extolling the virtues of Obama, “Yes We Can,” a viral sensation that has garnered more than 5 million hits on YouTube.com, and the more recent “We Are The Ones.”
French said an accompanying video will soon be released on YouTube, and hopes the song will someday be played at Obama rallies, where Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed And Delivered” currently reigns.
Courtesy of Newsday.com
12 ZO2 – Ain’t It Beautiful (Release Year – 2007)
I have had a few different people suggest I check out the band ZO2. For those of you who mentioned this to
me, THANK YOU! ZO2 Rocks!
The powerful three piece from Brooklyn, New York has a lot to offer classic rock and hard rock fans everywhere.
I hear the influence of a few different bands in their music including Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Soundgarden. It sounds like an odd combination of sounds, but it works well for ZO2. What surprises me the most, is how big of a sound this band has for a three piece outfit. Paulie Z is solid singer and superb guitar player. I don’t want to discredit David Z or Joey Cassata, as all three members sing in this band, and do a great job.
Initially, my favorite cuts on this album were the hard rocking Isolate, the positively infectious If You See Kay and the Black Crowes like Ain’t It Beautiful . A few additional spins and some other songs really grew on me. She Believes has a huge vocal, and Cassata, sounds like he graduate from the John Bonham school of drum playing. Comin’ Home has a bluesy Zepplinesque feel to it. This song is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. Get Up Now is a fantastic, upbeat tune that has a killer groove.
There are so many radio ready cuts on this record that is should be getting huge amounts of play everywhere, but sadly it is not. ZO2’s Ain’t It Beautiful is a great rock record that should not be missed.
Hard rocks fans everywhere need a copy of this disc for their collection. You can get a copy of it at Amazon.com.
Rating:
Out of 10
Track Listing:
1. Isolate
2. She Believes
3. If You See Kay
4. Ain’t It Beautiful
5. Comin’ Home
6. Everywhere
7. Get Up Now
8. I Don’t Mind
9. Get the Led Out
10. Hopelessly Gone
11. On the Verge of War
ZO2 is:
Paulie Z (Vocals, guitar)
David Z (Vocals, bass guitar)
Joey Cassata (Drums, percussion, vocals)
