Street Sweeper Social Club May 09 AotM

Photo Credit: Romy Suskin

Taking the music scene by storm once again, Tom Morello and Boots Riley seem to have another iconic band on their hands. Street Sweeper Social Club, the new band unifying Tom Morello and Boots Riley, first album does not even debut until June 16th, but they’ve already packed houses in NYC and have had the groups first single “100 Little Curses” added to KROQ.

Their debut self-titled album is out June 16th through Warner Music Group’s Independent Label Group. The 11-song set was produced by Tom Morello and features Boots Riley on vocals, Morello on guitar and bass, and Stanton Moore (Galactic) on drums.

As if all of the buzz the band has been getting is not enough, Street Sweeper Social Club’s debut tour will be opening all dates in North America on the Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction May-June Tour (confirmed dates below).  The tour will find Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction sharing a stage for the first time since the debut of the Lollapalooza festival in 1991 (as well as the first tour by the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction in seventeen years).

Phoenix, why would you miss this? SSSC’s debut tour with Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction will be here on Friday May 15 at the Cricket Wireless Pavilion.

Tom Morello of SSSC performs at the Tempe Music Festival Photo Credit: Stephanie Baldwin

Tom Morello is a founding member and guitarist of the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. The two bands are responsible for multiple Grammy Awards and a combined 30 million albums sold worldwide. Morello has also received critical acclaim as a solo artist known as The Nightwatchman. Widely celebrated for his unique voice as a master electric guitarist, he is recognized by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Guitar Players of All-Time (#26).” He is also one of only two guitarists featured as a playable animated character in the overwhelmingly popular Activision video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Tom Morello graduated from Harvard University with honors as a Political Science major and has been a widely recognized political activist throughout his career. With System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Morello formed Axis of Justice, an organization whose purpose is to bring together musicians, music fans, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice.

Boots Riley is best known as the leader of The Coup, the seminal Hip-Hop group from Oakland, CA. As a producer and lyricist, Riley has crafted critically acclaimed albums for The Coup that have graced the year-end Top 10 lists of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. They have also received “Album of the Year” honors from The Washington Post, Time Out New York, while Billboard Magazine declared the group “the best hip-hop act of the past decade.” Born in Chicago and raised in East Oakland’s Funktown neighborhood, Boots became a teenage community organizer. From his history of student organizing in Oakland’s public schools, serving on the central committee for the Progressive Labor Party, being the President of Youth InCar (Youth International Committee Against Racism), organizing to build California’s Anti-Racist Farm Workers’ Union, to developing “guerrilla hip hop concerts” (mobile concerts on flatbed trucks), Boots Riley has been an integral part of the progressive struggle for radical change through culture.

Street Sweeper Social Club with Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction

May 14 – Albuquerque, NM Journal Pavilion
May 15 – Phoenix, AZ Cricket Wireless Pavilion
May 16 – Chula Vista, CA Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
May 20 – Irvine, CA Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
May 21 — Santa Barbara, CA Santa Barbara Bowl
May 22 -Mountain View, CA Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View
May 24 – The Gorge, WA Sasquatch Festival
May 26 – Englewood, CO Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
May 27 – Kansas City, MO Starlight Theatre
May 29 – Chicago, IL Charter One Pavilion at Northern Island (NIN/SSSC ONLY)
May 30 – Noblesville, IN Verizon Wireless Music Center Indianapolis
May 31 – Clarkston, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
June 02 – Toronto, ON Molson Amphitheatre
June 03 – Mansfield, MA Comcast Center
June 05 – Camden, NJ Susquehanna Bank Center
June 06 – Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
June 07 – Wantagh, NY Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
June 09 – Columbia, MD Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 10 – Burgettstown, PA Post-Gazette Pavilion
June 12 – Charlotte, NC Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre Charlotte

Myspace:
www.myspace.com/streetsweepersocialclub
The songs “Fight! Smash! Win!,” “Clap For The Killers,” and “The Oath” by Street Sweeper Social Club can be heard now at: www.myspace.com/streetsweepersocialclub and www.streetsweepermusic.com

Street Sweeper Social Club Track Listing: 

1. Fight! Smash! Win!
2. 100 Little Curses
3. The Oath
4. The Squeeze
5. Clap For The Killers
6. Somewhere In the World It’s Midnight
7. Shock You Again
8. Good Morning, Mrs. Smith
9. Megablast
10. Promenade
11. Nobody Moves (Til We Say Go)

TOM MORELLO AND BOOTS RILEY JOIN FORCES TO FORM STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB Debut Tour with NIN

TOM MORELLO AND BOOTS RILEY JOIN FORCES TO FORM STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB

SELF-TITLED DEBUT ALBUM TO BE RELEASED JUNE 16th THROUGH WARNER MUSIC GROUP’S INDEPENDENT LABEL GROUP

DEBUT TOUR CONFIRMED WITH NINE INCH NAILS AND JANE’S ADDICTION Tour Dates below!

April 22nd, 2009 — New York, New York — Tom Morello and Boots Riley have joined forces to form Street Sweeper Social Club. The group’s anticipated self-titled debut album will be released June 16th through Warner Music Group’s Independent Label Group. The 11-song set was produced by Tom Morello and features Boots Riley on vocals, Morello on guitar and bass, and Stanton Moore (Galactic) on drums.

“It’s revolutionary party jams,” said Morello of Street Sweeper Social Club. “It’s got huge steamroller riffs combined with depth, charge, funk, while Boots unloads clip after clip of incendiary rhymes rich with satire and venom.” Riley added, “This is a time when the working class is being fleeced left and right. More families will be homeless and more people will be jobless. They’ll need something to listen to on their ipods while storming Wall Street.”

Street Sweeper Social Club’s debut tour will be opening all dates in North America on the Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction May-June Tour (confirmed dates below). The tour will find Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction sharing a stage for the first time since the debut of the Lollapalooza festival in 1991 (as well as the first tour by the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction in seventeen years).

Tom Morello is a founding member and guitarist of the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. The two bands are responsible for multiple Grammy Awards and a combined 30 million albums sold worldwide. Morello has also received critical acclaim as a solo artist known as The Nightwatchman. Widely celebrated for his unique voice as a master electric guitarist, he is recognized by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Guitar Players of All-Time (#26).” He is also one of only two guitarists featured as a playable animated character in the overwhelmingly popular Activision video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Tom Morello graduated from Harvard University with honors as a Political Science major and has been a widely recognized political activist throughout his career. With System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Morello formed Axis of Justice, an organization whose purpose is to bring together musicians, music fans, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice.

Boots Riley is best known as the leader of The Coup, the seminal Hip-Hop group from Oakland, CA. As a producer and lyricist, Riley has crafted critically acclaimed albums for The Coup that have graced the year-end Top 10 lists of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. They have also received “Album of the Year” honors from The Washington Post, Time Out New York, while Billboard Magazine declared the group “the best hip-hop act of the past decade.” Born in Chicago and raised in East Oakland’s Funktown neighborhood, Boots became a teenage community organizer. From his history of student organizing in Oakland’s public schools, serving on the central committee for the Progressive Labor Party, being the President of Youth InCar (Youth International Committee Against Racism), organizing to build California’s Anti-Racist Farm Workers’ Union, to developing “guerrilla hip hop concerts” (mobile concerts on flatbed trucks), Boots Riley has been an integral part of the progressive struggle for radical change through culture.

The songs “Fight! Smash! Win!,” “Clap For The Killers,” and “The Oath” by Street Sweeper Social Club can be heard now at:

www.myspace.com/streetsweepersocialclub

and

www.streetsweepermusic.com
with Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction

May 8 – West Palm Beach, FL Cruzan Amphitheatre
May 9 – Tampa, FL Ford Amphitheatre
May 10 – Atlanta, GA Lakewood Amphitheatre
May 14 – Albuquerque, NM Journal Pavilion
May 15 – Phoenix, AZ Cricket Wireless Pavilion
May 16 – Chula Vista, CA Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
May 18 – Las Vegas, NV The Pearl
May 20 – Irvine, CA Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
May 22 -Mountain View, CA Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View

May 26 – Englewood, CO Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
May 27 – Kansas City, MO Starlight Theatre
May 29 – Chicago, IL Charter One Pavilion at Northern Island (NIN/SSSC ONLY)
May 30 – Noblesville, IN Verizon Wireless Music Center Indianapolis
May 31 – Clarkston, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
June 02 – Toronto, ON Molson Amphitheatre
June 03 – Darien Lake, NY Darien Lake Performing Arts Center
June 05 – Camden, NJ Susquehanna Bank Center
June 06 – Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
June 07 – Wantagh, NY Nikon at Jones Beach Theater
June 09 – Columbia, MD Merriweather Post Pavilion
June 10 – Burgettstown, PA Post-Gazette Pavilion
June 12 – Charlotte, NC Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre Charlotte

Tempe Music Festival Saturday Concert Review 04.04.2009

by Melanie Nelson, www.FromTheCrowd.com Contributor

I made it through the gate in time for Mute Math on Saturday at the Tempe Music Festival.  Their very electronic style rock was a welcome addition to a healthy dinner of Ben and Jerry’s and cherry Diet Dr. Pepper.   It was still relatively early Saturday evening, but a healthy crowd had already gathered and were in already dancing and partying. 
Today was the day of superfans.  I had an opportunity to meet very devoted dad, Larry Norton.  Larry’s son Wyatt had been a huge fan of the All American Rejects, for five years and was here to hopefully get a poster signed.  Once the band had completed their Tempe Music Fest TV interview and signed the sofa for charity, they began heading past our area back to their bus.  While their wrangler was keeping everyone back stating “no signing”, Tyson did stop for Larry to sign Wyatt’s poster.  As he stated, ‘You can’t resist a dad getting something for his son’.  Wyatt got even luckier later with dad getting his pass signed by 3 Doors Down.
Tom Morello: The NightWatchman was up after Mute Math and while I’m not a Guitar Hero player, I can see why he reached guitar god status.  His songs (I’m thinking particularly of “Shake my Shit”) had everyone dancing, beach bouncing in the crowd and even those sitting at tables were coming up with creative shoulder bobbing.  As an extra treat, it really did seem as if Tom was on stage much longer than the listed one hour.   His cover (uncensored) of “This Land is My Land” on the acoustic guitar was also one of many memorable moments.
The crowd had swelled to a massive sea of people by the time All American Rejects took the stage.  Starting off with some familiar crowd favorites ‘Dirty Little Secret’, they had everyone singing along in one of the best singing crowd moments I’ve ever heard.  Instead of the vague mumbling that precedes and follows the choruses everyone knows, this was clearly a group of fans who all knew their stuff perfectly.  The new waving lighter of the ages, a lit cell phone, was apparent in everyone’s hands in beat to the music and Tyson had the crowd eating out of his hands with his magic trick (though apparently it’s the only one he knows).
Between the bands that evening, winning High School and College garage bands were invited to play and both were excellent and talented additions that easily kept the crowd engaged.  Congratulations to both SRP prize winners.
By the time 10:30 rolled around, the event was a blend of the hard core 3 Doors Down fans, the hard core partiers, the hard core posers and the simply exhausted.  The latter group was determined to hold out as long as we all could as everyone huddled together for warmth and to keep one another upright.  Now IF I had any energy left, 3 Doors Down would have been a great band to stay to the very end for, but after a hugely long day we had to call it quits after their first six songs.  From that six though, I can say that lead singer, Brad Arnold has a voice that translates as brilliantly clear as if you were listening and rocking out at home.
All in all, a great event – I was exhausted, full of Mentos and ice cream, had several new songs to seek out and download at home and fully intend on returning to the Tempe Town Music Fest next year where I’ll definitely be springing for that VIP ticket.