You know all those numbers in your cell representing people you never talk to? Sometimes you wonder how they are and sometimes you wonder WHO they are. Well, Those Mockingbirds frontman, Adam Bird, is on a mission to say “hello” and possibly ask “who are you?” to the 600 contacts stored in his iPhone. And he’s launched a blog, The Last Time We Spoke, to document it all. We like to call it a the docu-blog because it keeps us coming back daily. Sometimes we laugh, sometimes we cry.  Other times we feel bad because the situations are so awkward (imagine when he has to call his ex-girlfriends!) However, one thing remains the same as we reach the end of every entry- we can’t wait ’till he dials our numbers.

*By Joelle, who is wondering how many phone conversations she has had with Adam over the past decade or so.

Lostprophets have debuted the action-packed video for “Bring ‘Em Down.” Of course, the content wasn’t made available in America from the band’s official YouTube page, but we managed to track it down:

*By Joelle, who thanks Google Alerts for letting her know this video came out.

Preview the upcoming documentary, Butch Walker: Out of Focus. Looks like the producers did an amazing job capturing the essence of Walker’s music, fans and personal life. Are you as excited as we are?

By Joelle, who produced a Butch Walker: Living Legend tribute in Planet Verge zine many moons ago.

Weapy word has it that this Friday night is the final Gay Blades show.

“The Gay Blades Valentine’s Ball”
with special guests
COLD FRONTS, ANJELIA PELAY
LADYKILLER, LIFEGUARD NIGHTS
Doors at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $10 in advance
$12 at the door
PLUS APPLICABLE SURCHARGES
ALL AGES ADMITTED
21 TO DRINK (IN BAR AREA)

This show is a special release date for Ghosts and a new 7 inch, both on vinyl

Lostprophets are back. Enough said.

Now if only they’d tour America. Sigh.

Here’s two tracks from the new album WEAPONS, which will be released on April 2nd.

*By Joelle, who has not posted in ages because she is busy writing a book called Trash the Dress: Stories of Celebrating Divorce in your 20s. Coincidently, the Lostprophets song “Where We Belong” is the theme song to her divorce.

Download “Better Off Dead” for free at Lostprophets.co.uk

Revealing some inside, scoop Manon tells Planet Verge, “No one had a better time at our event than Jessica’s mom- no really!”

Photos by Jeffrey Grossman

From L to R: Sharie Manon, Jessica Romano, Briella Marie and Glamo.

Krystal Couso of Jerseylicious

“They gave us keys to the kingdom back when record deals were exorbitant, and we looted it dry. In the end, the only things left emptier than our bank accounts were our souls, as we would find out soon enough.”

In his memoir, Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt, Butch Walker has authored the music business text book for a new generation. From accounts of growing up in small-town Georgia to playing a sold-out Webster Hall in New York City, Walker shatters dreams of the naive who believe a major label deal is the key to success, sounds off on where profits in the biz really reside and escorts readers on the scenic route down his personal highway of life, sharing the inspiration behind the songs a cult following of fans hold as Bible truth to their existence.

Butch Walker, pictured during his performance at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ this past weekend.

A self-proclaimed “mid-level artist between flop and big time,” Walker’s illustrious career has earned him 2005 “Producer of the Year” status from Rolling Stone and legions of local musicians so inspired by his music that they dedicate their lives to ripping him off. Having been around the block and back, he’s learned a few lessons:

• “I would come to learn that A&R actually stood for ‘alcohol and restaurants.’”
• “The biggest money to be made right now-no, make that the only money to be made in the dying industry- is through songwriting and publishing. It’s not through record sales because there are none; that means that producer points and royalties are pretty much reduced to nothing, too, depending on the genre (that’s code for ‘most country music fans don’t own computers’).”
• “There’s a difference between a hit song and a good song.”
• “Note to ‘industry types’: stop talking about yourself and everything you’ve done and listen to your artist. Nothing shows insecurity flaws like a braggart.”
• “If you don’t ever venture outside of your comfort zone, you will not have enough colors around you in the end.”
• “Independent promotion bigwigs are hired to go in and do favors and payola and suck dick to radio stations, like giving season tickets and condo timeshares in exchange for playing questionable music…People always wonder why music that gets played on the radio isn’t so great- it’s because of these independent promo goons.”


The spotlight is on members of Walker’s band, The Black Widows, as they open each night with individual performances. Walker sets the introductions and the tone for a special evening and even performs a pre-show acoustic set.

Recounting the first time the music business fucked him, Walker writes “Right then and there, I realized that the music business will fuck with you no matter what: that those guys who were your friends, bandmates, gang members, fellow musketeers, whatever- they can and often will screw you at the drop of a guitar pick. After that, I made sure I was always the leader; I always took matters into my own hands and did every deal, setting up everything myself from that point forward.” He’s referring to a man named Chuck– you will have to read the book to find out exactly who he is but bells may ring for those who have Walker’s new album The Spade and have heard “Summer of ’89.”

Other page turning topics in Drinking with Strangers:

• Top 10 essential cover songs
• How to make a bad video in 1990
• The evolution of Walker’s studio
• Why Walker walked out during a recording session with Lindsay Lohan
• Bands he turned down producing who later became huge
• The importance of building from the ground up to secure tangible fans
• How he got screwed over and lost a million dollar chart-topping song + the identity of the famous go-to producer that ripped him off
• His taste of Hollywood life and friendships with Pink, Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx, who counts Marvelous 3’s readysexgo as one of his favorite albums
• What Katy Perry’s first record label really thought of her future in the biz
• Walker’s first bands and their blush-worthy names Bands The Scene, Nytemare, Badd Boyz and Byte the Bullet
• In the studio with Weezer and how he first met Rivers Cuomo
• What happened when he was left in China without a ticket to flee, inciting a riot at age 23
• What band he chose not to take songwriting credit for and why

In the midst of the industry insight, Walker digs into painful moments of his past, including the end of his first marriage in his early twenties. He reflects, “I suppose I was more in love with the idea of love.”  He also unlocks heartfelt stories about his now-wife, who inspired perhaps his most lauded Marvelous 3 tune, “Cigarette Lighter Love Song” (read the book for this story!) and their son, James.

Coincidence?

Today it’s not uncommon for Walker to find himself in the middle of a sold-out venue singing sans microphone with an acoustic guitar in hand while the entire crowd is sitting Indian style, jaws dropped in awe, singing along. But it’s been a journey to reach that point. As the pages are turned, Walker shares his past anguish over his own status as an artist, revisits the loss of his home during the California fires and shows that he’s really just a humble version of his 13 year-old self living his fantasy.

*By Joelle, who has been following Butch Walker for about 13 years now. You should, too: Twitter @ButchWalker

View more photos of Butch Walker and The Black Widows at the Stone Pony on Planet Verge’s Facebook page.

On a side note:

After having finished reading Butch Walker’s book and now writing my review, I realized he has been my favorite musician for over 13 years. That is crazy. It’s really awesome for us to have had his support at Planet Verge since day 1 and I’m going to post something he told Jordana and I many years ago while we were filming something PV related together for The Style Network: “I think you always have to do what you set out in life to do, regardless of how successful you are at it. You are successful when you’re doing what you want to do. You’re not successful if you give up and do something you don’t want to do. It’s not about how much you make, as much as it is that you actually went for it.”  It’s something that I always say to myself. – Joelle

Drinking with Strangers: Music Lessons from a Teenage Bullet Belt was written with Matt Diehl

Rethink Breast Cancer has created a hilariously hot video to raise awareness about the importance of breast cancer exams.

Scary stats:

-In the United States, is estimated that about 230,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women. The term “invasive” refers to a cancer that has already grown beyond the layer of cells where it started as opposed to the “non-invasive” carcinoma, which is the earliest form of breast cancer. About 57,650 women will be diagnosed with this non-invasive breast cancer.

-A nutritious, low-fat diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables can help reduce the risk of developing breast cancer. Fat triggers estrogen production that can cause tumor growth; therefore a high-fat diet increases the risk of breast cancer.

-With as little as four hours of exercise per week, a woman can begin to lower her risk of breast cancer.

Some of the major breast cancer risk factors are hormonal and related to a woman’s reproductive history. The greatest risk results from breast tissue being consistently exposed to estrogen, as it is through long periods of uninterrupted menstrual or ovulatory cycles.

Hormonal factors that increase risk include:

* the birth of a first child after the age of 30 or not having children at all
* menstruation starting at an early age (before 12)
* late menopause (after 55)
* taking birth control pills and /or hormone replacement therapy (although debated, many experts say that this slightly increases one’s risk)

Evidence shows that lifestyle factors that increase estrogen levels increase your risk of developing breast cancer.
Lifestyle factors that increase risk include:

* more than mild or moderate alcohol consumption (alcohol may raise estrogen in the blood)
* obesity with excess caloric and fat intake (fatty tissue may raise estrogen levels)
* more than moderate meat intake (meat may raise estrogen levels and be a potential source of gene mutagens). Studies have shown an 18% difference in risk of breast cancer between those with the highest and those with the lowest levels of meat intake.

Thirty Seconds To Mars will celebrate their 300th and final show in support of their critically acclaimed third studio album This Is War with a special Tribus Centum Numerarae concert at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom on Dec. 7th, 2011. This show will set a new Guinness World Record for the most shows played during a single album cycle.

“We have been on the road for an incredible and insane two years and thought what better way to celebrate the end of this phenomenal journey than with a week of special shows in New York City. We thought documenting this for posterity with the Guiness Book of World Records would be fun especially as we aren’t any good at growing our fingernails very long or cultivating the world’s largest squash,” says frontman Jared Leto.

WATCH THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS ON PLANET VERGE TV.

WATCH ANOTHER PLANET VERGE TV FAVORITE, DAVID GARRETT, DISCUSS HIS GUINNESS WORLD RECORD AND PERFORM. AND IF YOU CAN’T GET ENOUGH, WATCH DAVID GARRETT DISCUSS HIS LATEST ALBUM.

Go behind the scenes and inside the making of My Ancient Rebellion, Enation’s highly anticipated new album. Lead singer Jonathan Jackson discusses everything from the process of making the album, to the band’s accomplishments as an independent band, as well as Enation’s partnership with the Global non-profit anti-human trafficking organization Not For Sale. My Ancient Rebellion is due out October, 2011.

Listen now: Enation iTunes
Read our Enation interview.