Tim Robbins will be releasing an album this July, reports Billboard.

The actor will be releasing his first album as ‘Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band.’ The album will be released on July 19.

Robbins worked with 429 Records on the effort, and the band also plans to tour North America beginning July 8.

They will begin their tour at the Winnipeg Folk Festival and work their way across Canada, eventually hitting up Los Angeles and New York before finishing at the Edmonton Folk Festival.

Little did I know, the oscar-winer has been a musician for decades. Robbins has apparently created music for his film ‘Bob Roberts’, and has contributed to the soundtracks of ‘Dead Man Walking,’ ‘Human Nature’ and ‘Catch a Fire.’

He also plays guitar and is a songwriter, which is no surprise that he wrote the nine songs on the album. I didn’t know he was so musically inclined, but I can’t wait to hear what his voice and music sounds like!

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In celebration of her seventh studio album 100 Miles From Memphis, Sheryl Crow is teaming up with andPOP.com to give one lucky fan a brand new, autographed acoustic guitar. Enter here for your chance to win.

100 Miles From Memphis, featuring the single “Summer Day,” is available now. Grab it now on iTunes, and don’t miss Sheryl on tour now through October.

Contest ends August 8/10. Open to residents of the United States only. Read the complete contest rules here.

Tour Dates:

7/23 New York, NY
8/11 Rama, ON
8/12 Gilford, NH
8/13 Canandaigua, NY
8/14 Atlantic City, NJ
8/15 Cary, NC
8/18 Knoxville, TN
8/19 Atlanta, GA
8/20 Memphis, TN
8/21 Sedalia, MO
8/22 Des Moines, IA
8/24 Tulsa, OK
8/26 Grand Prairie, TX
8/27 Spring, TX
8/28 Austin, TX
8/30 Albuquerque, NM
8/31 Morrison, CO
9/01 Salt Lake City, UT
9/09 San Diego, CA
9/10 Los Angeles, CA
9/11 Las Vegas, NV
9/12 Reno, NV
9/14 Saratoga, CA
9/15 Saratoga, CA
9/16 Santa Ynez, CA
9/17 Murphy, CA
9/18 Rancho Mirage, CA
9/23 Boston, MA
9/24 Portland, ME
9/25 Mashantucket, CT
9/26 New York
10/01 Nashville, TN
10/11 Glasgow, Scotland
10/12 Manchester, Apollo
10/16 Munich, German
10/18 Berlin, Germany
10/19 Brussels, Belgium
10/22 Hamburg, Germany
10/24 Cologne, Germany

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I walk into the dressing room at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre in Toronto to meet with pop singer and guitar sensation Orianthi. With her blonde hair tied in pigtail braids under a hat, she stands up to greet me. Orianthi reaches out one hand to shake mine, and in the other hand she holds a stuffed animal chicken. Apparently I am the only one in the room who finds this peculiar.

“I grew up with chickens and I want to have a chicken out on the road with me but I can’t,” she says, staring at the stuffed toy that now sits on the coffee table in front of her. “Everyone keeps giving me chickens, stuffed ones, so hopefully I’ll get a real rooster. That would be awesome. I’ve had chickens as pets since I was really young.”

At this point everyone in the room is giggling, including Orianthi and I. She flashes a gorgeous smile that lets me know she does not take herself too seriously. And for someone who became instantly famous for being Michael Jackson’s main guitarist in This Is It, that is no easy feat.

“A lot of people say that,” Orianthi says of the fact that even though she now has an established singing career of her own, she is still widely known as the girl who played guitar for Michael Jackson. “I don’t want to break away from that because I got to work with him for three months. … It was such an awesome time and I wish he was still around.”

For Orianthi, now 24, music goes back as far as she can remember. She started playing piano at the age of three and switched to guitar at the age of six.

“I can’t remember not playing [the guitar],” the Australian native says. “I wrote my first song when I was six. It was kind of terrible but I thought it was awesome. I played it to everyone in the school and I performed it at assemblies and had back-up dancers.”

Starting so young definitely paid off, because at the age of 18 Orianthi had the amazing opportunity to play on stage with one of her idols: Carlos Santana.

“It took me a while actually, afterwards, for it to sink in that I had actually got up there and jammed with him because he’s my idol and he’s the reason why I picked up the electric guitar,” she says modestly, almost as if she still does not quite believe it actually happened.

Not only an established guitarist, Orianthi is a songwriter and also has the vocal talent to back it up. Her first album, Believe (featuring the hit song “According To You”), is already out and is gaining momentum for its bright outlook and high energy.

“When I’m going in to write a song, I want it to be fun to play live,” she says. “I don’t want it to be a drag, so you look down the set list and you kind of get excited by it. That was sort of my frame of mind going into the record.”

And while staying true to pop music, Orianthi does not leave behind the instrument that made her into the person she is today, making room for various guitar solos amongst her pop melodies.

“[It was about] bringing in the guitar solos and also the guitar parts sort of throughout the songs, but not too much,” says Orianthi. “It’s finding the right balance so that people who are not guitar players are not turned off by it.”

Growing up in the guitar world, Orianthi often faced the double standard of being a talented woman in a predominantly male-oriented world. Still, it did not stop her from succeeding, and now it just fuels her to inspire other young women to pick up the guitar.

“My main goal is to inspire more kids, more girls to pick up the guitar and keep at it,” she says. “When people, when young kids come to my show, I want them to go home and want to pick up a guitar or paint a picture or be creative.”

“It’s pretty hard being a female guitar player,” Orianthi continues. “And some guys say, ‘You’re just getting attention because you’re a girl,’ so you’ve got to work twice as hard. You’ve got to play twice as hard just to get the respect. And for a guy to say, ‘Oh, you know, you’re just ok,’ I think there’s sort of a double standard with that, which hopefully will change.”

For Orianthi, gender is not an issue; the only thing that matters is the heart of the player.

“And it doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or a girl, it’s the way that you play,” she says thoughtfully. “[If it’s] with conviction and you put a lot of passion into it and you love it, I think it shows.”

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After months of downing excessive amounts of alcohol and chomping on fried food, Gwyneth Paltrow is getting herself back together, says People.com.

Don’t be too alarmed, she wasn’t on a downward spiral like most celebs these days – it was for a movie role, but the lifestyle had real-life repercussions on her body.

“I was so bad with the food and alcohol in Nashville,” the 37-year-old actress tells Harper’s Bazaar in its May issue about her role as an alcoholic country singer in the new film, Love Don’t Let Me Down.

“If you saw me naked [now] compared to what I looked like when I did Iron Man 2, when I was exercising every day – I’ll get it back together, but I’ve never eaten so much fried food and white flour in my life, ever,” said the mother-of-two.

Paltrow didn’t only have to eat and drink unhealthy, but also learn to play the guitar. Keep in mind, she is lucky to be married to Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin as he helped her with learning the new instrument.

“He was so helpful, so sweet and encouraging,” Paltrow says. “I mean, it’s embarrassing to be playing in front of your husband, especially when he’s in one of the world’s most successful bands.”

Not only is he successful, but sounds like a sweetheart, too.

“He is so great because he’s so supportive of me as an artist … I really lucked out with him. He’s deeply lovely and special,” she added.

So, she also has a fabulous family life and after taking time off to focus on her two kids – Apple, who will be 6 in May and Moses, who just turned 4 yesterday. (Thursday), she is back at it with two new movie roles. She said she missed acting, but that home life has its perks.

“When you’re having dinner with your kids and your husband and someone says something funny or you’re dying laughing because your 3-year-old made a fart joke, it doesn’t matter what else is going on,” she says. “That’s real happiness.”

She also had something to say about the paparazzi when it comes to having a family. She believes that paparazzi pics reinforce negative misconceptions about her as a person. “[The pictures] probably made me look like a really grumpy person,” she says. “But when you’re the person they’re taking the picture of, it’s like, ‘You just followed me and made my kid cry and you’re going to make money off it? You want me to look at you and smile?’ ”

And although her and hubby Chris Martin are in the spotlight frequently, she realizes they aren’t the only ones – and that they don’t have it the worst. She believes her ex Brad Pitt and wife, Angelina Jolie take the cake when it comes to the paparazzi.

“I feel bad for them,” she says. “They have it worse than anybody on the planet. I mean, we get hounded too, but not like that.”

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PARTY ON!

In early 2006 Harmonix split ways with the Guitar Hero series and went off with MTV to create Rock Band leaving Activision to contract Neversoft to re-build the game that Harmonix arguably perfected. This move marked the day that split the plastic instrument community right down the middle.

While some people saw no problem with the direction that Guitar Hero went in there is a hardcore contingency of people that would like nothing more than to see Guitar Hero vanish into obscurity and let Harmonix’s Rock Band franchise rule supreme. It has been said that ever since Rock Band was released Guitar Hero has been scrambling to avoid doing just that by “ripping off” Rock Band any chance they get. Well if that’s the case then on September 1st, 2009 they finally caught up.

Guitar Hero 5 seems to have fixed everything “wrong” with Guitar Hero World Tour and thrown in all the improvements we have received from the side games that followed (Metallica, Smash Hits). What we have now is a sleek interface with incredible graphics which still retain the trademark over the top Guitar Hero style mixed with a bit of Rock Band’s low frame rate use to give the illusion of a music video. Guitar Hero 5 also boasts a different take on some of Rock Band’s innovations: the ability to “save” your band mate once they fail through maintaining a long enough streak of notes hit, individual star-power for each member of the band which if maxed out will overflow to other members, and band moments which work much like Rock Band’s “Unison Bonuses” however focused on band multipliers rather than added star-power/overdrive.

The really big feature however is Party Play mode which combined with the fact Guitar Hero 5 allows any instrument to join allows you to have just that- a party. As soon as the game loads up the music starts playing and all you need to do is press Yellow (Y Button on your controller) and you are able to join instantly! Pick your instrument (Guitar/Bass) your difficulty and off you go! Same thing applies to vocalists and people with drums, I especially liked how it remembered my hyper-speed settings dependent on the slot my instrument was connected to (Player 1, Player 2) and yes Hyper-speed is now in the options of quickplay- it’s no longer under cheats!

Another nifty feature in party play is making playlists of up to 125 songs and you don’t even need to play them you can just sit back and watch the animations and join at anytime! If your group of friends has a fondness for the music Guitar Hero licenses this will no doubt be a hit at parties- I mean come on… Who doesn’t like a bit of Rammstein followed by Stevie Wonder.

Contraversial digi-Kurt, an in-game character.

Track lists are of course subjective by nature but I really feel that the setlist for Guitar Hero 5 while not having the most insanely difficult “ow my hand hurts please make it stop mommy” songs it still has some fairly challenging Guitar songs (Scatterbrain by Jeff Beck, Done with Everything Die for Nothing by Children of Bodom) it does have a 14 minute song by Peter Frampton after all complete with Talkbox solo and an outro solo that may take you by surprise. If I had to guess though that as we go forward with these games the focus seems to becoming more about drummers and vocalists because with Guitar Hero 5 it surely delivers on that front. 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson and Brianstorm by Arctic Monkeys will give any expert drummer a run for their money- or hard difficulty drummer even. Another plus is that the Rock Band drum kit which is 4 pads as opposed to Guitar Hero’s which is 5 has been modified so that the orange crash note is now on green- which allows more a much better feel while playing the reduced charts.

As vocals are primarily my main instrument there are some real interesting picks here, who would’ve thought singing Bush’s 90s hit “Come Down” would be so fun! There’s quite the challenge in store for you as well if you play expert vocals as vocal phrases are now scored by how much of each phrase you hit. Singers with high lung capacities and accurate pitches are rewarded with higher scores and Neversoft has finally given us a visual feedback meter to help us determine how much of the phrase we are hitting akin to Rock Band’s pie meter.

Everyone should know by now that Kurt Cobain is in the game as a playable character and unlike Hendrix (in Guitar Hero: World Tour) you can play other songs with him! Of course if you choose to do that Kurt won’t be left handed anymore and you wouldn’t want to do that, now would you? It’s great to play Lithium and Smells Like Teen Spirit with his character however and it’s an experience only had in the career mode of the game, which can be played with any combination of instruments and online!

Use your Xbox Live avatar as an in game rock god? SCORE!

To add to the replay value each song in career mode has a challenge associated with it I won’t list them all but to get some of these diamond challenges you are either going to have become really good at expert guitar or find someone online to play with you and that goes for any challenge (vocals, drums, bass) as long as they are in your band you get the challenge unlocked.

Another great thing about Guitar Hero 5 is the ability to import my World Tour DLC into the game which feels brand new in comparison, and additionally a portion of songs (which is rumoured to expand eventually) from World Tour and Smash Hits for a small fee of $3.50 US for each game (approximately on Xbox Live). However you must actually have the manual from the game in your possession, and with the way people are I could see the code being copied at stores and people being unhappy when they buy it and have their code show up as invalid. It’s nice to see my song list up to 195 songs though.

The online mode has also been revamped with new competitive modes that while still are about hitting all the notes provide an added challenge through modes such as Momentum, Do or Die, Perfectionist, and Streakers. I’ve played them and they were a blast and a nice change from who can use starpower at the better opportunity while hitting every solo ever.

In short while Guitar Hero 5 doesn’t have the level of expert difficulty Dragonforce gives us or Guitar Hero: Metallica it’s still a great game with tons of replay value especially if you are willing to play different instruments. This game is great for parties I can’t stress it enough- being able to join instantly in the middle of a song may be the best idea ever for these games. Plus the game has King Crimson – 21st Century Schizoid Man if that won’t sell the copies I don’t know what will.

Gameplay: 5/5

Graphics: 5/5

Sound: 4/5

Replay Value: 5/5

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Multi-Platinum Alternative rock band Linkin Park have just released their much-anticipated track for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. The single “New Divide” will serve as the official theme song for the movie which is slated for silver screen release on June 24th. Working intimately with composers Steve Jablonsky and Hans Zimmer for the project, Linkin Park contributed their hard-driving, alternative rock sensibility to the film’s score in addition to the title track. “New Divide,” is now available exclusively on iTunes. Be sure to download your copy today!

Still haven’t had your fix of Linkin Park? Enter now to win a custom Fender Squier guitar from Linkin Park, fully decked out with official artwork from the newTransformers movie: Revenge Of The Fallen!

Enter now. Contest ends July 5th.

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Static-X has just released their heaviest album in years!
 
Cult of Static features more of the hard-charging industrial metal their legions of fans have come to expect from the California killing machine.
 
To help celebrate the release and their current tour, Static-X and AndPop.com are giving one fan a chance to win a special Wayne Static signature model ESP guitar.
 
How cool is that?!To enter this contest click here.

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Peak Products, a gaming peripheral company specializing in instrument gaming controllers, has just announced the release of Starpex, the first full size, wood, PS2/PS3 guitar controller that strives to look and feel like a real guitar. The controller is designed for the popular Guitar Hero and Rock Band games.

The Starpex has an instrument-quality, high-gloss lacquered finish with a hardwood body, neck and headstock. The Starpex features a unique button that provides the fast and accurate access to Star Power and Overdrive modes in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In addition, the Starpex has an optimized whammy car and an enhanced strum bar to help maximize scoring, according to a press release from Park Products.

The Starpex also features a high-quality ten fret button design. Ten fret buttons mean that players have the option of using traditionally positioned fret button, or can choose to use the solo button high up on the neck of the guitar controller.

The Starpex will be available in Circuit City and various other retailers for about $180 by late August.

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