It’s all about context. If you heard some frat dink say his buddy was this generation’s Freddy Mercury, you’d tense your shoulders in preparation for the inevitable “Buttsecks LOL. Har Har, You have AIDS” riff. If you hear someone say Amy Winehouse is the new Freddy Mercury you’d assume they were talking about the similarity of their garden trowel-esque dental work and obligatory 70’s porn ‘stache (seriously, that chick needs braces and a lip waxing, although that can probably wait until after she overdoses.) But when Taylor Hawkins says it about Dave Grohl, you know it’s just shameless ass-kissing to guy who saved him from the relative obscurity of being the dude who plays bongos for Alanis Morrisette while she yodels for an hour and a half… AND that it’s probably pretty much true. Taylor was asked by Rolling Stone why Foo Fighter concerts were so good and he said, “It’s all about Dave and how great a frontman he is. When we played Live Earth last year, Dave turned that stadium into a f**king club. All the great frontmen were like that. That’s what Freddie Mercury did every night.” As far as the forthcoming Foo Fighter tour goes, Taylor says it will be a parade of hits.  He said, “We pander to our audience, there’s no question. We’re not going to pull a Radiohead and not play our biggest songs. Luckily, I like playing ‘Everlong’ and ‘Monkey Wrench.’”

At the Drive-In was a pretty influential band. They inspired a whole new generation of punk kids who weren’t afraid to add a couple new chords to their repertoire and maybe try a time signature that isn’t 4/4. At the Drive In inspired bands that made punk music interesting again. But for as great as At the Drive In was, it could not withstand the head-scarfed siren sound of Erykah Badu. Yes, Erykah Badu played a part in the break-up of At the Drive In and the subsequent formation of The Mars Volta. Here’s the guys from the Mars Volta with the story.

"We heard Erykah Badu came by to watch us play so we’re just excited by that. Cause we use to listen to her a lot right when we started the band. We didn’t get to meet her but I wanted to tell her, ‘You were pretty much the soundtrack to the moment that we decided to quit our last band.”

Just a warning, don’t piss off a bunch of Maroon 5-loving, View-watching, Subaru-driving, 35-year-old soccer moms. Worse yet, don’t piss off their 15-year-old daughters who actually know how post to a message board and give the appropriate amount of over-reactive, mindless vitriol in large quantities as to illicit a blanket response. Yesterday Chris Daughtry, AKA the only person to come out of American Idol that didn’t make me want to slip up behind Ryan Seacrest and garret him ninja-style, told Rolling Stone what he thought about American Idol. Basically he just said that they should lay off the freak show aspect of the show and then they might get more real musicians in there. Idol fans took his comments as Daughtry dropping his pants and spraying ropey streams of asparagus urine all over the producers, judges, host and contestants of the show, an act that I think all but Seacrest would object to. Well now, after a torrent of acronymed insults and unintelligible posts Chris Daughtry had to publicly tell everyone to settle down. Daughtry ends his post at Dughtryofficial.com, writing, “I was never trying to ‘DISS’ the show or ‘BITE THE HAND THAT FED ME’ so to speak. I was simply giving my input on what I think would spice the show up a bit. Sorry for being honest.”