Some interesting things coming out this week, including a couple I wasn’t originally planning on picking up.

Slayer, World Painted Blood - Slayer remains on my list of artists whose new releases I automatically buy. I haven’t heard anything off of it, but I read a review that made it sound pretty decent but really with Slayer you know what you’re going to get. The deluxe version has an animated movie by Mark Brooks who does Metalocolypse, so that’s a definite bonus.

Weezer, Raditude - I wasn’t originally going to pick this up until I read that Butch Walker produced it. Despite my original enthusiasm for it, the red album didn’t hold up for me so I was going to pass on this. However the combination of Weezer and Butch Walker make for an intriguing combination and I want to see how it ends up.

Foo Fighters, Greatest Hits - Another one I wasn’t planning on picking up until I learned that the deluxe edition comes with a DVD with their music videos on it. I can’t explain why but I love that. The odd thing is that it’s missing “Walking After You” which I thought was one of their bigger songs. It also does something I hate with greatest hits discs, and that’s including an alternate version of one of the songs, in this case it’s an acoustic version of “Everlong”.

One thing I won’t be picking up is the new version of the Chickenfoot album which contains an extra song and a DVD.  Really guys, in order to drum up more sales of your album you’re trying to get people to buy it again?  Or do you think that this will be enough to get a load of people to buy it after they passed on it the first time?  No sale here.

I started to get nervous the afternoon of the Chickenfoot show when I did a search for concert reviews (which I usually don’t do) and saw that with the exception of a couple of songs the band was sticking to their one and only album. With everyone’s background it didn’t make sense to do this, especially since I was hoping for at least one Satriani song as a guitar solo.

Well that turned out to be true but the show didn’t turn out to be as bad as I feared.  The band sounded great together and gave the songs more life than they have on the album itself.  One of the suprising things - for me at least - was how much the crowd was into it.  The Uptown Theatre was sold out and I figured a lot of the people were there to hear some Van Halen songs and “I Can’t Drive 55″ but they were really into every song in the set.  The band put on a great performance despite the questionable setlist.

The opener - Davey Knowles and Backdoor Slam - was fantastic.  Again, I didn’t think the crowd would be into a relatively unknown opener but it seemed like most people were into them.  Davey Knowles, the singer and lead guitarist, gave a dynamite performance and displayed some incredible guitar playing.

As for the venue, the Uptown Theatre isn’t a bad place to see shows, but the chairs they set out on the floor are absolutely horrible.  I felt like I was in a middle seating flying Delta economy.  At least the building was air-conditioned.