Something to chew on, mull over and digest as you get ready for the weekend.

Insound president Matt Wishnow was good enough, as you probably already know from the blog posted recently, to talk to us about the online music store he runs.

During the interview, I asked him what bands he's been into lately. You might want to check them out if you've just got paid and that money is burning a hole in your pocket.

"There's a band I really like called The Duchess And The Duke, who sound sort of like a raggedy, late-'60s, Let It Bleed-era Rolling Stones," says Wishnow. "I think they're really good. I like No Age on Sub Pop. There's a new band on Touch & Go called the Uglysuit that I like a lot. Those are the three lately that I've been listening a lot to, but if I go back a couple of years that list will get real long (laughs)."

I also asked what albums have been top sellers for Insound, and he replied, "Well, certainly The Walkmen (You and Me) record has been huge for us. The Fleet Foxes (self-titled) record has been good for us. The new Ra Ra Riot (The Rhumb Line) record's been good for us. I'm going to go back a little bit further than that. The Beck record was really good for us. Deerhunter (Microcastle, due out Oct. 28 but available for pre-order), Atlas Sound (Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel), the Conor Oberst (self-titled) record was real strong for us. Always, always, bands like The National's catalog has been really good for us. And even bands from the '90s, like Neutral Milk Hotel, their second record is consistently a Top 50 record for us, always has been."

Check out Insound at www.insound.com.

During a time of social and political unrest, when the hippies and the "man" were locked in mortal combat and profound changes were taking pop music to places nobody had dreamed of before, Steppenwolf was not only there, it was spearheading the revolution.

The pack leader of the late-'60s counterculture, Steppenwolf's fire-breathing biker anthem "Born To Be Wild" laid rubber and spewed exhaust as the band, led by John Kay, he of the primal growl you hear on the song, drove down the highways and byways of America and took magic carpet rides. On its journey, the band found itself at the epicenter of explosive cultural movements, and on the 1969 album Monster, Steppenwolf addressed head on some of the hot-button political issues of the time.

Now comes a career-spanning DVD titled "John Kay & Steppenwolf, A Rock & Roll Odyssey," due out Sept. 30, that tells the incredible story of this iconic band and what was happening around them when Steppenwolf was as big as anybody in the land.

Recently interviewed for a story that will appear in the Oct. 24 issue of Goldmine, Kay relates the tale of how the project came about.

"It was something that had been on my list of projects to hopefully get to one day for several years, and an old friend of mine, who passed away a couple of years ago, Morgan Cavett — who, in fact, co-wrote one of the songs on our very first Steppenwolf album... Morgan and I were talking about doing, basically, a video biography, and he had, over the years, gotten involved in all sorts of other pursuits, and the last one was video shooting, directing and production and the like. So, he would come out during some of the Steppenwolf engagements, he would fly out with some of his gear, and he would shoot some talking heads and performance clips and other things, and amassed a backlog of video footage, but we were always too busy to completely follow through on this. And unfortunately, he then developed a serious illness and died a couple of years ago."

Then, along came a Nashville videographer by the name of Mark Hall to save the day.

"[He's] a Canadian fellow who's been in Nashville for a long time, and has done numerous video biographies on Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and The Band and on and on and on," says Kay. "He had also done a project with me for the Bravo Canada channel, and so he and I had a good working relationship. I liked the quality of his work, and so, he also had known Morgan, and he was willing to take on this project and to finish it basically."

The idea behind the project was to tell Steppenwolf's story the way it should be told.

"The whole premise of doing this project was really the idea that we would get to tell our story, our way, without any concerns where we would have to satisfy someone else's expectations — meaning, when you create something for cable channels, or VH-1 or whoever, they have their take on what it is they want to focus on in any of these stories," says Kay. "After all, it's about ratings, and in the end about ad dollars, and we knew that would definitely interfere with what we had in mind, because we had already done a 'Behind the Music,' which turned out to be what it turned out to be (laughs). And so, consequently, I decided that this would be a self-financed and directed project, because we, as a band, in our history, don't really fit any particular mold 100 percent. While people tend to think of us as being either a biker band or, because of the Monster album, a social-political oriented band, or if it's 'Magic Carpet Ride,' you know, it's kind of a pop hit... we were a lot of things, but perhaps not enough of one particular thing to fit any particular sort of pigeonhole. And the same thing was the case with respect to this DVD because it is something quite separate and apart from the typical 'here are five guys, who were in a garage and made some music and they got lucky and they had some hits, and the trials and tribulations of being a rock band, and the infighting and you know, eventually half of them go face down in the gutter with drug addiction, you know'... That sort of thing we've seen plenty of and done to death, and it doesn't actually fit our situation to a T in any case."

In Kay's eyes, there was more important stuff to address.

"Far more importantly, from our perspective, is the fact that we had much more of a bigger story to tell," says Kay. "It's because of my individual background, having been born in what was then East Prussia and growing up behind the Iron Curtain, and escaping to West Germany, discovering rock 'n' roll on the Armed Forces Radio Network, you know, coming to Canada, etc. etc. That all leads into my joining The Sparrow, the Canadian band which later migrated to the West Coast, broke up then in L.A., from the ashes of which Steppenwolf was formed in '67, and from there forward. But, during the course of both The Sparrow as well as Steppenwolf's life span thereafter, we were in certain cultural meccas at certain times that were pivotal times."

Such as?
"We were in Yorkville Village in Toronto when Neil Young blew in there and Joni Mitchell passed through, you know," remembers Kay, "and we were on the Sunset Strip when the hippie riots shut down Pandora's Box and Steve Stills wrote "For What It's Worth" about that. We were in the Bay Area playing the Avalon Ballroom and others when the first 'Human Be-In' was at Golden Gate Park took place, and those kinds of things. And also, once we launched our first album in '68 and went out on the road, my God, that year we had assassinations, riots in the streets, the Democratic Convention... on and on. So, a lot of what was going on is part of this bigger picture, and when we first showed a rough cut to someone, just as sort of a trial balloon to get a reaction — this was a person not entirely keen on rock 'n' roll to begin with and was like, 'Yeah, Steppenwolf, "Born to be Wild," that's all I know about them' — but what he commented [on] was very telling, because he said, 'Well, the story of the band is pretty interesting, but it's really sort of a train that takes you through the time tunnel of all these different decades in all these different places you guys were in were either culturally or artistically or because of the times you were in, politically and socially, there were major events that are part of this bigger picture."

Kay isn't sure if there's a particular television channel that'd be willing to show this film, but he's all right with that.

"Unfortunately, because of that diversity of ingredients, it again doesn't really fit on any particular cable channel's focus," says Kay. "Because there's not enough history for the History Channel. There's not enough debauchery and God knows what for VH-1, and so, we basically said, 'Don't worry about that. This is really us telling our story and there are those that have supported us for many, many years, who will be interested —  up to a certain number of them — in this somewhat different, somewhat less typical story of a rock 'n' roll band, and its life and its times that it lived in.'"

For ordering information and all things Steppenwolf related, visit www.steppenwolf.com. Order through Wolf Wares and you can get a copy autographed by Kay himself. Also, visit www.rainmanrecords.com to find more Steppenwolf and John Kay related merchandise.

AC/DC is doing the unthinkable and selling its new album, Black Ice, due out Oct. 20, exclusively through Wal-Mart and Sam's Club.

Does that strike anybody else as sheer lunacy? Oh, I get why the band is doing this. There's good money to be had in striking such a deal with... shall I say, the devil. But, what's the compromise here, or is there any? After all, Wal-Mart isn't exactly down with rocker famous for any sort of Satanic shenanigans — however bogus or ridiculous such assertions are that link certain bands with the lord of the underworld — or lurid lyrics full of sexual innuendo. The question has to be asked: Did AC/DC tone itself down for this record?

To put it another way, Wal-Mart has, at least in the past, been absolutely prudish when it's come to such things. And yet, here we are, with the retail giant having been granted exclusive rights to distribute the new AC/DC, selling the band's new disc for a right reasonable $11.88. Will Wal-Mart put out a "clean" version of the record, or does it even need to?

The proof will be in the pudding, and get a spoon because that pudding comes your way Aug. 28, when the hard-rocking Aussies deliver the first single from Black Ice, "Rock 'N' Roll Train." It's one of 15 new tracks on Black Ice, helmed by hot-shot producer Brendan O'Brien at the Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, B.C.

The video for "Rock 'N' Roll Train" will debut in September. Then, in late October, the band will hit the road, the air and the sea for its first world tour since 2001. And despite the whole Wal-Mart thing, aren't you absolutely stoked for this? The time is right for AC/DC to come back in a big way.

Now, the CD will also be available, with free shipping and handling, through the band's Web site, www.acdc.com, where it is available for pre-order. It is also available through Walmart.com — where it is also available for pre-order — and Samsclub.com.

Anybody else a little uneasy about this unholy marriage?

Stripped down to their musical skivvies, so to speak, Neil Young's songs lose none of their emotional potency. A listen to Nils Lofgren's new album of Young covers bears that out.

On The Loner, released July 22 on the Vision Music label and available via the nilslofgren.com Web site, it's just Lofgren at home alone, haunting Young classics with just his ghostly voice accompanied solely by either gentle, resonant acoustic guitar workings — including some powerful strumming and rich, earthy blues studies — or tender piano meditations. Almost uncomfortably intimate, The Loner, an homage that includes Lofgren's versions of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Long May You Run," "Harvest Moon" and "I Am A Child," to name a few , was recorded live without any sort of production enhancements.

Interestingly, the genesis for this project did not come from Lofgren, surprising when you consider that the E-Street Band member, as a teen, cut his session-work teeth on Young's 1970 landmark LP After The Gold Rush.
 
"I would have never thought of it," says Lofgren. "I had a Christmas break from the E-Street Tour, which I was thrilled to be out with. I spent the last 14 years without a record company, and I put music out on my Web site, at nilslofgren.com — this and other things. There's free downloads. I started a beginner's guitar school, a lot of things there. But the last 10 years or so, I guess the most popular items have been an acoustic live CD and a live acoustic DVD, and my manager, Anson, pointed this out and suggested I consider singing my favorite Neil Young songs in an acoustic format. And that led to the record. I certainly never would have thought of that on my own."

Lofgren and Young go way back to Topanga Canyon. After working on After The Gold Rush and contributing bits and pieces to Crazy Horse's debut, Lofgren left Young to concentrate on his band Grin. When Grin failed to get off the launching pad, Lofgren rejoined Young for work on the Tonight's The Night album and played on Young's 1983 Trans tour. After that, he joined Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band.

As for The Loner, Lofgren had a lot of material to choose from, but he pared it down to 15 tracks.

"I spent a couple weeks singing 25 or 30 songs of Neil's without recording anything, no production, [I] just literally woke up early in morning, sang for a few hours to my dogs and cats, and after two weeks, it seemed like some of the songs stopped sounding like good karoake and made a transition into something more special as a performer," says Lofgren. "So, once I felt like I had a dozen or so of those, then I turned on the tape machines and went out into the studio, set everything up, and I also realized that the only chance this had of working was if it was completely live, no production, no overdubbing — just me and one instrument doing the performance, and with those as the rules, I came up with 15 songs that felt right. So, I'm honored to have had this stroll down memory lane and just share this new CD."

A visit to nilslofgren.com can yield much fruit. The site offers free downloads and Lofgren's Guitar School that's designed especially for beginners and those who've come to believe they'll never play the instrument.

"A lot of teachers make it very complicated, and sometimes you have to work for years before you really enjoy yourself, and learning an instrument is hard," says Lofgren. "It's gymnastics for the hand, and it's going to frustrate you. So, what I do every lesson is try to show people something they can do with one finger today that feels and sounds like music to them and [allows them to] play along with me. Because after all, the planet is crazy, people are pressed for time, they have kids, sick parents, crazy bosses, hectic schedules, lot of pressure and the theme of this school is: Look, if you only want to practice 10 minutes on the hard stuff before your hand cramps up and you get frustrated, stop at that point, but don't put down the instrument. Spend five or 10 more minutes doing the one-finger stuff that feels and sounds like music but takes no practice. Jam along with me on the tape and then walk away. Then, maybe tomorrow, maybe you'll come back and say, 'I'll do the hard stuff for 20 minutes today, and then I'll go have some fun.' But the theme is, let's have fun now, let's have it every day, to navigate learning and keep you engaged, and I have a lot of tips and shortcuts I've learned through 10 years of classical accordion studies and 40 years on the road as a rock musician, I'm just trying to share those things in the beginner's guitar school at nilslofgren.com.

To listen to a podcast of our interview with Nils, visit www.goldminemag.com. And watch for a story on Lofgren and his memories of working with Neil Young on After The Gold Rush in a future issue of Goldmine.

Metal Church's glory years coincided with the halcyon days of thrash-metal in the mid-80s, a time when the dark, powerful overlords of Seattle's metal community whipped up furious storms of riffs that threatened to consume even Metallica. But, Metal Church, its progress blunted by inner turmoil and a flurry of lineup changes, would not follow Metallica into arena-rock heaven.

Ronny Munroe, Metal Church's singer for the last four years, starting with the 2004 album The Weight Of The World, wasn't around back then to help lay siege to Metallica's empire. But, he thinks Metal Church's new album, This Present Wasteland, due out Sept. 23 on SPV, has the goods to force the world to, once again, pay attention to Metal Church.

"I think this one is a little more straightforward (than its predecessor A Light In The Dark)," says Munroe, whose vocals are a roiling cauldron of Halford histrionics, Bruce Dickinson's bear-like growls and Ronnie James Dio's nightmarish screams. "To me, it sounds a little reminiscent of early Metal Church, which is kind of what every older band tries to recapture. And I think we did a pretty good of that. I'm very pleased with it."

Aggressive, focused and always on the attack, the Metal Church of 2008, led by guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof, is still out to spread a message of positivity. But, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. This Present Wasteland grapples with questions of morality and evil, couching them in punishing metal — see "Meet Your Maker," "Deeds of a Dead Soul" and "Mass Hysteria" — that sounds eerily similar to Dio-era Black Sabbath, only with the emphasis on speed.

"I write like that to begin with," says Munroe, talking about his lyrical preoccupation with dark subjects and moral dilemmas. "And also, Kurt's vision for Metal Church, from the very start, was to always have a positive message, because there's enough negativity in the world without us adding to it. And who's the one that made the rule that there's no smiling in metal (laughs)."

Still, it's hard to find something to smile about when the country's at war and the economy is in the toilet. And This Present Wasteland reflects that – especially the "war" part, as Munroe says present conflicts around the globe influenced some of the record's lyrical content.

Stay tuned for more on Metal Church in an upcoming issue of Goldmine.

For more on Metal Church, visit Myspace.com/SPVUSA, Myspace.com/metalchurch and MetalChurchMusic.com