Went to a viewing party last week in L.A. for VH1 Classic's Decades Rock Live, featuring Heart and some of the Wilson sisters' Seattle brethren -- including the reunited Alice in Chains and Velvet Revolver bassist Duff McKagan. After making me earn a quote by doing shots of Patron tequila, Alice bassist Mike Inez, who's played with Heart for the last five years, talked about what the group meant to him. "They're like royalty in Seattle," said Inez. "They're my sisters in life, in music." Ann and Nancy Wilson also had family on their minds -- their mom, who died recently. "Our mom was passing away at the exact time that we were doing the show," said Nancy. "It was a landmark show for us: Much in the way Bono still commemorates his dad, we were doing our commemorating." McKagan said Heart made him think of his own family: His older brothers and sisters used to catch Heart playing local clubs when he was little. "First call I made when this [gig] came up was back home to my family," he confessed . . .
But the Velvet Revolver bassist also had some more to say about his own band's upcoming album. "Lenny Kravitz wants to record us. Daniel Lanois, we want to do a track with. Pharrell will probably do one," said McKagan. "And then a myriad of others are doing two or three songs each." As for his favorite track thus far: "A song called 'Wasted Heart' is great. Kind of a back-to-Exile on Main Street-type of song." . . .
The following night, I hit up a performance by Ludacris and Camp Freddy frontman Donovan Leitch at a Vanity Fair event, the Svedka Erotica Reading Series. Among those on hand were Incubus' Mike Einziger and Brandon Boyd. "We've written and recorded half," Einziger said of their upcoming album, produced by Brendan O'Brien. Also on the scene was Pharrell, who's staying busy as usual. In addition to working with V.R., he's working with a certain rapper-turned-Oscar nominee. "I'm just here to support Luda!" said the uber-producer. We asked the man himself, ready to hit the stage, for some unexpected grooves we might find in his collection. "One of my favorite songs in the world is Puddle of Mudd's 'Blurry,'" said Ludacris. "And any of Sade's albums. God, man -- Sade is the truth." Can we get an amen to that? . . .
Another recent event stuck with us on a totally different level. Whitestarr and fellow L.A. band Bitter:Sweet hit the lanes recently for the second annual Rock 'N' Bowl gala, a night of music and bowling to raise money to fight leukemia and lymphoma. Both bands had personal reasons for lending their time and talents. "My father and my stepmom actually run a camp called the Painted Turtle," said Whitestarr frontman Cisco Adler, "which is for kids with terminally ill diseases so they can have summer camp every summer. That's a good reason to play, shit." Bitter:Sweet's Shana Halligan had a friend who'd died of leukemia. "So it's a really special thing to know that we're raising money to help find a cure," said Halligan . . .
