Kind of like Buena Vista Social Club, but not really. Tom Morello and Boots Riley have joined forces to create the Street Sweeper Social Club.
Rage Against the Machine-Wake Up! [mp3]
Here’s more:
Tom Morello and Boots Riley have joined forces to form Street Sweeper Social Club. The group’s anticipated self-titled debut album will be released June 16th through Warner Music Group’s Independent Label Group. The 11-song set was produced by Tom Morello and features Boots Riley on vocals, Morello on guitar and bass, and Stanton Moore (Galactic) on drums.
“It’s revolutionary party jams,” said Morello of Street Sweeper Social Club. “It’s got huge steamroller riffs combined with depth, charge, funk, while Boots unloads clip after clip of incendiary rhymes rich with satire and venom.” Riley added, “This is a time when the working class is being fleeced left and right. More families will be homeless and more people will be jobless. They’ll need something to listen to on their ipods while storming Wall Street.”
Street Sweeper Social Club’s debut tour will be opening all dates in North America on the Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction May-June Tour (confirmed dates below). The tour will find Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction sharing a stage for the first time since the debut of the Lollapalooza festival in 1991 (as well as the first tour by the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction in seventeen years).
Tom Morello is a founding member and guitarist of the rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. The two bands are responsible for multiple Grammy Awards and a combined 30 million albums sold worldwide. Morello has also received critical acclaim as a solo artist known as The Nightwatchman. Widely celebrated for his unique voice as a master electric guitarist, he is recognized by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the “100 Greatest Guitar Players of All-Time (#26).” He is also one of only two guitarists featured as a playable animated character in the overwhelmingly popular Activision video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Tom Morello graduated from Harvard University with honors as a Political Science major and has been a widely recognized political activist throughout his career. With System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Morello formed Axis of Justice, an organization whose purpose is to bring together musicians, music fans, and grassroots political organizations to fight for social justice.
Boots Riley is best known as the leader of The Coup, the seminal Hip-Hop group from Oakland, CA. As a producer and lyricist, Riley has crafted critically acclaimed albums for The Coup that have graced the year-end Top 10 lists of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and more. They have also received “Album of the Year” honors from The Washington Post, Time Out New York, while Billboard Magazine declared the group “the best hip-hop act of the past decade.” Born in Chicago and raised in East Oakland’s Funktown neighborhood, Boots became a teenage community organizer. From his history of student organizing in Oakland’s public schools, serving on the central committee for the Progressive Labor Party, being the President of Youth InCar (Youth International Committee Against Racism), organizing to build California’s Anti-Racist Farm Workers’ Union, to developing “guerrilla hip hop concerts” (mobile concerts on flatbed trucks), Boots Riley has been an integral part of the progressive struggle for radical change through culture.
Street Sweeper Social Club Track Listing:
1. Fight! Smash! Win!
2. 100 Little Curses
3. The Oath
4. The Squeeze
5. Clap For The Killers
6. Somewhere In the World It’s Midnight
7. Shock You Again
8. Good Morning, Mrs. Smith
9. Megablast
10. Promenade
11. Nobody Moves (Til We Say Go)
Street Sweeper Social Club Tour with Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction
May 8 2009 Cruzan Ampitheatre – West Palm Beach, Florida
May 9 2009 Ford Amphitheatre – Tampa, Florida
May 10 2009 Lakewood Amphitheatre – Atlanta, Georgia
May 12 2009 Frank Irwin Center – Austin, Texas
May 14 2009 Journal Pavilion – Albuquerque, New Mexico
May 15 2009 Cricket Wireless Pavilion – Phoenix, Arizona
May 16 2009 Cricket Wireless Amphitheater – Chula Vista, California
May 18 2009 The Pearl – Las Vegas, Nevada
May 20 2009 Verizon Wireless Amphitheater – Irvine Meadows – Irvine, California
May 21 2009 Santa Barbra Bowl – Santa Barbara, California
May 22 2009 Shoreline Amphitheatre – Mountain View, California
May 24 2009 Sasquatch Festival – The Gorge, Washington
May 26 2009 Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre – Englewood, Colorado
May 27 2009 Starlight Theatre – Kansas City, Missouri
May 29 2009 Charter One Pavilion – Chicago, Illinois
May 30 2009 Verizon Wireless Music Center – Noblesville, Indiana
May 31 2009 DTE Energy Music Theatre – Clarkston, Michigan
Jun 2 2009 Moison Amphitheatre – Toronto, Ontario
Jun 3 2009 Comcast Center – Mansfield, Massachusetts
Jun 5 2009 Tweeter Center at the Waterfront – Camden, New Jersey
Jun 6 2009 PNC Bank Arts Center – Holmdel, New Jersey
Jun 7 2009 Nikon at Jones Beach Music Theater – Wantagh, New York
Jun 9 2009 Merriweather Post Pavilion – Columbia, Maryland
Jun 10 2009 Post-Gazette Pavilion – Burgettstown, Pennsylvania
Jun 12 2009 Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre – Charlotte, North Carolina