The California-based rock duo Eagles of Death Metal were swept up in a global terrorism drama Friday night while playing a packed house at Paris’ famed Bataclan concert hall. The theater seats about 1,500 people. Veteran multitaskers that they are, Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme packed a lot into the seven years between Heart On and Zipper Down. Homme returned to Queens of the Stone Age and started another band, Them Crooked Vultures, with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones; Hughes became an ordained minister, appeared in a movie with Grace Jones and Iggy Pop, and worked on his solo project, Boots Electric. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that Zipper Down feels more like the work of a side project than any of the duo's albums since Peace Love Death Metal.
This set is said to combine all of the surviving BBC recordings with previously unreleased sessions taken from BBC Transcription Discs, off air recordings made on reel-to-reel tape recorders and the occasional cassette tape. The box contains 16 previously unreleased Tyrannosaurus Rex tracks, and over 20 T.Rex tracks never before issued. There are also a dozen interviews many of which have never been commercially available. The 117 track box set kicks off with some June 1968 John’s Children recordings and the curtain closes at the end of disc six with a couple of T.Rex tracks broadcast on the David Hamilton show, less than a month before Bolan’s untimely death.
Rex Smith, younger brother of Starz vocalist Michael Lee Smith, may be better known to his Stateside fans for his roles on stage and screen; playing motorcycle police officer Jesse Mach in the 1985 TV series Street Hawk, as well as guest appearances on The Love Boat, Baywatch, Daredevil and Caroline In The City. He also played Danny Zuko in the 1978 Broadway production of Grease, eventually becoming a household name via the popular daytime drama As The World Turns, whilst also replacing Andy Gibb as presenter on popular US TV music show Solid Gold in 1982.