Ben Folds Five to reunite in Chapel Hill

After last week's tease, it's been reported that Ben Folds Five — Ben Folds, Robert Sledge and Darren Jesse — will reunite on Thursday, Sept. 18 for a show at UNC's Memorial Hall for the group's first public appearance in a decade.

As if that weren't enough, benfolds.com is reporting that the trio will play The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner in its entirety.

Darren Jesse's band Hotel Lights will open the show. Hotel Lights new album Firecracker People was just released a few weeks ago.

Tickets for the general public are $40 and will go on sale Monday, Sept. 8 at 10 a.m. via etix. The show will be presented by MySpace Music. UNC student tickets will go on sale at the same time for $22 at the Memorial Hall box office. Tickets will have a policy of one ticket per One Card, two One Cards per student.

As someone who never had the opportunity to see the trio during their heyday, I'd just like to say: HELL YES.

Stone Temple Pilots reunite

Days after Velvet Revolver announced they were kicking Scott Weiland out of the band for not being committed to the band and fans, Stone Temple Pilots announced they were reuniting for a tour.

Last night, after a short set of hits, they announced their tour plans from Harry Houdini's estate in Los Angeles. The North American tour is said to include 65 cities. Over 30 of the cities and dates were announced today and they include a stop in Charlotte at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre on August 17.

There are still 30 cities to be announced, so Raleigh still has a good chance at booking the tour.

Check out this little EPK with interview and professionally shot footage from the reunion announcement set.

Van Halen will come to Triangle after all

The Van Halen reunion tour that kicked off in Charlotte and Greensboro earlier this year will finally stop in the Triangle. The band announced a new string of dates in 2008 which includes a stop at the RBC Center on March 7. Ticket info isn't available yet.

Now if we could only get The Police, we'd be set.

[UPDATE]
Tickets for Van Halen go on sale Saturday, December 8 at 10am. Tickets will be $125, $75 and $49.50.

Van Halen reunion to kick off in NC

It looks like the Van Halen reunion tour with David Lee Roth is back on. The group was initially scheduled to tour through the summer but the tour was canceled when Eddie Van Halen entered rehab in March.

The tour won't include the full classic lineup though. Original bassist Michael Anthony will be replaced by Eddie's son Wolfgang.

The tour will include all the major stops including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston, but the surprising thing is that the tour will kick off with not just one, but two shows in North Carolina. The tour will begin in Charlotte at the Charlotte Bobcats Arena on September 27 and roll through Greensboro at the Greensboro Coliseum on September 29.

While it's cool that Van Halen will kick off there tour here, one could also speculate that the band would want their first, potentially mistake-ridden, shows to be in North Carolina as opposed to a major city like New York or LA. The start of The Police's reunion tour was plagued with problems and mixed reviews that led to Stewart Copeland (drummer of The Police) to slam one of their shows.

So, with a new bassist and some rusty, aging members, will the Van Halen reunion tour be a high-flying success or a train wreck? Hell, will the tour even happen or will it get canceled again? Let us know what you think.

Van Halen: Not ready to make nice

Surprisingly, there are many things we can all learn from rock stars. Today let's look at a chapter from the book of Van Halen entitled "Quitting While You're Ahead."

As some of you may have heard, it was rumored that Van Halen's reunion tour — starring David Lee Roth, not that weird guy with a perm — would kick off in North Carolina this summer. However, before one tour date was ever officially announced, the band scrapped the whole thing. According to Pollstar, the tour is "officially postponed indefinitely."

We can apply this lesson to this summer's Police reunion tour. The band is scheduled to do one leg in the U.S., head abroad and then come back to the states for a second leg of the tour. Hopefully they'll come somewhere near North Carolina before they realize they're not that good of friends after all and cancel the rest of the tour.


Download Van Halen on iTunes