Ed Kowalczyk of LIVE releases solo album Alive today

Ed Kowalczyk, former lead singer of the multi million-selling band LIVE, has released his solo album Alive today in iTunes and elsewhere. Upon first listen, the sound of Kowalczyk’s new album appears to be more closely analogous to 1991′s Mental Jewelry than anything else in LIVE’s back catalog. While the release of the solo album won’t do anything to help the future prospects for LIVE, which suffered from a nasty public split last year, fans of the band will likely be glad to hear new Kowalczyk material one way or the other. The iTunes link for Alive is right here.

Ed Kowalczyk of Live to release solo album “Alive” in early July

Ed Kowalczyk, longtime lead singer for the band LIVE, will release his debut solo album in early July via his own website. The album, entitled Alive, is available for pre-order on CD now and includes the lead single Grace. No official word yet on whether the album will also be available digitally via iTunes or whether the CD will also be available via retailers. Kowalczyk has tour dates scheduled in the U.S. and Europe throughout the summer with what he promises will be a “full rock band.” The brief snippets we’ve heard from Ed’s solo album suggest that Alive will continue down the musical path that he had been on during his years with LIVE. More details on Ed’s new album and tour are at edkowalczyk.com.

Kowalczyk split with his LIVE bandmates acrimoniously last year; they’ve gone on to form The Gracious Few with members of Candlebox.

Ronnie James Dio died today. Ozzy Osbourne is still alive.

Ozzy Osbourne is still alive and well. On any other day that might sound like the opening line of a joke. But we’ve seen a disturbing number of people land on Beatweek.com today after hitting search engines with queries like “Is Ozzy Osbourne dead?” and “Did Ozzy die today?” – so we want to make it clear as possible that Ozzy is alive and well. The singer who died today is Ronnie James Dio, who took Ozzy’s place in Black Sabbath after Ozzy’s departure.

Not that the clarification should make fans of heavy metal any less sad, as the loss of Ronnie today is a major one. There’s no attempt at whimsy or comparison in this post, or anything beyond an attempt to help set the record straight for some folks who have clearly managed to somehow mishear or misinterpret today’s sad news – probably not helped by the fact that the news broke on a weekend. The confusion may have come from the fact that Ozzy did post a response regarding Ronnie’s passing today via Twitter.