MACY GRAY IS THE NEW SINGER FOR VELVET REVOLVER

Well, no, not really. But Velvet Revolver do accompany her on “Kissed It,” a new track from her forthcoming album The Sellout. (Hm. Interesting title.) And by “Velvet Revolver,” I mean, “The track listing says “featuring Velvet Revolver,” but of the four current members of that band, only three appear.

Guess which one doesn’t?

If you guessed anyone besides Dave Kushner, guess what? It’s probably because you don’t know who Dave Kushner is. And that doesn’t make you all that different from the members of Velvet Revolver.

I feel so bad for Kushner I can’t even find the words. Not because he doesn’t get to be on a Macy Gray album – I mean, I’m sure that was the highest artistic aspiration of his entire being, but whatever – but, rather, because the poor dude keeps getting screwed by this band. First, Slash misspells his name multiples times in his autobiography, identifying him as “Dave Kirschner;” then he manages to be the only member of VR to stay sober while out on the road, and is promptly rewarded for his good deeds by watching the band go on “indefinite hiatus” while everyone easily finds work except for him. Fuck, the last time I saw VR live, I was surprised to see that the band had allowed him to take a guitar solo during one of their songs – and even more surprised to see that the spotlight stayed on Slash during Kushner’s entire solo. Even VR’s lighting crew doesn’t know who the fuck this poor dude is.

I guess he should just be happy that he was ever invited to leave The Village People and be in this gajillionaire superstar band in the first place, but, like, for reals… Slash, Duff and Matt couldn’t have said “Hey Macy, you can’t put the band’s name on the album unless we have the whole band?” Like, show some class, dudes.

The good news is for Kushner, at least from a creative if not a financial standpoint, is that the track is fairly generic pop stuff. Matt Sorum could literally have been replaced by a drum machine and now one would have ever known it, Duff could probably play his bass part with one finger while talking on the phone about some completely unrelaed topic, and then Slash takes a guitar solo that sounds like a Slash guitar solo. Whoopee!!!