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Krokus  

• On tour: yes
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Krokus are a hard rock band hailing from Solothurn, Switzerland who formed in 1975. Since their debut in 1976 they have become one of, if not the most succesful Swiss metal band of all time, with a swathe of worldwide hit albums to their name released throughout the 1980’s.

Australian legends AC/DC are easily one of the most influential bands of all time, but Swiss hard rock heroes Krokus owe a bigger debt to them than most since until the band saw them live around 1977, they were a prog band through and through. One who came together in 1975 and released their self-titled debut album the following year in a limited release of 560 copies. By the release of their second album “To You All”, the band had taken in a concert from the Aussie titans and radically changed their sound to a more straightforward, heavy riffing hard rock style. They began building up a cult following in their home country, but didn’t see any mainstream success until the 1980 release of their fourth album “Metal Rendez-vous”. The record was a huge hit in their home country and Europe as a whole, and was eventually certified triple-platinum in their native Switzerland.

“Metal Rendez-vous”, was also the album that brought them over to the U.S.A on a wave of hype about their live shows and their records. Setting their sights on success in America, the band hired new management and released 1982’s “One Vice At A Time”, followed by their breakthrough hit in the states, 1983’s “Headhunter”. This signalled the beginning of a commercial purple patch for the band, which saw “Headhunter” certified Platinum in the States, and with their 1984 single “Midnite Maniac” they became the very first Swiss act to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. While they might not have been able to keep up their commercial dominance once the 1990’s came along, they remain active to this day playing some of the best live shows of their entire career and releasing the most acclaimed albums of their four decades as a band. For possessing the kind of longevity that most bands would kill to have, Krokus come highly recommended.

Live reviews

It’s hard not to draw comparisons between legendary rock band AC/DC and Swiss heavy metal band Krokus, but I doubt that the group would be offended by this comparison. Krokus openly admit that their style was heavily influenced by the rock giants, and critic Chris von Rohr described their album ‘One Vice at a Time’ as "the album AC/DC never made."

Nevertheless, Krokus is so much more than an AC/DC tribute band and their music goes in their own unique direction. The almost déjà vu element of their similar but oh so different music is almost certainly what contributed to much of the band’s success in Europe and the US during the 1980s.

Seeing Krokus live is like taking a trip back in time. Their sound is so fantastically 80s and specific to the rock n roll of that era that just the opening bars of hits such as “Screaming in the Night” and “Born To Be Wild” bring a massive smile to the face. Krokus still rocks out hard. Seeing them in concert is face-meltingly awesome and I highly recommend you see them while they’re on tour!

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The best concert I have been to in awhile ! (and i go to a lot of concerts)Krokus had not been to San Antonio Tx in over 25 years so I really wasn't sure if the quality of the band had remained the same . I'm happy to say they did not disappoint! ! I can't wait for them to return hopefully we wont have to wait as long .

OMG! what an exciting show these guys put on here in San Antonio,Tx. The last time I saw them in SA was about 25 years ago. It was so amazing how the energy of the band and voice of Marc Storace was so Riveting. It was like hearing them back in the 80's so Awesome. It was a Rockin time!!!!! Loved it!

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Krokus tour dates and tickets 2024-2025 near you

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Krokus is not due to play near your location currently - but they are scheduled to play 2 concerts across 1 country in 2024-2025. View all concerts.

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Krokus Announce Their Final Tour Dates in North America

It's not over till it's over. That's the message Krokus conveyed Monday (Dec. 9) when the Swiss heavy metal band announced their last concerts in North America. So dubbed "The Final Tour," the group will set out across the U.S. and into Canada for the trek that kicks off in September 2020.

It seemed like only yesterday when the band announced their first shows in the States in over 25 years . But after a career that spans over 40 years and includes nearly 20 studio albums, Krokus appear ready to hang up their hats, at least in America. See the tour dates toward the bottom of this post.

As lead singer Marc Storace once explained, the speed-metal indebted rockers visiting stateside has always held a special place in his heart. After all, it's the birthplace of Krokus' sonic bread and butter.

"The USA was always, for me, the land of rock and roll," Storace told Classic Rock Revisited the last time the group toured the country. "It is where it all came from... There is an adrenaline rush we get as soon as we land on USA soil. The whole sentimental bit comes rushing through your head."

Back in the '80s, Krokus scored hits with singles such as "Midnite Maniac," "Eat the Rich" and "Screaming in the Night." 1983's  Headhunter  and 1984's  The Blitz  were both certified gold in the United States.

Krokus "The Final Tour - Adios Amigos" Fall 2020 North American Tour Dates

Sept. 18 – Dallas, Texas @ Canton Hall Sept. 19 – San Antonio, Texas @ Sunken Gardens Sept. 22 – Silver Spring, Md. @ The Fillmore Sept. 23 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ Theatre of Living Arts Sept. 25 – New York, N.Y. @ Gramercy Theatre Sept. 26 – Worcester, Mass. @ The Palladium Sept. 29 – Toronto, Ontario @ MOD Club Sept. 30 – Westland, Mich. @ Token Lounge Oct. 2 – Cleveland, Ohio @ Agora Ballroom Oct. 3 – Joliet, Ill. @ The Forge Oct. 5 – Denver, Colo. @ Herman's Hideaway Oct. 8 – Seattle, Wash @ El Corazon Oct. 10 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Whisky a Go Go

The Best Metal Song of Each Year Since 1970

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KROKUS’ MARC STORACE On North American Tour Plans – “If It Was Up To Us, We’d Be There In A Shot”

December 13, 2022, a year ago

news krokus hard rock

Guesting on the Mike Nelson Show, Krokus frontman Marc Storace was asked if there were any plans to reschedule the 2020 North American dates that were wiped out by COVID-19 pandemic.

Storace said, “"If it was up to us, we'd be there in a shot. But look what happened in the meantime with COVID. I mean, COVID was a huge slap in the face. In 2019, in Europe, we were over. We played our last gig in Hallenstadion, which is like the holy ground of rock for Switzerland — for the German-speaking part anyway. [In] the COVID lockdown we stayed at home, and that's when I decided, 'I'm gonna start working on songs for my solo album.' 'Cause I don't like sitting on my ass doing nothing. So, in the meantime, time passed. People's tickets [for the U.S. tour], I don't even know what happened to their tickets… In the meantime, the whole economy stuff, and now with Ukraine…Ukraine is a real big punch in the face to show business. Already with the lockdown, lots businesses every kind went bankrupt and had to close. And it's the same with bus companies, production companies and stuff. And the ones left, they feel kind of free they can ask for more. Whereas the price of gasoline is up there, and that's only one thing. If you count everything together, it's, like, do we wanna pay to tour? [laughs] Nobody wants to do that. And we're not Led Zeppelin."

Krokus will be playing a special show to celebrate the 2000 birthday of their hometown of Solothurn.

"Our hometown Solothurn's 2000 year celebration show was sold out within 20 minutes! A new record!!

"May 6th, 2023 seems to be far away when we play the Hallenstadion in Zurich. Based on the interest we saw for the Solothurn performance, you might wanna consider getting your Zurich show tickets rather early than too late when that event will be sold out as well!"

Back in February, Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon from Canada's The Metal Voice spoke to Krokus vocalist Marc Storace about his first solo album, Live And Let Live; and his solo tour.  Plus, Marc gave an update of Krokus farewell tour, a statement to Dee Snider in regards to the years of their feud, and the AC/DC audition explained and clarified.

When asked about an update on the Krokus farewell tour:

"Last time we talked  (with the band) I had high hopes, and in the meantime those high hopes have become quite dusty and have crumbled. I don't know what to think anymore, but I kind of  lost hope myself. Everyone has kind of gone in different directions and it's like what is going on is just nothing. So, I am concentrating on my stuff, I'm having fun and I am even planning on coming over. Things are being looked at now as we speak in the USA (fall 2022) and am happy about that, for the  fall. I will be playing almost my whole solo album and I'm going to play Krokus songs (no covers). And some Krokus songs which I will play will be songs I wanted to do but never got the chance to do again, like 'Midnite Maniac'."

When asked if Dee Snider and Marc have made peace after their long and ongoing  feud:

"I have always made peace. In fact I was on this tour, Rock Meets Classic, with other artists and at the end of the tour we were supposed to play one concert in Wacken with this whole orchestra and band. And I was thrown off because Dee Snider came in to headline, and he said he won't do it unless Storace's  thrown off. I was looking forward to asking Dee if we could go to the side and have a beer so maybe I could apologize and say, 'Hey, let's bury the hatchet, it's not worth a few hundred dollars of stage clothes which we didn't like.'  It is as simple as that. I was not in the room when this happened, so I don't know if there were any dirty words spoken or attitude in which things were said. But I don't think it is worth carrying a burden like that."

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Krokus Announce Final North American Tour

“Its not over ’till its over,” the band said in a statement. “American and Cananda, here we come!”

Tickets are on sale now HERE .

Krokus formed in Switzerland in 1976 and released their debut LP that same year. The band broke out with their 1980 outing  Metal Rendez-vous . The record was certified 4x platinum in Switzerland. Their seventh album – 1983’s  Headhunter   – achieved gold status in the U.S. and hit No. 25 on the Billboard 200.

The band experienced global success throughout the 80s, and a revitalization in the early 2000s. Their 2003 effort  Rock The Block  went No. 1 in Switzerland, as would three of their next four albums. Their last (and also No. 1) studio album was 2017’s  Big Rocks .

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Krokus Announce New U.S. Tour

Krokus  are returning to U.S. soil this spring. The Swiss rockers just lined up a new tour that will run two weeks. It will be their first stateside tour in 10 years.

Best known for a string of early '80s hits, Krokus released a concert recording , Long Stick Goes Boom: Live From Da House of Rust , in 2014. Now they've announced a string of dates from April 24 in Houston through May 6 in Los Angeles, preceded by a stop on the annual Monsters of Rock cruise on April 18-22 along with  Night Ranger ,  Tesla ,  Queensryche , the  Winery Dogs ,  Stryper ,  Europe  and others.

A complete listing of tour dates and cities can be found below.

Signature hits like "Midnight Maniac," "Screaming in the Night" and "Eat the Rich" helped both 1983's Headhunter and 1984's The Blitz earn gold-selling status in the U.S. But Krokus have actually been around for four decades, releasing almost 20 studio albums along the way. "Winning Man" (1981), "Long Stick Goes Boom" (1982) and "Our Love" (1984) all cracked the U.S. Top 30 on the rock charts over the years. Their most recent original studio LP, Dirty Dynamite , was released in 2013.

A recent recipient of a Swiss Music Awards lifetime achievement award, Krokus are still huge in their home country. In fact, the band saw two of its '00s albums go gold in Switzerland, while 2010's Hoodoo went platinum there.

Krokus 2015 U.S. Tour 4/24 - Houston, TX 4/25 - San Antonio, TX 4/26 - Dallas, TX 4/28 - Tulsa, OK 4/29 - Kansas City, MO 5/1 - St. Charles, IL 5/2 - Columbia, MD 5/4 - El Paso, TX 5/5 - Las Vegas, NV 5/6 - Los Angeles, CA

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"If you look at the long-term output of this band, Krokus is clearly one of the best hard rock bands of the last 40 years."

- Malcome Dome, Journalist -

Since 1975, Krokus has stood for high-quality, honest-to-goodness, hand-made power rock. No other Swiss rock band sells albums and its back catalogue worldwide like Krokus. The band has already sold over 15 million records, toured the world, and received gold and platinum record awards in the USA and Canada. The milestones in their rock career are dotted around the world: from Australia and the USA to Mexico, Russia, Japan, and China. Krokus was the first Swiss band to sell-out the legendary Hallenstadion in Zurich and has received a Diamond record award for selling one million albums in Switzerland alone.

Current members

Marc Storace  – lead vocals

Fernando von Arb  – lead and rhythm guitars

Chris von Rohr  – bass, producer

Mandy Meyer  – lead and rhythm guitars 

Mark Kohler – rhythm guitars

Flavio Mezzodi – drums

The Krokus albums you should definitely own

As Switzerland’s answer to AC/DC continue to deliver farewell tour dates, we look at their must-have (and best not to have) albums

After most 50 years of rocking, Krokus are not going quietly or without a little mischief. In September 2018 the Swiss heavy metal band announced their ‘Adios Amigos’ tour, calling time on a career that began in 1975 and also aiming a sly dig at Europe’s most successful rock act, Scorpions . The Krokus statement read: “Unlike other bands on their eternal ‘farewell tour’, we will keep our word and pull the plug at the end of 2019.” 

It was a provocative comment, but not entirely out of character for a band whose rise to international fame in the early 80s came with a degree of controversy. Krokus were accused of ripping off AC/DC on albums such as 1980’s Metal Rendez-vous and 1982’s One Vice At A Time , on which singer Marc Storace belted it out like Bon Scott . 

Then, with 1983’s Headhunter , they were accused of ripping off Judas Priest . There was also a farcical feud with Def Leppard when Krokus opened for them on a US tour. As Leppard singer Joe Elliott recalled: “Marc Storace was nicking everything I said on stage, so when I said it the next night it was second-hand. The guy was a complete knob-head!” 

But no matter, At their peak, on those 80s albums, Krokus kicked ass. And as they continue to tour – the Adios Amigo tour now promises to continue in 2024, despite Storace's promise to pull the plug in 2019 – the band still features four members of the classic 80s line-up – Storace, bassist Chris Von Rohr, and guitarists Fernando Von Arb and Mark Kohler. 

It was Von Rohr who formed Krokus in the small town of Solothurn back in ’75. They started out playing progressive rock , with Von Rohr as multi-instrumentalist and lead singer. The arrival of Malteseborn Storace in 1979 transformed the band, with Metal Rendez-vous the breakthrough that led to worldwide sales of 15 million albums. 

There have been numerous line-up changes across the years – astonishingly, Von Rohr was ousted from his own band in 1983. And there were many lean years in the 90s and early 2000s. But in recent times, with Von Rohr reinstated, Krokus have rallied again. 

For Storace there is always the thought of what might have been. He claims he was twice approached by AC/DC, first in 1980, before Brian Johnson got the gig, and second in 2016, when Axl Rose stepped in. But Storace has had a good run with Krokus. And as Von Arb says: “Every party has to end eventually.”

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB0000071GC%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> One Vice At A Time (Arista, 1982)  

The best album Krokus ever made is also the best AC/DC album that AC/DC never made. No matter how derivative, One Vice At A Time is a prime example of what was known, in the parlance of the times, as cranium-crunchin’ chaos. 

The album’s gonzoid, singleentendre opening track Long Stick Goes Boom has the bludgeon riffola of AC/DC circa <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/album-of-the-week-club-review-acdc-powerage" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK""> Powerage , with Marc Storace in a priapic frenzy. That energy and intensity is relentless across heavy-hitting numbers such as Playin’ The Outlaw, To The Top and a cover of The Guess Who’s American Woman (far superior to <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/six-reason-to-love-lenny-kravitz" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Lenny Kravitz’s later version).

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB0BTF9YBD6%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Headhunter (Arista, 1983)  

The band’s biggest hit, Headhunter went gold in the US. It was also, by design, different to One Vice At A Time , which was produced by Tony Platt; the engineer on AC/DC’s Highway To Hell and Back In Black . 

For Headhunter, Krokus had Judas Priest producer Tom Allom. They also had Priest singer Rob Halford backing up Storace on the wonderfully OTT heavy metal anthem Ready To Burn . There were shades of Priest in the album’s head-banging title track; a subtler mood in the power ballad Screaming In The Night ; and another great cover, of Bachman Turner Overdrive’s Stayed Awake All Night . From metal’s golden age, Headhunter is a minor classic.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB0000071GB%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Metal Rendez-vous (Ariola, 1980)  

The fourth Krokus album was the game changer. Storace, a powerhouse singer, lifted the band to a whole new level on the electrifying Metal Rendez-vous . At times they sounded like the new Scorpions – on the blazing Heatstrokes and the non-PC Tokyo Nights. The other influence was AC/DC. 

And while this inspired the album’s standout track, Bedside Radio , a rollicking boogie, Krokus pushed their luck a little too far with Shy Kid , its opening lines stolen almost verbatim from Bon Scott’s lyrics to Ride On . Certainly Metal Rendez-vous had its flaws. but Krokus had arrived with a bang.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB00JV215L6%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Hardware (Ariola, 1981)  

Hardware has always been overshadowed by what came before and after – the pivotal Metal Rendez-vous and the titanic One Vice At A Time . Hardware delivered the regulation route-one heavy-duty numbers in Mad Racket and Mr. 69 . In contrast, there was real depth, an atmospheric quality and emotional power, in Celebration and Winning Man . 

The surprise turn – for better and for worse – was Smelly Nelly , the band’s weirdest song. In purely musical terms, it was brilliant; a killer riff offset by spoken verses and bizarre vocal harmonies. But the lyrics were grimly sexist. Whole Lotta Rosie this was not.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB00332DJP0%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Hoodoo (Columbia/Sony, 2010)  

28 years after One Vice At A Time , the line-up from that monolithic album was reunited for Hoodoo . Most important of all, this was Chris Von Rohr’s first recording with Krokus since Heart Attack back in 1988. 

With Von Rohr as producer, the band sounded revitalised on songs that recalled the crazy days of the early 80s: Drive It In was a thunderous opening salvo, Hoodoo Woman a smoking boogie with a flavour of <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-to-buy-the-very-best-of-zz-top" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">ZZ Top, and Keep Me Rolling another homage to AC/DC. A version of Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild was unnecessary. But with Storace still operating at full power, this was an emphatic, loud and proud return to form.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB09Q6W4853%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Dirty Dynamite (The End, 2013)  

The band’s most recent release, 2017’s Big Rocks , was just a lazy covers album, but this, their last album of original material, was another late-career triumph, even if the originality of said material was questionable at best. 

In the three years since Hoodoo , Krokus had added a third guitarist, Mandy Meyer, who had served the band in the 80s and 2000s. On drums was Kosta Zafiriou, ex-Pink Cream 69. But there was no deviation in style, as Krokus brazenly channelled AC/DC to brilliant effect on Hallelujah Rock N’ Roll, Go Baby Go and the title track. The only bum note was in the obligatory cover – a mauling of <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-beatles-best-albums-buyers-guide-collection" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">The Beatles’ Help!

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB013T9K2GU%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Painkiller (Mercury, 1978)  

The band’s third album was the best they made before they hired a singer of real authority in Marc Storace. Recorded in just six days, Painkiller was impressively rowdy in a rough-and-ready fashion. But it was evident that Krokus needed a proper frontman. Chris Von Rohr, while game, couldn’t sing for toffee. 

The album was a curious mix, with opening track Killer evoking Steppenwolf, Get Out Of My Mind a Quo-style boogie, and Rock Me, Rock You an early sign of their AC/DC fixation, while two softer numbers, Susie and Bad Love , exposed Von Rohr’s limitations. The subsequent addition of Storace, formerly of heavy prog act TEA, was the making of them.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB00M0NASTI%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Blitz (Arista, 1984)  

Never the most cerebral of men to begin with, Krokus really dumbed it down on The Blitz . In 1984, with hair-metal at the height of fashion, they tarted up their image and covered a 70s glam-rock classic, a trick that had worked for LA rockers Quiet Riot with a hit version of <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/slade-a-guide-to-their-best-albums" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Slade’s Cum On Feel The Noize . 

For all their gusto, however, Krokus made a mess of Sweet’s hit Ballroom Blitz , but the album still made the US Top 40. And there was much to enjoy for fans of no-brainer rock – in heroically daft, irony-free songs such as Midnite Maniac, Ready To Rock and Boys Nite Out , the latter a leftover from <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/bryan-adams-reckless-story-behind-album" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Bryan Adams’s Reckless .

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB000H7I2TC%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Hellraiser (AFM, 2006)  

In the 90s, as Marc Storace did a Krokus hokey cokey – in, out, in, out – the band made weak albums with singers Peter Tanner (formerly of aptly named Swiss act Headhunter) and Carl Sentance, a Welshman who fronted Persian Risk, the 80s group led by future <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/motorhead-studio-albums-ranked-worst-to-best" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell. 

But in the 2000s, Storace was back for good. And while the lineup on Hellraiser was mostly unfamiliar except for guitarist Mandy Meyer, who first played with the band in 1981, there was enough in it to make it a legitimate Krokus album: the brawn in the title track, Midnite Fantasy and Too Wired To Sleep , and the glory of Storace in full cry.

...and one to avoid

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

<a href="https://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?tsid=38569&GR_URL=https%3A%2F%2Famazon.co.uk%2Fdp%2FB0000071G7%2F%3Ftag%3Dhawk-future-21%26ascsubtag%3Dhawk-custom-tracking-21" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Change Of Address (Arista, 1986)  

If ever a rock band handed their balls on a plate to their record company, it was Krokus with Change Of Address . Under orders from Arista to deliver radio-friendly hits, they ended up with the lamest record of their career. 

Producer Tom Werman had cut great albums for Ted Nugent, <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/cheap-trick-a-guide-to-their-best-albums" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Cheap Trick and <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/every-motley-crue-album-ranked-from-worst-to-best" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Mötley Crüe, but the AOR gloss he applied to Change Of Address failed to mask the mediocrity of songs such as Hot Rock City , a gutless wannabe anthem, Let The Love Begin , a ghastly power ballad, and a cynical remake of <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/alice-cooper-albums-ranked-from-worst-to-best" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="loudersound.com"" data-link-merchant="Amazon UK"">Alice Cooper’s School’s Out . It was an act of desperation, and it bombed. A nadir for Krokus and for 80s rock.

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Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2005, Paul Elliott has worked for leading music titles since 1985, including Sounds, Kerrang!, MOJO and Q . He is the author of several books including the first biography of Guns N’ Roses and the autobiography of bodyguard-to-the-stars Danny Francis. He has written liner notes for classic album reissues by artists such as Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy and Kiss, and currently works as content editor for Total Guitar . He lives in Bath - of which David Coverdale recently said: “How very Roman of you!”

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KROKUS ANNOUNCES U.S. TOUR DATES

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2/22: TMS PREMIERE RECAP, BACK FROM PITT, TRUNKNATION MONDAY ›

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Another great band that does not get the credit they deserve, especially here in the U.S. Metal Rondezvous is one kick ass album.

How rare that a rock tour nowadays is actually coming to my city (El Paso). I definitely will make plans to be there May 4. I haven’t seen Krokus since The Blitz Tour 1985, when Accept and Coney Hatch opened for them. This Friday at the same venue Stephen Pearcy and Quiet Riot will be performing as well. I’ll have to catch that show as well.

I saw Krokus last on the tour for The Blitz. It was the first concert my parents allowed me to go to with just my friends (my dad took me to all previous concerts). Krokus must have been having an off night because they weren’t all that great. But the opening band, Kick Axe (dumb band name!) were awful! I was 14 years old and knew I was already cooler than anyone in Kick Axe. I still have my Krokus t-shirt from that concert, but I’m not 14 now: I’m 6 ft 2in and WELL over 200 lbs lbs, so that shirt might as well be a headband now.

Totally bummed that there is no New England area show. I guess I won’t be “screaming in the night” anytime soon.

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Professional Golf Is at a Crossroads. How—and When—Will It Find a Resolution?

Nearly a year after the announcement that the PGA Tour and LIV Golf would merge, pro golf is in a confusing place. The tours are still separate; government investigations are ongoing; players are defecting; and fans are lost. So where does the sport stand in 2024? And where is it going?

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Last December, after a professional golfer named Jon Rahm showed up on Fox News wearing a varsity jacket with the LIV Golf logo, a Reddit user going by the name Golfhood started a thread with the subject line: “I’m done with pro golf .”

Golfhood claimed to be a former mini-tour player who had been working in the golf industry for nearly 15 years. The game, to Golfhood, was a way to break free of everyday life for a few hours, talk trash with friends, and eat hot dogs at the turn. But the protracted power struggle between the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabia–backed LIV Golf over the future of the professional game had shattered that illusion of escape. The joy had been swept away by pointed debates about business and laws and ethics and politics and money … so, so, so much money. Golfhood watched Rahm make his announcement about defecting from the PGA Tour to LIV—after previously pledging his fealty to the PGA Tour and insisting he was in it “ for the love of golf ”—and saw yet another dude who had embraced hypocrisy for the paycheck.

“This is the first time in my life,” Golfhood wrote, “that I have felt like I don’t love golf anymore.”

Golfhood’s post received over a thousand replies, most of which agreed with the overarching sentiment. Some said they might still watch the major tournaments, such as this week’s Masters, but that they had no reason to watch week to week anymore; some said they’d rather watch women’s golf or amateur golf, which, to them, feel like purer products. Some mentioned that they had long ago severed the relationship between playing golf and watching golf—that their love of the game had become separate from their need for the sport .

“Just watch the big 4 [major tournaments] like the rest of us and then go be a weekend warrior,” someone replied.

Golfhood’s five-paragraph missive—punctuated with a plaintive “fuck”—captured the visceral frustration many are feeling with the sport these days, from the fans to the players to the media members who cover it on a daily basis. And it raised the same questions they’ve been asking for months, like: What the hell is even going on anymore? Will LIV and the PGA Tour ever actually merge? Is there even a right side and a wrong side anymore, or have morals and ethics been rendered irrelevant by the money? When does it end? How does it end?

And will we still care in the same way when it does?

“Everything in golf over the past two years has shouldered this existential weight that no one has been able to shed,” Joel Beall, a senior writer for Golf Digest , told me over email. “For the most part, golf’s stakeholders have taken fans’ attention for granted, assuming it will always be there because it always has been. … I don’t think fans are ignorant to the fact that professional sports are a business. It’s just that this business is also the passion of millions.”

Such is the state of professional golf leading into its most prestigious tournament: mired in arguments about laws and ethics and morality and politics as it faces down central questions about its future. How do we even know what this sport is anymore? And will we recognize what it eventually becomes?

Let us begin by cutting back to last June, which is when it seemed, for a time, like this whole conflict was ending. After more than a year of constant warring, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf appeared to reach a détente: PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced , alongside LIV Golf’s leadership, that the two bodies would merge to form one unified commercial entity. LIV players would eventually be invited to reapply to the tour; a binding framework had been agreed upon, they said, though the financial details had yet to be worked out. “How did we go from a confrontation to now being partners?” Monahan told the media . “We just realized that we were better off together than we were fighting or apart.”

This announcement was an utter shock to pretty much everyone involved, including many PGA Tour players themselves. Perhaps most of all Rory McIlroy, who had served as the face of the tour’s supposedly principled stand against a competitor backed by a Saudi regime that has a deeply problematic geopolitical history , including a paragraph-long list of what the State Department calls “significant human rights issues.” For months, McIlroy had fought against LIV’s very existence, against what he saw as the greed of the players who had sacrificed their personal ethics for an admittedly tremendous financial gain. If you make a decision “purely for money,” McIlroy said , it “doesn’t usually end up going the right way.” Over that time, McIlroy presumed the PGA Tour leadership was on his side.

And then, facing the prospect of additional player defections and up against a seemingly endless stream of Saudi money, it appeared as if the tour abruptly caved. Two entities that despised each other—LIV was born out of grudges that former tour pro Greg Norman, LIV’s CEO and commissioner, had carried against the tour for 30 years —would find a way to join forces. All the hard feelings would soon be papered over by a wall of cash. McIlroy, captured behind the scenes on Netflix’s reality series Full Swing , said he’d pretty much reached his breaking point with the tour. “Fuck it,” he said. “Do what you want to do.”

It felt, to many, like one of the most transparently cynical moments in the modern history of sports. “Bought,”’ wrote Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post. “That’s the only word for Monahan and his henchies on the PGA Tour policy board.”

Such was the condemnation. But then the actual resolution never came.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs opened an antitrust probe into the merger and held hearings last summer; Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal condemned it as an attempt by a “repressive” regime to “buy influence” in the United States. To this point, the investigation has been stymied by LIV’s backer, the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which reportedly threatened to jail its advisers if they cooperated with the inquiry. The U.S. Department of Justice also said it would investigate the merger over antitrust concerns but has made no announcements on the subject since June. A late-2023 deadline to iron out the details of the merger passed with negotiations supposedly progressing , but nothing concrete was announced. And so, as the bargaining goes on, the struggle for leverage continues.

Rahm—one of the best players on tour—abruptly defected to LIV in December, potentially swinging the momentum of the ongoing negotiations in the direction of the PIF. The PGA Tour, in response, signed an agreement with a deep-pocketed group of American sports team owners and investors called Strategic Sports Group , seemingly trying to wrest back some power from LIV’s endless flow of cash. Monahan appeared at the Players Championship in March and gave an update on the merger that revealed nothing and was most notable for his prickly response to questions about Rahm’s departure. (“I’m focused on every single member of the PGA Tour,” he said .) Asked whether the PGA Tour could go on if the merger didn’t happen at all, Monahan said, “I guess I’ll answer that question if a deal isn’t concluded.”

Now, here we are in April, when we should be talking about the Masters. Instead, we’re still ensnared in speculation about various consortiums of ultrarich people hiding behind a jumble of acronyms—PIF, SSG—that don’t mean a damn thing to the vast majority of people who actually watch the sport. In short, Beall wrote in a March piece, “No one knows anything.”

“It’s like the worst soap opera ever,” says Don Heider, ​​chief executive of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Last week, McIlroy told the publication Golf Monthly that he believes “we’re probably still quite a long ways from” a merger, if one happens at all. And the longer this push and pull for power and leverage and influence goes on, McIlroy said, the less sustainable this fractured landscape becomes for everyone, from players to sponsors to fans. In the meantime, it feels increasingly like there’s no normalcy to be found anywhere in men’s professional golf. There’s just the cynical view that another crumbling American institution sold out to the highest bidder.

Years ago, Lee McGinnis, a professor at Stonehill College who has studied the culture and fandom of golf, wrote a thesis about the notion of the golf course as a “sacred space.” “You consider the golf time that you have with your friends, your buddies, your associates to be sacred time,” McGinnis says. “There are certain norms you don’t violate in terms of etiquette.”

But over the course of the past couple of years, McGinnis says, that notion has been fractured. The sport’s trials have begun to encroach on the joy of the game. “For lack of a better term,” McGinnis says, “it feels dirty.”

Scroll down on Golfhood’s Reddit thread, and the vitriol is apparent: “I wouldn’t watch LIV even if every top 25 PGA player jumped ship,” one respondent says. “Fuck LIV and the people that own it,” says another. The presumption, among many of those fans, is that there’s no point even bothering to watch. Because what is LIV as an actual product, anyhow, beyond the noise? What does it aspire to be, beyond a money-driven construction?

The team format —13 groups of four, plus two wild cards, with a team championship tournament at the end of the season—has rung hollow. (With team names like Fireballs, Crushers, and RangeGoats, it comes across like a Ryder Cup for loudmouths.) And LIV tournaments themselves have no history. Most Americans don’t care about watching three rounds of golf in Singapore or Mayakoba on a course they know nothing about. David Berri, a professor of economics at Southern Utah University, compared it to the NFL’s employment of replacement players during the 1987 strike. “It was like, ‘What am I watching here?’” Berri says. “‘I’m not watching the Eagles. These aren’t the Eagles. These are just 50 guys you found up the street.’”

You might argue that Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka are not Shane Falco , and that would certainly be fair, but the larger point is that the whole concept still feels artificial . A more apt comparison might be Vince McMahon’s XFL: a brash challenger that deliberately and aggressively tried to shatter the sanctity of the sport in order to wedge its way into the culture. At least for now, it mostly seems to exist just to create chaos.

“Going to the LIV” event in Boston, McGinnis says, “I thought, Oh my gosh, this felt … Vegas-ish or Niagara Falls or something. It felt like, Oh my God, this is supposed to be really nice and pristine. … You get in there, and the pros are wearing shorts. It’s like, no, no, this isn’t some kind of a practice round that you hang out with your buddies. It didn’t feel professional.”

“It didn’t feel like a sanctioned event,” he continues. “It violated golf’s sacred spaces.”

The television ratings show how many people would still rather watch the PGA Tour: In February, LIV set a new viewing record of 432,000 people for its tournament in Mayakoba … which was roughly a third of the number of viewers who tuned in to a re-airing of the third round of the rain-shortened Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The vast majority of fans, at least, still don’t understand why or how LIV Golf should be a meaningful force in their lives.

“And that’s why, thus far, LIV Golf has not worked,” Beall says.

But the irony is that the PIF, in backing LIV, may not care about meaning. Not if it can buy that meaning. Not if it can merge its money with the PGA Tour’s legitimacy and, in so doing, perhaps legitimize itself to the world—without the need for the government that backs the PIF to alter its behavior. (This is a concept that experts refer to as “ sportswashing .”) The PIF can wait out the final terms for years if the merger continues to stall; it can focus on recruiting the next generation of young talent with lucrative contracts and keep toying with format and location. It can hang around and see if the fans eventually decide to follow its product. This is its leverage in these negotiations: money and time.

“It just appears to me the Saudis really want to be involved in this,” Berri says. “And the PGA [Tour] people are like, ‘We have to let them be involved because they have enough money to take the golfers away, but they also don’t have any ability to create something that replaces us.’”

It is common, in a politically and culturally fraught situation like this, to lose track of who’s right and who’s wrong. In a way, one fundamental answer to that question is simple, says Heider, the ethics expert at Santa Clara: While there is an argument to be made that a competing tour could be good for the players, the golfers who joined LIV made a poor ethical decision by knowingly joining a competing tour that’s tied to the Saudi government. Period. End of story. “If you’re a player,” Heider says, “you have to really hold your nose and understand that you’re taking money indirectly from a regime … [that’s done] all sorts of horrible things.”

Except it’s not the end of the story. If the players are acting unethically, what about the PGA Tour, which appears to be chasing reunification at all costs to discourage the very idea of competition? Here is where Jodi Balsam, a professor of clinical law at Brooklyn Law School and an expert in antitrust law, brings up the concept of a “natural monopoly.”

A natural monopoly is what we conceive of when we think of most professional sports, Balsam says. A natural monopoly means there is one dominant sports league, in which all of the best players compete against each other. As fans, that’s what we want; it creates the purest form of a meritocracy. But a natural monopoly, in terms of antitrust law, is not considered credible, because in the U.S., monopolies are still (theoretically) supposed to be illegal.

A natural monopoly “seems to be sort of a reflexive statement about any market in which a dominant existing firm is trying to block competitive entry,” Balsam says. “And to be fair to the golfers, if you’re measuring how competitive the market is in selling your services, you want many bidders.”

So what does that actually mean?

“Right now in professional golf,” Balsam says, “consumers’ and golfers’ self-interests are in conflict.”

The players who defected to LIV were chasing their own economic interests, which is what we would expect pretty much anyone else in any other industry to do. But these players also accomplished that goal by accepting money from the Saudi regime, which, Balsam says, “is not a rational economic actor.” And yet in every other industry, foreign investment is an acceptable way of growing a company. Why, Balsam asks, do we care that Saudi Arabia invested in golf but don’t care that it has also invested in corporations such as Uber and Meta ?

The answer, she says, is because sports are different. It’s because athletes represent these aspirational human ideals. It’s because, frankly, we expect more from them. And when people like Golfhood see that those athletes are just as susceptible to self-interest as the rest of us—when they see these impure concepts encroaching on something they hold in higher regard—it shatters people’s illusions. The burden of this civil war has increasingly shifted onto the consumer, who now has to endure a diluted product that’s been weighed down by the heaviness of geopolitics and whose interests feel increasingly marginalized. There is no escape from it. Not even at Augusta National.

Ideally, this week’s Masters would serve as a sort of Swiss summit, in which the best golfers in the world—regardless of their stance in this civil war—would convene in the placid setting of Augusta National Golf Club and compete for the right to drape themselves in the sport’s most sacred piece of bright green haberdashery. The Masters is itself a throwback, a tournament that, as Golf Digest ’s Jerry Tarde wrote in February, has a time-honored strategy of leaving money on the table in exchange for control and sustainability.”

But this year’s Masters is happening as golf is mired in a battle that symbolizes the opposite of that time-honored strategy—one that also resurfaces the issue of golf’s ugly past. “Golf in America is already viewed as an elitist, exclusive game,” says Beall, author of an upcoming book about this era in the sport called Playing Dirty . “Golf is in this position because of entitlement and greed. ... The sport has never been more detached from reality.”

You might argue that a certain detachment from reality is part of the Masters’ charm: The whole event is constructed as a kind of time warp, a step back into a more tranquil era in American life. But for all the cheap sandwiches and reasonably priced souvenirs that Augusta National sells during Masters week—for all the money it really does leave on the table—the club cannot obscure the fact that its insistence on control was why it did not accept a single Black member until 1990 and didn’t have a female member until 2012 . And the sport as a whole cannot erase a shameful history of exclusion; even now, a generation after Tiger Woods upended the status quo—and despite efforts to make change —there are still only a handful of minority professional golfers.

“Maybe golf has blinders on about the issues relating to individual rights and persecution of women and minorities because golf has not been as open historically to women and minorities,” Balsam says. “Now, that has certainly changed. And maybe what that means for the PGA Tour is that, in this partnership, they have to be even more vocal going forward about opening up the sport to everybody.”

If you think that sounds like a vision that is slightly detached from the brutal realities of the modern world, I can’t blame you. And neither can the writers who cover the sport on a regular basis, the ones who have witnessed golf’s grand vision of itself completely collapse. “It appears like most of golf’s central actors have cared more about getting paid or taken care of,” Beall says, “rather than where their actions could be taking golf as a whole.”

The origins of the modern PGA Tour date back to the late 1960s, when a group of pros including Jack Nicklaus, dissatisfied with the lack of control and with their cut of the television money from the PGA of America, chose to break off and form their own organization. At the time, the PGA of America oversaw 6,000-plus golfers, the vast majority of whom were teaching pros rather than touring pros. When the PGA of America refused to sanction a $200,000 event sponsored by Frank Sinatra, feeling it would conflict with the existing Bob Hope Classic, the players began an open revolt.

Over the course of a couple of contentious years, pro golf appeared to be crumbling. Arnold Palmer tried to play peacemaker and failed. Boycotts were threatened; a competing entity called American Professional Golfers Inc. began forming a splinter tour (something Max Elbin, then the president of the PGA of America, called “a thirst for power resulting possibly from too much prosperity”). And then in 1968, a settlement was reached . The modern PGA Tour split off from the PGA of America, which still oversees teaching pros and administers the PGA Championship. And the whole thing became a historical footnote, so much so that most of us don’t even know it happened.

Which made me wonder: Are we being overly histrionic about this whole thing?

“This is sort of the problem with being a sportswriter,” Berri, the economics professor, tells me. “I wrote an article years ago about strikes and lockouts and noted that strikes and lockouts don’t have any permanent effect on attendance when the strike ends. But when you listen to the sportswriters write about strikes and lockouts, when these things were happening, it was always, ‘The world is ending,’ and, ‘These strikes are going to ruin the sport permanently.’”

Maybe Berri is right. Maybe this thing will get resolved sooner rather than later, and maybe the next Tiger Woods will emerge and golf will cycle through another boom period, the way baseball did when the Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa home run chase of 1998 briefly erased the anger over the 1994 strike (at least until we realized none of that was entirely real, either).

“That’s the thing about sports that is so weird compared to every other type of good people consume,” Berri says. “The fans are addicted.”

But this is also where golf is different: Fans like Golfhood and the thousands who responded to that Reddit post can still play the game without caring about the sport . As Beall—a sportswriter himself— wrote in a column for Golf Digest , “Fans don’t need the tour, but the tour sure as hell needs fans.”

It’s a small sample size, Beall says, but television audiences for recent tour events are shrinking , even as interest in playing golf has steadily grown since the pandemic . What if the merger takes place and the Saudis continue to act problematically on the geopolitical stage, and their very presence continues to tarnish the sport? What if the hard feelings between PGA Tour and LIV players still exist even after unification? What if the whole enterprise still feels dirty enough that it fundamentally alters the relationship between the sport and the game?

“This just feels like a huge turning point in pro golf as a product,” Golfhood wrote in that Reddit post. “No other sport is as intertwined between people who play it casually and the top players in the world.”

Maybe Golfhood is right. Or maybe Berri is right, and nothing is sacred anymore, because it never really was. Isn’t this how the addiction to golf works, anyhow? We cycle through periods of frustration and despair, we swear we’re done with it, we curse its very existence—and in the end, we just keep coming back.

Michael Weinreb is a freelance writer and the author of four books.

Mets Right the Ship, Yankees With Another Series Win, and Sean Fennessey on the Knicks’ Playoff Hopes

Nuggets control the west, the kentucky job, and nba draft talk with j. kyle mann. plus, what it’s like to play the masters with michael kim., uconn going for a third plus, the impact of giannis’s injury and picks for the masters..

Masters gets underway with Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Tom Watson hitting ceremonial first shots

Honorary Starters Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Gary Player pose with Augusta National Chairman Fred Ridley during the opening ceremony of the 88th Masters. (Ben Jared/PGA TOUR)

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AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The Masters got underway Thursday after a 2 1/2-hour weather delay with wind still whipping under a cloudy sky, the first time since July at The Open Championship that golf’s best players have come together on the same course for the same tournament.

Six-time champion Jack Nicklaus, with his wife Barbara on the bag, joined three-time winner Gary Player and two-time champion Tom Watson as thousands of patrons surrounded the first tee to watch them hit the traditional opening shots.

“It’s not so easy to put the ball on the tee now, is it?” Player asked the others, before striping one down the fairway.

“Watch out on the left and right,” Nicklaus quipped, before he, too, drove it right down the middle.

Erik van Rooyen and Jake Knapp were the first competitors to tee off, while the heavy hitters from both the PGA TOUR were scattered in featured groups throughout the day. Those with later tee times, including Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth and Collin Morikawa were unlikely to finish before dark, meaning they would need to return Friday to finish their first rounds.

Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 champion and world’s top-ranked player, is the biggest betting favorite at +400 since Woods ruled nearly two decades ago. Rory McIlroy, who missed the cut last year, is trying for the 10th time to complete the career Grand Slam. Woods is playing for only the second time this year because of illness and injury.

Scheffler and Sam Burns have wives each expecting their first child. Both players have said they would withdraw if they learned their wives had gone into labor, though that’s hard to believe if they were leading on the back nine on Sunday.

Last year, the weather pushed the conclusion of the third round into Sunday, and Rahm began the marathon day in a four-shot deficit to Brooks Koepka. He halved it by the start of the final round, and Rahm became the fourth Spaniard to win a green jacket with a four-shot victory over Koepka and Phil Mickelson, who closed with a round of 65 at the age of 52.

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2024 Masters live stream, watch online: TV coverage, channel, Tiger Woods in Round 3, broadcast schedule

Watch every single shot from the biggest names in golf throughout round 3 at the 2024 masters.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The third day of action at the 2024 Masters is going to be a significant one as Moving Day meets Augusta National with the leaderboard undoubtedly shifting ahead of the tournament's final 18 holes. Two days of pristine golf at the nation's best course remain with the best hoping to finish not just in the money but as high up the leaderboard as possible.

The grounds are filled to capacity with patrons, and they were undoubtedly keen to see how Tiger Woods continues to play after he created Masters history on Friday by making his 24th consecutive cut , a tournament record. Woods also hit 22 of 36 fairways through his first two rounds, his best such mark since 1999.

Though he was on the edge of contention entering Saturday, after shooting his highest nine-hole total in Masters history going 6 over on the first nine, Tiger is now firmly out of contention with some questioning whether he will finish 72 holes at all. Meanwhile, Rory McIlroy -- after an extended session on the range Friday night -- shot one of the better rounds of Saturday's early wave. Neither he nor reigning Masters champion Jon Rahm are a threat to those atop the leaderboard.

Far more likely to find the winner's circle is Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 green jacket winner seeking to win his second in three years. Scheffler entered as an overwhelming favorite and sits +100 to win the tournament entering Saturday's third round. He is one of three men tied atop the leaderboard with Max Homa the author of Friday's best performance and Bryson DeChambeau holding steady looking for his second major championship and first since 2020. Who pulls ahead between that trio remains to be seen, but you can follow  2024 Masters leaderboard live updates throughout Round 3  right here and find out.

There is so much to pay attention to this week that it can be overwhelming at times. No worries: We have you covered. On Saturday alone, you can watch the entire first rounds from Woods, McIlroy, Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama and young sensation Ludvig Åberg.

CBS Sports is offering live coverage of the 2024 Masters from start to finish Saturday with our myriad of Masters Live streaming options along with our broadcast from 3-7 p.m. ET. Hit the links below to tune into the Featured Groups channel and watch complete rounds from some of the best golfers in the game, spend your day surveying Amen Corner or view all the action at Holes 15 & 16. Masters TV coverage does not begin until later in the day, so this is the absolute best place to watch the Masters live on Saturday.

All times Eastern

Round 3 -- Saturday, April 13

Round 3 start time:  9:35 a.m.

Masters Live stream Desktop and mobile:  Free on  CBSSports.com ,  CBS Sports app Connected devices*:  Available on  Paramount+ ,  CBS Sports app *Paramount+ login required

• Masters on the Range : 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (CBS Sports Network,  Paramount+ )
• Featured Groups  -- 9:35 a.m. to 7 p.m. 9:35 a.m. -- Rickie Fowler, Hideki Matsuyama 10:55 a.m. -- Rory McIlroy, Camilo Villegas 12:45 a.m. -- Tiger Woods, Tyrell Hatton 2:15 p.m. -- Ludvig Åberg, Matthieu Pavon
• Amen Corner  -- 12:10 p.m. to 6 p.m.
• Holes 15 & 16  -- 1:10 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
• Holes 4, 5 & 6  -- 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Masters.com)

TV coverage:  3-7 p.m. on CBS TV simulcast live stream:  3-7 p.m. on  CBSSports.com ~,  Paramount+ ,  CBS Sports app ~ ~TV provider or Paramount+ with Showtime login required Round 3 encore:  8 p.m. to Midnight on CBS Sports Network

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White House says Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona after state Supreme Court abortion ban ruling

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Arizona on Friday, the White House announced Tuesday, shortly after the state Supreme Court upheld a near-total abortion ban .

Harris will travel to Tucson, the White House said in an advisory, "to continue her leadership in the fight for reproductive freedoms." It noted that it will be the vice president's second trip to Arizona this year and her fifth time since being sworn in.

"Last month, the Vice President visited Phoenix, AZ to highlight how extremists in states across the country have proposed and enacted abortion bans that threaten women’s health, force them to travel out of state to receive care, and criminalize doctors," the White House said.

The White House said that the trip was part of Harris' nationwide "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour "that included stops in Wisconsin, California, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, and Minnesota."

Since the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Harris has held more than 80 events on reproductive rights in 20 states, the White House added.

The announcement about her upcoming trip came just about an hour after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban still on the books in the state could be enforced. Under the law from 1864, anyone who performs the procedure or helps a woman access that care could face felony charges and up to two to five years in prison. The  law  — which was codified in 1901, and again in 1913 — includes an exception to save the woman’s life.

President Joe Biden, Harris and Democrats in general are hoping that existing abortion bans and threats to expand them nationwide will help them win their races in this November's general election.

Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.

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Pinehurst #10 opened last week. Want to play it?

Masters tickets: How to get 2025 Masters tickets at Augusta National

Brooks Koepka putts on the 9th green during the first round of the 2024 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club.

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AUGUSTA, Ga. — If you’re watching the Masters on TV and wondering how you can get your own 2025 Masters tickets and score a trip to Augusta National Golf Club , then let this be your handy guide.

How to get 2025 Masters tickets

Let’s get one thing straight — not just anyone can snag Masters tickets . You have to apply via the Masters ticket lottery. To do so, go to the Masters Tickets page here , log in to your account (if you have applied before) or create a new account.

You can’t technically apply now, since the application window is June 1-20, 2024. So make sure to remember the date; the Masters website also gives you the option to set a calendar reminder, which you’d be smart to do.

The Masters has a ‘mystery beer.’ We tried to find its origin

Once the lottery opens, you simply select the number of tickets you are requesting — 1-4 for practice rounds and 1-2 for tournament rounds — and for the day(s) you want to attend. You can apply for just one day or all of them, but if you win you’ll only be selected for one.

Tickets for 2024 were $100 for practice rounds and $140 for tournament rounds. Prices for 2025 have yet to be announced, but even if the price increases it will be modest, like most years. You won’t be asked to pay for tickets until you are notified via email that you won them, which usually happens in mid-July. (And if you didn’t win, you’ll find out then too.)

That’s it. So set your reminder for June so you can apply (and for more information, click here ).

And worst case, if you don’t get tickets, you can still gain access to Augusta National and the Masters, but it’s going to cost you. There’s a ton of hospitality offerings, like Map & Flag , the Masters’ new high-end facility that debuted this week across the street. Although that price ($17,000) does a little more damage to your bank account than winning the Masters ticket lottery.

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Contenders and pretenders on masters moving day | seen and heard at augusta day 6, how a father-daughter masters trip revealed golf's true magic, how much money does the 2024 masters winner get purse and payout, 2024 masters sunday channel: how to watch round 4 at augusta national, josh berhow.

As GOLF.com’s managing editor, Berhow handles the day-to-day and long-term planning of one of the sport’s most-read news and service websites. He spends most of his days writing , editing, planning and wondering if he’ll ever break 80. Before joining GOLF.com in 2015, he worked at newspapers in Minnesota and Iowa. A graduate of Minnesota State University in Mankato, Minn., he resides in the Twin Cities with his wife and two kids. You can reach him at [email protected].

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KROKUS Postpones Summer/Fall 2020 North American Tour

Swiss hard rock legends KROKUS have postponed their last-ever concerts in USA and Canada due to the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the globe. The 13-date trek was originally scheduled to kick off at Canton Hall in Dallas, Texas on September 18 and conclude at Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, California on October 10.

Says the band: "Due to the current state of things going on, it was both nearly impossible to get all the needed pieces to fall in line to do the tour and with the uncertainty of the immediate future of live music in North America. We felt it was best to postpone the tour this fall and look for a more appropriate time to finally return to the USA/Canada to kick your ass on the farewell tour. We hope things change and we will work with our team to insure the next tour will be 100% safe and sound. We love you all."

Back in September 2018, KROKUS announced that it was going to be embarking on a farewell tour dubbed "Adios Amigos" before calling it a day. At the time, they said their final show would take place on December 7, 2019 at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, Switzerland. However, last June, KROKUS frontman Marc Storace posted a message on Facebook indicating that the band would play additional concerts beyond the Zurich date.

"We always said Zürich is the last show for Europe — but USA, Canada and Mexico want some 'Adios' too!" he wrote. "That's why we do an encore in 2020 there — we think our fans deserve that — they cannot all fly to Europe."

Storace later clarified that he and his bandmates are "not responsible for choosing the countries/cities/towns we play in, since we depend on your local promoters to book us. But you can help by calling your local radio/TV stations asking for more KROKUS ," he wrote. "Hell yeah! We'd love to wake up your lazy town!"

When KROKUS first announced its decision to embark on a farewell tour, the band explained in a statement: " KROKUS shows have always been special and should stay that way. That's why we decided to stop when it's still really good. That's how the fans should remember us."

Since 1975, KROKUS has stood for high-quality, honest-to-goodness, hand-made power rock. No other Swiss rock band sells albums and its back catalogue worldwide like KROKUS . The band has sold over 15 million records, toured the world, and received gold and platinum discs in the USA and Canada. The milestones in their rock career are dotted around the world: from Australia and the USA to Mexico, Russia, Japan, and China. KROKUS was the first Swiss band to sell out the legendary Hallenstadion in Zurich and has received a Diamond Disc for selling one million albums in Switzerland alone.

1980 saw the band set out to conquer America, Canada, and England, quickly consolidating its reputation as a strong, no-nonsense live band. Soon they were part of unforgettable headline tours and on the same bill as incredible bands such as AC/DC , VAN HALEN , RUSH , TED NUGENT , JUDAS PRIEST , MOTÖRHEAD and many, many more. These were wild times, full of big adventures, which saw the band not only going gold and platinum in the U.S. and Canada, but also being made honorary citizens of Memphis, Tennessee.

But it hasn't all been one long high: death, sickness, and internal strife pushed the band to the brink of collapse. The story of KROKUS is like no other. It is full of highs and lows, sell-out stadium concerts and sweaty club gigs. These five musketeers of rock have outlasted trends and survived treacherous U.S. managers, tough splits, bad deals, shady lawyers, drugs, awful fast food, endless bus trips, disco, grunge, grotesque record companies, and double-dealing advisors.

In the course of its legendary career, KROKUS has rocked over 2,000 shows on five continents, countless cities, unique locations, crazy gigs, and loyal fans.

English rock journalist Malcolm Dome quite rightly said: "If you look at the long-term output of this band, KROKUS is clearly one of the best hard rock bands of the last 40 years."

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