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Nearly 7,000 music industry representatives and more than 1,000 bands are descending on Austin this week for the 17th annual South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival. Even for a place that calls itself the “Live Music Capitol of the World,” the planes, buses and vans arriving full of shaggy-haired men and tattooed women carrying guitars and drums adds a new dimension to the city. The musicians and industry representatives have come for four days of industry panels, discussions and trade shows. To balance out the shop talk, the festival features four intense nights of live music with 1,000 acts… Read more »

The Beastie Boys recently released a new anti-war song via their official website (beastieboys.com). “In A World Gone Mad…” represents the first new music from the group in three years, and it is free to download. The veteran rap trio-which comprises Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mike D-is currently in New York working on material for a new album. Mike D told MTV what motivated the group to record the new song, “We all got to a point where we felt like, we’re in this room in New York, we’re looking at each other every day, and we felt compelled to speak… Read more »

A flying sheep’s head hit a concertgoer and fractured his skull at a concert of metal band Mayhem. The band, part of Norway’s death metal music scene, was carving up a dead sheep as part of its stage act when the animal’s head flew off lead singer Maniac’s knife and struck Per Kristian Hagen, 25. The show was Thursday in Bergen, 487 kilometers (302 miles) west of the capital, Oslo. “My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now. I like them, but not when they come flying through the air,” Hagen told The Associated Press Monday from his hospital… Read more »

Hollywood and Silicon Valley carried their battle over Internet piracy to Capitol Hill on Thursday, debating the need for technology to prevent the illegal trading of movies and television shows online. The entertainment industry told lawmakers that without copy protection the threat of extensive piracy will force the industry to move its best programming to pay services such as cable and satellite TV. “Over-the-air television as we know it today will be a thing of the past,” said Fritz Attaway, an executive vice president with the Motion Picture Association of America. He testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on… Read more »

Relatives of two victims of the deadly Rhode Island nightclub fire sued the club owners and the rock band Great White among others on Tuesday in likely the first wrongful death suit related to the blaze, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said. The lawsuit was filed in Providence Superior Court in Rhode Island on behalf of the families of Donald Roderiques and Tina Ayer. Their lawyer, Brian Cunha, said he expected to file more suits on behalf of four other families later this week. He said he would ask the jury for at least $1 million per victim. The Feb. 20 fire… Read more »

British pop singer George Michael, who has spoken out against a possible war on Iraq, has criticized plans by Lee Ryan of British boy band Blue to gather pop stars to record a protest song. Ryan said last week he hoped to approach stars such as Justin Timberlake, Pink and Kylie Minogue for a song in the spirit of Band Aid, the 1984 record to aid Ethiopian famine relief. But Michael, 39, said the prospective participants were too young and politically naive to carry it off. “I’m begging, I’m hoping that there will not be a Band Aid 2 because… Read more »

Hip-hop impresario Sean “P.Diddy” Combs is within a hair’s breadth of inking a worldwide distribution deal for his Bad Boy Entertainment imprint with Universal Motown Records Group. The partners haven’t put pen to paper yet, but the pact is 80% to completion, said a source close to the situation. The deal, which carries a fairly short term of between two and three years, is said to be worth roughly $10 million – a fraction of the $100 million Combs was seeking when he first cut Bad Boy loose from BMG last year. However, it does allow Combs to retain 100%… Read more »

Singer-actress Courtney Love was detained Tuesday at Heathrow airport after an airline claimed she verbally abused the crew of a trans-Atlantic flight. Love was “verbally abusive toward our cabin crew and disruptive” on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angeles to London, airline spokesman Paul Moore said. No one was injured on the Boeing 747, which carried 201 passengers and 20 crew. TV channel Sky News aired pictures of Love, 38, being escorted by two officers from the plane to a police van on the runway after the flight landed about 11 a.m. She smiled at the camera and covered… Read more »

The biggest winners turned out to be MIAs at the 30th annual AMAs, including Eminem, winner of a leading four American Music Awards. Others absent when their names were called at Monday night’s American Music Awards were the bands Creed and the Dixie Chicks, who won two awards apiece. Tim McGraw, who sang a “Tiny Dancer” duet with Elton John at the start of the nationally televised show, left for Nashville before winning favorite male country artist, and Mary J. Blige – another absentee – was named favorite female hip-hop artist. Eminem won in every category in which he was… Read more »

Blamed by shareholders for AOL Time Warner’s sharp fall in fortunes, Steve Case said he will step down as chairman of the conglomerate he helped create – a marriage of old and new media first hailed as revolutionary but now struggling for a future. Case’s departure means the company’s leadership will be without any of the key architects of the blockbuster merger of America Online and Time Warner in 2001. The company said Sunday he would step down in May. In a brief statement, Case said he had concluded AOL Time Warner was better off without him as chairman. “Some… Read more »