Search Results for: Beauty School

Classic-rock fan George Petersen doesn’t need another copy of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” or Cream’s “Disraeli Gears.” He has spent the past four decades buying and re-buying his favorite music in a succession of new formats: vinyl, 8-track, cassette, compact disc, Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio. Enough is enough. The basement is full. “We as consumers have been trained by the music industry to go out and buy a new piece of plastic every few years,” said the 51-year-old Petersen, editorial director of Mix, a San Francisco-based magazine that covers professional sound recording. “Why do we keep buying… Read more »

Tower Records, the storied 1960s music chain that launched the music megastore and became a cultural retailing icon, strolls into its 43rd holiday shopping season this weekend struggling with debt and on the ropes. The West Sacramento, Calif.-based Tower hopes four weeks of strong sales will reverse a new image as the tottering giant inside a stumbling music industry. Among the chain’s troubles: deep-discounting rivals, changing consumer habits, lack of hits and its own missteps in the 1990s as the music business began a dramatic shift. Tower exemplifies the even deeper woes in a recording industry beset by piracy, computer… Read more »

Nearly 40 years after he wrote the lyric “He not busy being born is busy dying,” Bob Dylan clearly still believes that estimation is right on the mark. Looking snazzy in a black cowboy hat and old-school Western suit, the 60-year-old folk-rock icon was tireless, fearless and masterful throughout his 140-minute show Thursday at the Arena. Within shouting range of Treptow Park, where he played in 1987 when the area was still communist East Germany, the Arena is a onetime bus depot and hangar that now serves as one of the city’s largest music venues. The 7,500-capacity, standing-room-only space served… Read more »

There might be a better setting for a Tool concert, but it doesn’t exist in waking life: The prehistoric, rugged beauty of Red Rocks Amphitheater felt almost threatening when serving as the physical backdrop for the band’s volcanic performance on Friday night, which opened a brief tour with prog-rock veterans King Crimson. Flanked by rock formations pushed up from the bubbling earth more than 60 million years ago (and donning a bald head, sporadic body paint and a black leather bodice), Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan looked like an androgynous ambassador of the apocalypse. Judging by the capacity crowd –… Read more »

Alicia Keys says her expectations for her debut album, “Songs in A Minor,” never had anything to do with how well it sold. “Being connected with people, that’s what I hope for,” the 20-year-old Manhattan native says. “Numbers I leave for everyone else to count and calculate.” Well, everyone else has had a lot of calculating to do. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart after its release June 26. “We were stunned by the sales,” said Clive Davis, the music-industry veteran who heads up Keys’ label, J records. “Stunned” pretty much sums up the music world’s… Read more »

Fans of Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning Almost Famous were left with quite a few questions about the real people that inspired the film’s fictional characters. But none left admirers of the movie more curious than super-groupie Pennie Lane (played by Kate Hudson, who received an Academy Award nomination). Yes, there is a real Pennie Lane, and, yes, she is back. And after a quarter of a century away from music, the real Pennie Lane (not her true surname, but the one she is choosing to use for her music business venture, as well as to protect her privacy) has returned to… Read more »

For teens, summertime not only means that school’s out, but it also means there are new movies to see, concerts to attend, and CDs to buy. The July issue of J-14 (on sale June 8) makes it easy for kids to sort through the choices with “Your Best Summer Ever,” a 12 page J-14 cover story that includes dozens of previews, exclusive interviews with the stars, tour schedules, CD release dates, movie premiere dates, and giveaways. According to Janet Giovanelli, J-14 Editor-in-Chief, “There’s plenty of new rock, pop and r & b music this summer. ‘N Sync is the hardest… Read more »