Search Results for: Four Chord Music

In the words of one of their songs, Dancing Days are here again for fans of Led Zeppelin. Defunct for almost 23 years, the pioneering English band behind such hard rock classics as “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kashmir” has cleaned out its vaults to issue eight hours of previously unreleased live material on DVD and CD. The “Led Zeppelin DVD” contains footage from four tours spanning 1970 to 1979; the CD “How The West Was Won” combines two Los Angeles shows from 1972 to replicate a single concert. Remarkably, the band’s leader and guitarist, Jimmy Page, who compiled the releases,… Read more »

Sticking to nearly the same sound that got them booed during their debut performance as kids at a Palo Alto middle school, The Donnas have paved a nine-year path from obscurity to success. “We were just dorks in high school with weird clothes,” Head Donna and lead vocalist Brett Anderson deadpans between bites of breakfast at Mel’s Diner during a tour stop in San Francisco. Now, the female foursome’s powerful punk and tales of romantic angst are the stuff of hot-selling CDs and live performances on MTV. Anderson, bassist Maya Ford, whiz guitarist Allison Robertson and frenetic drummer Torry Castellano… Read more »

Any band that continues playing while one of its members bleeds profusely has gotta be punk rock, regardless of how poppy its harmony-filled songs are. Montreal’s Simple Plan did just that during a recent show in Detroit when a member of the crowd expressed his love by flinging a bottle of water at drummer Chuck Comeau’s head. “I stopped playing for a minute and took a towel to wipe my face, and it was just covered in blood,” Comeau recalled. “But we had two songs left, so I kept going. Every break I would just stop and pull out the… Read more »

Marcos Curiel has long been a fan of Carlos Santana, so when the P.O.D. guitarist discovered that the jam rocker wanted P.O.D. to record a song for his upcoming album, Curiel felt so alive he thought he could… well, you know how the song goes. “Every chance we get, we try to go to a Santana show because they just rock live,” enthused Curiel. “We’ve always been a band that’s open to so many different styles of music, so when we got the opportunity to work with Santana, we jumped on it.” P.O.D. got that opportunity after their producer, Howard… Read more »

When was the last time this happened: a breakthrough artist spends the night its album debuted in the top 10 on The Billboard 200 chart playing the opening slot at a tiny Sunset Strip club instead of headlining its own show – or partying like a rock star elsewhere in town? How about Wednesday (June 12) night, when current it-girl Avril Lavigne, who’s all of 17 years old, played an unexpectedly aggressive early set at the Viper Room in Hollywood. Though Lavigne was there, in theory, to warm the mostly-music-industry-crowd up for the hitless bands Lo Cal AM and Plain… Read more »

Twelve hours, four stages and more than 40 bands marked the end of the three-day Skate and Surf Festival on Sunday. Held at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, the second installment of the now annual event featured performances from Bouncing Souls, Face to Face and the Descendents, among many others. While the Warped Tour travels from town to town with many of skateboarding and BMX culture’s best-known athletes and favorite artists, the stationary Skate and Surf tends to be more down-home, offering quarter-pipes and rails to anybody bold enough to show up with a bike or a board and a… Read more »

A near-capacity crowd at Key Arena greeted headliners Incubus Friday night with open arms and open eyes – and deafening, wall-vibrating screams. Thousands of hollering fans – many encased in freshly purchased T-shirts from the merch tables – couldn’t be wrong: After more than a decade in the business, and years of touring far smaller venues with middling success, the band from sleepy Calabasas, California, has most definitely arrived. But before they took to the stage, their So-Cal neighbors, Hoobastank, warmed up the Key with a thunderous half-hour set. The foursome had no problem filling up the arena with their… Read more »

The last time System of a Down hit Las Vegas, it was on the Pledge of Allegiance Tour with Slipknot. System held their own on that outing, but now, back in Sin City as the headliner at a more intimate setting – the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s Joint – System had a lot more to prove. By the time the L.A. foursome of Armenian-American rockers strolled casually onto the stark stage, the crowd was already geared up for SOAD’s harsh and heavy sounds. Then the thunder hit. The opening riffs hammered across the venue – no introduction was needed… Read more »

The more time Wes Borland spent in Limp Bizkit, the more things around him turned black. First his wardrobe – draping cloaks that brought to mind one of his favorite characters, Darth Vader. Then his eyes – gripping contacts that, next to his flaring nostrils, made him look like a guitar-toting monster. His heart was the next to go. “Bells start going off, like, ‘This is what it feels like to sell out,’” Borland recalled. “I’m enjoying all the perks of [Limp Bizkit], but I feel my heart is going black, because this is not what I’m called to do.… Read more »

“Shhhhh!” is printed across the front of one of the T-shirts Ryan Adams is hawking during his current tour in support of his fabulous second solo disc, “Gold” (Lost Highway). It suggests that fame is the intention of least value for this 27-year-old singer-guitarist, an artist who has managed to fly ever so slightly above the radar as a solo artist and, previously, as leader of Whiskeytown, making one impressive artistic statement after another. On a night when a Mick Jagger performance was the hottest celeb-filled event in town, Adams’ show was the hottest ticket – the House of Blues… Read more »