Concert promoter Live Nation and ticket-seller Ticketmaster consummated their merger on Monday after the U.S. Justice Department approved it with conditions meant to lower ticket prices for consumers.
Last May, Derek Webb announced that his fourth studio album, Stockholm Syndrome, had been deemed too scandalous for release by his label, INO Records.
President Barack Obama’s promises of change are falling short for one core Democratic constituency: gays and lesbians, whose leaders say Obama’s administration is not keeping up with the times. Gay rights campaigners, most of them Democrats who supported Obama in November, have begun to voice their public frustration with Obama’s inaction, small jokes at their community’s expense and deafening silence on what they see as the signal civil rights issue of this era. His campaign promises to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and the military ban on openly gay and lesbian servicemembers have not been fulfilled. And the news,… Read more »
Two years after beginning his improbable quest as a little-known, first-term Illinois senator moves into the Oval Office as the nation’s fourth youngest president. A King once stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with dreams of equality and respect. Today, a president will stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, living out that dream in front of an entire nation and creating a new chapter in American history. It’s a chapter many didn’t think they’d live to see. But the day is upon us, and millions of spectators will watch this historic event unfold between those two… Read more »
New Orleans-based eclectic/innovative rock quartet MUTEMATH has confirmed an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this Thursday Jan. 15, 2009. The Grammy-nominated band will perform a brand new song entitled, “Spotlight,” from the chart-topping Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, TWILIGHT, based on the Stephanie Meyers book which has become an international phenomenon. The soundtrack to the movie was released this past Nov. 4, 2008. The critically-acclaimed band are currently in the studio recording their 2nd Teleprompt/Warner Bros. Records album. Release is expected later this year. Details to be announced soon. MUTEMATH first came to national attention with their independently—produced… Read more »
November 4 was a historic night for the United States, the city of Chicago and, on another level, for C3 Presents. C3, an Austin, Texas-based promoter/event producer whose principals are Charlie Jones, Charles Attal and Charlie Walker, produces Chicago’s Lollapalooza and Austin’s Austin City Limits Festival . It now has another production credit: Barack Obama ‘s election night victory rally in Chicago’s Grant Park. “It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever been involved in,” Jones says. “It was a humbling experience and very emotional.” C3’s relationship with the Obama campaign began during the Democratic Party presidential… Read more »
“SIMPLE PLAN,” the long-awaited new album from Lava/Atlantic recording group Simple Plan, has made a triumphant chart debut, both here and around the world. The Montreal-based band’s third studio effort — which features the singles “When I’m Gone” and “Your Love Is A Lie” — was the Billboard 200’s highest-charting debut of the week at #14, while also placing high on a variety of additional tallies, including #3 on “Top Rock Albums,” #4 on “Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums,” and #7 on “Top Digital Albums.” In addition, the album reached the #1 spot on the iTunes Store’s “Top Pop Albums” ranking.… Read more »
Roy Scheider, a one-time boxer whose broken nose and pugnacious acting style made him a star in “The French Connection” and who later uttered one of cinematic history’s most memorable lines in “Jaws,” has died. He was 75. Scheider died Sunday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital in Little Rock, hospital spokesman David Robinson said. The hospital did not release a cause of death, but Scheider had been treated for multiple myeloma at the hospital’s Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy for the past two years. Scheider earned two Academy Award nominations – a best-supporting nod for… Read more »
Between them, sisters Jessica and Ashlee Simpson have had one high-profile divorce, an embarrassing lip-synch scandal, plastic surgeries both obvious and subtle, blame for a Dallas Cowboys loss, and an impresario father looming over it all. Each shot to prominence – and up the pop charts – by taking the primrose path of MTV reality shows. Each has had shining success at selling records, followed by abject failure. And that’s just a sampling. If you’re a celeb-watcher (or football bettor), it’s juicy stuff. If you’re a Simpson sister, it’s beginning to look like a critical mass of negativity. Of late,… Read more »
Relationships in the entertainment world can be famously fraught. And few are more so these days than the one between Steve Jobs and Universal Music chief Doug Morris. You may recall that Morris recently refused to re-up a multi-year contract to put his company’s music on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. That’s because Jobs wouldn’t ease his stringent terms, which limit how record companies can market their music. Now, Morris is going on the offensive. The world’s most powerful music executive aims to join forces with other record companies to launch an industry-owned subscription service. BusinessWeek has learned that Morris has… Read more »
