Each month For The Record is here to bring you the best places to find your next favorite band in different cities all over the world—right to your screen. This month we’re diving into Grand Rapids, MI.
In this week’s Tuesday Ten, we’re exploring the connections between some of our favorite bands named after lyrics and the songs they’re titled for.
With a traditionally-rooted sound, varied instrumentals, and fired-up vocals amplifying the soul of this much-loved genre, the Dropkick Murphys have a sound all their own. But as inspiring and avant-garde as this variation of simple American punk is, it is safe to say that this band has played all of their cards.
Record-store owners owe Apple iTunes a tremendous debt of gratitude for being an uncaring, scatter-brained, inhuman little jukebox: It’s saving their skin right now.
The running narrative in the music world during the past decade is that the physical album is dead, and file-sharing, downloads and, most notably, Apple’s iTunes killed it. Yes and no.
NEW YORK — Green Day will appear at New York’s Bowery Ballroom on May 18, just three days after the release of the band’s hotly anticipated eighth studio album, “21st Century Breakdown,” MTV reports. The small club show is a rarity for the band, whose last album, 2004’s “American Idiot” sold more than 12 million copies. But the group has done some guerilla-style gigs in its hometown of San Francisco this past week, including a show at the 500-capacity DNA Lounge According to the New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog, the band played “21st Century Breakdown” in its entirety before running… Read more »
Quiet time is a rarity for the Jonas Brothers these days. Following a special performance for more than 500 screaming tween and teen girls at Apple’s downtown Manhattan store on Tuesday night, the brothers – Kevin, 20, Joe, 18, and Nick, 15 – huddled in a stairwell, trying to find a quiet space to conduct an interview with The Associated Press. Good luck with that. Even as they spoke, their words were almost drowned out by deafening, doglike shrieks from girls still trying to find a way to get at their idols, who have set off a boy-band pop craze… Read more »
Fans of safe and sentimental melodic pop-rock were treated to the best of both worlds Thursday, when Something Corporate and Yellowcard hit the Roseland Ballroom stage near the end of their six-week co-headlining tour. Where Something Corporate mostly played amidst an air of soul-baring and introspection, Yellowcard’s cheer and bravado helped dissipate any gray clouds that may have hovered overhead. With three flags marked by upside-down hearts hanging from the rafters and spotlights almost always fixed on Andrew McMahon’s upright piano at center stage, Something Corporate’s set alternated between songs about being in and out of love from their 2002… Read more »
Works by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and George Harrison are among the major catalog titles slated to be released in the first quarter of 2004. On Feb. 24, Universal Music Enterprises (UME) will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the British Invasion with a multi-disc set on the Hip-O label. UME will also begin a year-long, multi-title campaign feting rock’n’roll’s birth. Rhino delivers “Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath,” an eight-CD set collecting each album issued by the band’s original lineup (plus a bonus DVD) in March. On March 9, Sony catalog division Legacy will honor metal gods Judas Priest… Read more »
What everyone always wants to know is: who’s the worst? Meaning: which really famous person out there is a berk whose lack of personality is in inverse proportion to their abundance of fame? And the answer is, of course, all of them. No, it’s not. It’s Jon Bon Jovi. The next question – who’s the best, of course – is more difficult. The interviewees I like are the ones that turn out to be more than you expected, whether that’s more intelligent, or honest, or bonkers, or fun, whatever. And there are plenty of those. Madonna (sharper), Björk (wilder), James… Read more »
Two of the biggest slasher-film icons of the ’80s are finally set to meet, as the nightmare pairing of “Freddy Vs. Jason” hits U.S. theaters Aug. 15. Destiny’s Child’s Kelly Rowland will star in the film, but the soundtrack to the flick, due Aug. 5 via Roadrunner, will be chock full of hard-edged rock. The disc is highlighted by an unreleased track from Slipknot and contributions from Sepultura, Chimaira, Stone Sour and Type O Negative. Slipknot is contributing the previously unreleased track “Snap” to “Freddy Vs. Jason.” Other previously unheard cuts will include Killswitch Engage’s “When Darkness Falls” featuring Howard… Read more »
