Search Results for: The Warning

Washington – A year after Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl, all the excitement surrounding indecent content this year seems to be taking place in Washington, D.C. Among recent developments: The House is considering indecency legislation that would authorize $500,000 fines for broadcast licensees and performers, as well as license revocation hearings for repeat violators. The bill easily passed the Energy and Commerce Committee Feb. 8 and now goes to the floor for almost certain approval. Phil Lombardo, joint board chairman of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, is charging the Federal Communications Commission with inconsistent and discriminatory indecency… Read more »

CANNES, France – The theme song isn’t quite “Happy Days are Here Again,” but almost. Music industry veterans, after several years of worrying about how illegal Internet downloads could threaten their business, are humming a decidedly upbeat tune these days. While questions remain about how to best deliver hits by U2 or arias by Luciano Pavarotti to music fans, one of the industry’s top conferences opened Saturday in this Riviera resort amid new signs that online downloads could become a moneymaker after all. The optimism at the Midem conference is a sharp turnaround from a year earlier, before music publishers… Read more »

Green Day topped the U.S. pop albums chart for a second consecutive week Wednesday, passing the two million sales mark and extending its lead over Eminem during a quiet sales period. Overall U.S. album sales in the week ended Jan. 16 were down 9.5% from the previous week at 9.6 million units and 8.6% lower than the same week last year. Year-to-date sales stand at 20.3 million units, down 20% from 2004. Green Day’s “American Idiot” (Reprise) sold almost 100,500 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan, up 271 copies from the previous week. Along with Shania Twain’s “Greatest Hits,” which bolted… Read more »

Dallas – Motley Crue singer Vince Neil is accused of knocking out an employee of a Dallas nightclub after a disagreement over sound levels during a concert. An arrest warrant for misdemeanor assault was issued Wednesday for Neil in the fight at Gilley’s Dallas during an Oct. 30 show. Gilley’s soundman Michael Talbert was knocked unconscious by a punch allegedly thrown by Neil that pushed him to the floor. A CAT scan showed a mild concussion, Talbert told The Dallas Morning News for a story in Thursday’s editions. According to a police report attached to the warrant, the singer motioned… Read more »

Tupac Shakur has always meant different things to different people. But if you ask anyone who knew him personally or followed his career, they’ll all agree he was compelling, if nothing else. Eminem, for one, was so moved by Pac that he approached Shakur’s mother, Afeni, and asked to work on the deceased icon’s next posthumous album, Loyal to the Game. “I wrote to Afeni and said, ‘Please consider letting me produce this album,’ ” he told MTV News a few weeks ago in Detroit. “I just feel, as a longtime fan of Tupac… his music, his persona, his everything.… Read more »

Sony BMG Tuesday offered either early retirement or voluntary severance to all eligible employees at the newly formed music giant, warning that future layoffs may not be accompanied by such generous terms. More than 2,000 jobs at Sony BMG’s worldwide operations are expected to be cut as the company looks to generate at least $350 million in savings following its Aug. 5 creation as a 50-50 joint venture between Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG. Billboard magazine recently estimated the combined company had about 10,000 employees. “We have designed these programs to offer you an opportunity to separate from Sony BMG… Read more »

Green Day’s first studio album in four years will be titled “American Idiot,” a spokesperson told Billboard.com. The set is tentatively due Sept. 14 via Reprise. It’s the follow-up to 2000’s “Warning,” which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 998,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Along with No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Bad Religion and others, Green Day is expected to lend a track to “Rock Against Bush Vol. 2,” the second in a series of politically minded compilations due this August. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong will also contribute two songs to… Read more »

“At the end of every show we’d grab handfuls of these stickers we made at Kinko’s with our name and website,” says Steriogram frontman Brad Carter. “We’d toss ’em to our fans from the stage, 300 or 400 stickers every night.” Carter laughs at the band’s ultra-humble approach to building fan loyalty. But it’s working. Steriogram’s homemade stickers, website and music videos, together with its enthusiastic courting of street teams and high school kids, helped launch the rock-hiphop group from obscurity in Auckland, NZ, to a major deal with Capitol Records. “Our goal was to play in America because our… Read more »

Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl flash lasted less than three seconds, but the impact continues to ripple through Viacom, the media giant that broadcast the game. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, right-wing radio commentators and outraged citizens are calling for stricter decency standards – and the artists and executives who make a living from edgy music, performances and videos are in retreat. MTV in particular, which produced the Super Bowl halftime show, is in the midst of a wide-scale re-evaluation of its musical, news and dramatic content. Within a week of the game, MTV – no stranger to criticism, most recently… Read more »

Here’s one “guitar greats” list that Jimi Hendrix did not top: “the 100 greatest metal guitarists of all time.” According to Guitar World magazine, the No. 1 metal guitarist is Tony Iommi, the God-fearing axeman with pioneering English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Six musicians claimed the next four spots: Metallica’s James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett tied at No. 2; AC/DC siblings Angus and Malcolm Young at No. 3; Randy Rhoads, the late sideman for Ozzy Osbourne, at No. 4; and Eddie Van Halen, of the foursome that bears his name, at No. 5. Hendrix was No. 12, six places… Read more »