Search Results for: COIN

Los Angeles – Academia’s loss is heavy metal’s gain. Ian Kilmister, a.k.a. Lemmy, the frontman for Grammy-winning English rock trio Motorhead, could have made a stimulating history professor, sharing his begrudging admiration for Goering and disdain for “bastards” like Hitler and Roosevelt with eager students. Instead, the 59-year-old achieved cult fame with generations of headbangers by singing and writing furious anthems like “Killed By Death” and “Orgasmatron.” But he remains fascinated by World War II and he spends his money collecting Nazi memorabilia, which is piled high in his two-bedroom apartment off the Sunset Strip. “I was born in ’45,… Read more »

London – EMI Group PLC, one of the world’s largest music companies, warned Monday that its full-year sales and profits will be below expectations because of the delayed release of two key albums and market weakness in the fourth quarter. Its shares fell 16 percent. EMI, which owns several record labels including Virgin and Capitol, said the latest offerings from the bands Coldplay and Gorillaz – both expected to be big sellers – will be released in the first half of the next financial year. The albums had been due to hit the shelves before the end of the current… Read more »

The Take Action Tour (www.takeactiontour.com) kicked off in DC with an evening of hard-hitting music from Sugarcult, The Early November, Hawthorne Heights, Hopesfall and Gym Class Heros. The event is the brainchild of Louis Posen, president and founder of punk/hard-core label Hopeless Records. In 1998, five years after forming Hopeless, Posen formed Sub City Records, an offshoot label that donates 5 percent of its prof- its to charity, according to the Web site. In 1999, Sub City took its socially conscious act on the road. The idea of the Take Action Tour is to connect Sub City bands – and… Read more »

Back in the dark ages of May 2004, most people could only dream of having a personal radio show and beaming their thoughts out to thousands of people across the globe. Now, if you want to tell the world how you feel, all you need is a little piece of software, a microphone and something to say and you’re an instant international DJ. Thanks to the hot medium called “podcasting,” thousands of budding radio personalities are spouting off on everything from music and movies to technology, pagan spells, food, fishing, art, beer and the local farm report. Podcasting – a… Read more »

Los Angles – You only need one word to sum up the year in pop 2004: Usher. Clearly, it was his house. The rest of us were just overnight visitors. It began innocently enough, right at the beginning of the calendar year. On the Billboard Hot 100 dated Jan. 10, 2004 (coincidentally, the 55th anniversary of the introduction of the 45 rpm record), the highest new entry was “Yeah!” by Usher Featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris. Six weeks later, “Yeah!” had assumed pole position, and remained there for 12 weeks, tying it as the longest-running No. 1 (with “Lose Yourself”… Read more »

Just like in professional wrestling, a band’s entrance music provides a pretty good forecast of what’s to follow. When Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” filled an arena, Hulk Hogan’s irrepressible fortitude wasn’t far behind. The sound of glass shattering typically prefaced a Stone Cold-style beat-down. And this past summer, when Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best,” off “The Karate Kid” soundtrack, rained down upon an unsuspecting rock club, it meant that one of the most immodest bands around was about to deliver its musical equivalent of a jump-front kick to the head. “We thought it was the funniest thing,” explained Fall… Read more »

Los Angeles – Motley Crue, the hard-living Los Angeles heavy metal band that symbolized rock’n’roll excess in the 1980s, is reuniting for a world tour beginning next February in Florida, it announced on Monday. The foursome’s original members last played together six years ago, when drummer Tommy Lee – embroiled in domestic difficulties with then-wife Pamela Anderson – quit to form a short-lived side project. Vocalist Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx and guitarist Mick Mars briefly continued with other drummers, before pulling the plug a few years ago. The hiatus marked the end of a two-decade run that produced hits… Read more »

Anyone who visited their Web site and thought that Hearts That Hate were the next big thing out of the emo scene is about to get a reality check from MC Lars. The fictitious band has a starring role in “Signing Emo,” the second single off Lars’ Laptop EP. The song, a send-up of the bandwagon-jumping that goes on in the music industry, finds a 40-year-old, overweight and out-of-touch A&R exec named Marty feeling pressure from his boss to ink an emo band – any emo band – to the label because the boss’ daughter likes Dashboard Confessional. Just before… Read more »

“Back to basics” and “return to form” were some of the phrases floated by music critics worldwide when Manchester-based singer-songwriter Damon Gough, a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy, released his fourth and latest LP last summer. Not only does One Plus One Is One open with the line, “Back to being who I was before,” but it was recorded by Andy Votel – who produced Gough’s breakthrough record, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast – in a simple U.K. studio with traditional instruments, whereas its predecessor, Have You Fed The Fish?, was a product of Tom Rothrock’s ProTools palace in California. However, despite appearances,… Read more »

New York – Jerry Wexler is the classic record business guy. For more than three decades, Wexler, as co-owner of Atlantic Records and later senior VP at Warner Bros. Records, signed and worked with scores of vocalists and instrumentalists, and produced some of the greatest rock and soul records ever made. Now 86 and long retired, Wexler is still applauded as an insightful producer, crafty deal-maker and promoter, divining rod of hit songs and occasional writer of songs and liner notes. “He is one of my greatest heroes,” Sire Records founder Seymour Stein says. “Jerry is a consummate record man… Read more »