Search Results for: great good fine ok

Los Angeles – Before they made the jump to Atlantic Records in 2004, the members of Death Cab for Cutie thought long and hard about leaving Seattle’s Barsuk Records. But after six years of deliberation, and the ultimate satisfaction the band took in its decision, manager Jordan Kurland grants that there has been a twinge of remorse. “I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that after I saw Bright Eyes debut in the top 10, I didn’t think, ‘Ah, we should have done that…’ But we’re having a great time.” Indeed, the band Bright Eyes bolted to No. 10 on… Read more »

You can’t get the question right. You’re fumbling for the right words but all you can hear are the lyrics to “Age of Consent” over and over and over again in your brain… It’s almost too easy to toss the word “influential” in front of a band to hype up its place in the pop-music pantheon. Few acts deserve it, and the word is so damn relative. But the culture mill spits out thousands of new bands each year and inevitably even the most wanly creative gets the “influential” stamp if it can hang in there long enough. So, then… Read more »

Alexisonfire inherited the screamo crown of Canada this year, knocking it right off the emotionally hardcore heads of their peers. Their sophomore disc, Watch Out!, which the band describes as sounding like “two Catholic high-school girls in mid-knife-fight,” went gold in under three months, even though the band received little radio play. We caught up with lead screamer George Pettit to talk about the finer points of fronting the band and how his success is finally allowing him the chance to move out of his parents’ house. ChartAttack: You guys have had a crazy-good year. Has the success been any… Read more »

Los Angeles – Out of the blue comes an e-mail from my brother, Miles: “All confirmed. Rehearsals are next Friday, and your show with Andy Summers and Incubus at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas will be on Sunday.” Whaaaat? I dimly remember Miles mentioning something about this radio concert, months ago. At the time I said, “Wow, cool,” and then forgot about it. So I’m thinking about it now, a little panicked, and figure, what the heck? Of course, I had better dig out my drums and try to get some life into my wrists. I remember too vividly getting… Read more »

Legally challenged rocker Courtney Love can put “parent” back on the list of things she sometimes does-right up there with “sing” and “act.” A judge ruled Monday that Love could regain custody of her 12-year-old daughter, Frances Bean, whose father is the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. “Frances has been returned to [Love] after a judge indicated satisfaction in Ms. Love’s efforts to turn around her life and found it was in the best interests of mother and daughter to be reunited,” Love’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, said in a statement. Frances has not been in Love’s care since her mother’s… Read more »

Alexisonfire inherited the screamo crown of Canada this year, knocking it right off the emotionally hardcore heads of their peers. Their sophomore disc, Watch Out!, which the band describes as sounding like “two Catholic high-school girls in mid-knife-fight,” went gold in under three months, even though the band received little radio play. We caught up with lead screamer George Pettit to talk about the finer points of fronting the band and how his success is finally allowing him the chance to move out of his parents’ house. You guys have had a crazy-good year. Has the success been any different… Read more »

Los Angeles – Nearly 45 years after Stevie Wonder’s live harmonica workout “Fingertips, Pt. 2” topped the charts, the soul visionary’s musical charm still enthralls. From preteen wunderkind to adult visionary, his musical evolution embodies a “What’s next?” curiosity that still burns brightly as fans anticipate his first new Motown album in 10 years, which he hopes will come out in April. “Hopefully, that little boy will always stay in me,” Wonder said in a recent interview with Billboard. “The part of me that’s still eager to discover; who welcomes new, unbroken ground. When that ground is being broken, there’s… Read more »

Few music careers begin as dramatically as that of Philadelphia’s bluesy hard rockers Silvertide. By the end of the band’s first gig in February 2001, police had raided the club where they were playing and arrested dozens of crowd members for underage drinking and drug possession. Frontman Walt Lafty was almost hauled off as well. “I had given a bunch of equipment to my friends so they could sneak out the back and say they were carrying gear,” he explained. “Then I noticed all the gear was gone and I wasn’t out yet. So when I tried leaving, this black… Read more »

Washington – Viacom will pay a record $3.5 million to settle dozens of federal investigations into alleged indecency on TV and the radio, and introduce delays in more live programming to help catch troublesome material before it gets on the air. The settlement, announced Tuesday, closes investigations dating back to 2001. One involved shock jock Howard Stern, and two focused on Opie and Anthony, who lost their Viacom-owned New York radio show after it featured a couple purporting to have sex inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Greg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia went silent after the 2002 show until October, when… Read more »

Los Angeles – U2 has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and won 14 Grammy Awards during the course of its 26-year career, so you would think that there would be a level of ease that comes with a new release. Not so, says the Irish band’s longtime manager Paul McGuinness. “There is absolutely no resting on our laurels,” he tells Billboard. “I say to people we have to break the band every time we put out a record.” And this is with an album that McGuinness expects to debut at No. 1 in “32 or 33 countries.” “How… Read more »