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Liam Lynch was onstage about two minutes total, yet it was his song that best summed up Saturday’s 11-hour KROQ Weenie Roast. It was truly the “United States of Whatever.” As in, whatever goes. Good Charlotte unplugged, Pink got the party started with the Transplants, and Jane’s Addiction played unannounced, proving nothing was off-limits at the trend-setting radio station’s 11th annual summer festival. The lineup itself was a little bit of whatever, and certainly more diverse than last year’s “diet Ozzfest,” as Jack Osbourne called it. All three stages showcased a variety of bands, although it was surprisingly the main… Read more »

When radio programmers have hammered the final nail in the coffin of the Used’s “Buried Myself Alive,” the band will move on to “Blue and Yellow,” the fourth single from its self-titled album. The track is the group’s most melancholy and melodic. With its understated piano, vulnerable vocals and trickling, undistorted guitar, “Blue and Yellow” sounds like a relationship song, and it kind of is, but not of the boy-wants-girl variety. “It’s a song about me and [frontman] Bert McCracken’s friendship,” guitarist Quinn Allman explained. “When the band started to really pick up and people started to really get interested,… Read more »

Nearly two years after it sued Napster into submission, the recording industry has discovered it’s not enough to try to beat Internet music purveyors whose digital distribution techniques allow copyright violations. It also has to join them. To discourage piracy, the multibillion-dollar industry has in recent months moved beyond lawsuits against file-swapping services. It has employed hacker tactics to flood such sites with bogus files and even taken to suing students who created mini-Napsters on college networks. At the same time, however, the music labels have finally embraced the very online distribution model many had long resisted, one that analysts… Read more »

Tickets for the Vans Warped Tour are set to go on pre-sale starting Thursday, March 6 at 9:00 p.m. ET. The first 1,000 fans who purchase tickets for the traveling tour will receive a copy of the 2003 Vans Warped Tour double CD compilation, which features songs from bands on this year’s festival. The CD is distributed through Sideonedummy Records. The tour starts June 19 in Boise, Idaho and wraps up August 10 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Already confirmed for the festival: AFI, Andrew W.K., the Ataris, Dropkick Murphys, Face To Face, Finch, Glassjaw, Less Than Jake, Pennywise, Rancid,… Read more »

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network said an economic boycott of Pepsi would start next week unless the company runs an ad featuring the rapper Ludacris that was pulled last year. “Falling out of favor in the hip-hop community could be very damaging,” Simmons said Wednesday. He also wants Pepsi to issue an apology and donate $5 million to his charity organization. Pepsi yanked the Ludacris ad in August, a day after Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly ran a segment criticizing the company for using the rapper. O’Reilly questioned Ludacris’ appropriateness as a spokesman based on… Read more »

Face To Face, Andrew W.K., Rancid, and the Used are among the initial group of bands signed up for Warped Tour 2003. Andrew W.K. will only play West Coast gigs while the Transplants are booked only for the East Coast. Others on the bill include Less Than Jake, Suicide Machines, Dropkick Murphys, AFI, the Distillers, Poison The Well, Taking Back Sunday, Rufio, Finch, Brand New, the Starting Line, and Glassjaw, according to the tour’s website. The 2003 Warped Tour compilation album has been set for release on May 20. The collection will feature over 50 Warped tour bands. The track-list… Read more »

“Surreal” is about the only word to describe it when that kid you remember from “Gremlins” and “Goonies,” all grown up now, is rocking out in the middle of a record store. And surreal it was when Corey Feldman and his band played for a bewildered crowd numbering less than a hundred recently at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. As fans and curious shoppers waited (and waited), a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist named Pharaoh and a keyboard player (none of whom would look lost at a construction site) along with two backup singers crowded onto a makeshift stage, where… Read more »

In his continuing bid to be the hardest-working man in rock, Travis Barker has piled a few new endeavors onto his overstuffed plate. On top of firming up plans for side project the Transplants to drop their debut LP, setting off on the road with Box Car Racer, and preparing the new Blink-182 album, the drummer somehow found time to bring his collection of vintage Cadillacs up to 11 with the addition of a ’54 Coup De Ville and ’78 El Dorado. Although the Transplants album doesn’t yet have an official title, it’s scheduled for release October 22, according to… Read more »

The thin line between pop and punk just got thinner. Green Day, Blink-182 and Sum41 have long charmed the “TRL” audience with their pop hooks and eye candy videos, but now there’s a new crop of punk bands going after pop fans a little more directly. OK, a lot more. On Punk Goes Pop, released last month on Fearless Records, several up-and-coming punk bands cover hits from the cream of the pop star crop. Further Seems Forever speeds up ‘NSYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye,” Stretch Arm Strong gives Pink’s “Get the Party Started” a hardcore makeover, and the Starting Line turn… Read more »

When the Florida Marlins won the 1997 World Series, it was No Good’s remix of Luke Campbell’s “Raise the Roof” that blasted from the system at Pro Player Stadium. When the Miami Hurricanes won the national college football championship earlier this year, No Good’s “Ballin’ Boy” served as their theme song. As if that wasn’t enough to cement this particular sports-and-hip-hop connection, ESPN picked up “Ballin’ Boy” to play over its March Madness spots during this year’s NCAA hoops tournament. And No Good capped things off by performing the single – already a club staple in their hometown of Miami… Read more »