Search Results for: Bad Company

Last winter, Vans Warped tour founder Kevin Lyman attended the Consumer Electronics Show to learn more about setting up backstage wireless Internet connections. The connections he made, however, were of a different type. Technology companies, eager to tap into the Warped tour’s young, tech-savvy fan base, have jumped on board as tour partners or sponsors. The 10th annual roadshow kicked off June 25 in Houston with a lineup including such bands as Bad Religion, Good Charlotte, NOFX, Thursday, New Found Glory, Simple Plan, The Vandals and Taking Back Sunday. The tour’s extensive sponsor list includes Memorex, Samsung, Cingular Wireless, Apple… Read more »

If anybody can get Internet music downloads right, it should be Sony Corp. The company has years of experience selling records, consumer electronics and personal computers – and it’s had plenty of time to study earlier digital-music ventures. So how could the Connect music store, unveiled on Tuesday, have turned out so badly? It gets a few things right, but by forgetting that customers want to feel like they actually own their music, it repeats – or exceeds – the mistakes of other music stores. Let’s start with compliments: Sony does more than any other service to bring down the… 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 »

Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello and Coup frontman Boots Riley are joining Florida farm workers in protesting Taco Bell at the restaurant’s Irvine, California, headquarters tomorrow. Morello will join the Taco Bell Truth Tour’s Southern California stop as a speaker and performer, under his Nightwatchman guise, to draw attention to a wage dispute between the fast food company and farmers who provide its vegetables. “A real change comes from regular people regularly standing up for their rights at work, at home, and in the streets and that’s what we’ll be doing,” Morello says. “Farm workers in Immokalee Florida are getting paid… Read more »

Dave Matthews has plenty of things to do and places to go – what with his band regrouping for a summer tour, re-signing to RCA Records and beginning pre-production on a new album – but during his break from the DMB, the frontman pretended to be someone with no goals and nowhere to go. In Matthews’ first film role, “Because of Winn-Dixie,” he plays a drifter. “How on earth could I be a drifter?” Matthews asked. “If I didn’t have the job I have right now, if I wasn’t playing music, who knows? I could have been a scientist, but… Read more »

Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ ex-wife says their 10-year-old son should be getting the same amount in child support – $30,000 a month, she claims – as the son the rap mogul had out of wedlock. Misa Hylton-Brim testified Tuesday in Family Court in New Rochelle in her lawsuit seeking a raise from the monthly $5,000 she now gets for 10-year-old Justin. Combs did not appear and his lawyer, Peter Galasso, declined to comment. Hylton-Brim, a hip-hop fashion stylist who lives in Mount Vernon, has sole custody of the boy, although Combs has visitation rights. “I want to be able to… Read more »

Though U.S. album sales were down last year for the third year in a row – the longest stretch in 20 years – Nielsen SoundScan numbers still contain some bright spots for 2003. For the full year, album sales declined 3.6% to 667.9 million units from the 693.1 scanned in 2002. But when looking at the fourth quarter, album sales rose 4.7% from the October-December period in 2002. That has caused some executives to proclaim that the industry has hit bottom. Indeed, at mid-year, sales were down 8.6%. That gap was closed by the fourth-quarter surge. What’s more, 2004 is… Read more »

The future of the music industry is being held, quite literally, in the palm of a twentysomething’s hand. Not the “business” side of the music industry – you know, the folks you’ve perhaps heard weeping into their bowls of caviar over the 31 percent decrease in album sales over the course of the past year, a downturn the suits pin on the advent of digital music downloading and CD burning. No, the “art” side of music business is being forceably changed. Artists are either coming to terms with changes in the ways their music is distributed – or doggedly railing… Read more »

Ozzy Osbourne has been many things throughout his multi-platinum career: lead singer of Black Sabbath, successful solo star and a veteran touring artist. But as Ozzy marks the 35th anniversary of his career, there is no doubt that his starring part in MTV reality series “The Osbournes” ushered in a most unlikely role for him: that of mainstream pop-culture icon. Much has already been said about Ozzy and his family in the saturation media coverage that followed the success of “The Osbournes,” which documents the lives of Ozzy; his wife/manager, Sharon; and two of their children, Kelly and Jack (the… Read more »

Grammy-winning singer Meat Loaf, who collapsed on stage during a concert, is being treated for exhaustion brought on by a virus, hospital officials said Tuesday. A spokesman for Mercury, the singer’s record company, said a second concert planned for Tuesday night at London’s Wembley Arena had been postponed. Meat Loaf, 52, collapsed Monday on the first sellout date at the venue. A spokesman for North West London Hospitals said the pop star was in Northwick Park Hospital recovering “from exhaustion due to a prolonged viral infection.” “Meat Loaf will be re-evaluated by doctors today and further information about his status… Read more »