Search Results for: slow joy

Nearly 40 years after he wrote the lyric “He not busy being born is busy dying,” Bob Dylan clearly still believes that estimation is right on the mark. Looking snazzy in a black cowboy hat and old-school Western suit, the 60-year-old folk-rock icon was tireless, fearless and masterful throughout his 140-minute show Thursday at the Arena. Within shouting range of Treptow Park, where he played in 1987 when the area was still communist East Germany, the Arena is a onetime bus depot and hangar that now serves as one of the city’s largest music venues. The 7,500-capacity, standing-room-only space served… Read more »

The first rule when you’re about to drop $75 to $150 on a concert ticket should be “Do your research.” Anyone who expected a straightforward greatest-hits retrospective from Prince at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall Tuesday night will have to write their pricey ticket off as a fine for laziness. After all, any artist who is as unpredictable as Prince has historically been should warrant no less than a quick Google search for set lists. Therein, the scientific fan would find that “Little Red Corvette” and “When Doves Cry” aren’t bloody likely. Rather, much of the One Nite Alone Tour… Read more »

Alicia Keys, George Clinton, ?uestlove and Doug E. Fresh were among the surprise guests to appear onstage with Prince early Wednesday morning at Times Square’s The World nightclub. Free for members of Prince’s NPG Music Club, $40 for nonmembers, the show began at 2 a.m., a few hours after a full concert uptown at the Lincoln Center. With bassist Larry Graham (who appeared briefly at the previous show) and saxophonist Candy Dulfer joining most of Prince’s core band – Renato Neto on keys, John Blackwell on drums, Maceo Parker on sax and Greg Boyer on trombone – the freeform funk… Read more »

The Dave Matthews Band hit the third city of its spring tour Sunday, settling into the sold-out FleetCenter for the front half of the run’s first two-night stand. But despite big-screen video action, the pacing and atmosphere onstage seemed more barroom than arena. The group took its time between songs and frontman Matthews asked fans, “Are you enjoying yourselves?” with the laconic drawl of his Virginia club days. The predominately young crowd eventually slipped into a similar vibe as the Matthews Band delivered a two-and-a-half-hour concert that was largely mellow and favored newer material. Widely bootlegged songs from 2000’s scrapped… Read more »

The fourth track on Megadeth’s 2001 album, The World Needs a Hero, is “1000 Times Goodbye.” Written as a breakup song, its title is more meaningful now that after nine studio albums and nearly 20 years, Megadeth have bid the world farewell. Frontman Dave Mustaine made the announcement Wednesday (April 3) in a written statement. “For the time being, I have decided to exit Megadeth and explore other areas of the music business,” he said. Mustaine’s decision was triggered by a series of episodes that date back to the beginning of the year. In January, he relapsed after over a… Read more »

For any young band, the idea of performing before thousands on their first arena tour is a daunting proposal. When the heroically titled Saves the Day were tapped as openers for Weezer’s North American tour, which begins February 5, however, they pushed the butterflies aside and focused instead on rising to the occasion. “Every tour that we go on, we hope to be more comfortable as a live band,” bassist Eben D’Amico said. “Just being able to do our thing onstage that much better. We’re always honing and perfecting what we do.” While the Princeton, New Jersey-rooted quintet may come… Read more »

The more time Wes Borland spent in Limp Bizkit, the more things around him turned black. First his wardrobe – draping cloaks that brought to mind one of his favorite characters, Darth Vader. Then his eyes – gripping contacts that, next to his flaring nostrils, made him look like a guitar-toting monster. His heart was the next to go. “Bells start going off, like, ‘This is what it feels like to sell out,’” Borland recalled. “I’m enjoying all the perks of [Limp Bizkit], but I feel my heart is going black, because this is not what I’m called to do.… Read more »

Pressplay (www.pressplay.com), the online music service launched Dec. 19, is an order of magnitude better than rival MusicNet (www.musicnet.com), which launched Dec. 4. The gap is so great that I don’t think MusicNet deserves to sign up a single additional subscriber without first undertaking a major overhaul to match pressplay. Not that pressplay is perfect; the major record labels are still struggling to figure out how to sell their music online without opening the door to further piracy. But pressplay succeeds at delivering all three components of the online music experience: “streaming,” where you listen to songs without putting them… Read more »

British band Depeche Mode said on Thursday the September 11 suicide hijack attacks in the United States had hardly affected European musicians and concert-goers. He contrasted this to the U.S. situation, where the music industry had slowed down. Andy Fletcher, keyboardist in the technopop band that is still going after 22 years, said Europeans had had more experience of “terrorist attacks” than Americans and as a result were able to get on with their lives more quickly. “A lot of American bands and acts have canceled because they are not really used to terrorism in their own country,” Fletcher said… Read more »

“You’re going down [Heather],” Lance Bass joked earlier this month about his first feature film, “On the Line,” making more money when it opens October 26 than Heather Graham’s “From Hell,” which is scheduled for release the week prior. “Nah, I’m so new to this, I don’t know who’s opening up against us in the week so I don’t know what good numbers are, what bad numbers are. As long as people go see it and enjoy it that’s all I care about.” In the movie, Bass stars as Kevin Gibbons, a guy who’s too shy to ask for the… Read more »