Search Results for: The Pixies

Even though she’s a good few years away from taking stubby pencil to paper herself, Dave Grohl’s baby daughter Violet gets full credit for influencing her daddy’s writing style. For the Foo Fighters’ founder and frontman, the 2006 birth of his first child added a personal, often confessional tone to his lyrics. “Having a child made me feel like a superman in a way because I had to be,” says Grohl, who turns 39 this month. “Just as I can’t be afraid to ride the Spiderman roller coaster at Magic Mountain when it’s time, I can’t be scared of writing… Read more »

Among the legions of acts booked for this year’s South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival March 14-18 in Austin, here are 10 that people will be talking about. THE PIPETTES Sure, the Pipettes revel in the ’60s girl group sounds of the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las. And yes, they even conjure up cool memories of British sister-in-song, the beehived Mari Wilson, who covered similar musical ground in the ’80s. Still, the trio, who hail from the British seaside town of Brighton, manage to make songs like “Pull Shapes,” “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me” and “Dirty Mind”… Read more »

In addition to its always eclectic, star-studded lineup, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival has established a reputation for frequently landing the hotly sought return of a major indie-rock figurehead. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times , this year’s major coup is a reunion of thrashing political rockers Rage Against the Machine, who have not played together for seven years. The band is expected to get together for a one-off headlining show at the eighth edition of the three-day festival, which they last played in 1999. Also reportedly joining Rage on the bill are Coachella veterans… Read more »

Independent record labels behind artists like The White Stripes, Deep Purple and Arctic Monkeys announced a global deal Saturday to pool access to their catalogs, seeking to grab a bigger share of online music sales from the major record companies. Indies and their trade groups from more than a dozen countries signed up to Merlin, a nonprofit licensing agency that will cut deals on their behalf with download sites under the terms of the agreement unveiled at Midem, a music industry gathering in the French Riviera town of Cannes. Smaller record companies with just a handful of successful artists fear… Read more »

Los Angeles – Lollapalooza – a marquee touring festival of the 1990s that fell on commercial hard times last year – is returning this year in drastically scaled-down form. Lollapalooza ’05 will run July 23-24 in Chicago’s Grant Park. The band lineup will not be announced until the third week in April. The festival Web site (www.lollapalooza.com) will go live Friday. Lollapalooza began life in 1991 as a major vehicle for the exposure of left-field rock talent. A highly successful summer touring proposition in the early ’90s, it took a five-year hiatus from 1998-2002, as other treks like the Vans… Read more »

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Ozzy Osbourne and heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath will be among the headliners at this year’s Roskilde Festival, one of Europe’s largest music events. Osbourne, who grew up in Birmingham, central England, rose to stardom with Black Sabbath in the 1970s before launching a solo career. It will be the band’s sole summer festival appearance, organizers said Wednesday. Last year, 75,000 tickets were sold for the outdoor event, where more than 150 artists, including the Pixies, Morrissey, Sahara Hotnights and Avril Lavigne, performed on Roskilde’s six stages. This year’s festival, which also will include performances by Green… Read more »

Linkin Park has proved itself impervious to critics, genres and the rest of the competition on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, as the juggernaut of its “Meteora” album (Warner Bros.) continues its momentum from last year. Four songs from the band’s sophomore album charted on the year-end Modern Rock Tracks recap, with three finishing in the top 10. This earns the act the No. 1 spot on the year-end Hot Modern Rock Artists chart. “Numb” was the year’s second-most-spun song in modern rock, while “Breaking the Habit” and “Lying From You” came in at Nos. 8 and 9, respectively. “Faint”… Read more »

As promised yesterday, we’re back to update you on the remaining categories in Chart’s Year End Readers’ Poll. Yesterday we reported that Simple Plan were leading the votes in the music-based categories, but who are our readers rooting for in the Sexiest Canadian Musician categories? At press time, about 600 of you had filled out the poll and the majority of you fancy Pierre Bouvier, lead singer of Simple Plan. In a distant second place in our Throw Your Underwear (Male) category is The Tea Party’s Jeff Martin, followed by the more, er, mature William Shatner, who is quite surprisingly… Read more »

New York – Of the multitude of New York-based rock bands to garner recent media attention, surely the most unique musical personality belongs to TV on the Radio, a Brooklyn quintet whose two releases on Touch & Go have fueled major interest. Curiosity peaked after the group – then the barely-out-of-the-loft project of lead singer Tunde Adebimpe and producer/multi-instrumentalist David Sitek – released the five-track EP “Young Liars” in July 2003. The record blindsided the indie rock community with the title track, the haunting dirges “Blind” and “Staring at the Sun” and an a cappella doo-wop cover of the Pixies’… Read more »

What a week for Perry Farrell. Just days after his beloved Lollapalooza summer concert tour got canned due to poor ticket sales comes news his three Jane’s Addiction bandmates have joined forces with another singer to form a new group. The on-again, off-again Addiction had reunited last year to record the album Hypersonic, the band’s first since 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual. But a statement from Jane’s Addiction guitarist (and Carmen Electra sidekick) Dave Navarro says that the band is officially off again and that he, bassist Chris Chaney and drummer Stephen Perkins have moved on with Skycycle vocalist Steve… Read more »