Search Results for: As It Is

First album together in eight years finds band returning to its roots. For many years over the past two decades, New Order crafted cynical synth-pop that radiated with alternative dancefloor chic. But on Get Ready, the band’s first record together in eight years, New Order have done something they haven’t tried since their pre-Order days. They’ve rocked out. While the album still shimmers and shivers with electronic textures, it’s anchored by organic instrumentation and galvanic grooves. “60 Miles an Hour,” Get Ready’s second single, sounds like a beefier spinoff of the band’s hit “Blue Monday,” and “Rock the Shack” is… Read more »

Sean “Puffy” Combs won’t mind if critics say his latest album is raw, unpolished and without any real theme. That’s the way he planned it. After a year in which he successfully fought criminal charges and lost his high-profile girlfriend, the hip-hop mogul just wanted to put out something that would make people want to party. “That’s why everything is so carefree, everything is so positive,” he said of his new album, which is being released the same week he makes his acting debut (as a gangster) in the movie “Made.” “I lived in a murky pit – a negative,… Read more »

In return, the RIAA withdrew its attempt to have the company removed from the standard Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP) rate-setting policy. In a move that ends a complicated series of lawsuits and counter-suits for embattled online music concern Listen.com, the company has withdrawn from a suit filed by Digital Media Association (DiMA) and a group of music sites. In doing so, Listen made a pact with the RIAA to remove some features from its service that record labels find objectionable. Two interactivity features, one that allow listeners to either skip a song entirely, and another that allows users to… Read more »

Atlanta writer Tom Junod has no apologies for making up much of a profile on R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe for Esquire magazine, saying he wanted people to question celebrity journalism. In the profile for the June issue, Junod describes the 41-year-old Stipe eating all the sugar in a dispenser at a Los Angeles restaurant, then licking the top. He also writes about a five-hour limo trip to the Hoover Dam and recounts how Stipe sucks on two pennies and then sticks them on his eyelids. None of these things happened, Junod said. Esquire offers clues that the story is… Read more »

Paul McCartney’s Wingspan project looks to be as much a tribute to his late wife, Linda, as it is to his former band Wings. The Wingspan double-album compilation hits stores Tuesday, and a two-hour special of the same name will air Friday on ABC. “Basically, it’s the story of me and Linda struggling to put a band together and raise a family at the same time,” McCartney told VH1’s Rebecca Rankin of the TV documentary. “The original idea came from Linda putting together a surprise video for our anniversary,” McCartney said. “It was done by Allaster [Donald, McCartney’s son-in-law]. He… Read more »

The New York City Police Department has a message for the city’s hip-hop community: we’re watching you. Based on what it claims is a “culture of violence” in the hip-hop world, the police’s gang intelligence unit has begun watching nightclubs frequented by celebrity musicians. Police are also compiling a dossier on rappers and others in the music industry with criminal histories. “It would be ignorant for us to ignore the fact that there have been violent incidents where the only common denominator is the music industry,” police spokesperson Sgt. Brian Burke said Friday (April 20). “In an effort to ensure… Read more »

Napster interim CEO Hank Barry calls upon Congress to enact compulsory license laws that include direct payment to artists. Testifying before U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Napster’s chief executive officer said that an act of Congress is required to remedy the issues facing Internet music. Barry called on Congress to enact a compulsory license analogous to laws already in place for radio, for the delivery of music over the Internet. He urged that any such license should include language that enables direct payment to artists similar to the “writer’s share” of public performance payments that are collected by ASCAP and BMI.… Read more »

Don’t focus only on major labels’ interests when considering legislation, they say. Alanis Morissette and Don Henley urged the U.S. Senate to heed the voices of artists – and not just their record labels – during a hearing Tuesday morning on the future of online entertainment. Senators should take artists’ concerns into account if they decide to write any legislation related to the online future of the recording industry, Morissette and Henley said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “The reason that I am here is that although these intermediaries claim to represent the creators, and while there certainly… Read more »