Search Results for: When We Were Young Festival

Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as “What’d I Say” and ballads like “Georgia on My Mind,” died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73. Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney. Charles’ last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer’s studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark. Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries… Read more »

With a new album dropping in June and a summer concert schedule in place, all seemed normal enough in the Phish camp as this week began. But the group shocked fans Tuesday with the announcement that it will break up following a two-day festival in Coventry, Vermont, on August 14-15. Frontman/guitarist Trey Anastasio wrote on the band’s Web site, “We all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don’t want to become caricatures of ourselves or, worse yet, a… Read more »

Sometimes, Washington is as hot as Bangkok. OK, I stole that line, but it was baking hot at RFK Stadium Saturday for the HFStival, the annual, all-day, relentlessly eclectic rock extravaganza put on by local radio station WHFS-FM (99.1). An estimated crowd of 60,000 blazed under a pre-summer sun, moseying in and out of the stadium from parking-lot attractions that included a forest of beer trucks, giant inflatable corporate logos, two more bandstands – one for national acts, the other for local acts such as Washington Social Club and Jimmie’s Chicken Shack – and, for the truly adventurous, a Ferris… 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 »

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 »

What everyone always wants to know is: who’s the worst? Meaning: which really famous person out there is a berk whose lack of personality is in inverse proportion to their abundance of fame? And the answer is, of course, all of them. No, it’s not. It’s Jon Bon Jovi. The next question – who’s the best, of course – is more difficult. The interviewees I like are the ones that turn out to be more than you expected, whether that’s more intelligent, or honest, or bonkers, or fun, whatever. And there are plenty of those. Madonna (sharper), Björk (wilder), James… Read more »

The backstage area of this year’s Vans Warped Tour often resembled a punk-rock frat party, according to Thrice frontman Dustin Kensrue. There was plenty of partying and more than a few juvenile practical jokes perpetrated by the bands and their crews. Such situations can be flat-out dangerous, and sometimes injuries ensue. A few weeks ago, Thrice drummer Riley Breckenridge damaged his back while reaching under the band’s bus. Was he looking for water balloons filled with sour milk to throw at the members of Pennywise? Nope. He was trying to remove his suitcase from the storage compartment, and in the… Read more »

It was as if the tattooed hand of a punk rock god reached down and anointed Andrew W.K. The hard partying rocker was enthusiastically playing his anthem “I Get Wet” as the skies opened up and a torrential downpour put an early end to the eighth stop on this year’s Vans Warped Tour. He always sports a maniacal smirk and a dirty T-shirt, but even W.K., surrounded on the stage by a dozen head-banging fans, couldn’t help but laugh. Just one week into a grueling cross-country summer trek, the ninth edition of the punk and extreme-sports tour experienced both kinds… Read more »

Ticket sales are down, and big tours are scaling back to smaller venues. It looks to be a long, hot summer for the touring industry. On the cusp of the industry’s peak period, a number of high-profile tours and festivals have already hit snags, among them highly touted outings from Mariah Carey, the Field Day Music Festival, Lollapalooza, and Beck and Dashboard Confessional. Faced with a crowded tour market combined with high ticket prices, permit hassles, a sluggish economy and poor buzz, these tours and a handful of others have either had to scale back the size of the venues… Read more »

Good Charlotte are still deciding whether to put out a fourth single from The Young and the Hopeless, but if so, the band has selected “Hold On.” “It’s my favorite song on the record,” Benji Madden said backstage at Saturday’s KROQ Weenie Roast. “I think it’s sort of an anti-suicide song. It’s about coping with life, and we feel like if we were to put out another single, we would want to put out a song that would actually maybe help people. So that’d probably be the best bet.” Benji, brother Joel and the rest of the band are hesitant… Read more »