idobi’s Jamie McGrath sat down with the The Wonder Years at Starland Ballroom Saturday evening during their “Ship of Fools†tour with Streetlight Manifesto.
With a hit Broadway show and its own edition of the “Rock Band” franchise, Green Day is establishing itself as a punk-rock brand.
“American Idol” ratings are at their lowest since 2004, and Simon Cowell is moving on. As the season-nine finale approaches, a central question on many minds remains about the behemoth talent show: Can it stay dominant and turn its winners into stars again?
Moments before the opening curtain of “American Idiot,” the musical theater debut of the punk band Green Day, a t-shirted house manager took the stage at Berkeley Repertory Theater for the tradition of reminding audience members to turn off their cellphones and unwrap their candies. This being a musical by Green Day, though, it wasn’t your typical curtain speech. “Are you ready to rock tonight?” shouted the house manager, John Gay. And sure enough, the crowd roared back, “Yeah!” Such is the rowdy mood surrounding “American Idiot,” a rock opera drawn largely from Green Day’s multiplatinum 2004 album of the… Read more »
NASHVILLE — Watch Nathan Followill breeze into his local Nashville watering hole, and it’s obvious that he’s well known and well liked by the crew at McCabe’s Pub. Clad in sweats and a Yankees cap, the Kings of Leon drummer comes off more as cool local guy than international rock star Nothing in this manner indicates that his Nashville-based rock band’s fourth album is finally making the Kings as big in the United States as they have been in Europe since 2004, when the group had back-to-back No. 1 singles in the United Kingdom According to the band’s label, RCA,… Read more »
The Gym Class Heroes have experimented so much on their latest CD that even frontman Travis McCoy can’t quite describe the group’s newly formed sound. “It’s like our last two efforts combined in a sense, but pushed further. Hence the title ‘The Quilt.’ It’s like a patchwork of sounds, different arrangements (and) real lyrics,” says McCoy, trying to explain the CD, released earlier this month. “Musically, I think it’s a big cocktail of everything that’s inspired us over the past two years,” he said. “It is definitely rooted in hip-hop and hip-hop is like the main course on the plate,… Read more »
Michael Roberts: For all of the articles that have been written about you guys, very few of them have very much biographical information. It’s as if you were born at Columbia when you were twenty. So I thought I’d try getting some actual facts. Where are you from originally? Ezra Koenig: Well, originally, I was born in New York. My parents lived on the Upper West Side. But I have no memory of living here, because I almost totally grew up in Northern New Jersey, in the suburbs of New York. MR: Tell me about your parents. What jobs did… Read more »
Most young men can be forgiven for not knowing what they’ll be doing two days from now, much less two years. Not the three siblings who comprise the hit trio the Jonas Brothers. The superstars-in-the-making have every day mapped out for the next 24 months. If you’re not a tween/teenage girl or don’t live in proximity to one, you may not yet be in on the phenomenon created by 20-year-old Kevin, 18-year-old Joe and 15-year-old Nick. They opened for Miley Cyrus on her fall “Hannah Montana” tour to the delight of shrieking girls everywhere. Their song, “S.O.S.,” catapulted to No.… Read more »
Nick Haley took just 30 minutes to pluck the Brazilian band CSS from obscurity and hurl it into the national spotlight. In September, Haley paired the band’s dance-pop song “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” with his 30-second amateur video, displaying the capabilities of Apple’s new iPod Touch. The video ends with the lyrics, “My music is where I’d like you to touch.” “I was like, ‘This song is too perfect,’ ” said Haley, 18, by phone from the University of Leeds in England, where he studies politics. “It’s punchy, loud, fast and naughty.” Marketers at Apple headquarters in Cupertino… Read more »
Early in July, Rusty Shaffer, the founder of Optek, a small music company in Reno, Nev., visited Salon’s offices to show me his invention, the Fretlight guitar. Though it looks and feels like a standard, rock ‘n’ roll-ready instrument, the Fretlight contains a set of LEDs invisibly embedded inside its fretboard — connect the guitar to a computer and the lights spark up to indicate where to put your fingers in order to play a chord. Shaffer is certain that his guitar is a great leap forward for the normally tech-averse guitar industry; the Fretlight, he says, will transform guitar… Read more »
