Search Results for: when we were young festival

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 »

In a pop-punk field increasingly populated with interchangeable sound-alike bands, Good Charlotte has made a bid to break away from the pack with its second CD, “The Young & the Hopeless.” Lead singer Joel Madden, who along with twin brother Benj writes the group’s songs, credits Eric Valentine, the producer of “The Young & the Hopeless,” with helping to expand the group’s musical horizons. “He challenged me to write different songs than just a bunch of songs that were kind of the same thing,” Joel Madden said. “He was like, ‘Why don’t you try writing some songs that you wouldn’t… Read more »

When Good Charlotte last played here in October 2002, their “Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous” was about how the other half lives and they barely filled the 1,500-capacity Rave in Milwaukee. Since then, of course, the band’s sophomore album, The Young and the Hopeless, has gone platinum, and this time through the Brew City they moved upstairs to the much larger Eagles Ballroom, where they sold out 4,000 tickets in a couple of days and packed the place for Friday’s show. They had a little help from their friends this time, too, as they were joined by New… Read more »

Eddie Vedder has found plenty of material in mortality over the years. His band, Pearl Jam, was born of a heroin overdose more than a decade ago. Rival songwriter Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide while at the height of popularity. Two of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits, “Jeremy” and “Last Kiss,” deal with teen death. Now comes renewal, an appropriate topic as the lead singer and his bandmates re-emerge from their most proximate shock: the deaths of nine fans trampled during the 2000 Roskilde festival in Denmark. “Riot Act,” released Nov. 12, is Pearl Jam’s first studio album since the… Read more »

Fred Durst reiterated claims of inadequate security on Monday during a hearing looking into the death of a 15-year-old concertgoer last year. From Los Angeles, the Limp Bizkit frontman spoke via videolink to the Glebe Coroner’s Court in Sydney, Australia, according to his manager, Peter Katsis. He claimed to have warned organizers of the touring Big Day Out festival of potential security problems at the Sydney stop, which took place January 26, 2001, and threatened to withdraw from the show if they weren’t remedied, following a similar crowd-crushing incident that occurred days prior in Auckland, New Zealand. “We definitely said… Read more »

Trey Anastasio spent 17 years ripping genres apart and sticking them back together at odd angles with the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink uber-jam band Phish. So maybe it’s no surprise he’s whipped up another unusual concoction: a jam/swing hybrid dotted with sugary-sweet love songs and chamber music. The self-titled release has the elements you’d expect from Anastasio, from the drawn-out, frenetic jams to the catchy guitar riffs. But it’s also a departure: It’s got horns, it’s got soul, it’s got more horns. It’s clearly not a Phish album hiding under a different name. “I’ve been listening to a lot of big band music,”… Read more »