Now that he’s flying high with a hit record and one of the only successful tours of the summer, Justin Timberlake is unstoppable and afraid of nothing – not even a little SARS. The pop star will join the Rolling Stones and a host of other artists and celebrities at an eight-hour concert in Toronto on Monday to revive tourism and spirit in the city following the wane in both that hit after the city was hit by a highly publicized outbreak of the infectious disease SARS. The event will take place at Downsview Park and will be hosted by… 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 »
Dashboard Confessional and Jack Johnson played acoustic, and Beck and Coldplay celebrated Christmas, but otherwise KROQ-FM’s annual Almost Acoustic Christmas was a two-day, 20-act festival all about rocking. And the sold-out event was certainly crammed with rock and roll moments, particularly the announced live debut of Audioslave (they played a secret club show the night before), and an amusing rendition of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” orchestrated by Beck and the Flaming Lips and featuring Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, Johnson and a horribly off-key Juliette Lewis. (Click here for photos from the show.) Audioslave were the talk… Read more »
In an industry that obsesses over first-week album sales, heavy MTV rotation and radio airplay, the Shortlist Music Prize is trying to help offbeat or niche recording artists find a wider audience. Now in its second year, the contest taps successful musicians to champion the work of peers who have yet to make an impact on the charts. Among this year’s “listmakers” are India.Arie, Alanis Morissette (news), U2’s Larry Mullen Jr., and filmmakers Baz Luhrmann (news) and Spike Jonze (news). “Most of the attention that records get as far as awards and all that stuff is based on record sales,… Read more »
Bjork, N.E.R.D., Cee-Lo and the Hives are among the 10 finalists for this year’s Shortlist Prize, which celebrates acclaimed artists whose work has yet to reach widespread commercial success. Other finalists for the award, to be presented Oct. 29 in Los Angeles, are Aphex Twin, the Avalanches, DJ Shadow, Doves, the Flaming Lips and Zero 7. Last year, Icelandic band Sigur Ros took home the $10,000 first prize. “The Shortlist honors creative achievement across all genres of music, from the energetic punk of the Hives to the late-night grooves of Zero 7,” said co-founder Tom Sarig in a statement. “This… Read more »
The All-American Rejects are a Stillwater, Oklahoma based band whose incomparable sound fuses modern power pop music with drum loops, rock guitar and infectious melodies and harmonies. The duo that is known as The All-American Rejects is Tyson Ritter (vocals, bass) and Nick Wheeler (guitars, drums, keyboards, & programming). The band released their first independent album in the spring of 2000 securing spins on Oklahoma radio creating a massive local fan base. The songs compiling the album attracted opportunities for the duo such as mass local radio and press exposure, licensing on MTV’s Undressed, and opening bill for The Flaming… Read more »
Cake will headline this summer’s Unlimited Sunshine Tour, featuring the Flaming Lips, De La Soul, Modest Mouse and the Hackensaw Boys. “When I make mix tapes it’s a Frank Sinatra song followed by an AC/DC song followed by a Flaming Lips song,” says Cake singer-guitarist John McCrea of the diverse bill he and his band put together. “It’s not just rock band, rock band, rock band. I really think a lot of listeners listen to a wide variety of music, and those people unfortunately don’t have radio stations to listen to. In a way, we’re taking our own frustrations and… Read more »
After more than five years as host of Nickelodeon’s “Blue’s Clues,” Steve Burns is passing the leash to his successor and passing the mic to himself. Burns, who along with animated canine Blue has solved nearly 100 puzzles since the children’s show premiered in December 1996, is now facing a quandary that has baffled just about anyone who ever wanted to form a career around picking up a guitar: how to get signed. The 28-year-old Brooklyn, New York, resident has recorded 11 tunes, some of which are posted on www.steveswebpage.com, for an LP titled Songs for Dustmites. That was the… Read more »
We love music. We love movies. We really love when both of these worlds collide. Actors playing in bands isn’t new, from Jared Leto with 30 Seconds To Mars to Jack Black with Tenacious D. But today I want to talk about the actors you had no idea used to be or still are in bands.
Everyone needs a little help from their friends (especially on Monday). The well loved artists listed below all lent a hand to their equally talented cohorts for projects that had us screaming everything from “How the hell is that going to work?” to “Oh my god, that’s how,” to our online followers, friends, and blog subscribers. Check out the idobi staff’s favorite musical teams this year, and keep scrolling to find out which collaboration won best of 2015. — 1. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” – The Holidaze (John Feldmann, Joel Madden, Alex Gaskarth, Ashton Irwin, Pierre Bouvier) (Tom… Read more »
