Search Results for: System of a Down

Oops! Montreal’s radio pranksters did it again. Canadian comics posing as singer Celine Dion persuaded Britney Spears to sing a duet with golfer Tiger Woods called “Let’s Make a Hole in One” for a bogus charity event. Montreal comic Marc Audette, deftly imitating the voice of French-Canadian diva Dion, chatted with Spears on the telephone about each woman’s charity foundations. After a few minutes of mutual admiration, Audette got down to business and invited Spears to come to Montreal and visit “her club” – in reality, a popular Montreal strip joint. “We certainly won’t be distracted there,” Audette said. “Of… Read more »

A day after the body of Drowning Pool frontman Dave Williams was discovered on the band’s tour bus, details remained scarce but memories of Williams as a fun-loving, kind-hearted character abounded. The 30-year-old singer was found in his bunk by members of Drowning Pool’s touring crew Wednesday afternoon, their publicist said. The band was in Manassas, Virginia, on its way to Thursday’s Ozzfest show in Bristow. An autopsy conducted Thursday morning proved inconclusive, according to a Prince William County police spokesperson. A cause of death is expected to be determined from toxicology tests, which generally take four to six weeks.… Read more »

The world’s largest record companies sued major Internet service and network providers on Friday, alleging their routing systems allow users to access the China-based Listen4ever.com Web site and unlawfully copy musical recordings. The copyright infringement suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks a court order requiring the defendants to block Internet communications that travel through their systems to and from the Listen4ever site. The suit says the plaintiffs have not been able to determine who owns the Web site. Plaintiffs in the suit include such major labels as UMG Recordings, a unit of Vivendi Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, a unit… Read more »

P.O.D. (“Alive” and “Youth Of The Nation”), Missy Elliott (“One Minute Man”), and Eminem (“Without Me”) scored six nominations each for the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, which were announced Monday (July 22). Shakira (“Whenever, Wherever”) and White Stripes (“Fell In Love With A Girl”) garnered four nominations. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Eminem, and Pink are among the artists set to perform at the event, which will be held August 29 at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall. More performers for the show, hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Jimmy Fallon, will be announced later. Here’s a… Read more »

In order to go into space, Lance Bass first has to go to sea. As part of his rigorous cosmonaut training, which the pop star finally started last week in Star City near Moscow, Bass will be dropped into the Black Sea in an emergency-splashdown test and left to fend for himself in a Russian forest without food or supplies. Though the Russian Space Agency has yet to confirm that Bass will be their candidate for a third seat open in a fall rocket mission, which is set to launch October 22, Bass started his preliminary training on July 4,… Read more »

All things must pass-including criminal sentences-and that has the family of the late George Harrison ticked off. The rocker’s wife and son are angrily objecting to the release last week of the deranged fan who broke into the ex-Beatle’s mansion in December 1999 and nearly killed him in a knife attack. An independent panel in England comprising a judge, a psychiatrist and a British citizen determined 36-year-old Michael Abram, a former drug addict who suffers from schizophrenia, was well enough to be released back into the community and set him free on July 4 from the Scott Clinic, a psychiatric… Read more »

The government seemed to side with Internet broadcasters when establishing a royalty rate Thursday, and although the new fees were lower than a proposal rejected last month, the costs may force several independent Net radio stations out of business. The U.S. Copyright Office settled on a rate of 0.07 cent per listener per song for both Internet-only stations and conventional stations that simulcast their programming on the Web, according to a government spokesperson. The rate is exactly half of what the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP), a three-member board appointed by the Copyright Office, suggested in February that Internet-only stations… Read more »

The recording and music publishing industries extended their legal pursuit of online music swapping firms Friday, suing Audiogalaxy for copyright infringement. The Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers Association accused the Austin, Texas, firm of “willfully and intentionally” encouraging and facilitating millions of users to copy and distribute copyright work of artists, ranging from Dave Mathews and Celine Dion to Alicia Keyes and the Beatles. The two industry groups claim that Audiogalaxy, with more than 15 million registered users, uses a system that is even more egregious than Napster, which the music industry effectively shut down… Read more »

The people who tried to take away your VCR are at it again. Hollywood has always dreamed of a “well-mannered marketplace” where the only technologies that you can buy are those that do not disrupt its business. Acting through legislators who dance to Hollywood’s tune, the movie studios are racing to lock away the flexible, general-purpose technology that has given us a century of unparalelled prosperity and innovation. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its… Read more »

Radio Free Virgin, a leading digital broadcast company, and Vividon, Inc., the provider of Internet infrastructure devices that radically improve the economics of streaming media delivery(TM), today announced the installation of the Vividon(TM) SDA(TM) streaming appliance into the Radio Free Virgin Internet broadcast network to provide the highest quality streaming experience while ensuring scalable, economic growth. “Measurecast reported a 99 percent increase in Internet radio listening in just the first three months of 2002 and also ranked Radio Free Virgin as one of the top three Internet radio networks with 3.3 million listening hours in April,” said Brendon Cassidy, Vice-President,… Read more »