Search Results for: dream state

In 2004, U.K.-based independent label Memphis Industries released the sample-heavy, intentionally lo-fi and daringly jarring “Thunder, Lightning, Strike,” the Go! Team’s debut full-length CD. The buzz was deafening, so in 2005, the label entered a joint venture with Sony BMG to distribute the album internationally, with the major’s Columbia subsidiary handling it in the United States. It’s a turn of events that every band dreams of — unless that band is the Go! Team. The brainchild of Ian Parton, the Go! Team was never supposed to be mainstream. Parton set out to make “dirty” pop songs — danceable, catchy tunes… Read more »

The role of Notorious B.I.G. for an upcoming biopic on the rapper will be filled through an open casting call, the film’s producers told “Notorious,” which has been in the works for nearly seven years, will seek its star by auditioning actors and non-actors alike who resemble the rapper, whose real name was Christopher Wallace. Anyone can submit audition videos beginning 3 a.m. EDT Sunday to http://www.foxsearchlight.com/notorious or http://www.biggiecasting.com. An official announcement of the online casting call will be made Friday by Fox Searchlight Pictures, which in 2005 secured the rights to a film about the slain rapper. Wallace’s mother,… Read more »

Imagine a “dream machine” on wheels. It’s easy if you try. But the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is no dream. A state-of-the-art multimedia studio packed in a bus, it’s a vehicle for opening the minds of aspiring young musicians. “Swing open the door, step inside, take three short steps into the main cabin and look around,” writes Mark Garvey in “Come Together: The Official John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Guide to Music and Video,” a recently published history of the bus by Garvey and Yoko Ono Lennon. “You’ve entered a different world. And whether you’re young or old, if… Read more »

For all the talk about Linkin Park killing off nü metal on the upcoming Minutes to Midnight, it’s rather puzzling that the first sound you hear on the album is the crackle of a needle hitting a record. After all, one of the, uh, tenets of the genre was the head-bopping DJ – think guys like LP’s Joe Hahn or Limp Bizkit’s Lethal – the dude responsible for, literally, putting the needle on the record (and for appearing out of place in all the press photos). So was co-frontman Chester Bennington kidding when he told MTV News back in September… Read more »

Like Al Pacino in “The Godfather Part III,” just when eco warrior Al Gore thinks he’s pulled himself free of Washington, D.C.’s partisan politics, he gets pulled right back into the muck. Former Democratic Vice President Gore, one of the organizers behind the July 7 global-climate-crisis-awareness concert Live Earth , has run into opposition from Senate Republicans over his plans to have one of the eight worldwide shows take place in D.C. And, depending on who you believe, the objection to the concert is either a matter of simple parliamentary procedure or just politics as usual. Oklahoma Republican Senator James… Read more »

When an event has been around for 13 years, it’s usually time to shake things up. And while Ozzfest chose to do that by going free, the Vans Warped tour opted to piece together one of its most diverse rosters to date. The tour, which will kick off June 28 at Chula Vista, California’s Coors Amphitheater, is currently slated to play 45 shows through an August 25 date in Los Angeles with a lineup that includes Coheed and Cambria, Bad Religion, New Found Glory, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Cute Is What We Aim For, Bayside and Canadian rapper K-os. Among the… Read more »

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the… Read more »

LOS ANGELES CA – Drive-Thru Records’ recording artist HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW has decided to disband due to professional and creative differences, it was announced yesterday via the Drive-Thru Records website. The New Jersey based group expressed their gratitude in this statement: “To our families, friends and most importantly, our fans, thank you for all your love and support over the past six years.” HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW was formed in Stanhope, NJ by lead singer Joe Reo and lead guitarist Rob Freeman, who met in high school. The group signed to Drive-Thru Records in summer of 2002 and released… Read more »

Underoath drummer Aaron Gillespie will release the debut album from his side band, the Almost, April 3 via a joint venture with Tooth & Nail and Virgin Records. “Southern Weather” will be supported by a spring tour as well as a long stint on the Vans Warped Tour this summer. “I wrote all the songs last year when Underoath was in the studio doing ‘Define the Great Line,’” Gillespie tells Billboard.com. “I’d do all the drums, then have a three-week to a month lull between doing drums and singing. I got so bored, so I wrote these 11 songs.” Gillespie… Read more »

Around the time Brett Gurewitz was launching Epitaph Records in 1981, his father was lecturing him to take guitar lessons. The Bad Religion guitarist and punk-rock entrepreneur never sat down for courses with a guitar instructor, although he did go to school to learn to be a recording engineer. However, no amount of schooling could have prepared Gurewitz for the next 25 years of his life. Epitaph Records brought a new era of punk rock to the masses in 1994 when the Offspring’s “Smash” turned into one of the biggest rock records of the decade. The success of the label’s… Read more »