Search Results for: Body Count

BROOKLYN, New York – What does Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig have in common with Sting and Gene Simmons? It’s definitely not a shared sense of style. But like Sting and Simmons, the cardigan-and-Top-Sider-sporting 23-year-old spent a year as the antithesis of the flashy, rule-breaking rock star: a teacher. Before belting out tunes like “Oxford Comma” and “A Punk” in front of sold-out crowds and landing on the cover of Spin – along with bassist Chris Baio, keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij and drummer Chris Tomson – Koenig was juggling band practice and performances with a day job as an eighth-grade teacher… Read more »

The secret’s out: MySpace Music Secret Shows are a hit. Social networking pioneer MySpace has created its most successful music program with the intimate Secret Shows series, whose 150th installment will feature Gnarls Barkley on June 8 at Irving Plaza in New York. MySpace Music launched the Secret Shows franchise in January 2006 and has since hosted such acts as Rilo Kiley, Moby, Maroon 5, the Killers, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tenacious D, Lily Allen, Ice Cube, James Blunt and Neil Diamond in cities around the world. The concept is the brainchild of MySpace Music editor Isac Walter, who wanted… Read more »

It’s been more than a year since Quincy Jones was tapped to serve as a culture and art consultant for the 2008 summer Olympic games in Beijing. But instead of artistic planning, he’s been focused on human rights. “I don’t pretend to be a politician,” the music impresario and longtime humanitarian told Jones, 75, has met with the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations and was scheduled to address a group of Chinese-American business and cultural leaders in Los Angeles Saturday to discuss his position on China’s role in the Darfur crisis. China has faced protests from various human-rights groups… Read more »

As I write this, iTunes ranks as the 2nd largest seller of music in the U.S. — only Wal-Mart’s physical stores sell more. Digital revenue is real, and there is a lot of it being earned. Sales from iTunes alone can provide a band enough revenue to achieve true financial success. Don’t take my word for it, just look at some of the sales by the following unsigned artists utilizing the Net for both digital distribution and marketing: Kelly sold over 500,000 songs in five months, Eric Hutchinson sold 120,000 songs in three weeks, The Medic Droid sold over 25,000… Read more »

You’ll usually find R.E.M. playing arenas and esteemed concert halls. But this week, the rock hall of famers were among the acts trying to catch a break and artists looking to build their audience at the sprawling South by Southwest music festival. The multiplatinum rockers played Stubbs BBQ shortly after midnight Wednesday before an energetic crowd of a couple thousand, marking the first time they’ve played the annual extravaganza in their nearly three-decade career. But it’s hardly a downgrade: Playing a showcase at SXSW has often been a way for a veteran act to make a big splash with a… Read more »

Juvenile is in mourning. A teenage gunman shot and killed the New Orleans rapper’s infant daughter Thursday along with her Sheriff’s Deputy mother and older sister in their Lawrenceville, Georgia home, authorities have confirmed. The victims–39-year-old Joy Deleston and her two daughters, 11-year-old Micaiah, and 4-year-old Jelani–were gunned down by Deleston’s 17-year-old son, Anthony Tyrone Terrell. Jelani was the daughter of Juvenile. Police discovered the bodies in the residence on Thursday and took Terrell into custody Friday, booking him on three counts of murder and three counts of aggravated assault after he pointed them to the location of the gun… Read more »

Posters of scantily clad youths that were seized by police at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in a Virginia mall this weekend may be inappropriate for young children, but they are not obscene, according to legal experts. Virginia Beach police apparently have agreed. On Monday, they dropped charges against the clothing company that markets to prep chic teens through sexually charged imagery. The window displays went up in 363 stores across the country in mid-January, including the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach. One of the posters showed three shirtless young men, one with his upper buttocks revealed. The second one… Read more »

China vowed on Sunday to improve the “grave situation” of music piracy in the country, as it hosted the annual music industry event here to learn and exchange ideas with companies from around the world. China has been strongly criticized for its record on Internet piracy in recent years, and a report out this month by the international music trade body, the IFPI, said piracy was responsible for 99 percent of the Chinese market. On Sunday, a delegation from the Ministry of Culture met a small group of reporters to explain their approach to the problem. “Web music is booming… Read more »

After Velvet Revolver wraps a spring tour in support of its second album, “Libertad,” frontman Scott Weiland will rejoin his former bandmates in Stone Temple Pilots for a handful of summer reunion shows, guitarist Slash told Billboard.com. STP broke up in late 2002; the band’s last album was the previous year’s “Shangri-La Dee Da.” No other details have yet been revealed about STP’s plans. In the meantime, Weiland and his Velvet Revolver bandmates are still plugging away in support of “Libertad” with dates that run through early April. There’s also the hope that recording for album No. 3 could begin… Read more »

Heath Ledger, the Australian-born actor whose breakthrough role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 movie “Brokeback Mountain” earned him a nomination for an Academy Award and comparisons to the likes of Marlon Brando, was found dead Tuesday in an apartment in Manhattan with sleeping pills near his body, the police said. The police said Mr. Ledger, 28, was found naked on the floor near the bed in an apartment in SoHo that he had been renting. The chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the police did not suspect foul play. “There was no indication of a disturbance,” he… Read more »