Last week, Ann Kirsten Kennis – the cover star of Vampire Weekend’s Contra album – filed suit against the band in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging that her signature was forged on photographer Tod Brody’s photographic release.
Even before the doors to the Gramercy Theater opened, it was apparent that this show was going to be an entertaining way to start the weekend.
Recently news broke that Will.i.am will be part of the Super Bowl halftime show starring The Who, but in a very unusual way.
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 »
Michael Roberts: For all of the articles that have been written about you guys, very few of them have very much biographical information. It’s as if you were born at Columbia when you were twenty. So I thought I’d try getting some actual facts. Where are you from originally? Ezra Koenig: Well, originally, I was born in New York. My parents lived on the Upper West Side. But I have no memory of living here, because I almost totally grew up in Northern New Jersey, in the suburbs of New York. MR: Tell me about your parents. What jobs did… Read more »
For four years, AFI isn’t the only fire Davey Havok and Jade Puget have had inside – they’ve also been trying to flesh out the debut album by their long-pending side project, Blaqk Audio. Now, finally, the LP is good to go.”It’s very different from AFI,” Havok warned us at last weekend’s Live Earth concert in East Rutherford, New Jersey . The album, CexCells, has been in the works since 2003 – around the time Havok and Puget told Rolling Stone that they were hoping to release the project in early 2004. When AFI broke into the mainstream with 2003’s… Read more »
Five days after announcing that Fall Out Boy were postponing the Honda Civic Tour due to “personal issues” (a nebulous explanation that put the rumor mill into overdrive with a quickness), Pete Wentz would like to make several things clear: “No one has left the band, no one is dead, and no one is going to rehab,” he told MTV News late Monday. “I need that as a big pull-quote, man, because everyone thinks that. It’s the danger of language and the danger of the times we’re in. “It’s a health issue, but not a health issue that anyone needs… Read more »
One week after he leapt into the crowd and began wailing on a security guard at the Sunshine Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz is still a little bit sore, a little bit embarrassed and – in what might be a first – a little bit wary of talking about the incident. But that isn’t stopping his bandmates from giving their accounts of the punch-up, which occurred while FOB was playing the final song of their set during last weekend’s gig at the Sunshine . “I was standing on a riser, stage left, and I… Read more »
Most families spend the end of summer gearing up for school. The Carters are spending it preparing for the pop charts. Seven weeks before Nick Carter’s debut solo album is due, his younger brother Aaron will shake up the teen scene with Another Earthquake. Due September 3, Aaron’s fourth full-length will feature a collaboration with the Baha Men on “Summertime,” the album’s first single. Carter and the Baha Men shot a video for the song in the Bahamas last weekend, according to the singer’s Jive Records spokesperson. Another Earthquake also features production work from Rick Rock (Will Smith), Alex G… Read more »
Michael Jackson took on Sony Music chairman Tommy Mottola this past weekend, accusing the head of his record company of being a racist and part of a racist conspiracy against black artists. Though it was anticipated that Jackson would challenge standard practices of the music industry and champion artists’ rights when he spoke at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York’s Harlem neighborhood on Saturday, his personal attacks against the Sony executive came as a surprise, not least of all to Sharpton himself. Most of Jackson’s comments were constrained to the overall treatment of black artists, the… Read more »
