Search Results for: Body Count

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 »

There’s nothing like 1.3 billion potential ticket buyers to attract the attention of the live entertainment business. With the world’s largest population and an exploding economy, China may represent the future for international touring artists. That’s why the three biggest players in the U.S. live entertainment business — Live Nation, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and Ticketmaster — have all staked claims in China. It’s virgin territory. “In China you have a huge potential market, a clean slate and opportunities you don’t see in more mature markets,” Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty said. “There is no established way of doing business yet,… Read more »

The stars of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” were among the fan favorites at the 34th annual People’s Choice Awards on Tuesday, as CBS scrapped its usual live broadcast of the show in favor of a strike-friendly, pre-taped program. The two-month-old Writers Guild of America strike has taken a toll on Hollywood’s awards season, leading to the cancellation of the Golden Globes and the scaling-down of People’s Choice. The fate of other shows, including the Oscars, remains in question. The People’s Choice Awards announced last month that it would replace its traditional live show with “a new format”… Read more »

A revolutionary plan that would effectively legitimize file-sharing here has been slammed as “a pipe dream” by Canadian labels. The Songwriters Assn. of Canada proposes to allow domestic consumers access to all recorded music available online in return for adding a $5 Canadian ($4.96) monthly fee to every wireless and Internet account in the country. The SAC claims that the proposal, which has been presented to labels’ bodies the Canadian Record Industry Assn. (CRIA) and Canadian Independent Record Production Assn. as well as publishers’ groups, would raise approximately $1 billion Canadian ($993 million) annually. Although the SAC does not detail… Read more »

The Department of Justice on Thursday slammed intellectual property legislation that would re-organize its IP enforcement structure, calling it unnecessary and counterproductive to the work it has already accomplished. “We have a current structure … that works quite effectively,” Sigal Mandelker, deputy assistant attorney general, told the House Judiciary subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers last week introduced H.R. 4279, which would further crack down on intellectual property violations, and create several new government positions with the power to enforce the new law. It is intended to preserve American economic prosperity, according to sponsors.… Read more »

Getting fired wasn’t the first time Don Imus had hit rock bottom. Like his stumble into addiction in the 1980s, Imus fell into a personal purgatory after calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” “I analogize it to being an alcoholic and a drug addict, which I also am,” the talk-show host said during an apologetic return to the airwaves Monday. “If you get into recovery, as I am for 20-some years now, you have the opportunity to be a better person, to have a better life than you ordinarily would have had. And that’s true in this… Read more »

Morrissey has identified his latest quarry. The singer is suing British music magazine NME for defamation, claiming the publication twisted his words in a recent interview to make him appear racist. Morrissey was quoted by the magazine as saying he would no longer live in Britain because an “immigration explosion” was stripping his native land of its identity. “The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in,” he reportedly said. “Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.” The singer’s representatives claimed the magazine’s… Read more »

The Grinch might be stealing Christmas from music retailers, but thanks to Josh Groban and Oprah, there’s still some singing in Whoville. For the sales week kicked off by Super Tuesday–the release date before Thanksgiving when record labels typically schedule their big guns–the figures were abnormally bad, with only one Top 10 bow and a seven-week-old album topping the charts. Still, that album, Groban’s Noël, can thank last week’s performance on The Oprah Winfrey Show for driving it past Alicia Keys and into the number one spot. Noël crowned the Billboard 200 by selling 405,000 copies for the week ended… Read more »

Yahoo! Inc. and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit may shut down their Web radio services after being hit with a 38 percent increase in royalties to air music. “We’re not going to stay in the business if cost is more than we make long term,” Ian Rogers, general manager at Yahoo’s music unit, said in an interview. Yahoo and AOL stopped directing users to their radio sites after SoundExchange, the Washington-based group representing artists and record labels, began collecting the higher fees in July. Those royalties may stifle the growth of Internet radio, which increased listeners 39 percent in the… Read more »