When Jay-Z performed at the Yankees’ World Series victory parade, it definitely seemed like “Empire State of Mind” was the biggest song in the country. Last Thursday it became official: Jay-Z has his first no. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – It’s been Taylor Swift’s year, and Wednesday was her night as she became the youngest person and the first solo female act in a decade to win the Country Music Association’s entertainer of the year award.
On an appropriately cold and rainy Friday night in the Minneapolis warehouse district, the Despair Faction, AFI’s fan militia, was working itself up, chanting the intro to Black Sails in the Sunset (”Through/Our bleeding!/We/Are one!”) and throwing up martial fist pumps. The all-ages crowd had already been primed by opening act Gallows, whose lanky, ginger vocalist, Frank Carter, spent half his time singing from the middle of the pit and the rest on stage, gobbing loogies with impressive trajectories. The Faction had just spent three years waiting for AFI to break their hiatus with a new album, Crash Love, and… Read more »
Moments before the opening curtain of “American Idiot,” the musical theater debut of the punk band Green Day, a t-shirted house manager took the stage at Berkeley Repertory Theater for the tradition of reminding audience members to turn off their cellphones and unwrap their candies. This being a musical by Green Day, though, it wasn’t your typical curtain speech. “Are you ready to rock tonight?” shouted the house manager, John Gay. And sure enough, the crowd roared back, “Yeah!” Such is the rowdy mood surrounding “American Idiot,” a rock opera drawn largely from Green Day’s multiplatinum 2004 album of the… Read more »
After struggling through a concert in Hartford, Conn. Saturday night, Blink-182 has cancelled its Monday night show in upstate New York. “Due to circumstances surrounding the unfortunate and untimely passing of our dear friend Adam ‘DJ AM’ Goldstein, Blink-182 will not be playing tonight in Saratoga, NY at SPAC. Performances by Weezer, Taking Back Sunday and Chester French will take place as planned, along with some special surprises. We thank all of our fans for their support in this tough time,” reads a post on the band’s official Web site. Blink’s next scheduled show is Wednesday in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.… Read more »
The Pixies took the stage at the Isle of Wight festival last night, marking its first gig since wrapping up its 2004 reunion tour and its subsequent festival gigs in 2007. Frank Black, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering treated the crowd to a nearly hour-and-a-half greatest-hits set that kicked off with “U-Mass” and featured “Debaser,” “Gouge Away” and “Gigantic” along with a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On” and a version of Neil Young’s “Winterlong.” The show went off without a hitch, save for a moment when Black and Deal laughed off a mistake that… Read more »
Green Day is continuing their march to an inevitable Number One album, setting up rock-opera shop at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on May 18th for the East Coast live debut of 21st Century Breakdown. The band’s Bay Area guerilla gigs in April all featured the record in its entirety. But at the Bowery, Green Day played a pocket-jukebox edition of the album, starting with the opening title track and the first single, “Know Your Enemy.” Then the new six-piece band – with singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool assisted on guitars, keyboards and extra… Read more »
California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s gay marriage ban Tuesday but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that took place before the prohibition passed are still valid – a ruling decried by gay rights activists as a hollow victory. Demonstrators outside the court booed, wept and yelled, “Shame on you!” Activists said they would go back to the voters as early as next year in a bid to repeal the ban. In a 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George, the court rejected arguments that the ban approved by the voters last fall was such a fundamental change in the… Read more »
The memo on waning Jonas Brothers mania apparently has yet to reach Lima, Peru. Riot police were called to the city’s oceanfront Marriott Hotel Sunday when more than 1,000 fans took to the streets to form a tearful, shrieking and otherwise order-be-damned welcome wagon for the Jonas Brothers. “There are thousands of fans outside the hotel,” Kevin, Nick and Joe wrote on their website. “The police were called in to control the crowd… can’t wait to meet everyone!” The feeling was apparently mutual. “We just woke up to the sounds of fans screaming downstairs outside of our hotel,” the siblings… Read more »
Call him the “dark horse,” the “Come-From-Behind Kid,” the humble crooner. Call him whatever you like. But from now on you also need to call Kris Allen your “American Idol.” After a historic tally of nearly 100 million votes, the shy 23-year-old singer from Conway, Arkansas, pulled off one of the most surprising wins in the show’s nearly decade-long history by taking the crown from the theatrical season-long frontrunner, Adam Lambert. After nearly two hours of anticipation, when the time came for host Ryan Seacrest to announce the results, Allen and Lambert stood arm-in-arm, their friendship looking much more like… Read more »
