Search Results for: IN HER OWN WORDS

For what was supposed to be a valentine to Bono (“Bahn-o”), there sure were a lot of references to Bono (“Bone-o”) Thursday night. First, on the red carpet leading into the new Kodak Theatre, Evan and Jaron joked that they thought the inaugural “Love Rocks” concert was honoring the late Sonny Bono. Then, R.E.M. carried on the joke by bringing out Cher during their four-song set to duet with singer Michael Stipe on “I Got You Babe,” after which Cher said, “I’ve never done that song without my Bono, so that was for you, Bono.” Finally, when accepting his Heart… Read more »

Venerable singer/songwriter and former Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg has signed a new exclusive recording agreement with Vagrant Records, it was announced today by Vagrant President Rich Egan. “Stereo/Mono,” the first solo album from Westerberg in three years, is due for release April 23. “Words can’t describe the feeling of speaking to Paul Westerberg, much less having the honor of releasing his records,” said Egan. “I consider him to be among the three greatest American songwriters of the rock era (along with Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson). This new album, ‘Stereo/Mono,’ is a work that defies description in its depth and… Read more »

Pressplay (www.pressplay.com), the online music service launched Dec. 19, is an order of magnitude better than rival MusicNet (www.musicnet.com), which launched Dec. 4. The gap is so great that I don’t think MusicNet deserves to sign up a single additional subscriber without first undertaking a major overhaul to match pressplay. Not that pressplay is perfect; the major record labels are still struggling to figure out how to sell their music online without opening the door to further piracy. But pressplay succeeds at delivering all three components of the online music experience: “streaming,” where you listen to songs without putting them… Read more »

As Epic Records commitment to artist development continued to flourish in 2001, Epic will bring an entirely new group of exciting artists to the stage in 2002. The Epic team will work as one cohesive unit towards our common goal: helping our artists rise to the top of the marketplace. EPIC RECORDS 2001 RECAP Flickerstick – Winners of the breakthrough VH1 series Bands on the Run released their major label debut Welcoming Home The Astronauts. The album was re-mixed by Tom Lord Alge (Weezer, Blink-182, Marilyn Manson) and includes two new songs, “Execution By X-mas Lights” and “Smile.” Flickerstick will… Read more »

Welcome to 2002: The Year of the Living Dangerously. For the record labels that is. The major labels took their sweet time and finally rolled out Pressplay and MusicNet, online music subscription services, as 2001 came to an end. The reaction thus far has been, in a word, blah. And the reaction I am talking about is not coming from consumers, it is coming from inside the industry. “The services are useless right now,” one major label executive told me. “Unless we crush file-swapping, we’ll fail online. And if that happens the industry will have to rethink its strategy beginning… Read more »

Soul Asylum recently celebrated the group’s twentieth anniversary with a show at First Avenue in Minneapolis. “It was extremely touching,” says singer/guitarist Dave Pirner. “It seemed like First Avenue was overflowing with love. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it. I really couldn’t get a grip on the fact that we had been together for that long.” Now that the balloons are popped and the champagne bottles drained, Soul Asylum are back doing what’s kept the group together these last two decades: writing new music. “We don’t know where or when we’re going to put this out,” says Pirner of… Read more »

A Beatles’ shop in Liverpool, the birthplace of the world’s most famous band, has put what it says is a previously unreleased audio version of the last public recording by guitarist George Harrison on its Web site. A music industry source told Reuters he gave his recording of “If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going,” which he said Harrison played for an audience at music studios in Michigan in 1997, to the “From Me To You” shop in the northern English port. “I just thought it was a fitting tribute, a ray of light for the fans at this time,”… Read more »

If the Who, Elton John and Abba can be glorified on the theater stage, Gene Simmons sees no reason why he and Kiss can’t get a piece of those Broadway bucks. He plans to work with some of the top names in musical theater to put together a musical about Kiss. Next week, the Kiss bassist will meet with “Beauty and the Beast” director Rob Roth and “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” co-writer Stephen Trask about creating a story for the musical. At this point Simmons is unsure whether Kiss will pen new songs for the project, whether someone else… Read more »

In the downtime between their recently wrapped Pledge of Allegiance tour with Slipknot and a series of December radio festivals, System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian has recorded a full-length collaboration with noted Armenian multi-instrumentalist Arto Tuncboyaciyan. The tentatively titled “Serart” is slated for release next year on Tankian’s own Serjical Strike Records. Fans who dug Tuncboyaciyan’s curious noisemaking on System’s newly platinum Toxicity will surely enjoy “Serart,” a collection Tankian says is a marked departure from that band’s prog-metal barrage. “It’s really crazy world, jazz and experimental,” he says. “With some rock and hip-hop, beats, dance beats, electronic… Read more »

They came not to bury him, but to praise the man who pioneered television sketch comedy. Sid Caesar, whose “Your Show of Shows” was a household name during its run from 1950 to 1954, recalls being amazed and profoundly moved when he received a 15-minute standing ovation during his recent appearance on Drew Carey’s improvisational series “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” on ABC. The 79-year-old actor, who walks with a cane following recent surgery to both hips, told Reuters his biggest fear about returning to the small screen after an absence of more than 20 years was that no one… Read more »