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Los Angeles – None of the Grammy nominees was more surprised than Chris Morris, who was taking notes along with the rest of the press corps Tuesday morning when he heard his name announced among the luminaries. Morris, who joined The Hollywood Reporter as music editor in September, was nominated for the liner notes he wrote for “No Thanks! The ’70s Punk Rebellion.” That Rhino Records compilation of various artists gives an overview of the genre’s early days by gathering 100 songs in a four-CD boxed set. Morris contributed a definitive context for the music in a thoroughly researched 116-page… Read more »

Record labels are embracing new technologies in search of music’s next big thing Joe Berman looks for new bands. Typically, that means hanging out in dive bars, enduring hours of unlistenable music by groups whose rock-and-roll dreams far exceed their talent, praying for the occasional act that shows promise. About 16 months ago, however, the Los Angeles-based talent-finder sat at home scouting the globe for groups. He typed “New Zealand indie rock bands” into his computer search engine and found Steriogram, five lads from the town of Whangarei in New Zealand. They had a song and a video posted on… Read more »

Los Angeles – Nearly 45 years after Stevie Wonder’s live harmonica workout “Fingertips, Pt. 2” topped the charts, the soul visionary’s musical charm still enthralls. From preteen wunderkind to adult visionary, his musical evolution embodies a “What’s next?” curiosity that still burns brightly as fans anticipate his first new Motown album in 10 years, which he hopes will come out in April. “Hopefully, that little boy will always stay in me,” Wonder said in a recent interview with Billboard. “The part of me that’s still eager to discover; who welcomes new, unbroken ground. When that ground is being broken, there’s… Read more »

New York – The Thanksgiving weekend kicked off with a bang for U.S. music retailers, turned into a whimper and rebounded nicely. “Friday exceeded our expectations, and then Saturday was softer than expected,” reports Bob Higgins, chairman/CEO of Trans World Entertainment in Albany, N.Y. “Overall, the weekend was good and we are still positive that it will be a good holiday season.” Likewise, Jim Urie, president of Universal Music & Video Distribution, reports: “We are getting a pretty consistent story from retail; overall, it was not great, but not horrible. Friday was great – in fact, better than great –… Read more »

Few music careers begin as dramatically as that of Philadelphia’s bluesy hard rockers Silvertide. By the end of the band’s first gig in February 2001, police had raided the club where they were playing and arrested dozens of crowd members for underage drinking and drug possession. Frontman Walt Lafty was almost hauled off as well. “I had given a bunch of equipment to my friends so they could sneak out the back and say they were carrying gear,” he explained. “Then I noticed all the gear was gone and I wasn’t out yet. So when I tried leaving, this black… Read more »

Los Angeles – Wednesday’s VH1 Big in ’04 awards show was a terrifying example of life imitating art, one that was dreadfully similar to “Saturday Night Live”‘s “Train Wreck Awards” skit from a few weeks ago. There was Anna Nicole Smith, just slightly more coherent than she was at the American Music Awards, threatening to flash the Shrine Auditorium audience after accepting the Big Makeover of ’04 award. There was ultimate odd couple, Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen, fondling each other from the “beige carpet” to the stage, which they entered on a horse-drawn carriage. (They also tried to fondle… Read more »

Tupac Shakur has always meant different things to different people. But if you ask anyone who knew him personally or followed his career, they’ll all agree he was compelling, if nothing else. Eminem, for one, was so moved by Pac that he approached Shakur’s mother, Afeni, and asked to work on the deceased icon’s next posthumous album, Loyal to the Game. “I wrote to Afeni and said, ‘Please consider letting me produce this album,’ ” he told MTV News a few weeks ago in Detroit. “I just feel, as a longtime fan of Tupac… his music, his persona, his everything.… Read more »

Brandon Boyd admits he wasn’t too sharp when he packed a knife in his luggage before attempting to board an airplane. The Incubus frontman pleaded guilty in New York’s Queens County Court on Monday to criminal possession of a weapon, according to a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office. Boyd was ordered to pay a fine of $250. The charge stems from Boyd’s arrest on October 6, when a screener at LaGuardia Airport found a switchblade knife in Boyd’s carry-on bag as he tried to catch a flight to Raleigh, North Carolina. From the beginning, Boyd has insisted that he… Read more »

When Good Charlotte wrote “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” the song that vaulted their last album into the mainstream, they were neither rich nor famous. These days, after selling more than 3 million copies of 2002’s The Young and the Hopeless, the guys in Good Charlotte are, to say the least, in a higher tax bracket. So their latest video – for “I Just Wanna Live,” off The Chronicles of Life and Death – skewers the fact that Good Charlotte are now in the precarious position of being rich people singing a song that complains about rich people complaining,… Read more »

Los Angeles – U2 has sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and won 14 Grammy Awards during the course of its 26-year career, so you would think that there would be a level of ease that comes with a new release. Not so, says the Irish band’s longtime manager Paul McGuinness. “There is absolutely no resting on our laurels,” he tells Billboard. “I say to people we have to break the band every time we put out a record.” And this is with an album that McGuinness expects to debut at No. 1 in “32 or 33 countries.” “How… Read more »