Search Results for: 2003

What do you do if you’ve been touring the world for the past decade and, at 25, you’re having what amounts to your first midlife crisis? If you are coming off a very public breakup with your longtime movie-star girlfriend? If you are headline news at home, but just another face in the crowd in your adopted hometown of New York? If you’re Ben Lee, you write an album of existential pop songs and call it Awake Is the New Sleep (February 22) and enjoy how you’ve turned heartbreak and the search for life’s big answers into the strongest album… Read more »

After he joined the Smashing Pumpkins 17 years ago, drummer Jimmy Chamberlin’s career began to revolve around incidents of death and rebirth. In March of 1996, his father died when the Pumpkins were on tour. Then in July of that same year, road keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin died from a heroin overdose while shooting up with Chamberlin. The drummer was arrested for possession and booted from the band for his inability to kick smack, with which he had battled since 1991. Ironically, the seeming death of his career triggered his spiritual rebirth. With help from friends, he got clean and rejoined… Read more »

New York – In 2001, Martin Amis, Rick Moody and other authors and artists gathered in New York to honor a peer they regarded as a giant of the times. They compared him to Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Arthur Rimbaud. They called him a bard, a shaman and a master of “art as revenge.” That man was Bob Dylan. Had he lived in England, he’d be Sir Bob Dylan, maybe even Lord. Scholarly books have compared him to Dante and Keats; admirers lobby for him to get the Nobel Prize. At a 1997 Kennedy Center ceremony, where fellow honorees… Read more »

After being on the road for two years, playing hundreds of shows and doing about just as many interviews, the last thing Finger Eleven guitarist James Black probably wants is to listen to the same old questions. So, ChartAttack sat down with Black to talk a little about comics, the band’s new single and surviving on the road with your friends… You guys have a new single coming out called “Thousand Mile Wish.” Is it a heavier song or more of a ballad like “One Thing”? James Black: It’s a softer song. In my opinion it’s actually in-between because the… Read more »

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Now selling at a rate of more than a million downloads per day, Apple Computer Inc. said Monday customers have purchased a total more than 250 million songs from its online iTunes Music Store. The store, now available in 15 countries, is selling 1.25 million songs per day, which puts the annual run rate of almost half a billion songs per year, Apple said. Apple helped invigorate the market for legal music downloads when it launched the iTunes store in April 2003, but its robust sales continues to far outpace rival services. The success is due… Read more »

CANNES, France – The theme song isn’t quite “Happy Days are Here Again,” but almost. Music industry veterans, after several years of worrying about how illegal Internet downloads could threaten their business, are humming a decidedly upbeat tune these days. While questions remain about how to best deliver hits by U2 or arias by Luciano Pavarotti to music fans, one of the industry’s top conferences opened Saturday in this Riviera resort amid new signs that online downloads could become a moneymaker after all. The optimism at the Midem conference is a sharp turnaround from a year earlier, before music publishers… Read more »

New York – Tennessee-based rock act Kings Of Leon will hit the road in North America later this month in support of its upcoming sophomore album, “Aha Shake Heartbreak.” Released last November in Europe, where the act is hugely popular, the RCA set is due Feb. 22 in the United States. Kings of Leon will be in Park City, Utah, on Friday (Jan. 21) playing an ASCAP-sponsored showcase at the Sundance Film Festival. A handful of other West Coast dates will follow before the band heads to Japan for the Sonicmania Festival, which will also feature Good Charlotte, Marilyn Manson,… Read more »

Washington – You might say the Janet Jackson moment of President Bush’s inaugural festivities came Tuesday at a youth concert with hundreds of preteen Hilary Duff fans in the audience. No nudity was involved, but the Vince Neil-style profanity probably didn’t win rock band Fuel any fans at the Federal Communications Commission, nor from the parents at the concert. Now the Pennsylvania band is just hoping the concert, “America’s Future Rocks Today,” wasn’t aired live. Borrowing a word from Motley Crue’s Neil, the lead singer of Fuel proclaimed, “Welcome to the greatest –ing country in the world.” Brett Scallions followed… Read more »

New York – The Offspring is the latest act to sign on for the 2005 Vans Warped Tour next summer. Beyond the California rock act, which is making its first Warped appearance, the 11th annual trek will also feature the Transplants, Thrice, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Dates and venues will be unveiled next month. It is unknown if the Offspring will be touring in support of a new studio album. The group’s most recent was 2003’s “Conspiracy of One,” which debuted at No. 9 on The Billboard 200. Warped, which claims to be the longest-running music and… Read more »

With the metal world still reeling from the shocking murder of Dimebag Darrell Abbott, it seems that a second Damageplan album might be in the works. Damageplan’s manager Paul Bassman recently told Billboard.com of a nearly completed recording that the band had laid down just prior to Abbott’s death. Bassman also mentioned that according to Abbott’s brother, Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul, the band have every intention to get the music to the fans as soon as possible. It’s not known how much material was completed or when the album may be released. When Abbott was killed, Damageplan were touring behind… Read more »