Search Results for: AVOID

Last month the music industry and Apple, long uneasy partners, seemed a picture of harmony when they agreed on new terms for pricing on iTunes, Apple’s online music store. Behind the scenes, however, the relationship remains as tense and antagonistic as ever. The announcement on Jan. 6 seemed to signal a rapprochement between the music industry and its biggest distributor: record companies gave up their demand for copyright protection (called digital rights management) and Apple allowed flexible pricing, so the labels could charge more for new or popular tracks. But according to one music industry executive involved in the negotiations,… Read more »

Three years ago, Cobra Starship weren’t even a band. Two years ago, they weren’t one either, but at least things were beginning to happen. Gabe Saporta – tired of watching his band Midtown being mired in the major-label quagmire – began writing songs on his own, under the name of Cobra Starship (apparently borrowed from a brand of vintage jackets). Somewhere along the way, he got tapped to write the theme song for the Samuel L. Jackson flick “Snakes on a Plane,” which became the first official Cobra release. Since then, they’ve released two full-lengths, kicked out a keytar player… Read more »

Kylie Minogue, who went from soap actress to become one of the world’s most famous female recording artists, wowed fans on Monday at her first performance in Chinese capital Beijing with an electric show. A beaming Minogue, who recently overcame breast cancer , belted out a series of her biggest hits, including “Can’t get you out of my head,” “Better the devil you know” and “I should be so lucky.” “It’s my first time ever here in Beijing and you’ve made me feel so welcome,” she told the crowd of some 6,000 who had gathered to see her at the… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »

Avril Lavigne is getting under the skin of Malaysian censors. A hard-line Islamic opposition party in the Southeast Asian country is calling on the government to scuttle an upcoming concert featuring the “Sk8er Boi” singer, calling her stage act way “too sexy” for local tastes. Officials with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party’s youth wing contend Lavigne’s Aug. 29 performance in Kuala Lumpur would set a bad example for citizens, especially coming two days before the nation’s Aug. 31 Independence Day holiday. “It is considered too sexy for us…it’s not good for viewers in Malaysia,” party official Kamarulzaman Mohamed was quoted by… Read more »

When the culture began to change in the late 1960s – when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam – George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the time he died Sunday night (of heart failure at age 71), the transformation he helped bring about in stand-up had become so ingrained that it’s hard to think of Carlin as one of America’s most radical and courageous popular artists. But he was. Carlin started doing stand-up… Read more »

Boy George doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wants to entertain. The British artist is planning a free concert for his one-time coworkers at the New York Department of Sanitation as a sign of appreciation for the good will he was shown while performing community service in the city two years ago. George, whose real name is George O’Dowd, will perform during the department’s annual Family Day on Aug. 17. More than 5,000 people are expected at the event. “The people I worked alongside showed great kindness to me at a very difficult time, and I wanted to thank… Read more »

Napster Inc. on Tuesday opened what they claim is the world’s biggest MP3 download store with more than 6 million songs in a direct challenge to Apple Inc’s iTunes store. The new Web-based music store will have digital songs from all major music labels as well as thousands of independent labels. The MP3-format songs will be compatible with the vast majority of digital media devices and mobile phones including Apple’s popular iPod as well as its iPhone. Before now Napster has focused on selling all-you-can-eat monthly streaming music subscription packages but has struggled to win over the majority of fans… Read more »

The term “singer-songwriter” makes Gavin DeGraw cringe. “It makes you feel like a weakling the way all the singer songwriters are marketed, you know what I mean? … It’s not masculine enough for me. I don’t feel like I fall into that category in a lot of ways,” he said about his “typecasted genre.” Maybe it’s because he was seen as the sensitive songwriter dude that the gregarious 31-year-old is anxious to break out of that mold. DeGraw – who sings, writes his own songs and plays multiple instruments – debuted his skills as a pop artist on his 2003… Read more »

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger only survived an assassination attempt by Hells Angels members nearly 40 years ago because a boat carrying his would-be killers was swamped in a storm, according to a new BBC documentary. The details of a plot to kill the British rocker were revealed by an FBI agent as part of a series, “The FBI at 100,” which is to be aired on BBC Radio 4 on Monday. Tom Mangold, who presents the series, told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper that Jagger fell out with the Hells Angels after a member of the notorious gang killed a… Read more »