Search Results for: Download Fest

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 »

Hasidic reggae rapper Matisyahu and rock act Chiodos will join the 2008 Vans Warped Tour lineup for limited dates this July, Billboard.com has learned. Matisyahu, who joins the Vans Warped Tour for the first time, will appear in the traveling rock festival July 9-11 and on July 13 at St. John’s Country Fairgrounds in Jacksonville, Florida. Vans Warped Tour veteran Chiodos joins the trek on July 18 at Comerica Park in Detroit. Matisyahu has a handful of other summer concert appearances lined up, including sets at Milwaukee’s Summerfest (June 30) and the inaugural Pemberton Festival in British Columbia (July 27).… Read more »

The album that will put the new EMI under its greatest global scrutiny to date is also 2008’s most eagerly awaited release. That’s the official word from Coldplay’s new boss. The band’s “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends” will be released June 12 internationally on Parlophone/EMI and on June 17 in North America on Capitol. EMI Group chairman Guy Hands, who led the buyout of the music company last summer through his private-equity firm Terra Firma, says, “Right across the world, this is the most anticipated album of the year.” As the follow-up to the British melodic… Read more »

Radiohead has confirmed 16 European summer concert dates for 2008, including an appearance at Denmark’s giant Roskilde Festival. The British rock band’s first confirmed concert will take place June 7 at the Malahide in Dublin. The tour, announced Wednesday on Radiohead’s official Web site, will roll on to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Germany. The band will be promoting its new release, “In Rainbows,” which fans can download from the Web for a price of their own choosing. It will come out on CD early next year. Radiohead manager Bryce Edge said dates… Read more »

LOS ANGELES CA–The traveling band of merriment known as HELLOGOODBYE will embark on a headlining tour this spring. Kicking off April 4th, the two month tour will encompass the US and Canada, and even jump the pond for the Give It A Name Festival in the UK. Providing HELLOGOODBYE tour support is Boys Like Girls, The Rocket Summer and The Hush Sound. A full itinerary, as well as pre-sale ticket info to come. The Top 20 single, “Here (In Your Arms)” reached gold status the week of February 10th. This is the first gold single in Drive-Thru history including artists… Read more »

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the… Read more »

Linkin Park are to release their third studio album ahead of a headline slot at this year’s Download Festival. The as-yet-untitled-set is confirmed for release on April 30th, with the U.S. rockers also preparing a single to hit a week prior, on April 23rd. Co-produced by Rick Rubin and the band’s co-lead vocalist Mike Shinoda (who toured his side project throughout 2006), the set is described as ‘unpredictable’ by the band’s other singer Chester Bennington. “[It’s] dark and spooky, poppy and very melodic…” he says. “We’re straying away from a lot of the predictable sounds we’ve had in the past.… Read more »

Sony Corp and Bertelsmann AG have refiled a request for EU regulators to clear a 2004 deal merging their music units, the European Commission said Thursday. Regulators have to re-examine the deal they cleared in July 2004 because an EU court struck down their original approval last July, citing “manifest errors” in how authorities decided that combining the two music majors would not restrict customer choice. The judgment sent lawyers into a flurry because it undermined the legality of the Sony BMG deal that formed the world’s second-largest record label behind Universal, bringing Sony artists like Aerosmith, George Michael and… Read more »

Nearly half of the short films being screened at this month’s Sundance Film Festival will be available for purchase at Apple’s iTunes store under a deal announced Friday. The digital downloads will supplement the free streaming at Sundance’s Web site, which will offer the shorts for only a three-month period beginning Jan. 18, the start of the festival in Park City, Utah. The iTunes downloads are expected to be available for three years and once purchased will play for at least the life of the owner’s computer. “Streaming on our site is not the same as owning, and there seems… Read more »

High School Musical officially graduated at the top of its class. The surprise monster hit soundtrack accompaniment to the Disney Channel’s tween song-and-dance fest, finished as 2006’s chart valedictorian, selling more than 3.7 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released Thursday. In the SoundScan era, the only other soundtracks to finish atop the yearend chart were The Bodyguard in 1993 and Titanic in 1998. Remarkably, High School Musical debuted on the charts way down at number 143 in January 2006. The disc increased its position each week, eventually hitting the top spot on two nonconsecutive weeks in March. It… Read more »