Search Results for: Fueled By Ramen

Pete Wentz was treated to dinner a few months ago by Lyor Cohen, the renowned rap promoter and U.S. music chief of Warner Music Group. Wentz, 28, is the eyelinered heartthrob and bassist of punk band Fall Out Boy; but this dinner was in celebration of the hit single just released by another band, Panic! At the Disco, which records on Wentz’s own label, Decaydance. “He asked me, ‘What do you want out of life, Pete?’” Wentz says. His answer was flip: business cards. The next day he received a stack of cards listing his name and a new title:… Read more »

For then 15-year-old Travis McCoy, high school gym class was nothing more than an excuse to chat about music with buddy Matt McGinley. McCoy, who was an aspiring rapper, was the frontman for a local band, and McGinley played drums for another in their native Geneva, N.Y. The summer after sophomore year, McGinley’s band landed a party gig, and McCoy, who happened to be at the same gathering, stepped to the mic and began to rhyme along with it. Thus Gym Class Heroes was born and went on to release three independent albums before signing to Fall Out Boy principal… Read more »

To the Academy Is …, the name “Santi” means many things, none of which make very much sense. “Adam [Siska], our bass player, had this enemy in high school whose last name was Santiago, but everyone called him Santi, and he had associates called, like, Panti, Canti and Fruscianti or something,” drummer Andy “the Butcher” Mrotek explained. “Adam always hated the name Santi, so to annoy him, we all started saying it instead of ‘thank you’ or ‘cheers’ or anything. So it started out as this incredibly stupid thing, the kind of stupid thing you do in a band on… Read more »

Around the time Brett Gurewitz was launching Epitaph Records in 1981, his father was lecturing him to take guitar lessons. The Bad Religion guitarist and punk-rock entrepreneur never sat down for courses with a guitar instructor, although he did go to school to learn to be a recording engineer. However, no amount of schooling could have prepared Gurewitz for the next 25 years of his life. Epitaph Records brought a new era of punk rock to the masses in 1994 when the Offspring’s “Smash” turned into one of the biggest rock records of the decade. The success of the label’s… Read more »

Following the release of Fall Out Boy’s 2003 full-length debut, Take This to Your Grave, the Chicago quartet was flooded with hyperbolic praise. The group, which was signed by tiny independent label Fueled by Ramen, was declared the “next big thing” by multiple media outlets, and its album sold more than 200,000 copies. So expectations were high for the band’s major-label follow-up, From Under the Cork Tree, which came out on May 3 and will debut at #9 on next week’s Billboard albums chart. Some pundits predicted a groundbreaking pop-punk expedition, and others awaited a heart-rending emo excursion, but Fall… Read more »

The Take Action Tour (www.takeactiontour.com) kicked off in DC with an evening of hard-hitting music from Sugarcult, The Early November, Hawthorne Heights, Hopesfall and Gym Class Heros. The event is the brainchild of Louis Posen, president and founder of punk/hard-core label Hopeless Records. In 1998, five years after forming Hopeless, Posen formed Sub City Records, an offshoot label that donates 5 percent of its prof- its to charity, according to the Web site. In 1999, Sub City took its socially conscious act on the road. The idea of the Take Action Tour is to connect Sub City bands – and… Read more »