Vans Warped Tour kicks off its 15th year of rocking up summer in Pomona, Calif. on June 26, and this year Fearless Records has four acts heading out for two months of punk rock mayhem. The Maine continues a killer year with a headlining slot on The Hurley Stage, while both A Skylit Drive and Breathe Carolina will play the entire tour on the SmartPunk Stage. Also joining them on select dates will be Every Avenue, which is set to take Warped by storm for a second year from July 24 – August 23. The Fearless tent will be… 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 »
A judge has dropped Michael Jackson from a lawsuit filed by the family of a woman who died at a hospital soon after she was moved to make room for the pop star. Judge Rodney Melville on Tuesday dropped Jackson from the lawsuit against Marian Medical Center in response to a challenge from Jackson’s attorney, Timothy Gorry. Melville rejected a similar motion by an attorney for the hospital. The attorneys could not be reached for comment Wednesday, and a phone message left for a Jackson representative was not immediately returned. The family of Manuela Gomez Ruiz had sued Jackson and… Read more »
Donda West, Kanye West’s mother, died of heart disease and “multiple postoperative factors” after plastic surgery, a deputy medical examiner said Thursday. But a coroner’s report said the exact contribution these factors could have played in West’s death following breast reduction, tummy tuck and liposuction couldn’t be determined. The investigation found “therapeutic levels of medication” but no unusually high levels and no internal bleeding.” West, 58, died Nov. 10 at a Los Angeles-area hospital, a day after her surgery. “It is my opinion Ms. West died from some pre-existing coronary artery disease and multiple postoperative factors,” Dr. Louis A. Pena,… Read more »
There’s something to be said for consistency – go to Farm Aid and you see John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and Dave Matthews. For this year’s inaugural show in New York, they’ll be joined by Counting Crows, the Allman Brothers Band, Montgomery Gentry and the Derek Trucks Band, among others, Farm Aid announced Wednesday. The concert will be held Sept. 9 on Randalls Island, an island just east of Manhattan. “I’ve always felt we should do it in New York because New Yorkers consume so much food,” Mellencamp told Nelson, Mellencamp and Young organized the first Farm Aid in… Read more »
For all the talk about Linkin Park killing off nü metal on the upcoming Minutes to Midnight, it’s rather puzzling that the first sound you hear on the album is the crackle of a needle hitting a record. After all, one of the, uh, tenets of the genre was the head-bopping DJ – think guys like LP’s Joe Hahn or Limp Bizkit’s Lethal – the dude responsible for, literally, putting the needle on the record (and for appearing out of place in all the press photos). So was co-frontman Chester Bennington kidding when he told MTV News back in September… Read more »
Season 2 Finale – “Live” from Brazil… Originally Aired January 25, 2006 on idobi Radio. Music from Young Heart Attack, Mest, The Academy Is…, Screeching Weasel, Fefe Dobson, Good Riddance, Nx Zero, Ludacris ft. Sum 41, Justin Nozuka.
Denny Doherty, one-quarter of the 1960s folk-rock group the Mamas and the Papas, known for their soaring harmony on hits like “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday,” died today (Jan. 19) at 66. His sister Frances Arnold said the singer/songwriter died at his home in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, after a short illness. The group burst on the national scene in 1966 with the top 10 smash “California Dreamin’.” The Mamas and the Papas broke new ground by having women and men in one group at a time when most singing groups were unisex. John Phillips, the group’s… Read more »
The album Rick James was working on before his fatal 2004 heart attack will be released in early May, his business manager said. The as-yet-untitled Stone City Records release features tracks the funk singer wrote in the last two or three years of his life; it was originally due in August 2005 via Sanctuary. “This is one he really wanted out,” Ron Kramer told Billboard.com. “He really didn’t want anybody else on these songs. He wanted to prove himself again. He wanted people to enjoy him; his music.” The album’s first single, “Deeper Still,” will hit urban radio in late… Read more »
One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »