Search Results for: NeX GEn

Panic! at the Disco went from a group of teenagers who’d written only three songs and never played a live show to the biggest new rock band in America. Their secret: Put together a band the way you’d create a MySpace page and let the kids run wild Ryan Ross bought his C55 Mercedes three months ago, but it’s been parked in his Las Vegas garage ever since. When the Panic! at the Disco guitarist climbs behind the wheel, cues up Tom Waits’ new Orphans collection and starts pushing buttons on the navigation system, he’s still not sure how it… Read more »

Independent record labels behind artists like The White Stripes, Deep Purple and Arctic Monkeys announced a global deal Saturday to pool access to their catalogs, seeking to grab a bigger share of online music sales from the major record companies. Indies and their trade groups from more than a dozen countries signed up to Merlin, a nonprofit licensing agency that will cut deals on their behalf with download sites under the terms of the agreement unveiled at Midem, a music industry gathering in the French Riviera town of Cannes. Smaller record companies with just a handful of successful artists fear… Read more »

Struggling U.S. auto manufacturers are hoping music will do for them what it did for Apple after the introduction of the iPod — make them cool. And in so doing, they aim to attract a new generation of car buyers who expect digital entertainment at all times. Two-thirds of 2007-model cars will enable users to connect MP3 players to factory-installed stereos. Leading the charge is Ford Motor, which at the Detroit Auto Show January 9 introduced a new factory-installed, in-car communications and entertainment system called Sync, developed in partnership with Microsoft. While auto manufacturers have offered iPod-integration kits as a… Read more »

2007 is off to a great start for Pepper! Once again these Island boys are gearing up for a two month national tour which kicks off February 14th in San Diego with the Mad Caddies. Pepper has been celebrating the attention from their latest album release No Shame on Atlantic/East West Records. Pepper mixes influences like Nirvana with the likes of Bad Brains and Black Sabbath, creating some of the best “kick back, sunny side, back side, grinding mellow guitar picking, cool wave riding sounds” around. The first single “No Control” continues to climb the Alternative Rock charts. Since its… Read more »

Dustin Kensrue hasn’t been getting much sleep lately. The release of his debut solo album, Please Come Home, is right around the corner, and his month-old daughter has been doing her best to keep him up too. Oh, and there’s that little project he’s been working on with Thrice, the band he’s fronted since 1998: a collection of 25 songs, spread across four CDs that will be known collectively as The Elements. Thrice, Kensrue said, are about halfway through the writing and recording of The Elements, which is bound to be one of the most ambitious studio efforts in recent… Read more »

LOS ANGELES – Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris resents that MTV and other cable music channels built multibillion-dollar businesses around videos given away by record companies anxious to promote their artists. So when he saw his own grandson watching 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” video on Yahoo, it got him asking: “How much are we getting paid for that?” The answer – nothing – led Morris to pull all of Universal’s videos from the giant Web portal until it agreed to a licensing deal in 2005. He wrangled similar arrangements from Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and other Internet portals… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO – Apple’s new iPhone appears to be the clearest statement yet of what Steve Jobs’s impact has been on consumer electronics. It is not that he invents new technologies. He refines existing ones. Mr. Jobs himself acknowledged that when asked during an interview on Tuesday whether he thought the iPhone represented a trend toward the convergence of computing and communications. “I don’t want people to think of this as a computer,” he said. “I think of it as reinventing the phone.” If the iPhone succeeds commercially, it will be new proof of Mr. Jobs’s power and influence over… Read more »

In a sobering, businesslike, 25-minute speech that aired during prime time Wednesday night (January 10), President Bush announced new plans for the war in Iraq. Those include the much-discussed addition of 21,500 troops, the demand that Iraqi forces take over major combat operations by November and the infusion of $1 billion to help build up the country’s infrastructure. “The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me,” Bush said during the speech, which had been delayed from late 2006 as he gathered more opinions and shook up his national security team . “Our… Read more »

A minor career change for the guitar legend Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards will make an appearance in the next Pirates of the Caribbean flick, the franchise’s producer has revealed. Richards famed rock and roll persona was famously the inspiration for Johnny Depp’s Academy Award-nominated role as Captain Jack Sparrow in the two previous films, and will make a cameo appearance at Sparrow’s father, it is rumoured, for the third outing. Hollywood heavyweight Jerry Bruckheimer confirmed the 63-year-old rocker would be appearing in the latest outing at the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: World’s End’ during a Walt Disney Corporation press… Read more »

Apparently when the bell tolled for Marissa Cooper, it also spelled curtains for the entire O.C. After ordering up an abbreviated season of what was once TV’s hottest prime-time teen drama (Beverly Hills, 90210 with even more beach time, if you will), Fox announced Wednesday that it has officially deep-sixed The O.C. The finale will air Feb. 22 after a non-stop run of new episodes starting Thursday. “The O.C. season four finale will also be the series finale. This feels like the best time to bring the show to its close,” O.C. creator and executive producer Josh Schwartz said in… Read more »