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Bummer Summer For Concerts – Why Aren't Fans Going?


Ticket sales are down, and big tours are scaling back to smaller venues. It looks to be a long, hot summer for the touring industry. On the cusp of the industry’s peak period, a number of high-profile tours and festivals have already hit snags, among them highly touted outings from Mariah Carey, the Field Day Music Festival, Lollapalooza, and Beck and Dashboard Confessional. Faced with a crowded tour market combined with high ticket prices, permit hassles, a sluggish economy and poor buzz, these tours and a handful of others have either had to scale back the size of the venues… Read more »

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Top Artists Balking At A La Carte Downloads


Despite the major labels’ success in clearing hundreds of thousands of tracks for purchase online through services like Apple’s iTunes Music Store, some top artists continue to resist authorizing the dismantling of their albums for Internet consumption as a la carte singles. Some acts are requiring that their music be sold exclusively in album bundles. For example, Linkin Park recently pulled its music as a singles offering from digital services. Sources say the band has expressed concerns about undercutting album sales. Other acts with similar stipulations about their work include Radiohead, Madonna, Jewel and Green Day, sources say. Top acts… Read more »

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Epic Records Goes Low-Tech to Seal Its Newest Music


The Epic Records Group, a unit of Sony Music, is approaching the sticky problem of prerelease music’s being traded online with an even stickier solution. Writers receiving review copies of two soon-to-be-released albums – Tori Amos’s “Scarlet’s Walk” and Pearl Jam’s “Riot Act” – are finding the CD’s already inside Sony Walkman players that have been glued shut. Headphones are also glued into the players, to prevent connecting the Walkman to a recording device. By locking up the discs, Epic hopes to keep writers from converting the music to MP3’s that can then be traded over the Net. But even… Read more »

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Queens Of The Stone Age Embark On… Trail Of Dead


The pairing of unabashed riff mongers Queens of the Stone Age and… And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead should make for a show that falls somewhere between rock and a harder place. The bands are scheduled to hit the road together beginning August 30 in Washington, D.C., according to an Interscope spokesperson. Thirteen shows have been confirmed thus far, ending with September 21 in Columbia, Missouri. Additional dates will be added to the itinerary that will take the trek into October. … Trail of Dead will support Josh Homme and the boys on all dates with… Read more »

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White Stripes Choose 'Dead Leaves,' Will Play With Strokes


Detroit blooze duo the White Stripes have chosen “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” as the third single from their latest album, White Blood Cells. The tale of woe, composed of sluggish verses that explode into a rough-hewn, feedback-tweaked chorus, follows previous cuts “Hotel Yorba” and “Fell in Love With a Girl.” A video for the song will be shot by Michel Gondry, according to a spokesperson for V2 Records. Gondry, who has directed groundbreaking clips for Björk, Cibo Matto and Radiohead, was the visual artist responsible for the living Lego style of the Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a… Read more »

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Glum Music Industry Outlook Plagues EMI


EMI Group emerged on Tuesday from a dismal year of slumping profits confident that things could only get better, but the music giant’s shares spun lower as a glum industry outlook rattled already jangled nerves. EMI, home to artists such as Radiohead and Kylie Minogue, posted a sharp but expected 40 percent fall in adjusted pre-tax profit and said its radical overhaul was going to plan despite an industry ravaged by an economic slowdown and piracy. The world’s third biggest music company saw its battered stock slide almost seven percent as analysts took fright after a post-results meeting, shrugging off… Read more »

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Snippets Of Nirvana Song At Center Of Lawsuit Appear Online


Portions of the last recorded Nirvana track surfaced online this week, bringing a new twist to the legal debate between Courtney Love and Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic. Live bootlegs of “You Know You’re Right” have circulated for years, but until now the studio version has gone mostly unheard. (Love spun the song at a London club in March and provided part of it to “Access Hollywood.”) Although she claims to possess more than 100 tapes of unheard material from the late Kurt Cobain, “You Know You’re Right” has been singled out as a huge potential hit by Love and… Read more »

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Lifehouse Feeling British With 'Stanley'


Lifehouse has turned to the U.K. for inspiration for its upcoming second album, which now boasts the odd title Stanley Climvfall. Frontman Jason Wade says some of that country’s classic rock artists, as well as some newer favorites, were on the band’s mind when they entered the studio. “All of us started listening to a little bit more Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, so I think that it’s sounds a little less American, a little more influenced by, like, Coldplay, Radiohead, Pink Floyd.” Lifehouse is approximately two weeks away from completing the album, Wade says, with a release from DreamWorks… Read more »

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Oasis Set Up U.S. Tour Whether Liam Likes It Or Not


Despite Liam Gallagher’s claims to the contrary, Oasis will be touring America this fall – because his big brother and bandleader, Noel, said so. “We’re coming back in August,” the elder Gallagher asserted, contradicting comments his predictably unpredictable brother made to the British press. “Liam’s invited. If he wants to come, he’ll come, if not, we’ll do it without him.” The group’s tour, which kicks off August 2 in Pompano Beach, Florida, is in support of the forthcoming Heathen Chemistry, Oasis’ first studio album in over two years. “Liam’s always – you know what he’s like,” Noel said, smiling. “I… Read more »

News

Courtney on Unheard Cobain Songs


“I have a buttload of material,” says Courtney Love of the archive of unreleased material by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. “I have the holy grail of rock & roll. That’s the story.” There are 109 tapes. “But not all of it’s great. Some of it’s fragments.” She thinks there are between five and eight “solidly good,” unheard acoustic songs. “There’s some stuff that’s not very melodic that I’m not fond of, but, hey, if you’re a fan of [Radiohead’s] Kid A, it might be really great. “On those tapes,” Love continues, “are everything from shitty collages to some pretty stunning,… Read more »

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