Search Results for: Rock Fest

Nobody would ever confuse R.E.M. for Metallica, but the guitars have definitely been turned up for the Georgia group’s 14th studio album, “Accelerate.” The follow-up to 2004’s “Around the Sun” is due in stores April 1 via Warner Bros. Nearly all the material was tested out during a summer run in Dublin, although manager Bertis Downs said a few of those songs didn’t make the cut, and a couple of album tunes were held back from live airings. Mostly gone is the drowsy vibe of “Around the Sun,” which was a commercial and critical disappointment. New tunes such as “Living… Read more »

Some of the world’s biggest names in music were all about Saving Our Selves this weekend. SOS, of course, referring to the campaign being touted Saturday across the globe at the seven-continent, 24-hour Live Earth concert extravaganza, a worldwide shout-out to individuals, political leaders, corporations and every other entity capable of helping put a stop to the environmental scourge that is global warming. In a partnership with Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection and other U.S.-based and international organizations, Live 8 executive producer Kevin Wall put together a bill that included the Police, Madonna, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica,… Read more »

Reunited rock band Rage Against The Machine will be one of the headliners at the third annualVegoose Music Festival, set for October 28-29 in Las Vegas, sources said. Vegoose producers declined to comment on specific artists booked for the show at Sam Boyd Stadium, but said an official lineup will be announced in mid-July. Rage ended a seven-year hiatus in April when it played the Coachella festival in southern California. Also on tap for the Los Angeles quartet are a July 28-29 run with the Rock the Bells tour at New York’s Randall’s Island, an August 24 date at Alpine… Read more »

INDIO, California – Perhaps it was a sign that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Arcade Fire and Hot Chip were sharing the same bill. Whatever the case, Saturday was certainly one of the most scorching Coachella afternoons ever, with temperatures into the100s for hours on end. That meant the tented stages provided plenty of shadowy solace, while pre-sunset outdoor acts were playing to their diehards and suffering while doing it. (Let’s just say there were multiple hipster rockers quoting Lil Jon’s infamous sweat-dripping lyrics.) Still, Peter Bjorn and John and the Decemberists wore their suits and the Sahara tent was… Read more »

Festival Preview LLC announces the launch of a music festival news, opinion and community website serving “involved” festival-goers, those that attend multiple festivals each year. Demand for the site is indicated by soaring attendance in recent years at North American festivals of every musical genre. “Hanging with your friends and favorite entertainers at live music events is more than a hobby–it’s a lifestyle,” says Festival Preview founder and publisher Dan Ruby. “A community service like Festival Preview is a prime example of how the Internet can enrich people’s lives and give them more of what they want. Covering all music… Read more »

Are the re-formed Smashing Pumpkins set to rock Lollapalooza? Will the long-dormant Police return at Bonnaroo? How about a reunited Nirvana taking the stage at South by Southwest, only with Ben Kweller playing guitar and singing Kurt’s vocals? All three sound too good to be true, little more than the pipe dreams of manic music buffs with way too much free time. But incredibly, they’re all “100 percent confirmed” by sources with intimate knowledge about such things. But don’t go crazy just yet. It’s entirely possible that absolutely none of the above information is true. After all, we’re smack-dab in… Read more »

In one of the most unusual summer-tour pairings in recent memory, the Ozzfest Web site announced Monday night that there will be one final act added to this year’s second-stage lineup: actress Jada Pinkett Smith’s rock group, Wicked Wisdom. The addition of the Christian-leaning rock-and-soul hybrid to a summer touring package that boasts ferocious metal merchants like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Shadows Fall, Mudvayne, In Flames and the Black Dahlia Murder is unexpected, to say the least. Wicked Wisdom is an Evanescense-esque act that Pinkett Smith, the band’s frontperson and the wife of actor/rapper Will Smith, has said is influenced… Read more »

Los Angeles – Lollapalooza – a marquee touring festival of the 1990s that fell on commercial hard times last year – is returning this year in drastically scaled-down form. Lollapalooza ’05 will run July 23-24 in Chicago’s Grant Park. The band lineup will not be announced until the third week in April. The festival Web site (www.lollapalooza.com) will go live Friday. Lollapalooza began life in 1991 as a major vehicle for the exposure of left-field rock talent. A highly successful summer touring proposition in the early ’90s, it took a five-year hiatus from 1998-2002, as other treks like the Vans… Read more »

Austin, Tx – There’s SXSW, the annual music biz spring break that’s been attracting talent from all over the world since 1987. Then, there’s the underground festival, not publicized as such, but the one where bands that didn’t achieve one of the chosen slots appear. This is the more interesting of the two. Merit certainly has nothing to do with who gets to appear at the more traditional festival. L.P., a NYC rocker with Marc Bolanesque curls and an amazing set of pipes is a glaring example of this. L.P.’s crafty manager Andrew Krents hustled a 3-night stand at the… Read more »

Just like everything that surrounds Sum 41, Chuck, the band’s fourth full-length album, has an outlandish story behind it. Last May, the group of 20-somethings were in the Congo, doing the charitable rock star thing by filming a documentary for War Child Canada about the civil war there, which has claimed over three million lives. In the midst of their altruistic act, the band suddenly found themselves in the midst of a serious violent outbreak as gun-fighting and bombs began falling just outside of their hotel. We caught up with Dave “Brown Sound” Baksh to talk a bit about dodging… Read more »