Search Results for: Rock Fest

British pop singer Elton John, whose string of hits has made him one of the richest stars in the music business, has said it’s time to let the sun go down on his recording career. He stunned his audience at a weekend concert in the United States by saying his latest album, “Songs From The West Coast,” would be his last, his London-based spokesman said. “I’m fed up with it. I like playing to you guys but I hate the record industry,” said John, who has amassed an estimated 150 million pounds ($210 million) fortune in a career spanning more… Read more »

Columbia Records and Music Choice are announcing the line-up for the December episode of “Street Team,” the next generation of rock & roll television. Episode Eight, airing from December 3, through December 16, features segments with Xzibit, John Mayer, Blaque, and Cypress Hill. Nine young Street Team hosts take television viewers on a first hand trip to a place previously off-limits to most music lovers: backstage, on tour, on stage and in the studio shooting music videos with top artists. Viewers now get a chance to find out what it’s all about from the perspective of their peers: the Street… Read more »

No, this is not a story about an isolated incident. Although for years rock concerts have been drug and alcohol fests (come on, we’ve all been to them), for some reason dance music related events and clubs have recently been targeted by law authorities nationwide – from superclub Twilo in New York being shut down earlier this year to a yet unsubstantiated Federal case filed in New Orleans against club organizers. You even see the prevailing attitude on nightly news programs and in magazines like Time that dance music events are simply all about the drugs … perhaps all the… Read more »

Coldplay took a break from recording its second album and squeezed into to a local London pub on Friday (November 23) to tune up for its upcoming American dates. The band, minus ill bassist Guy Berryman, performed at the Shepherd pub with “acoustic guitars, disco lights and a pub-singer P.A. system…hastily installed in the corner near the dartboard,” according to a report on the band’s official website (coldplay.com) by Coldplay guitar tech Matt McGinn. The trio played several of its own songs, including “Yellow,” “Trouble,” “Don’t Panic,” “Parachutes,” and the new “In My Place,” as well as covers of the… Read more »

In the downtime between their recently wrapped Pledge of Allegiance tour with Slipknot and a series of December radio festivals, System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian has recorded a full-length collaboration with noted Armenian multi-instrumentalist Arto Tuncboyaciyan. The tentatively titled “Serart” is slated for release next year on Tankian’s own Serjical Strike Records. Fans who dug Tuncboyaciyan’s curious noisemaking on System’s newly platinum Toxicity will surely enjoy “Serart,” a collection Tankian says is a marked departure from that band’s prog-metal barrage. “It’s really crazy world, jazz and experimental,” he says. “With some rock and hip-hop, beats, dance beats, electronic… Read more »

Busta Rhymes celebrated a birthday on Tuesday, but it wasn’t the anniversary of the day he was born. It was the day he was reborn as an MC and businessman – the day his new album hit stores. “I named my album Genesis ’cause there was nowhere left to go after The Coming (1996), When Disaster Strikes (1997), Extinction Level Event (1998) and Anarchy (2000),” he said recently, sitting in the offices of J Records. “Sequentially it made sense to be at that point…. The only place left to go is just rebuilding a whole brand new whatever.” Part of… Read more »

Mick Jagger, once the wild man of rock, says that at the age of 58 he has given up on drink, drugs and partying. And with the Rolling Stones set to embark on yet another world tour, he said the veteran rockers weren’t ready to fade away quite yet: “The Stones would keep going even if they all died,” he said. Jagger, famed for his swiveling hips and pouting lips, has won critical acclaim for his latest solo album – “Goddess in the Doorway” – and he let loose in Los Angeles last week with a rare one-man concert to… Read more »

There is no part of a Femi Kuti show that doesn’t thrill or educate. It’s a whirlwind of African percussion, and American funk and soul married in a most danceable state by a colorfully dressed ensemble, with Kuti overseeing the maelstrom with either a saxophone or a set of dictum-weighted lyrics. His act, drawing heavily on material from his second album for MCA,”Fight to Win,” continues to set the bar for the term “first-rate” with new music that is loaded with colors softer than the ones found on his debut, “Shoki Shoki,” or in the Afrobeat music of his late… Read more »

Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc. announced today that four additional major recording artists have agreed to provide music and video content for the upcoming interactive musical game, Frequency(TM), exclusively on the PlayStation ®2 computer entertainment system. Setting the stage for the next generation in gaming, Frequency lets gamers take part in the music revolution by mixing and re-mixing songs from top bands in a unique new addictive gaming experience. Adding some exclusive tracks and unreleased footage to the previously released lineup of top artists, the newly signed bands include No Doubt, Jungle Brothers, Curve and Akrobatik, bringing the total to… Read more »

Fred Durst was the undisputed star of Thursday’s MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony, accepting three awards and performing with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. Limp Bizkit won Best Group, Best Rock Act and the Web Award, besting nominee leaders Gorillaz, who won only two of the six awards they were up for – Best Dance Act and Best Song for “Clint Eastwood.” Durst, Page and Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin played the Zeppelin song “Thank You,” nearly stealing the show from such fellow performers as Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z, who performed “Girls, Girls, Girls” with 300 German women joining… Read more »