Search Results for: Rock am Ring

Tripoli – An American rock band hoping to be the first Western group to play in Libya since Muammar Gaddafi came to power 35 years ago could not perform because of an administrative glitch, government officials said on Saturday. The Heavenly States, a little-known group based in Oakland, California, had arrived in Libya on Feb. 1 to play three concerts, including one in the Roman ruins of Leptis Magna. Government officials said there had been a problem with the group’s visa. “They came with a tourist visa,” an official said by way of explaining the failure to grant them permission… Read more »

Gertrude Walton of Fayette County hated computers, her daughter said. That did not stop the recording industry from accusing the now deceased 83-year-old Mount Hope woman of illegally trading music over the Internet. More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the only defendant in a federal lawsuit. They claimed Walton made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name “smittenedkitten.” On Thursday, a spokesman for the Recording Industry Association of America acknowledged that Walton was probably not the smittenedkitten… Read more »

Washington – Eleven years after the demise of his million-selling rock band Nirvana, Krist Novoselic is back on the road, but this time he’s getting out of bed before noon. Novoselic, whose bass guitar anchored one of the most popular and influential bands of the 1990s, now spends his time pushing for voting reforms that he thinks could change the cynicism many people feel about U.S. politics. It’s a gig that requires him to wear a suit and tie and speak to audiences that measure in the dozens, rather than the thousands. But Novoselic, 39, sees parallels with the heady… Read more »

Los Angeles – Out of the blue comes an e-mail from my brother, Miles: “All confirmed. Rehearsals are next Friday, and your show with Andy Summers and Incubus at the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas will be on Sunday.” Whaaaat? I dimly remember Miles mentioning something about this radio concert, months ago. At the time I said, “Wow, cool,” and then forgot about it. So I’m thinking about it now, a little panicked, and figure, what the heck? Of course, I had better dig out my drums and try to get some life into my wrists. I remember too vividly getting… Read more »

Los Angeles – Epitaph Records built its foundation on punk rock. But just before last year’s presidential election, the label’s most biting political commentary arrived courtesy of Sage Francis, a 27-year-old rapper from Providence, R.I. The song “Slow Down Gandhi” sarcastically rips into liberals and conservatives alike, casting a cynical eye at warmongers and the “cool kids” who “were rocking votes.” With a perfectly articulated delivery that recalls Chuck D, Francis builds each verse with a mixture of activism, paranoia and humor. “If they could sell sanity in a bottle, they would be charging for compressed air,” he quips. Epitaph… Read more »

New York – In 2001, Martin Amis, Rick Moody and other authors and artists gathered in New York to honor a peer they regarded as a giant of the times. They compared him to Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Arthur Rimbaud. They called him a bard, a shaman and a master of “art as revenge.” That man was Bob Dylan. Had he lived in England, he’d be Sir Bob Dylan, maybe even Lord. Scholarly books have compared him to Dante and Keats; admirers lobby for him to get the Nobel Prize. At a 1997 Kennedy Center ceremony, where fellow honorees… 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 »

Since few people actually care about the winners of the Grammy Awards, the producers of the show always stack the program with top-notch performers to keep things interesting. Few people can remember who won the top award last year, but those images of Prince grinding with Beyonce during last year’s show opener will go down as one of the greatest musical moments in television history. This year, the Grammy people have drawn on 2004’s best-selling artists to make up their list of performers. Performers announced earlier today include Green Day, Alicia Keys, U2 and Tim McGraw. The Grammys will air… Read more »

Los Angeles – A bronze statue honoring late punk guitarist Johnny Ramone was unveiled before hundreds of celebrities and cheering fans at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Ramone, co-founder and guitarist of The Ramones, was 55 when he died of prostate cancer in September at his Los Angeles home. The $100,000 statue sits near the grave of bandmate Dee Dee Ramone, who died of a drug overdose in 2002. Grammy-winning producer Rick Rubin said at the Friday unveiling that The Ramones were as influential on the world of rock ‘n’ roll as the Beatles. “There was the music before them and… Read more »

SAYREVILLE, New Jersey – This small Jersey ‘burb is pretty far removed from Banda Aceh or Phuket (and even though it’s Jon Bon Jovi’s hometown, it’s pretty far removed from Manhattan, too). But on Wednesday night, Sayreville played host to the first in a series of benefit shows dubbed the Concerts for Tsunami Relief. It was a big show for an even bigger cause. The concert – co-sponsored by Linkin Park’s Music for Relief charity and New York radio giant K-Rock – was held at the Starland Ballroom, a very un-ballroom-like venue just off of Sayreville’s winding Jernee Mill Road,… Read more »