Search Results for: Rock am Ring

Ground control to Avril Lavigne: It’s David Bowie, like doughy – not Bowie, like Howie. That’s how the 18-year-old Canadian singer pronounced the veteran rock star’s name when the Grammy nominations were announced Tuesday. Lavigne was helping announce the nominees for best male rock vocal performance at Madison Square Garden when she made the gaffe, pronouncing Bowie’s name like “Howie.” When an Associated Press reporter told her afterward that she’d flubbed Bowie’s name, Lavigne said: “Oops! I knew that was going to happen, I knew I was going to pronounce someone’s name wrong.” Lavigne – that’s pronounced luh-VEEN – received… Read more »

Papa Roach spent some time in the studio with the Neptunes last week, recording a song for the soundtrack to “Biker Boyz,” starring Laurence Fishburne and Kid Rock. Jacoby Shaddix and company shacked up with producers du jour Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo in Los Angeles’ Record Plant, according to a DreamWorks Records spokesperson. The resulting track, tentatively titled “Don’t Look Back,” is slated for the “Biker Boyz” soundtrack, due January 28. The album’s other tracks had not been finalized at press time. “Biker Boyz” stars Fishburne as Manuel “Smoke” Galloway, leader of a black motorcycle club. Rock, following up… Read more »

Though some artists have been known to exaggerate a broken heart for the sake of art, the All-American Rejects have no need for such artistic license. For them, the truth is often sadder than fiction. “There’s rarely a happy ending in any of my songs,” singer/bassist Tyson Ritter said. “As far as the guy getting the girl in the end, it’s all fictitious. It’s all made up in my mind, I guess; all wishful thinking.” Such weighty fare fills the self-titled full-length debut by Ritter, 18, and multi-instrumentalist Nick Wheeler, 20. Two kids from Stillwater, Oklahoma, shouldn’t know so much… Read more »

In an historic decision handed down by a federal jury in Pittsburgh, PA, SESAC has been awarded more than $1.2 million in damages, including the maximum damages on 6 songs, in a copyright infringement litigation. The verdict was returned against WPNT, Inc., the operator of radio stations WLTJ-FM and WRRK-FM in Pittsburgh, and its president, Saul Frischling. In their complaint, SESAC and 15 affiliated music publishers alleged that on numerous occasions WPNT’s stations performed the music of SESAC-affiliated songwriters without authorization. SESAC sought statutory damages under U.S. Copyright Law Title 17 U.S.C. # 504 and charged willful infringement. The music… Read more »

Peter Garrett, the energetic lead singer of Australian rock band Midnight Oil, has quit the band after 25 years. With his distinctive bald head, wild dancing and strident voice, Garrett was one of the most recognizable Australian singers of the last generation. Midnight Oil’s protest song about Aboriginal land rights, “Beds are Burning,” was a hit around the world and the band played it at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. “The last 25 years have been incredibly fulfilling for me, and I leave with the greatest respect for the whole of Midnight Oil,” Garrett said in a… Read more »

A founder member of British rock group Oasis has lost his bid to sue the band’s lawyers over his firing because he took too long to start legal action. London’s High Court threw out the claim by drummer Anthony McCarroll that solicitors Statham Gill Davies had negligently handled Oasis’s 1993 recording agreement with Sony, allowing the band to get rid of him instantly without compensation. The judge, awarding summary judgment to the solicitors without the need for a full trial, said McCarroll had failed to bring his claim within the legal limit of six years from the date his cause… Read more »

More than a decade after the height of the Seattle rock explosion, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains are long gone and Mudhoney have become a cult band. Pearl Jam are the last man standing. And despite their best efforts to maintain a low profile, their Riot Act debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling more than 165,000 copies. No one could be more surprised than guitarist Mike McCready. “I’m amazed that people are even still wanting to listen to us,” he said. “With all the other music out there and the shifting times, I’m surprised that… Read more »

Word has surfaced that the ex-wife of Creed’s Scott Stapp was arrested earlier this month for aggravated battery with a weapon after she hit the famed rocker in the face with a cell phone during an argument in the bedroom of his Orlando, Florida home. Hillaree Stapp “picked up a cell phone and punched [Scott] with it across his left side of his face” with enough force to cause his head to “jerk to the right,” according to a report filed by the Orange Country (Florida) Sheriff’s Office. The incident took place on November 14 as the pair discussed “the… Read more »

Pearl Jam’s new effort, Riot Act, debuts at Number Six and 3 Doors Down’s new album, Away From The Sun, enters at Number Eight on this week’s Billboard 200. 3 Doors Down’s Brad Arnold revealed that the huge success of the band’s debut, The Better Life, gave the band freedom with the new album. “With your music, when it succeeds you just gradually can pull people, I guess, more to the things that you want them to hear. Or maybe you can get them to accept things that maybe they wouldn’t accept off a first record or something. I don’t… Read more »

Eddie Vedder has found plenty of material in mortality over the years. His band, Pearl Jam, was born of a heroin overdose more than a decade ago. Rival songwriter Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide while at the height of popularity. Two of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits, “Jeremy” and “Last Kiss,” deal with teen death. Now comes renewal, an appropriate topic as the lead singer and his bandmates re-emerge from their most proximate shock: the deaths of nine fans trampled during the 2000 Roskilde festival in Denmark. “Riot Act,” released Nov. 12, is Pearl Jam’s first studio album since the… Read more »