Search Results for: Rock am Ring

After seven years of performing, writing songs and recording, identical twins Evan and Jaron Lowenstein are finally enjoying the success of a major radio hit, “Crazy for this Girl,” on Sony/Columbia Records. Born and raised in Atlanta, the brothers were destined for sports careers – they traveled the country as semi-pro baseball players – until Evan decided to drop everything for music after hearing Elvis Costello’s “Allison.” He talked it over with Jaron, and the two decided to pursue writing music and becoming rock stars. But simultaneous actions weren’t a new thing for these twins. Together they thought up the… Read more »

Creatively speaking, rock and roll is in a box: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. A box. Sure, artists have introduced foreign elements: samples, loops, turntables, theremins, various techno effects. But it’s still a box limited by the traditional tools of the trade. Is this a bad thing? To some it’s the worst thing, like tape over your mouth, like handcuffs. To others, like Lucky Boys Confusion, it’s a challenge. What can you do in this box that hasn’t been done before? Not much, according to those artists who can’t help but step outside of the box (and hooray for them,… Read more »

The release of Amnesiac on June 5 will bring to a conclusion Radiohead’s three-year saga of what to do after OK Computer. And after going in markedly different directions with Amnesiac and last fall’s Kid A, bassist Colin Greenwood says he expects the group to drift back toward something resembling a standard operating procedure. “We’ve talked about doing a guitar album next,” Greenwood reports. “The reason we did these two records is to show that anything is possible rather than everything is expected; the last thing we wanted to do was go into the studio and make another version of… Read more »

Veteran songwriters and singers Randy Newman, Tom Waits and members of the rock band Heart filed a $40 million copyright infringement suit against online music company MP3.com Inc., the artists’ lawyer said on Tuesday. “This is a case of artists banding together to protect their most valuable assets – their songs,” said attorney Bruce Van Dalsem, an attorney for Gradstein, Luskin & Van Dalsem, who is representing the artists in the case. The suit alleges MP3.com illegally copied tens of thousands of the plaintiffs’ songs by digitally converting music on compact discs into MP3 files for its My.MP3 service, which… Read more »

Columbia/Loud Records’ Stereomud will be headlining what promises to be one of the most aggressive, exultant and satisfying underground hard rock tours of the summer: the “Pain & Suffering” Tour featuring Columbia/Dv8 Records’ Endo. The “Pain & Suffering” Tour kicks off Monday, May 21 at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan and will feature either Columbia/Portrait Records’ Spike 1000 or Columbia Records’ Flybanger. Inspiration behind the name of the “Pain & Suffering” Tour can be found in the music of the bands: Stereomud’s current hit, “Pain”; Endo’s first single “Suffer,”; and “Make Me Suffer,” the first single from Spike 1000. Currently… Read more »

Sugar Ray recently had a chance to live out their dreams – or at least their dream videos – when the pop-rockers shot a clip for the single “When It’s Over.” “Each guy has their dream sequence – like if they had the video of their choice, what would it be?” drummer Stan Frazier explained on the set of the video shoot over the weekend. Guitarist Rodney Sheppard steps into Bruce Lee’s shoes and kung-fu fights basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; DJ Homicide chills in a strip club featuring imagery pulled from his favorite hip-hop videos; bassist Murphy Karges rocks out… Read more »

Two weeks after Joey Ramone succumbed to cancer, friends and colleagues gathered Monday night at CBGB to remember the good-natured soul behind the tinted sunglasses and long dark bangs who inspired a musical uprising. It was something of a misfit family reunion, with Joan Jett, Deborah Harry, Dictators singer Handsome Dick Manitoba, punk writer Legs McNeil, photographer Roberta Bayley and Ramones manager Danny Fields among those offering brief eulogies. Craig Leon, who produced the Ramones’ 1976 debut album, called Joey “the most unlikely singer, and also the spirit of rock and roll.” Harry put it another way. “Once a cretin,… Read more »

Joey Ramone’s mother promised her son a 50th birthday party and he is going to get one. On May 19 – what would have been the punk-rock icon’s big day – family, friends, fans and, of course, other bands will honor the late Ramones singer at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. “In the weeks prior to his death, we often talked about his upcoming 50th birthday, and Mickey [Leigh, Ramone’s brother] and I promised Joey that for this very special day, we would throw the best and biggest birthday bash he ever had,” Charlotte Lesher, Ramone’s mother, said in a… Read more »

Blink-182 have picked a single for their forthcoming album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, and are offering fans a sampling on their Web site. An excerpt from the song, “The Rock Show” is currently streaming at www.blink182.com, a couple weeks before its May 7th radio date and some six weeks away from the June 12th release of Jacket. Of course, the track is loaded with bounce and hooks, typically youthful and reflective, “Couldn’t wait for the summer and the Warped tour,” sings singer/bassist Mark Hoppus. “I remember it’s the first time that I saw her there.” The San Diego… Read more »

British rocker Phil Collins and his third wife, Swiss-born Orianne, have had their first child, the star’s publicist said on Tuesday. Orianne gave birth to Nicholas Grev Austin on Saturday in Geneva, Switzerland, where the couple now live. “It is difficult to express just how happy Orianne and I are with the arrival of little Nicholas,” the 50-year-old legend said in a statement. He married Orianne, 22 years his junior, in July 1999. Collins has three other children, Simon, Joley and Lily, by his first two marriages. The stocky drummer who became frontman for the hugely successful band Genesis has… Read more »