It began with a benign four-minute ferry ride through calm waters to a little-trafficked landmass in the Upper New York Bay, but Saturday night at The Beach on Governors Island proved to be anything but gentle.
NEW YORK – Barely a year after it opened in Soho, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum’s New York annex is closing. The Cleveland-based parent Hall of Fame confirmed Friday that its New York affiliate, which required a $9 million investment and was part of a broader expansion plan, will shut its doors on Jan. 3.
When Barack Obama moved into the White House on January 20th, he gained access to five chefs, a private bowling alley – and a killer collection of classic LPs. Stored in the basement of the executive mansion is the official White House Record Library: several hundred LPs that include landmark albums in rock (Led Zeppelin IV, the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed), punk (the Ramones’ Rocket to Russia, the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols), cult classics (Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin) and disco. Not to mention… Read more »
Backstage notes from the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. 1. After winning three Moonmen, including video of the year, Britney Spears got cold feet before she met the press. She peeked into the media room with personal assistants and camera crew in tow, then promptly turned around and left. A few moments later, Chris Brown hurried in to take her place — prompting a round of disappointed “Awwwww!” from disappointed Britney-wannabe paparazzi (a reaction that seemed to miff Brown, who maybe didn’t understand that he wasn’t being booed personally.) Never fear, Britney returned after Brown; she said… Read more »
Every record collector’s library contains a handful of forgotten classics, great records mismanaged by labels and lost to the annals of history. In recent years, some specialty labels have started reissuing these records for new audiences. Among them, Hacktone Records, founded in 2005 by Rhino Records veterans David Gorman and Michael Nieves. “Our goal is not to cater to completists or to be a legacy label,” Gorman said. “We’re not putting out lost demos by famous acts or throwing a few bonus tracks on a well-known record and putting it back out.” Rather, they acquire the rights to lesser-known works… Read more »
Hilly Kristal, the founder of New York punk rock club CBGB, which helped make the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads stars, has died at age 75, his daughter said on Wednesday. Kristal died on Tuesday from complications of lung cancer, his daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, said. He founded the club in 1973 hoping to showcase country music, calling it CBGB & OMFUG, for “Country, Bluegrass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers.” But the club drew few country acts and instead became a breeding ground for punk rock, playing host to the likes of Patti Smith, Television, Living Colour as… Read more »
It’s New Year’s Eve in New York and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is headlining the buzziest indie rock bill in town. The eclectic quintet — which has risen to notoriety for selling more than 110,000 copies of its 2005 debut album in the United States without the help of a record label — has plenty to celebrate. The band is using the show at Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom to preview a half-dozen tracks from its self-released sophomore set, “Some Loud Thunder,” due January 30. CYHSY’s most rabid fans don’t need much of an introduction to some of the new material.… Read more »
The upcoming closure of New York’s famed punk-rock club CBGB is lamented by locals as the loss of a legendary venue; for others it symbolizes another Manhattan neighborhood becoming corporate and bland. Standing underneath the club’s red awning on Thursday evening, several young musicians smoked cigarettes and bemoaned the loss of the dank, grimy club that began in 1973 and will have its last show on Sunday, featuring Patti Smith. The venue — its full name is CBGB & OMFUG, or Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers — spawned the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie, whose lead… Read more »
New York – Radio’s playlist liberation movement hatched in late 2001 at a birthday party in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A radio was blasting when Howard Kroeger, director of operations and programing for CHUM Broadcasting’s Winnipeg stations, arrived at his friend’s 40th-birthday bash. It was a competitor’s classic rock station, and Kroeger used the occasion to conduct an informal focus group among the partygoers, most in their mid- to late 30s. Whenever Boston, the Cars, Meatloaf, Supertramp or some other ’70s staple came on, it got an overwhelming thumbs-up from the Molson-enhanced crowd. But there was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm when… Read more »
New York – Hours earlier, Hilly Kristal joined rock’s royalty inside a Waldorf-Astoria ballroom for the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. By the morning, though, Kristal sips a cup of coffee and pops an antacid as he considers the future of his own piece of rock history: CBGB’s, the venerable birthplace of punk. After 32 years in business, the world-renowned club on the Bowery is in danger of losing its lease. “Even at this Hall of Fame thing, people were coming up and asking, ‘What can we do? What can we do?’” Kristal recalls, sitting at his… Read more »
