Search Results for: The Aces

For the third time in his career, Eminem has a new album debuting atop the Billboard albums chart. Encore, the rapper’s fourth full-length LP, will bow at #1 on next week’s chart with more than 710,000 copies sold, according to SoundScan. What’s more impressive is that Shady pulled off the feat with less than a full first-week’s worth of sales. Because the album leaked online, Encore went on sale Friday, four days before the previously scheduled release of Tuesday. Since SoundScan ends each week’s tally on Sundays at midnight, Em’s 710,000 copies, which is also the year’s fourth-largest first-week total,… Read more »

New York – San Diego veteran rockers, Unwritten Law return to the limelight with Here’s To The Mourning, the band’s long-awaited, new studio album which is scheduled for release on Lava Records February, 2005. Considered by many to be one of the founding fathers of the Southern California punk/skate scene, Unwritten Law continue to push the envelope while maintaining their credibility as one of the most successful bands to break out of the late 90’s SoCal arena. The band’s new album is undoubtedly one of the most highly anticipated, pure rock n’ roll records to be released in the New… Read more »

Chicago – Musicians in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra approved a three-year labor contract that provides a raise after a year but grants concessions on benefits, officials said. The contract, approved shortly before a performance began Saturday night, freezes the musicians’ base salary at $104,000 for the first year but grants increments every six months thereafter, topping out at $114,400, company and union officials said in a joint statement. The Chicago Federation of Musicians and the symphony association’s board of trustees approved the agreement. The last contract had been scheduled to end Sept. 12 but was extended three times. The symphony… Read more »

Los Angeles – Vanessa Carlton is realistic. She knows today’s musical environment is not always friendly toward pop-oriented artists who play their instruments and write their songs, as she does. In fact, Carlton says she is gladly straddling the fence between “being true to myself as a musician and being embraced commercially” with her sophomore album, “Harmonium,” due Nov. 9 from A&M/Interscope Records. “It’s nice to be back and be the alternative to the more calculated, poppy acts out there,” the 24-year-old artist says. “I feel lucky that I’m able to appeal to real music lovers, and it also somehow… Read more »

Los Angeles – Will it be a blue Christmas in the music business? The first eight months of 2004 were a romp, when labels and retailers were measuring their progress against the soft numbers from the first two trimesters of 2003. The question looming then was how numbers would hold up when we got to September, which was the point last year when same-week increases bloomed for the first time in almost three years. The answer so far? Not so great. Even with collective sales of this week’s top 10 on the Billboard 200 outweighing that from the comparable week… Read more »

After a 25-year absence from the #1 album spot, J Records artist Rod Stewart with his album Stardust… The Great American Songbook: Volume III enters the Billboard 200 Album chart at #1 on a first week Soundscan total of 240,043 copies sold. The Songbook albums are a musical and cultural phenomenon, and are now the biggest-selling ongoing series of new music recordings in history. This is also Rod Stewart’s first ever #1 debut on the Billboard Top 200 chart. Stardust is the follow-up to 2002’s It Had To Be You… The Great American Songbook (which spent 85 weeks on the… Read more »

On one hand, New Found Glory aren’t really learning anything while on tour with Green Day. “We know all the songs in their set,” guitarist Steve Klein said. “There aren’t many bands where I know every single song from every single CD.” But on the other hand, touring with three guys who are both your mentors and your favorite musicians does have its upside. “Green Day are a band that all of us look up to for what they’ve done and what they stand for,” drummer Cyrus Bolooki said. “They are like the pioneers of our kind of music.” New… Read more »

AUGUSTA, Ky. – Henry and her husband, former Kentucky Lt. Gov. Steve Henry, said they plan to buy the home within the next two weeks, renovate it for use as a public museum and also live in it part-time with their two children. Heather French Henry grew up just three blocks away before moving to Maysville and said Clooney served as a mentor to her when she was Miss America 2000. “Augusta and Maysville were the only places where we could get away and breathe,” Henry said. “I would like my children to get what I got from Augusta.” The… Read more »

Good Charlotte, Lostprophets, Coheed and Cambria and other Sony BMG Music affiliated artists will be found on the in-game soundtrack to “ATV Offroad Fury3.” Exclusive to Sony’s PlayStation 2 game platform, the highly anticipated videogame ships Nov. 2 and marks a creative partnership between Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) and Sony Music. The array of tracks from well-known and up-and-coming rock, funk, hip-hop and techno acts was selected to amplify the extreme gameplay and intense offroad racing excitement. Other artists heard in the game include Chevelle, Eighteen Visions, Crossfade, Future Leaders Of The World, the Mooney Suzuki, Midtown, Killradio and… Read more »

A quarter century after Sony Corp. first shipped the legendary Walkman personal stereo, the electronics giant is launching a high-tech model that aims to topple Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod as today’s leading digital music player and status symbol. Sony has its work cut out: In less than three years, the simple white iPod has undergone four revisions, each time capturing more customers and acclaim with slick designs, clean interfaces and ever increasing versatility. For now, Apple has nothing to fear. Sony’s Network Walkman NW-HD1 is as clunky as its name. The gadget looks great, but it’s ruined by a bizarre… Read more »