Search Results for: This Wild Life

Showing no signs of fatigue or question marks about making a show revolve around material from her last two albums, Madonna started her final stop on the Drowned World Tour Sunday with a mesmerizing and confident performance that puts to shame any singer who thinks she might have a shot at Ms. Ciccone’s pop throne. Madonna frames blocks of songs in various settings, using mix-and-match motifs that yield differing results. In the end, she emerges triumphant – a reminder of why her star has never dimmed. Hundred-minute show closes on “Holiday,” Madonna’s first top 40 single from way back in… Read more »

Once a punk rock outcast who was locked up in a psych ward, Iggy Pop is now a celebrity, a Reebok model who rubs shoulders with the cream of society. But his elevated status does not stop him from noticing the absurdity of the situation, as he told Reuters in a recent interview: the kid raised in a Michigan trailer park is often the center of attention at various phoney-baloney shindigs. “Occasionally I’ll go to one of these VIP affairs or parties, and I always sorta look around thinking, ‘My God, how shallow and crass these people are! Not like… Read more »

Funk/punk/rap-rockers 311 will follow their summer on the Warped Tour with an extensive headlining tour across North America. The group will kick off a two-month swing in support of its latest album, From Chaos, at the Street Scene in San Diego on September 8 and play more than three dozen shows through the end of October. The trek culminates in a Halloween performance at the Universal Amphitheater in the group’s home base of Los Angeles. Shows in Texas and New Mexico from October 22-27 are also expected to be announced in the coming days. Frontman Nick Hexum tells LAUNCH that… Read more »

The inspiration behind the title of DMX’s upcoming The Great Depression is plain and simple: The author of “Stop Being Greedy” has been telling the people who work with him that after his LP drops on September 25, all the other rappers are going to starve. “You thought I’d let you have this sh-?,” he screams on the album intro, “Sometimes.” “You thought this rap sh- was yours? You muthaf ers done lost your mind!” He calms down just a little to give a shout out to all of his friends and family who have been influential in his life… Read more »

There might be a better setting for a Tool concert, but it doesn’t exist in waking life: The prehistoric, rugged beauty of Red Rocks Amphitheater felt almost threatening when serving as the physical backdrop for the band’s volcanic performance on Friday night, which opened a brief tour with prog-rock veterans King Crimson. Flanked by rock formations pushed up from the bubbling earth more than 60 million years ago (and donning a bald head, sporadic body paint and a black leather bodice), Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan looked like an androgynous ambassador of the apocalypse. Judging by the capacity crowd –… Read more »

Kid Rock is not dumb. That’s according to Sheryl Crow, who recently dated him. “He has an overview of what entertainment is that just blows my mind, a great scope of what people want and what’s considered kind of challenging to the audience,” Crow said in the September issue of Esquire magazine. “The other thing is, he’s wildly talented. As he gets out and plays with other people, people are shocked at how talented he is.” Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, is known for his sometimes racy lyrics. But the 30-year-old rocker also performed a duet with… Read more »

The Beastie Boys, Alanis Morissette, the Dave Matthews Band and Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio are among the artists banding together in the “New Power Project,” an effort to fight President George W. Bush’s energy plan. The members of the coalition – which also includes Tom Petty, Jackson Browne and Blues Traveler – hope to use their Web sites, online fan mailing lists and tours to get their fans to petition Congress and the Bush administration to alter federal energy policy. “President Bush’s energy plan recommends drilling for oil in the biological heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, bringing back… Read more »

Macy Gray picked up more than postcards and passport stamps during her world tour supporting On How Life Is – she also brought home inspiration for her second album, The Id. The charismatic songstress says her world travels supporting her 1999 breakthrough exposed her to an eclectic mix of styles and sounds that inspired her to get wild in the studio. “You go to France and African rhythms are really big over there and then you go to Germany and you’ve got like German hip-hop,” Gray said Wednesday. “And then there’s all kinds of techno clubs and drum’n’bass and jungle… Read more »

Even as Chuck Leavell watches Mick Jagger for cues or listens to Keith Richards’ riffs, his mind sometimes drifts from rock ‘n’ roll to the trees and seedlings on his 2,200-acre farm in central Georgia. Being part of one of the world’s great rock bands is just one side of Leavell, who tours with the Rolling Stones but always returns to Charlane Plantation eager to get his hands dirty again. “Part of my job is to really keep a close eye on Mick. They look to me for changes, and to signal to let them know the verse or chorus.… Read more »

Pudgy and shy, 13-year-old Matt Shafer had an outlet in rap but few to really share it with – until a chance day he saw Bob Ritchie work the deejay’s turntable. “Wickie-wickie-wickie,” was how the skinny, smug 16-year-old Ritchie scratched records during a deejay contest, his baseball cap’s visor flipped up and a rapper’s clock dangling from his neck. The showman did his thing backward, even upside down. “Everything about him was cool – the way he dressed, the way he talked. I admired him, looked up to him. He was kind of like an older brother to me,” Shafer… Read more »