Search Results for: Thursday

The Warped Tour kicked off in Boise, Idaho at the Idaho Center Amphitheater on Thursday (June 19), playing to 10,000 fans. The festival opened at noon with a mad rush of vendors and fans to claim spots, akin to the Oklahoma land rush. The performances began at 12:30 p.m. with 2 Cents on the mainstage, and continued through closing act Face To Face, which went on at about 10:00 pm. The festival started off with a bang, with a huge line forming outside the venue’s two entrances early on. Popular bands of the festival included the Used and A.F.I. One… Read more »

After surviving the temper tantrums of their previous lead singer, three former members of rock band Guns N’ Roses won’t let a mere drugs bust derail their fledgling supergroup. As the new band, Velvet Revolver, generates early buzz with its first new song, the legal and health problems of frontman Scott Weiland have already cast doubt over its prospects. But bassist Duff McKagan told reporters Thursday, an hour before the band played its first public performance, that Weiland’s woes were a fact of life. “Rock ‘n’ roll is not a safe thing,” McKagan said. “It shouldn’t be a safe thing.… Read more »

Former Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra must pay $220,000 in back royalties and other damages to the other members of his band, an appeals court judge has ruled. A three-judge panel of a state appeals court in an unpublished opinion Wednesday upheld an earlier ruling against Biafra for breach of contract and fraud. Telephone calls to Biafra’s manager and lawyer Thursday were not immediately returned. The panel also decided that the band’s creative output, including songs “Holiday in Cambodia” and “Kill the Poor,” belongs to a partnership formed among the four band members. But the panel reversed the lower… Read more »

Britney Spears, Kevin Costner and Halle Berry are getting stars on Hollywood’s celebrated Walk of Fame. Glenn Close, Anthony Hopkins, John Singleton, Ted Turner, Journey and 17-year-old twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen will also get the sidewalk honor next year. The new inductees were announced Thursday by Johnny Grant, chairman of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a favorite on this list for everybody. We have both young and veteran performers and local, national and international stars,” Grant said. “The induction ceremonies will generate a lot of excitement for our residents and visitors from around the world.” The inductees represent… Read more »

They don’t have a record deal. They don’t have a music publishing deal. But they are on their way to having a hit single with “Set Me Free” off “The Hulk” soundtrack. Collectively, they’ve sold 70 million albums worldwide. Velvet Revolver’s lineup is stocked with the bad boys of rock supergroups, including Guns N’ Roses vets Slash, Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum, David Kushner of Suicidal Tendencies and former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland. Thursday night, they play their first official show – a free, fans-only, short set after an international news conference – at the El Rey in… Read more »

The Boston Herald reports that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band may be booked to play two shows, September 6 and 7, at Fenway Park, the home of baseball’s Red Sox. The team will be out of town those two days, playing the New York Yankees in the Bronx. The Boston dates have not been confirmed. The newspaper said “arrangements are in progress” and also claimed the concerts will be part of a ballpark “Glory Days Tour” that may also bring The Boss to Yankee Stadium in New York and Wrigley Field in Chicago. Springsteen and the band are… Read more »

With two fewer selling days than most releases have when they hit the charts, rock stalwart Metallica manages an opening-week sum larger than that which greeted its last album in 1999. The band’s new St. Anger thus leads the Billboard 200 for the week ended June 8, marking the fourth straight week – and the seventh time in the past 11 – that a rock album has topped the chart. The shorter selling window came as a result of the decision by the band’s U.S. label Elektra and distributor WEA to shift the album’s release date from June 10 to… Read more »

A guitar owned and played by the late Jimi Hendrix has remained unsold at auction after failing to reach its reserve price, a spokesman for auctioneers Cooper Owen said on Thursday. The 1965 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster was billed as the highlight of a “Rock Legend” sale, with the auctioneers hoping to achieve a sale price of up to 150,000 pounds. The reserve price was not revealed. Hendrix, considered by many as the greatest rock guitar player ever, was born in Seattle but only shot to worldwide prominence after finding success in Britain as part of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He… Read more »

At the very least, give credit to New Found Glory and Good Charlotte for getting teenage girls enthusiastic about rock that has real guitars and real drums. More than that, those two pop-punk bands deserve to be saluted for the energy and enthusiasm they displayed at their show Wednesday night at the University of California, Irvine’s Bren Events Center. But no one can applaud them for nuance or finesse. Their performances are like this: Go from zero to 60 in 6.5 seconds, and keep it there. The kids who filled the Bren Center loved it. They screamed, sang along (especially… Read more »

Russia is fast rising to the top of world music piracy charts with a counterfeit boom that could hit foreign investment and damage Moscow’s efforts to join the World Trade Organization, a leading watchdog said on Thursday. The issue of intellectual property rights, an increasingly important component of U.S. trade policy, is a major obstacle to WTO accession for both Russia and neighboring Ukraine, where bootleg computer programs, music CDs and movie DVDs are rife. In Russia alone the local pirated music market grew to $311 million last year, well above a legal music market of $257 million. “Russia is… Read more »