Search Results for: Thursday

The Material Girl is about to become a Hall of Famer. The ever-evolving Madonna was announced as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee on Thursday along with John Mellencamp, The Ventures, Leonard Cohen and The Dave Clark Five. A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 10 in New York. “The 2008 inductees are trailblazers – all unique and influential in their genres,” Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman said in a statement. “From poetry to pop, these five… Read more »

Veteran entertainer Liza Minnelli collapsed on stage a few songs into a performance in Sweden’s second city and was taken to hospital before being discharged on Thursday, a concert promoter said. Minnelli collapsed during a Christmas show Wednesday night and fell off the side of the stage but was caught by a technician and escaped additional injuries, said Michael Silfverskiold, a local promoter. “It was a terrible situation,” he said. “She fell off the side of the stage. The production manager caught her.” Minnelli, 61, was appearing in a Christmas show, together with Swedish performers. It was the final show… Read more »

Rocker Scott Weiland was charged Wednesday with driving under the influence of drugs in a car crash last month, prosecutors said. The 40-year-old rocker was arrested Nov. 21 after crashing his car on a highway. He refused to take a blood or urine test as required by law, city attorney spokesman Frank Mateljan said. The Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver singer, who had a DUI conviction in 2004, could face eight days to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor count, Mateljan said. Weiland, who is free on $40,000 bail, was to be… Read more »

The next batch of painful “Jackass” stunts is coming to a computer screen near you. The first two films – spun off from the former MTV series – co-starred Johnny Knoxville and his gang of gross-out pranksters as they performed stunts to the delight of their youthful fans. But for the sequel “Jackass 2.5,” the dirty daredevils pull a new stunt: bypassing the movie theater entirely. “Jackass 2.5” will instead be released to the Internet. The feature – which combines unreleased footage from “Jackass Number Two” and new content – was announced Thursday as a joint venture between Viacom-owned Paramount… Read more »

Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits. Waving signs that read “Shame on Viacom,” the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning Jan. 1. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits… Read more »

Kanye West and Amy Winehouse each have had a rough year. He weathered the death of his mother last month, and she has been battling health issues that forced her to cancel scores of shows. But West and Winehouse may at least get some good news at Thursday’s Grammy nominations, where industry insiders predicted they were likely to garner multiple nods. Grammy-nominated producer Sean Garrett said West was a sure bet. The rapper’s third album, “Graduation,” had the year’s biggest debut, selling nearly 1 million copies in its first week, an amazing feat during the industry’s current struggles. Winehouse, though… Read more »

Morrissey has identified his latest quarry. The singer is suing British music magazine NME for defamation, claiming the publication twisted his words in a recent interview to make him appear racist. Morrissey was quoted by the magazine as saying he would no longer live in Britain because an “immigration explosion” was stripping his native land of its identity. “The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in,” he reportedly said. “Other countries have held on to their basic identity yet it seems to me that England was thrown away.” The singer’s representatives claimed the magazine’s… Read more »

Former Smiths frontman Morrissey is suing music magazine NME for defamation after it printed an article in which he discussed his views on immigration in Britain. The magazine criticized the 48-year-old singer for allegedly saying Britain had lost its identity as a result of higher levels of immigration than other European countries. “We can confirm we have received two writs from Morrissey’s legal representatives pertaining to NME and its editor Conor McNicholas,” a spokesman for NME said on Friday. “NME takes this matter — and the issues it highlights — extremely seriously and we are currently in discussion with our… Read more »

Warner Music Group Corp, the world’s third-largest music company, on Thursday posted a 58 percent drop in quarterly profit, hurt by an industry-wide slump in CD sales, as more fans bought songs online. Although Warner’s revenue rose 2 percent to $869 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, it declined 2 percent when taking out the impact of the weaker dollar. The company also posted weaker international sales, particularly in the United Kingdom. Digital music revenue was up 25 percent at $130 million during the quarter, but this could not make up for the short-fall in compact disc sales. U.S. album… Read more »

Sony Music must pay the founder of a small record company $5 million for failing to put his company’s logo on reissues of Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell” album, a federal appeals court ruled. Steve Popovich, 65, who started Cleveland International Records in 1977 and soon afterward signed the chubby singer named Marvin Lee Aday, persuaded Epic Records to release the wildly successful album. Epic was owned at the time by CBS. Sony, which bought out CBS Records, paid $6.7 million to Popovich and his former partners in 1998 to settle a lawsuit over royalties from the album. The… Read more »