Search Results for: With Confidence

Last month, when the Dillinger Escape Plan revealed that founding drummer Chris Pennie had left the highly technical mathcore outfit to join progressive rockers Coheed and Cambria, no one wanted to believe it. The surprise move baffled the band’s allegiant fans almost as much as it confused the Dillinger dudes, who started to wonder if Pennie had been fostering some strange, secret obsession with unicorns and minotaurs.”We found out about him playing with Coheed on the Internet,” explained guitarist Ben Weinman. “[Frontman] Greg [Puciato] forwarded me a link to an announcement, and I’m like, ‘What?!?’ At that point, though, he… Read more »

One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

After watching the Grammys, there were several moments that stuck with you. Kanye West’s onstage death and resurrection, Green Day’s pyro-fueled punk rock, and Alicia Keys and Jamie Foxx’s tender tribute to Ray Charles all spring to mind, but it was one of the show’s quietest moments that left some people talking loudest. When U2 took the stage to accept their third Grammy of the evening – for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals – Bono seemed genuinely shocked. And in a rare inarticulate moment, he had nothing to say. So drummer Larry Mullen stepped to… Read more »

Just like in professional wrestling, a band’s entrance music provides a pretty good forecast of what’s to follow. When Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” filled an arena, Hulk Hogan’s irrepressible fortitude wasn’t far behind. The sound of glass shattering typically prefaced a Stone Cold-style beat-down. And this past summer, when Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best,” off “The Karate Kid” soundtrack, rained down upon an unsuspecting rock club, it meant that one of the most immodest bands around was about to deliver its musical equivalent of a jump-front kick to the head. “We thought it was the funniest thing,” explained Fall… Read more »

If his bubble burst and all else failed, Benji Madden is sure there’d be more than a few regular jobs waiting for him. Flipping burgers, working in department stores, tending cash registers, living in small towns. That’s what Madden and his Good Charlotte bandmates were used to before rock stardom. “One thing I never worry about is money. Because I have my health and my family and I can always go back to work,” Benji said. “We’ve all had a million day jobs,” the 25-year-old guitarist/vocalist said during an interview at a Manhattan hotel. “We got by fine then. If… Read more »

If Sting wins a Grammy for Best Pop Male Vocal Performance this year, it will be the fourth time he will have had the honor bestowed upon him since 1992. Eric Clapton didn’t release a studio album in 2003, but if he had, you could wager with confidence that he’d be up for the award too, having won three times since 1992. As usual, most of the Pop Male Vocal playing field this go-round is dominated by old-timers: Sting, Michael McDonald, Warren Zevon, who died of lung cancer last September, and George Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001. One… Read more »

The stage’s platforms, ramps and angular slabs of metal made it look like a futuristic factory floor, and Linkin Park proved to be the gleaming machine that keeps the warehouse in brisk business. In concert at Nassau Coliseum Sunday night, the band was precise and efficient, the members taking on their roles like theater veterans. They ran from side to side without colliding, waved their arms in tandem, leapt from oversized milk crates and waded into the crowd to spread the Linkin love. And for added flair, they brought out an acrobatic breakdancer during “Nobody’s Listening.” Their musical performance was… Read more »

When was the last time this happened: a breakthrough artist spends the night its album debuted in the top 10 on The Billboard 200 chart playing the opening slot at a tiny Sunset Strip club instead of headlining its own show – or partying like a rock star elsewhere in town? How about Wednesday (June 12) night, when current it-girl Avril Lavigne, who’s all of 17 years old, played an unexpectedly aggressive early set at the Viper Room in Hollywood. Though Lavigne was there, in theory, to warm the mostly-music-industry-crowd up for the hitless bands Lo Cal AM and Plain… Read more »

The cameraman removed the digital video camera from the tripod and got ready for some hand-held shots of the X-ecutioners at Phat Beats record store in the West Village. A look of concern creased the face of the group’s publicist, who hurriedly approached the producer of the shoot. Her idea was to lead into the television news story with shots of the DJs scratching, but the X-ecutioners, whose new record, Built From Scratch, charted at #15 on this week’s Billboard 200 albums chart, don’t normally perform in retail outlets and their label rep was worried that without their precision equipment… Read more »