Search Results for: With Confidence

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 »