One of the most fascinating aspects of Lady Gaga’s ascension to the pop stratosphere is how formerly unknown New York rock-club singer Stefani Germanotta seems to have known all along that this was her destiny.
Green Day is continuing their march to an inevitable Number One album, setting up rock-opera shop at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on May 18th for the East Coast live debut of 21st Century Breakdown. The band’s Bay Area guerilla gigs in April all featured the record in its entirety. But at the Bowery, Green Day played a pocket-jukebox edition of the album, starting with the opening title track and the first single, “Know Your Enemy.” Then the new six-piece band – with singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool assisted on guitars, keyboards and extra… Read more »
Green Day has been delivering power-punk to the mainstream since Billie Joe Armstrong clutched a monkey in “Longview” nearly 15 years ago. The trio has done it all with one foot firmly entrenched in its hometown East Bay punk scene, stating its allegiance to gutter punks and Gilman Street at every possible chance. It’s been both a blessing and a curse, eternally indebted to the past, but inching ever closer to the future. With the reigning punk royalty out of the picture the past couple years, the number of punk releases declined sharply. Anyone hoping Green Day would bring… Read more »
It appears hot tubs can now be powered by green energy. On Dec. 8, newbie garage rockers Foxboro Hot Tubs launched its website with the six-song EP Stop Drop and Roll available as a free download. It didn’t take long for music junkies to realize this new band might not be so new after all. “The internet is ablaze!!!!” proclaimed celeb blogger Perez Hilton last month. “A band called Foxboro Hot Tubs has released an EP of six songs that has people speculating that it’s the Green Day boys experimenting with a new sound.” The songs were pulled a short… Read more »
Casey Calvert collected toys and loved the Peanuts Christmas album.
He enjoyed filmmaker Tim Burton’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” so much, he got tattoos of images from the animated movie. And he was thrilled, said his wife, Ashley, when she took him to a 3-D screening of the film for his 26th birthday on Oct. 20.
Waving their arms in the air and dancing with 70,000 fans at London’s Wembley Stadium, princes William and Harry celebrated the life of their mother, Princess Diana, on what would have been her 46th birthday Sunday at a concert they organized. William, 25, rocked his hips as Canadian pop star Nelly Furtado belted out her song “Man Eater” – to the embarrassment of younger brother Harry, who shook his head and laughed. Harry, 22, said they asked Elton John to play “Candle in the Wind,” the song he sang at Diana’s 1997 funeral in Westminster Abbey. Originally about Marilyn Monroe,… Read more »
Many acts avoid reading reviews of their albums for fear one sour critic will reduce their noble efforts to rubble. Good Charlotte’s Benji Madden is not one of those artists. “I read all the reviews,” he says. “I remember the first review I ever read about our band was ‘They’ll be gone tomorrow; they’ll be gone quicker than they came.’” Seven years and more than 9 million albums later, pop punkers Good Charlotte are not only still standing, but proudly proclaiming a return three years after the release of 2004’s “The Chronicles of Life & Death.” “Ben said something a… Read more »
In a team-up worthy of the Wonder Twins, two of emo-punk’s biggest acts – Jimmy Eat World and Taking Back Sunday – have announced plans to launch a North American tour on April 10 in Champaign, Illinois. “I remember in high school, the true measure of your ‘scene points’ was having Jimmy Eat World’s first album,” Taking Back Sunday frontman Adam Lazzara said. “A lot of the stuff we do, they wrote the script for. When I first heard “Goodbye Sky Harbor” [from 1999’s Clarity ], I was floored, and I’ve been trying to produce something like that ever since.… Read more »
Since few people actually care about the winners of the Grammy Awards, the producers of the show always stack the program with top-notch performers to keep things interesting. Few people can remember who won the top award last year, but those images of Prince grinding with Beyonce during last year’s show opener will go down as one of the greatest musical moments in television history. This year, the Grammy people have drawn on 2004’s best-selling artists to make up their list of performers. Performers announced earlier today include Green Day, Alicia Keys, U2 and Tim McGraw. The Grammys will air… Read more »
Green Day will toast the release of American Idiot on Tuesday, but perhaps an even bigger cause for celebration these days is the 10-year anniversary of their breakthrough LP, Dookie. The modern-day classic not only launched the Bay Area punk trio into the mainstream, it opened the door to a mid-’90s wave of popped-up punk and provided a launching pad for the current crop of melodic pop-punkers. “[Dookie] changed my life,” confessed Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden. “It made me want to start Good Charlotte…. Right after that record came out, we were like, ‘We have to start a band in… Read more »
