Search Results for: against the current

Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl flash lasted less than three seconds, but the impact continues to ripple through Viacom, the media giant that broadcast the game. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, right-wing radio commentators and outraged citizens are calling for stricter decency standards – and the artists and executives who make a living from edgy music, performances and videos are in retreat. MTV in particular, which produced the Super Bowl halftime show, is in the midst of a wide-scale re-evaluation of its musical, news and dramatic content. Within a week of the game, MTV – no stranger to criticism, most recently… Read more »

Veteran Los Angeles punk outfit Bad Religion will release a new studio album, “The Empire Strikes First” June 8 via Epitaph. Like its predecessor, 2002’s “The Process of Belief,” the forthcoming disc was co-written and co-produced by guitarist Brett Gurewitz and frontman Greg Graffin. “It’s not ready for public consumption yet, but it’s basically recorded and finished,” Graffin told Billboard.com. “We really put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the best album we could. ‘The Process of Belief’ is considered by many to be our comeback, since Brett and I started writing together again. After so many years… Read more »

A long-anticipated partnership with Pepsi that Apple hopes will help raise the profile of its iTunes Music store is launching during the Super Bowl on Sunday. ITunes already dominates the still-fledgling online music industry. Pepsi will run a commercial featuring 16 teenagers who have been sued by the RIAA for music piracy to promote its giveaway of 100 million free downloads from the iTunes Music store on Pepsi bottle caps. But in a coup for what has been one of the lower-profile competitors in the digital music space, MusicMatch announced that is has signed a partnership deal with Coca-Cola and… Read more »

On Jan. 6, San Francisco’s Moscone convention center pulses with all the energy of a rock concert. A crowd sprinkled with hip-hop teenagers, digerati, and aging hippies streams in to hear the annual state-of-the-Mac keynote from Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs. Every facet of the event bears the fingerprints of the obsessive Jobs – right down to the music that fills the air. This year, it’s the King himself, Elvis Presley. Later, Jobs rolls the tape of Apple’s famous “1984” ad that ran on Super Bowl Sunday that year – and hasn’t been broadcast since. Only this… Read more »

The future of the music industry is being held, quite literally, in the palm of a twentysomething’s hand. Not the “business” side of the music industry – you know, the folks you’ve perhaps heard weeping into their bowls of caviar over the 31 percent decrease in album sales over the course of the past year, a downturn the suits pin on the advent of digital music downloading and CD burning. No, the “art” side of music business is being forceably changed. Artists are either coming to terms with changes in the ways their music is distributed – or doggedly railing… Read more »

A new document leaked Tuesday (December 9) reveals that Michael Jackson was investigated on sexual abuse allegations in February and that investigators found those charges to be “unfounded.” A memo from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services, dated November 26 and leaked on the Smoking Gun Web site, says a Los Angeles Unified School District official called the agency’s child-abuse hotline soon after the airing of “Living With Michael Jackson” on February 6. The Martin Bashir documentary depicted Jackson hanging out with the boy in question, who admitted to sleeping in the singer’s bed. In addition to… Read more »

What do you get when you put a couple of pop-punk guys together with a few near-legendary dudes from New York’s underground hardcore scene? You get Hazen Street, a hard-edged but catchy, two-singer-fronted band that has become the first act to be signed to Benji and Joel Madden’s D.C. Flag imprint. The signing of Hazen Street is neither a leg up to a buddy band nor an attempt to cash in on a current trend. For the brothers who call Good Charlotte their day job, putting out the new supergroup’s debut is a chance to show some love to the… Read more »

Goldfinger front man and animal rights activist John Feldmann and his wife Amy, were featured on the syndicated television show, Celebrity Justice, last week. The segment dealt with an incident that occurred on October 3rd, when the couple’s Los Angeles area home was raided by over 30 law enforcement officials after they were falsely suspected of taking part in an act of vandalism against the home of Jerry Greenwalt, the General Manager for the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services. The Feldmann’s home was searched for over three hours. Greenwalt has been targeted by animal activists in the past several… Read more »

When they’re onstage, the members of a Perfect Circle perform in fluid synergy, but behind the scenes all they seem to agree on is when to disagree. Band founder and guitarist Billy Howerdel was uninterested in releasing the moody, melodic “Weak and Powerless” as the first single from Thirteenth Step, and he was against using the cover art of a slug crawling across a woman’s face, which is why he gave singer Maynard James Keenan credit for all artwork. Currently, the bandmembers are torn between releasing the melancholy “Blue” or the bruising “The Outsider” as the second single. Bassist Jeordie… Read more »