Search Results for: against the current

It is Friday night in the San Fernando Valley and the regulars at Paladino’s, a tiny biker bar, are out in full force. Hell’s Angels gun their engines in the parking lot while lines of leather-clad rock fossils straighten their acid-washed jeans, run combs through their mullets and get ready to rock. Most of the crowd has come to catch the Atomic Punks, a blue-ribbon Van Halen tribute band. But there’s another contingent on-hand. Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk, actor/singer Jack Black, and porn queen Jenna Jameson are in the house, and it’s unlikely they made the trek… Read more »

Internet song-sharing software is downloaded and enjoyed by millions of music fans and becomes the talk of the nation. Record labels complain and seek to punish the program’s creators for allegedly encouraging music piracy. So it goes for Soribada, or “Sea of Sound,” South Korea’s answer to Napster. Except instead of facing a lawsuit, the two U.S.-educated brothers who authored the file-swapping program are in deeper trouble. Yang Jung-hwan, 28, and his 32-year-old brother Yang Il-hwan were indicted Sunday on criminal charges of copyright violation. The Yang brothers, who face up to five years in jail and up to $38,500… Read more »

Punk as an aid for getting in touch with one’s feelings has superseded the other modes evident at this year’s Warped Tour. As in their ordinary lives, these fans had too many options. Thirty bands played on eight stages, and the event also included professional skateboarding and mountain- biking displays, a wrestling ring, a Playstation tent, numerous ways to spend money or learn about political causes and of course the chance to peruse one another’s concertgoing finery. So most fans locked into a perambulatory pattern, meandering around the festival’s circular layout as the fairground grew dusty, then muddy, from the… Read more »

Epic Records, is proud to announce the signing of Flickerstick, winner of VH1’s 2001 “Bands On The Run” contest. Flickerstick, an emotionally charged, melodic five-piece rock band from Dallas, TX, competed for several months against three other talented, unsigned bands for the top prize in VH1’s Emmy nominated and critically acclaimed series (currently being re-run in its entirety). In the end, Flickerstick was left standing as the victor in both the main contest and the on-line competition, which was decided exclusively by viewers of the show. “We think it’s great that the exposure from “Bands On The Run” has lead… Read more »

When it comes to riding the boy-band wave in pop music, nobody has done it better than Lou Pearlman. The Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync and O-Town are just a few of the groups the Orlando-based impresario and his company, Trans Continental Entertainment, have launched on the road to hormone-fueled success. But in the past few months, Pearlman has hit some sour notes. About 15 key executives and staffers, including company vice presidents, the chief operating officer, a tour manager, accountants and publicists, have left or been laid off. O-Town, Pearlman’s latest breakout success, recently left for a management firm run… Read more »

The Dixie Chicks have been clucking loudly about their record deal. And it’s apparently ruffled some feathers at Sony. The music label has filed a federal lawsuit against the Grammy-winning pop-country trio, claiming the superstar gals are making “sham” claims about being underpaid in order to break their recording contract. The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New York, seeks to enforce Sony’s current contract with Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Seidel, saying they still owe the label up to four more albums. Sony’s lawsuit also seeks an injunction preventing the Chicks from recording with another label.… Read more »

Napster’s still down, and there’s no telling when it’ll be back up again. As the file-sharing service headed for the fifth day of its longest service outage ever on Thursday (July 5), the company couldn’t say when users would be able to start swapping songs again. Since early Monday morning, Napster has blocked all file transfers, blaming problems in assembling the database needed for its new filters, which use acoustic fingerprinting technology. The new filters should allow Napster to block files based on musical content instead of simply relying on user-provided filenames. “Napster’s goal is to start file transfers again… Read more »

The advent of file-swapping technologies such as Napster and the digitization of the written word have prompted a deluge of high-profile intellectual-property lawsuits. Federal filings of intellectual property lawsuits have increased 24 percent since 1996. Pending court battles may decide everything from what a book is to whether artists (or their fans) have the right to distribute works without the blessing of entertainment companies. Freelance photographers are even closing their shutters against magazines such as Forbes and Vanity Fair over the issue of payment for republishing their images on the Web. Vivendi Universal has so many court battles boiling, it… Read more »

Courtney Love has blocked the surviving members of Nirvana – Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic – from releasing one of the band’s final tracks, and she’s suing them for control of the group’s legacy. A Seattle judge has granted Love a preliminary injunction preventing the release of a Nirvana song called “You Know You’re Right,” which Grohl and Novoselic planned to include on a Nirvana box set due this fall. Nirvana recorded the Kurt Cobain-penned tune in January 1994, three months before his suicide. “The fight is over control of Nirvana,” said Warren Rheaume, attorney for Grohl and Novoselic. “Hopefully… Read more »

Compared to a year ago at this time, MTV and Eminem are locked in a very reluctant embrace. MTV has agreed to play a new video by Eminem’s group, D12, but only during the overnight hours and only after several days of negotiations with the rap star’s record label, Shady Records/Interscope Records. The video for “Purple Hills,” the album’s lead track, had to be cleaned up to minimize overt drug references, MTV spokeswoman Jeannie Kedas said on Tuesday. “We had a dialogue with the label and they provided us with an acceptable version for our air,” she said. MTV will… Read more »