Search Results for: between you & me

It’s been nearly 15 years, and they’re no longer youngsters, but the Backstreet Boys are still around and have just released a new album. The youngest of the four-member group, Nick Carter, joined the ensemble at the age of 12 and is now turning 28. Their sixth album, “Unbreakable,” is near the top of the Billboard 200 charts. “We’ve been so blessed to have so many fans worldwide that are still keeping us around,” said band-member Howie Dorough, who is getting married next month. Members of the group have kept busy putting out solo albums, managing other artists and doing… Read more »

In one of the final sessions of the Future of Music Policy Summit, panelists discussed how the music industry is going through a process of “disintermediation,” where fewer steps stand between artist and audience, thanks to social networking and Internet distribution. “Someone spoke earlier about a ‘musician’s middle class,’” said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com. “In this world, you don’t need to be a full-time professional musician.” Instead, the speakers noted that it’s possible for amateur musicians or independent bands to reach new and unexpected audiences over the Web. Speaking for promotional service echomusic, Pinky Gonzales pointed to Todd Rundgren… Read more »

Between all the hubbub over Britney Spears’ VMA comeback disaster and Tommy Lee and Kid Rock’s smackdown, someone’s got to make sure Kanye West gets his fair share of the spotlight. And who better to do that than the man himself? West, who left the MTV Video Music Awards empty-handed Sunday night, has lashed out, claiming the network “betrayed” him and “exploited” Spears. “They exploited Britney in helping to end her career,” West said Monday in an interview with New York radio station Z100. “When Britney was opening, near the end, I felt so bad for her. I said, ‘Man,… Read more »

Early in July, Rusty Shaffer, the founder of Optek, a small music company in Reno, Nev., visited Salon’s offices to show me his invention, the Fretlight guitar. Though it looks and feels like a standard, rock ‘n’ roll-ready instrument, the Fretlight contains a set of LEDs invisibly embedded inside its fretboard — connect the guitar to a computer and the lights spark up to indicate where to put your fingers in order to play a chord. Shaffer is certain that his guitar is a great leap forward for the normally tech-averse guitar industry; the Fretlight, he says, will transform guitar… Read more »

‘It will be quite awhile before there’s another My Chemical Romance album,’ front man says at Comic-Con 2007. My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way has always loved comic books. His first job, in high school, was at a local comic book shop in New Jersey. He didn’t actually collect a paycheck each week – his compensation came in the form of free comic books. He idolized the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison. Long before the band was formed, Way attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he majored in illustration and cartooning.… Read more »

Dave Grohl has been in the rock business for more than 20 years now, and during that time, he’s seen many so-called “musical movements” come and go. Thus, he’s particularly amused by the current generation of emo-punk acts bounding across stages worldwide. After all, he’s been doing this for so long that he remembers emo the first time it came around.”I have a funny relationship with emo,” he said. “I’m from Washington, D.C., and in the mid-’80s, the hardcore scene changed from what it was – Bad Brains and Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys and MDC – to a… Read more »

There wasn’t a Thursday fan alive who wasn’t floored by last month’s announcement that the New Jersey emo innovators will be working with Victory Records on a retrospective CD/DVD package that, as a press release noted, will “tell Thursday’s 10-year-career story from the beginning to the present.” After all, Thursday’s 2002 split from Victory – which issued the band’s landmark 2001 LP, Full Collapse – was the very definition of cantankerous. Mud was flung from both sides when the band joined Island Records, and lawyers were eventually called in to clean up the mess.At the time of the band’s break… Read more »

In October, the hard-partying, grill-sporting dudes in Avenged Sevenfold will release the self-titled follow-up to 2005’s City of Evil, the band’s breakout LP that’s sold close to 810,000 copies in the U.S. alone. The album is the California metalcore act’s first attempt at self-producing, but according to frontman M. Shadows, that wasn’t always the plan.”We were going to do it with Rob Cavallo,” said Shadows, referring to the producer behind Green Day’s 2004 LP American Idiot and My Chemical Romance’s 2006 effort The Black Parade. “It was such a great match – he loved the songs we’d been working on.… Read more »

Avril Lavigne is being sued by two songwriters who claim that her hit “Girlfriend” sounds like a track their American power pop band recorded in the ’70s. Tommy Dunbar, the founder of the Rubinoos, filed the suit in California’s Northern Federal District Court in San Francisco on July 2. The suit alleges that “Girlfriend” bears striking similarities to the Rubinoos’ song “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend,” co-written by Dunbar and former Rubinoos’ road manager James Gangwer, and released by Beserkley Records in 1978. The lawsuit also names as defendants Lavigne’s publishing company, Avril Lavigne Publishing, and the co-writer of “Girlfriend,”… Read more »

Hollywood music emporium Amoeba Records has long been considered one of America’s coolest record stores, but it got even cooler when it was paid a visit on Wednesday, June 27 by none other than Sir Paul McCartney. The legendary former Beatle made a rare appearance at the shop to play an intimate live gig that was by far Amoeba’s biggest event yet. Diehard Macca-maniacs camped out on Sunset Boulevard for three days and flew in from as far away as Japan to attend the free “secret” show, and the legendary former Beatle rewarded their devotion with 90 minutes of Fab… Read more »