Search Results for: boys of fall

“American Idol” Ruben Studdard is lucky he has a healthy ego. Not only is “Idol” runner-up Clay Aiken beating the champ on the Billboard singles charts, but on the fifth stop of the “Idol” summer tour, the spiky-haired crooner proved that he’s winning the battle for the hearts and minds of “Idol” fans across the country. Even before the nine “Idol” finalists took the stage at U.S. Bank Arena Sunday night to perform a nearly two-and-a-half-hour medley of covers, the mere sight of Clay’s face on the two Jumbotron screens flanking the massive neon ballroom set was enough to elicit… Read more »

Back in May we told you that Hanson had completed a new album but had no immediate plans to put it out, seeing as they parted with their label, Def Jam, earlier this year. Well, the brothers Hanson still don’t have any new product to unleash upon the world, but fans will get a chance to hear the band’s new songs in a live setting this summer. The three Hansons – Isaac (now 22), Taylor (20) and Zack (17) – will hit the road for the first time in three years. Not only will the boys be playing new songs,… Read more »

It was as if the tattooed hand of a punk rock god reached down and anointed Andrew W.K. The hard partying rocker was enthusiastically playing his anthem “I Get Wet” as the skies opened up and a torrential downpour put an early end to the eighth stop on this year’s Vans Warped Tour. He always sports a maniacal smirk and a dirty T-shirt, but even W.K., surrounded on the stage by a dozen head-banging fans, couldn’t help but laugh. Just one week into a grueling cross-country summer trek, the ninth edition of the punk and extreme-sports tour experienced both kinds… Read more »

Ticket sales are down, and big tours are scaling back to smaller venues. It looks to be a long, hot summer for the touring industry. On the cusp of the industry’s peak period, a number of high-profile tours and festivals have already hit snags, among them highly touted outings from Mariah Carey, the Field Day Music Festival, Lollapalooza, and Beck and Dashboard Confessional. Faced with a crowded tour market combined with high ticket prices, permit hassles, a sluggish economy and poor buzz, these tours and a handful of others have either had to scale back the size of the venues… Read more »

Being nominated for a Grammy hasn’t changed the boys of Bowling for Soup. At all. The pop-punk foursome are up to their old tricks on a just reissued version of their 2002 breakthrough, Drunk Enough to Dance. The album, which spawned the Best Pop Performance Grammy-nominated single “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” and sold nearly 200,000 copies, has been augmented with a typically tongue-in-cheek take on A Flock of Seagulls’ new wave staple “I Ran (So Far Away)” as well as the new tracks “Punk Rock 101” and “Star Song.” “We thought we were working on the follow-up to… Read more »

Good Charlotte are still deciding whether to put out a fourth single from The Young and the Hopeless, but if so, the band has selected “Hold On.” “It’s my favorite song on the record,” Benji Madden said backstage at Saturday’s KROQ Weenie Roast. “I think it’s sort of an anti-suicide song. It’s about coping with life, and we feel like if we were to put out another single, we would want to put out a song that would actually maybe help people. So that’d probably be the best bet.” Benji, brother Joel and the rest of the band are hesitant… Read more »

In a pop-punk field increasingly populated with interchangeable sound-alike bands, Good Charlotte has made a bid to break away from the pack with its second CD, “The Young & the Hopeless.” Lead singer Joel Madden, who along with twin brother Benj writes the group’s songs, credits Eric Valentine, the producer of “The Young & the Hopeless,” with helping to expand the group’s musical horizons. “He challenged me to write different songs than just a bunch of songs that were kind of the same thing,” Joel Madden said. “He was like, ‘Why don’t you try writing some songs that you wouldn’t… Read more »

Godsmack takes over the Billboard 200 with a No. 1 debut for “Faceless,” and leads the charge of seven top-20 entries on the album chart. The Universal album sold 269,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the band its best debut week on the chart. The total is easily enough to end the two-week reign of Linkin Park’s “Meteora” (Warner Bros.), which falls to No. 2 on a 30% sales decline to sales of 186,000 copies. “Faceless” is Godsmack’s third major label album and its entry bests the opening position of its last set, “Awake.” That release… Read more »

With nary a Hells Angels member or flying pool cue in sight, the Rolling Stones played their first free concert in 33 years on Thursday, as a celebrity crowd headed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton looked on. The event at the Staples Center was a considerably more sedate affair than their last free show, at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco in 1969. Then, security was handled by the local Hells Angels chapter, who clubbed fans with pool cues while the band looked on helplessly. A teenager was stabbed to death as he appeared to point a gun at… Read more »

Among the many things complicated for Avril Lavigne – stuff like new romances and pronouncing the names of rock legends – performing onstage isn’t one of them. The 18-year-old rocker said that “being up onstage is the best part of being a musician” and “everything else is annoying” in a recent online chat. When her first North American headlining tour begins April 11 in Montreal, fans will see for themselves how performing in front of thousands can put a smile on her face. Twenty-two shows are lined up for the trek thus far, according to Lavigne’s publicist, with a few… Read more »