Search Results for: christmas

Paris – Hip-hop rhymers, classical orchestras, church choirs, punk bands and creamy-voiced crooners from Paris to Hong Kong are taking up the fund-raising theme for victims of the Asian tsunami, holding money-raising concerts and singing special songs. Ever since the 1980s African famine relief hit “We Are the World” and its Band Aid predecessor “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” support from musicians has been part of charity fund-raising. But the response to the tsunami has been huge. In Norway alone, dozens of benefit concerts are planned. In its oil capital, Stavanger, groups scheduled a free show Thursday, with cash to… Read more »

New York – Christmas sales came in the nick of time, saving the holiday selling season for most merchants at the last minute. After watching sales waver on an almost daily basis in the first half of December, most retailers say that because the weeks before and after Christmas were strong, stores could top last year’s numbers. “Christmas was late coming, but once it did, it came crushing in,” says Geoffrey Caruso, manager of the Amoeba store in Berkeley, Calif. “In the first part of December, it vacillated from day to day.” Indeed, Nielsen SoundScan numbers confirm that for the… Read more »

After a couple weeks on Christmas vacation, those Ajax punks are back on the road for another run of their home country. The new and more serious Sum 41 will be touring all around Canada up until the middle of February when they head off to the land of the rising sun. With shows in most markets already on sale, you’d better run to grab tickets fast because the first Toronto date on the tour is already sold out. Goons in the Big Smoke aren’t entirely out of luck though – the Sums have just added another date. In addition… Read more »

Denver – Carmelo Anthony finally has some good news about his personal life: He’s engaged to MTV veejay La La Vasquez. The Denver Nuggets star said Thursday he made his proposal, accompanied by a nine-carat ring, on Christmas Day. They haven’t set a wedding date. The engagement follows a series of unflattering off-the-court news about Anthony. He was charged with misdemeanor drug possession in October after airport inspectors found marijuana in his backpack. The charge was dropped after a friend said the marijuana was his. In November, three men were arrested on suspicion of trying to extort $3 million from… Read more »

BAGHDAD, Iraq – While Saddam Hussein spent a second New Year’s Eve in a jail cell, a Southern California rock band known for such albums as “Hitler Bad, Vandals Good” and “Look What I Almost Stepped In” played in the heart of his former empire. The 3rd Brigade of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division got a one-hour show by punk perennials The Vandals during a modest Friday night party in the Green Zone. The show was one of the few entertainments provided for U.S. troops in Iraq on New Year’s Eve, a day marked chiefly by a relative lull in… Read more »

It seems only fitting that after six months, 7,000 bands and more than 100,000 votes, the winner of the Takeover Records “Sign My Band” contest would be determined by mere percentage points. And so on Christmas Eve, when the Internet polls closed and Pennsylvania’s Strike Fire Fall defeated the New York band Silhouette by the slimmest of margins – 52 percent to 48 percent – no one was really surprised. “People don’t realize how many bands there are out there, how many kids there are in garages out there. And we’d like to think that this contest communicated to those… Read more »

Eminem apparently learned to be nice this holiday season because Santa gave the usually naughty rapper another number one. Previously ruling the charts for the last two weeks of November, the Shady One’s Encore encored at number one for the week ended Sunday, selling 430,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. Em has a record of reentering the top slot, having done it with both The Eminem Show and the 8 Mile soundtrack. His is the fifth album to regain the number one position in 2004, joining discs by OutKast, Ashlee Simpson, Usher and Now That’s What I Call Music!… Read more »

One week after a fan was shot outside a Ja Rule afterparty in Peoria, Illinois, a man was killed and another wounded Monday morning outside a New York club where the rapper was hosting a party. Ja’s after-Christmas bash at the LQ club was interrupted at 3:45 a.m. Monday when shots rang out across the street from the nightspot, killing an as-yet-unidentified 39-year-old man and wounding his friend in the stomach, according to Detective John Sweeney of the New York Police Department. The shooter and a friend reportedly ran out of the club after an argument and opened fire on… Read more »

Proving that the holiday spirit is alive and well, even in New York’s jaded indie scene, the Walkmen have released their own version of the ubiquitous Christmas album: a three-song EP with a minute-long track of feedback and shrieked profanity. “We spent a day recording ‘Eggnog,’ ” Walkmen frontman Hamilton Leithauser said of the explicit track. “I just screamed some curse words so we could slap a ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker on it.” Christmas Party, a limited-edition 7-inch, doesn’t exactly qualify as a new album for the band, which has been touring in support of its sophomore release, Bows Arrows, for… Read more »

When word came out last week that Hoobastank were canceling the remainder of their U.S. tour, fans began to worry. After all, this isn’t something that happens all the time. For a band that’s been on the road nonstop for more than 14 months to skip out on some shows must mean that something cataclysmic has happened. A meteor striking the Earth. A volcanic eruption. A motorbike accident, like the one guitarist Dan Estrin suffered in 2003. But it actually was a nasty case of bronchial pneumonia that sidelined Hooba frontman Doug Robb, finally bringing their whirlwind four-continent jaunt to… Read more »