Search Results for: decade

C. Michael Greene has resigned as the head of the organization that hands out the music industry’s most prestigious award, the Grammys, following an emergency board of trustees vote to remove him from office. Greene resigned Saturday night at an emergency meeting attended by more than three dozen trustees of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Greene, 52, had three years remaining on his contract and will receive a severance package of $8 million, much of which will be covered by insurance and includes his bonus from the CBS Grammy contract. He is… Read more »

Despite what Lil’ Bow Wow and Britney have shown us, stardom doesn’t always come before you can vote or get behind the wheel of a car. The past few years have been a boon for the high school (Aaron Carter, B2K, Lil’ Romeo) and graduation set (Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton). Even though it may have felt like it, it hasn’t been all teens all the time, though. Veteran acts such as U2, Nickelback, Creed, No Doubt, Train, Sugar Ray and R. Kelly have been banging the charts all along. And lately, singers like Tweet and rockers Unwritten Law and Jimmy… Read more »

Songstress Sheryl Crow is on track to be the highest debut performance when the latest pop album charts are released Wednesday, challenging reigning Universal Music labelmate Ashanti for the top spot. But Crow’s latest effort, “C’mon C’mon,” her first studio release since the platinum “Globe Sessions” four years ago, also leads a sizable roster of artists bowing this month that have had a rocky history with the rapidly consolidating major-label system. Crow herself was one of several artists to question her future with Universal Music after the label giant acquired her alma mater, A&M Records. While the star and her… Read more »

Twelve hours, four stages and more than 40 bands marked the end of the three-day Skate and Surf Festival on Sunday. Held at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, the second installment of the now annual event featured performances from Bouncing Souls, Face to Face and the Descendents, among many others. While the Warped Tour travels from town to town with many of skateboarding and BMX culture’s best-known athletes and favorite artists, the stationary Skate and Surf tends to be more down-home, offering quarter-pipes and rails to anybody bold enough to show up with a bike or a board and a… Read more »

With the passing of Layne Staley, those who knew him best remember him as deeply troubled yet immensely talented. Described as a caring person, he made great strides to elevate an underground genre to the mainstream. In the early ’90s, Alice in Chains, along with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, were directly behind Nirvana on the grunge wave that began in Seattle and cascaded throughout the country. The singer’s Alice in Chains bandmates – guitarist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, drummer Sean Kinney and former bassist Mike Starr – their manager and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell gathered Saturday, a day after police… Read more »

The Who invented it. Nirvana perfected it…. And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead got accountants thinking about it. Closing a show in a bout of destruction is one of the great traditions of rock and roll, but when it becomes a routine the spectacle isn’t exactly priceless. Fender bass guitars (approximately $900), Marshall amplifiers (approximately $800) and run-of-the-mill drum sets (approximately $600) – the instruments behind Trail of Dead’s beloved rock – make expensive confetti. So when this buzzed-about band of multi-instrumentalists toss drum and guitars around like balloons waiting to be popped, they are conscious… Read more »

Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake love each other very much and have not broken up. At least that’s still the “official” stance a spokesperson for the couple takes when asked of the status of their relationship. And if you believe that, some might think you were born yesterday. The official media statement is in direct opposition to a month’s worth of unconfirmed reports and anonymous eyewitness accounts that say the king and queen of the teen-pop prom have ended their reign. While public opinion favors the notion that the romance is kaput – gossip columnists citing Britney shakin’ it with… Read more »

With nearly a decade of hits to their name and a command of large audiences that would put Tony Robbins to shame, Green Day are a hard act to follow. No wonder, then, that Blink-182 took a page from one of rock’s biggest bad boys Wednesday night in an attempt to avoid being overshadowed. Facing an opening-night Pop Disaster Tour crowd that had expended most of its energy during Green Day’s set, Mark, Tom and Travis found that even their onstage fireballs were no match for the ones their elder peers had singed the Centennial Garden with less than an… Read more »

Sure, there are Grammys and a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There are MTV’s Video Music Awards and platinum albums, too. But Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler said the ultimate accolade comes when well-known artists cover the songs that made his band a household name. “We’ve had people cover our stuff for years. You can go into a lot of bars and hear it. That’s an honor in itself. But then when you hear Kid Rock or Run-DMC or somebody else perform your songs, it brings it to a whole new level,” Tyler told The Associated Press. Now… Read more »

Angst-ridden Mancunian rock quartet The Smiths have beaten off competition from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to be declared music bible NME’s most important rock group of the last 50 years. The band, renowned for its fatalistic lyrics and fronted by the misery-wallowing Morrisey, have not troubled the pop charts for more than a decade, but NME – the fanzine formerly known as New Musical Express – ranked them as more important than Elvis, the Sex Pistols and Madonna. Bands were assessed on the number of front covers, letters and features they generated as well as end-of-year polls. Beatle… Read more »