Search Results for: decade

Posters of scantily clad youths that were seized by police at an Abercrombie & Fitch store in a Virginia mall this weekend may be inappropriate for young children, but they are not obscene, according to legal experts. Virginia Beach police apparently have agreed. On Monday, they dropped charges against the clothing company that markets to prep chic teens through sexually charged imagery. The window displays went up in 363 stores across the country in mid-January, including the Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach. One of the posters showed three shirtless young men, one with his upper buttocks revealed. The second one… Read more »

British scientists are ready to turn female bone marrow into sperm, cutting men out of the process of creating life. The breakthrough paves the way for lesbian couples to have children that are biologically their own. Gay men could follow suit by using the technique to make eggs from male bone marrow. Researchers at Newcastle upon Tyne University say their technique will help lead to new treatments for infertility. But critics warn that it sidelines men and raises the prospect of babies being born through entirely artificial means. The research centres around stem cells – the body’s ‘mother’ cells which… Read more »

Stevie Wonder has not performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 35 years, and has never headlined the event. Organizers want to change that this year. Wonder was scheduled to headline the second weekend of the 2008 Jazz Fest along with Billy Joel, Sheryl Crow and Louisiana native and country music star Tim McGraw, festival promoter Quint Davis said Thursday in announcing the lineup. Joel, Crow and McGraw are all festival first-timers. The last time Wonder took the stage at Jazz Fest was in 1973, when he participated in an impromptu jam session with The Meters, the… Read more »

The late rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Ike Turner died of a cocaine overdose, the San Diego County medical examiner said on Wednesday. Turner, 76, was found dead on December 12 at his home in San Marcos near San Diego. He had a history of cocaine addiction stretching back more than 30 years. The medical examiner said an autopsy showed that a long history of cardiovascular disease and emphysema contributed to Turner’s death. Turner was considered one of the founding fathers of rock music but his run-ins with the law and a messy marriage to R&B singer Tina Turner shadowed his… Read more »

An independent Miami label says it plans to release never-before-heard Beatles live recordings made in 1962 at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. Fuego Entertainment has partnered with British producer/promoter Jeffrey Collins to put out his catalog holdings. They say those include a live Beatles performance of 15 songs at the club. No release date has been set for the recordings, which the label claims are the first to feature drummer Ringo Starr as part of the group. Other Beatles recordings from the Star Club have been released, but Fuego says its collection includes previously unheard tracks, such as covers… Read more »

In a dramatic demonstration of the economic toll of digital piracy on the music industry, EMI Group is expected to fire more than a quarter of the London-based company’s employees and radically alter the way it does business to further cut costs. Guy Hands, who was installed as chief executive of the world’s fourth-largest record company after it was bought last year by investment company Terra Firma, is expected to announce cuts of at least 1,500 employees today as part of a major restructuring, two EMI executives said. EMI also will become the first major label to eliminate the large… Read more »

For the typically rowdy rock band on the road, “scoring” might not necessarily have anything to do with film music. Yet over the last couple of decades of making music, a number of rock talents have made the career leap from arenas to scoring stages, and the ranks of today’s A-list composers include many with rock ‘n’ roll pedigrees. Randy Newman had a successful career as a songwriter and solo artist; Mark Mothersbaugh was a founder of Devo; and Danny Elfman started out in Oingo Boingo (a band that also included future composers Steve Bartek and Richard Gibbs). Trevor Rabin… Read more »

After failing to crack the million mark with her last two albums, Janet Jackson is wary of using the “c” word to describe her upcoming release, “Discipline,” which hits stores on February 26. “I think a comeback is when you leave and then you … come back,” Jackson said with a laugh during a recent interview. “People are always quick to use that word ‘comeback,’ but I never went anywhere, really.” “Discipline” marks her 10th studio disc, and her debut release for Island Def Jam after more than a decade at Virgin Records. Her last album, 2006’s “20 Y.O.,” stalled… Read more »

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music… Read more »

High-priced reunion tours by the Police, Van Halen and Genesis failed to prevent the North American concert industry from posting its worst year since 2004, according to a music industry trade publication. The top 20 tours generated $996 million, down 15.6 percent from the year before, according to preliminary data issued on Friday by Pollstar, which covers the concert business. The previous low was $951.1 million in 2004, when Prince and Madonna topped the box office, it said. The comeback tour by Anglo-American rock trio the Police was the top draw this year with ticket sales of $131.9 million, followed… Read more »