Search Results for: decade

There’s something to be said for consistency – go to Farm Aid and you see John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and Dave Matthews. For this year’s inaugural show in New York, they’ll be joined by Counting Crows, the Allman Brothers Band, Montgomery Gentry and the Derek Trucks Band, among others, Farm Aid announced Wednesday. The concert will be held Sept. 9 on Randalls Island, an island just east of Manhattan. “I’ve always felt we should do it in New York because New Yorkers consume so much food,” Mellencamp told Nelson, Mellencamp and Young organized the first Farm Aid in… Read more »

KT Tunstall’s apparently tireless capacity for work makes even her laugh. “I feel like a camel,” the Scottish singer-songwriter says with a giggle. “Because I had 10 years of nothing, it does give me an enormous capacity for embracing what’s going on and remembering all that time when I was really wishing things would happen.” That’s why, after two straight years of touring and promotion behind her multiplatinum debut, “Eye to the Telescope” — first released in the United Kingdom at the end of 2004, although its U.S. release was not until February 2006 — Tunstall is, eagerly, right back… Read more »

Appearing under the alias Sacred Fools, powerpop family band Hanson played a special ‘secret’ semi-acoustic concert last night (Friday, June 29) at Hollywood’s cozy, 200-capacity Hotel Cafe. Of course, it wasn't that well-kept a secret, judging by the gaggle of excited, camera-toting female fans at the gig, some of whom had to be told repeatedly by the Hotel Cafe staff to refrain from taking flash photos of their flaxen-haired idols. Hanson's concert was a decidedly intimate and low-key affair, with youngest brother Zac hauling and setting up his own drum kit before the show. And on a couple occasions during… 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 »

Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is … , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, “basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over”). Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists… Read more »

The Smashing Pumpkins announced Monday they will give nine concerts in Asheville and eight in San Francisco this summer in the band’s first residencies in more than a decade. The band will perform at the Orange Peel in Asheville on dates from June 23 to July 5, and at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on dates from July 22 to August 1. According to information posted on the band’s Web site, fans attending any of the shows are allowed to capture them with audio and video recorders. “They were looking for one West Coast venue and one East Coast… Read more »

British rock band New Order, which arose from the ashes of post-punk band Joy Division in the early 1980s, has broken up, according to a Web posting by the group’s bass player. “I’m relieved really hated carryin on as normal with an awful secret so lets move on shall we?” Peter Hook wrote in a blog published on Wednesday on his MySpace page. Hook first revealed the split as an aside during an interview last weekend with Manchester radio announcer Clint Boon, when he said, “… me and Bernard (Sumner, New Order singer/guitarist) aren’t working together.” Hook and Sumner have… Read more »

For nearly a decade now, Tom Gabel has made a career of pissing people off. He played shows in Laundromats as a one-man acoustic act known as Against Me! before forming a full band (adding electric guitars = selling out!). He leapt from indie No Idea Records to equally indie Fat Wreck Chords (changing labels = selling out!), tinkered with Against Me!’s sound on 2003’s As the Eternal Cowboy (production = selling out!) and finally decided to sign with a major label in late 2005 (major label = selling out!). Whatever the situation, it seems he’s always derived some sort… Read more »

Rage Against The Machine played its first show in seven years last night (April 29) to close the 2007 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. The foursome tore into staples like “Testify,” “Bulls on Parade,” “People of the Sun” and “Guerrilla Radio” to one of the largest main stage crowds in the event’s history. Guitarist Tom Morello was in particularly blazing form on “Know Your Enemy,” and the band grooved in lockstep throughout, as if no time had passed since it was last active. Rage has thus far only scheduled four other shows in… Read more »