Search Results for: decade

The lead singer of well-known Mexican band K-Paz de la Sierra was abducted and strangled to death, justice officials said on Monday, adding to a list of performers killed in a violent crime wave. Sergio Gomez, whose group had close ties to the U.S. city of Chicago, and two music promoters, were seized by armed men in the western Mexican state of Michoacan in the early hours of Sunday after a show. The promoters were released on Monday but Gomez was found dead on the outskirts of Morelia, the state capital, according to Magdalena Guzman, spokeswoman for Michoacan’s justice department.… Read more »

The new owner of EMI Group PLC has said he will drop artists the music group believes are not working hard enough and will overhaul the company’s own executives’ pay packages, the Financial Times reported Friday. EMI, which has Coldplay, the Rolling Stones and Kylie Minogue on its roster, also threatened to withdraw stars’ lucrative advances if record sales are disappointing, the FT said, quoting an internal memo to staff from the chief executive of the private equity firm that bought the company in August. Guy Hands, the CEO of Terra Firma Capital Partners, said the company would in the… Read more »

Jasun Martz, a producer and musician who has recorded for Michael Jackson, toured with Frank Zappa and helped arrange Starship’s classic hit We Built this City, recently found an old, dusty suitcase in the corner of his attic. Inside was a small canvas painting and unmarked audio tape. An unreleased Michael Jackson or Zappa outtake, he thought? The tape, missing for 30 years, turned out to be the only known recording by unknown Los Angeles singer, songwriter, pianist Sue Reed. In the late ’70s Ms. Reed was pioneering the sound now made popular by Tori Amos, Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple,… Read more »

The Eagles will perform during this fall’s Country Music Association Awards for the first time, a nod to the success of their new single, “How Long,” on country radio. The song is from the group’s first new studio album in 28 years, “Long Road out of Eden,” which will be released next month. The single is No. 26 and rising on the Billboard country chart. “From the early ’70s this group has defined country rock, and more than three decades later they are still creating music that resonates with our audience,” said CMA chief operating officer Tammy Genovese. The 41st… Read more »

Sumner Redstone, the billionaire businessman who grew up in Boston’s former West End and went on to build a career at the forefront of the entertainment industry, delivered a message to a standing-room-only crowd at Boston University yesterday: content is still king, but in the digital age, copyright is what matters. Redstone, 84, the majority owner of National Amusements and the chairman of the boards of Viacom, the CBS Corporation, and the MTVi Group, spoke at the School of Law Auditorium about the challenges of keeping a media company profitable in the digital age and answered questions from Bill Schwartz,… Read more »

It has finally come to this: labels are simply giving their music away. A new Web site named SpiralFrog.com allows visitors – with label approval – to download music free of charge. It launched Monday in the U.S. and Canada after a beta-testing period. The fine site features more than 800,000 tracks and 3,500 music videos, and promises hundreds of thousands more soon. It makes money through advertising, rather than by the 99-cent downloads popularized by Apple’s iTunes. The service, founded by Joe Mohen, pays record companies part of its advertising revenue. Thus far, Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, the… Read more »

Early in July, Rusty Shaffer, the founder of Optek, a small music company in Reno, Nev., visited Salon’s offices to show me his invention, the Fretlight guitar. Though it looks and feels like a standard, rock ‘n’ roll-ready instrument, the Fretlight contains a set of LEDs invisibly embedded inside its fretboard — connect the guitar to a computer and the lights spark up to indicate where to put your fingers in order to play a chord. Shaffer is certain that his guitar is a great leap forward for the normally tech-averse guitar industry; the Fretlight, he says, will transform guitar… Read more »

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 »