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One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

IRVINE, California – After 13 years, three labels, seven albums and a career-retrospective DVD, MxPx say they have a record that will put their past work to shame. “This record will kick all of our other records’ asses!” singer/bassist Mike Herrera said. The band’s forthcoming LP, Panic, is its first disc for SideOneDummy and the follow-up to 2003’s Before Everything & After, which spawned punk-pop singles like “Well Adjusted” and “Everything Sucks (When You’re Gone).” “[This record] is raw, but it’s heavy, and it’s a different MxPx,” said the 29-year-old Herrera. “Someone that’s known us in the past may be… Read more »

In one of the most unusual summer-tour pairings in recent memory, the Ozzfest Web site announced Monday night that there will be one final act added to this year’s second-stage lineup: actress Jada Pinkett Smith’s rock group, Wicked Wisdom. The addition of the Christian-leaning rock-and-soul hybrid to a summer touring package that boasts ferocious metal merchants like Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Shadows Fall, Mudvayne, In Flames and the Black Dahlia Murder is unexpected, to say the least. Wicked Wisdom is an Evanescense-esque act that Pinkett Smith, the band’s frontperson and the wife of actor/rapper Will Smith, has said is influenced… Read more »

Temecula, California, emo quintet Finch have been plenty busy since exchanging fisticuffs with bro-rockers Disturbed at last summer’s Rolling Rock Town Fair. The group has finished a new album, Say Hello to Sunshine, and is scheduled to kick off a tour this week. Guitarist Alex Linares said Say Hello to Sunshine – Finch’s first full-length for Geffen and the successor to their 2002 debut, What It Is to Burn – will signal a change in direction for the band. Those expecting What It Is to Burn, Vol. 2 might be in for a bit of a shock on the June… Read more »

San Diego – You know it was a powerful show if every single seat in the arena is still occupied by fans singing at the top of their lungs even after the band is done and the house lights go up. That was the scene Monday at the San Diego Sports Arena, where U2 kicked off their Vertigo Tour with a two-hour celebration of the new and the old and a few favorites in between, including a grand finale of “40” that felt more like the end of an Easter service than a rock concert the night after. “We haven’t… Read more »

Media reports say that Coldplay are having mixed feelings about getting up onstage again after their long recording break. So they started out slowly on March 4 playing a small gig in London where lucky fans and industry people got to preview new songs from the upcoming album. Coldplay debuted three new songs from their currently untitled record that should be out this June. The tracks “Speed Of Sound,” “A Message” and “What If” were all played. Another new song “Fix You” had to be cut from the set list due to time. Coldplay have also said that the songs… Read more »

U2 may have disappointed Canadians when they only announced one stop here for their Vertigo tour, but the band love our country enough to set up camp here a month before the tour begins. The Canadian Press reports U2 are taking over Vancouver’s GM Place for the next month to rehearse for the tour. There’s been no official announcement from ClearChannel Entertainment – the tour’s promoter – if the band will be in Vancouver. There’s been reports of trucks lining up in the GM Place parking lot, however, so suspicions are high. This isn’t the first band to stay in… Read more »

A French consumer group has initiated legal proceedings against Apple and Sony, claiming their online music sites violate European anti-trust legislation. We’ve seen this kind of silliness before. Like California resident Thomas Slattery, who filed a similar complaint against Apple in January, Paris-based UFC-Que Choisir claims that Apple’s iTunes Music Store and Sony’s Connect service are anti-competitive because they only work with the companies’ own music players. This is, of course, nonsense. In Apple’s case songs can be downloaded and played on any Windows PC – a kind of machine the company does not itself produce. Sony Connect songs can… Read more »

Los Angeles – British rock group Oasis has confirmed its first U.S. shows in three years, which will come in support of its as-yet-untitled new studio album. The band will play Toronto (June 17), Detroit (June 18), Chicago (June 20), New York (June 22) and Philadelphia (June 25), with support from Australian rock outfit Jet. Tickets for all shows go on sale Feb. 12 via Ticketmaster. The dates will be sandwiched between a run of European and U.K. performances, including previously announced visits to the German Hurricane and Southside festivals. The new album, a follow-up to 2002’s “Heathen Chemistry,” is… Read more »

In a team-up worthy of the Wonder Twins, two of emo-punk’s biggest acts – Jimmy Eat World and Taking Back Sunday – have announced plans to launch a North American tour on April 10 in Champaign, Illinois. “I remember in high school, the true measure of your ‘scene points’ was having Jimmy Eat World’s first album,” Taking Back Sunday frontman Adam Lazzara said. “A lot of the stuff we do, they wrote the script for. When I first heard “Goodbye Sky Harbor” [from 1999’s Clarity ], I was floored, and I’ve been trying to produce something like that ever since.… Read more »