Search Results for: extreme

There was a time when most aspiring musicians had the same dream: to sign a deal with a major record label. Now, with the structure of the music business shifting radically, some industry iconoclasts are sidestepping the music giants and inventing new ways for artists to make and market their music – without ever signing a traditional recording contract. The latest effort comes from Brian Message, manager of the alternative band  Radiohead, which gave away its last album, “In Rainbows,” on the Internet. His venture, called Polyphonic, which was announced this month, will look to invest a few hundred thousand… Read more »

Paris Hilton hated her 2006 movie “Pledge This!” and refused for months to make promotional appearances for it despite a contract requiring her to do so, lawyers for the film’s investors said as trial opened Thursday in an $8 million lawsuit against her. “During the six-month period, at no time would she take 10 minutes to do a phone interview,” said attorney Bryan West, who represents the investors. With Hilton nodding vigorously from her defense table seat, her attorney Michael Weinstein insisted she did numerous appearances for the movie but was unavailable to meet many requests by the film’s producers… Read more »

Why be at odds when there’s music to be made? Back on the same page after months of legal wrangling over royalties, 30 Seconds to Mars is once again recording for longtime label Virgin Records. The Jared Leto-fronted rock band’s third studio album currently titled This Is War, is slated for a fall release following a truce between the EMI-owned label – which had sued the group for $30 million – and talent, who in turn had really lashed out at Virgin. “So here we are, after almost a year at war, and the time has come,” Leto wrote yesterday… Read more »

It’s early January, and occasional downpours drench thousands of fans as they file into Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium for Sound & Speed, an annual event featuring country stars and NASCAR drivers. Camo-clad devotees and their children, some dressed in miniature racing suits, line up for an autograph and a picture. The event is the perfect mix for those who consider autographs from Dierks Bentley and Dale Earnhardt Jr to be treasured booty. NASCAR fans and country music fans are eager to rub elbows with drivers and artists alike, something both circuits are eager to take advantage of. The 2009 race season… Read more »

Two years after beginning his improbable quest as a little-known, first-term Illinois senator moves into the Oval Office as the nation’s fourth youngest president. A King once stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with dreams of equality and respect. Today, a president will stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, living out that dream in front of an entire nation and creating a new chapter in American history. It’s a chapter many didn’t think they’d live to see. But the day is upon us, and millions of spectators will watch this historic event unfold between those two… Read more »

Anchored from President-elect Obama’s official Youth Inaugural Ball, MTV and ServiceNation announced “Be the Change: Live From the Inaugural” on Sunday (January 11), which will celebrate the huge youth-voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election and ongoing youth community service. The show will feature live remarks from the newly inaugurated president as he addresses young people across the globe from the Youth Inaugural Ball, and call on them to continue to engage in national and community service. Obama’s remarks will be made available to viewers around the world, reaching a potential global youth audience of 1 billion people in 162… Read more »

It was another brush-with-an-icon moment for the Killers : back in May of this year, joining Duran Duran – the first name in ’80s fashionista Britpop  – onstage, aptly in Las Vegas, to perform the vets’ chestnut “Planet Earth.” Brandon Flowers, resplendent as ever in a tux, looked like a young James Bond. And you know he had to have been stirred, if not a little bit shaken. There are no more unabashed Anglophiles among U.S. pop-rockers than the Killers. From day one, they have made that clear: They took their name from a New Order video, they’ve covered Joy… Read more »

Overwhelming youth support for President-elect Barack Obama in battleground states kept this election out of reach for Sen. McCain, according to Eric Greenberg, author of “Generation We: How Millennial Youth Are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever.” “This race would have been extremely close had the youth vote not been so active. Nationally there was an a large increase in the youth vote turnout, but it was their massive turnout in college towns in the battleground states that kept this election out of reach for McCain,” Greenberg said. Exit polls show that the youth vote supported Obama/Biden over… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »