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AUSTIN, Texas – Every March, the music industry throws on a pair of shorts, slathers on the SPF 45 and heads on down to Austin for South by Southwest, a weeklong celebration of bands, BBQ and (sometimes free!) beer. It’s a brutal bacchanal and music marathon powered by thousands of acts playing in hundreds of venues – at all hours – plus an unreal number of open-bar tabs and fancy private parties. Sleep is not exactly a top priority, so MTV News has dispatched three of its most tireless reporters into the fray. They’ll be filing reports a few times… Read more »

When an event has been around for 13 years, it’s usually time to shake things up. And while Ozzfest chose to do that by going free, the Vans Warped tour opted to piece together one of its most diverse rosters to date. The tour, which will kick off June 28 at Chula Vista, California’s Coors Amphitheater, is currently slated to play 45 shows through an August 25 date in Los Angeles with a lineup that includes Coheed and Cambria, Bad Religion, New Found Glory, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Cute Is What We Aim For, Bayside and Canadian rapper K-os. Among the… Read more »

Among the legions of acts booked for this year’s South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival March 14-18 in Austin, here are 10 that people will be talking about. THE PIPETTES Sure, the Pipettes revel in the ’60s girl group sounds of the Ronettes and the Shangri-Las. And yes, they even conjure up cool memories of British sister-in-song, the beehived Mari Wilson, who covered similar musical ground in the ’80s. Still, the trio, who hail from the British seaside town of Brighton, manage to make songs like “Pull Shapes,” “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me” and “Dirty Mind”… Read more »

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the… Read more »

Dustin Kensrue hasn’t been getting much sleep lately. The release of his debut solo album, Please Come Home, is right around the corner, and his month-old daughter has been doing her best to keep him up too. Oh, and there’s that little project he’s been working on with Thrice, the band he’s fronted since 1998: a collection of 25 songs, spread across four CDs that will be known collectively as The Elements. Thrice, Kensrue said, are about halfway through the writing and recording of The Elements, which is bound to be one of the most ambitious studio efforts in recent… Read more »

Following the release of Fall Out Boy’s 2003 full-length debut, Take This to Your Grave, the Chicago quartet was flooded with hyperbolic praise. The group, which was signed by tiny independent label Fueled by Ramen, was declared the “next big thing” by multiple media outlets, and its album sold more than 200,000 copies. So expectations were high for the band’s major-label follow-up, From Under the Cork Tree, which came out on May 3 and will debut at #9 on next week’s Billboard albums chart. Some pundits predicted a groundbreaking pop-punk expedition, and others awaited a heart-rending emo excursion, but Fall… Read more »

Few things are sadder than aging punk rockers attempting to cash in on their misspent youth, especially their desperate act of trying to recapture the glory days of fickle preadolescents with disposable incomes. Such is the lot of Good Charlotte and Simple Plan, purveyors of a Splenda version of pop-punk so lightweight that only Top 40 radio will touch it. Not that the bands resemble glossy pop stars, per se: GC’s members look like thugged-out suburbanites who overdosed at the tattoo parlor, and the Plansters are the mischievous skater kids hellbent on crashing keggers thrown by the football jocks. Good… Read more »

Some of the greatest hard-rock bands in history have thoroughly awesome – and thoroughly undead – mascots. Iron Maiden have toothy demon Eddie. Megadeth have a similarly toothy yet blind demon named Vic Rattlehead. And Motörhead unleash yet another toothy, snarling hellion: a bulldog/gorilla named Snaggletooth. So you can’t blame My Chemical Romance for wanting to get in on the act. By now, you’ve probably seen the video for “Helena,” in which MCR play pallbearers at a funeral for a young girl who just happens to rise from her casket about halfway through the clip to bust into a ballerina… Read more »

You know the saying “you’re always the last to know”? On Monday evening, radio listeners in New York were privy to news that the G-Unit were severing ties with the Game before he even knew. Late that afternoon, Game had been a guest of Hot 97’s Angie Martinez and downplayed the rumors of problems between himself and 50 Cent. Simultaneously, 50 and the rest of the G-Unit were telling a different story on rival station Power 105.1. “Where does he stand with your camp?” Power 105.1’s Ed Lover asked 50. “Across the street or around the corner,” he answered. “He’s… Read more »

CANNES, France – In the music business, it’s a vision that may soon be consigned to history: Grandpa slumping into the recliner, closing his eyes and enjoying a favorite rendition of an operatic solo. For music lovers these days, the sedentary lifestyle is out. A generation after the birth of portable tunes on the Walkman, technology has made music available nearly everywhere for today’s on-the-go consumer – and the recording industry sees a new wave to ride. The buzzwords Sunday at the Midem music industry conference in the French Riviera resort town of Cannes were mobile music, seen as the… Read more »