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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 »

If there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy in the musical landscape of the year, it’s the way the Virgin debut band THE SUMMER OBSESSION is coming into its own, with its crunchy pop-rock combination of guitar, electronics, and faultless songwriting, during the dog days of 2006. The Florida-based quartet — Luke, on keyboards and vocals; Chris, formerly of Good Charlotte, on drums and “shenanigans”; Fin, on guitar and vocals; and Christ, on bass, with Josh Abraham (Velvet Revolver, P!nk) producing and Ryan Williams engineering (OutKast, Rage Against the Machine) — will release the album “THIS IS WHERE YOU BELONG” on Virgin Records… 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 »

Matt Skiba, lead singer and guitarist for Chicago punk purists Alkaline Trio, feels that there are a lot of misconceptions out there regarding Satanism, and, as a longtime member of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, can tell you that it’s not all fire, brimstone and threats of eternal damnation. Really, the faith’s simply about theatrics, how to comport yourself when you’re out and about (for instance, one of the church’s Ten Commandment-like mandates forbids followers from bothering others in open territory, but “if someone bothers you, ask him to stop – if he does not stop, destroy him”) and maintaining… Read more »

A valuable lesson was learned when we last spoke to Finch guitarist Randy Strohmeyer – don’t describe his band as emo. But now they’re about to release their third album and have garnered a new classification – screamo punk. How does Strohmeyer feel about that? “I think it’s even worse than emo. It’s fucking retarded. I hate that shit,” he says. “I’d just like people to call us Finch, and that’s it. We’re Finch and we make an effort to be Finch and we don’t want to be categorized as something else. I would like Finch to stand up on… Read more »

Claiming that their free-speech rights had been violated, Mötley Crüe filed suit against NBC, the network that banned the group for dropping the F-bomb on a live New Year’s Eve broadcast of “The Tonight Show.” “This ban constitutes governmentally pressured censorship and violates the law the same as if the government itself had ordered the censorship,” read the suit, filed in Los Angeles federal court on Tuesday. Claiming the ban was a result of an attempt by the network to pacify the government in light of its crackdown on indecency, the band says in the suit that the action has… 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 »

The All-American Rejects’ second album is truly a work in progress. There are still so many nails exposed and the paint is still so wet that if this album were an episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” Ty Pennington would be bellowing stuff like “Come on, guys! Let’s take it up a couple of notches!” into his megaphone. He would also probably be shirtless. The point is, for a record that’s been in the works for eight months, there’s a whole lot that needs to be done. Like, for example, choosing a proper title. When Interscope Records mailed out promo… Read more »

Baltimore – If you find yourself surrounded by 40,000 fans, 40 bands, three stages and 85 degrees, you’ve apparently waded chest-deep into the summer concert season. For years, folks east of the Mississippi have welcomed the start of that season at the HFStival, now staged in Baltimore after thriving for 15 years as a Washington, D.C., staple. Quite a bit’s changed since WHFS-FM started ushering in the arrival of summer – most notably the station itself, which disappeared from the dial earlier this year. It has since resurfaced as an online entity and also takes over Baltimore’s Live 105.7 on… Read more »

Good Charlotte drummer Chris Wilson – who provided the back beat on the band’s latest album, The Chronicles of Life and Death – has left the group due to undisclosed “personal health problems.” The band made the announcement via a letter posted Tuesday on GoodCharlotte.com. “As many of you know, our drummer Chris Wilson has been on and off the road due to personal health problems,” the band wrote. “Unfortunately, his problems continue, and we have made a collective decision to have Chris stay around his friends and family and begin to truly rehabilitate. This has not been easy on… Read more »