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Another year of touring isn’t frazzling AFI – quite the opposite. “I usually bug out off tour at, like, day 10,” explained drummer Adam Carson, who, along with his bandmates, is enjoying his first vacation since before Sing the Sorrow was released in March. “It’ll be nice to do another tour.” AFI’s latest jaunt launches February 18 in Bakersfield, California, with Coheed and Cambria and A Static Lullaby in the opening slots. A few weeks later, Thursday will replace the latter until the tour wraps in mid-March. AFI will then decide whether they’ll release another single and remain on the… Read more »

Having played some reunion gigs last year to immense hype, the classic Duran Duran lineup (metrosexual when metrosexual wasn’t cool… or even coined) will offer up “Sunrise,” its first new song in almost two decades, on the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy soundtrack, due February 10th. The album, subtitled What’s That Sound, will actually be the first in a series of recordings tied to the hit Bravo show. In addition to the reunited DD, the set will include “Good Luck,” a new cut by the Basement Jaxx, and “Everybody Wants You to Emerge,” a new mashup that pairs Billy… Read more »

Antonio “L.A.” Reid, who took the helm at Arista Records nearly four years ago and oversaw platinum successes from acts including OutKast, Pink and Avril Lavigne, has left the label, it was announced Tuesday. Reid became president and CEO of Arista in May 2000 after the company’s founder and CEO, Clive Davis, left because of parent company BMG’s mandatory retirement policy. Reid was not available to comment, according to an Arista spokeswoman. Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, chairman and CEO of BMG, called Reid “one of the music industry’s top record men.” “His passion for working with and developing some of the world’s… Read more »

Though U.S. album sales were down last year for the third year in a row – the longest stretch in 20 years – Nielsen SoundScan numbers still contain some bright spots for 2003. For the full year, album sales declined 3.6% to 667.9 million units from the 693.1 scanned in 2002. But when looking at the fourth quarter, album sales rose 4.7% from the October-December period in 2002. That has caused some executives to proclaim that the industry has hit bottom. Indeed, at mid-year, sales were down 8.6%. That gap was closed by the fourth-quarter surge. What’s more, 2004 is… Read more »

Mandy Moore will pose on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, but don’t look for anything much racier than that. Moore says when she was 15 years old she was asked to pose for men’s magazines like FHM or Maxim. She says she doubts they knew she was 15 at the time, but now that she’s legal, she figures they know she’s not interested in that kind of stuff. Her decision means readers of the racy magazines will never get to see her tattoo, not that it’s in anyplace scandalous. Moore says her friend Kelly Osbourne got a heart on her… Read more »

Maroon 5 has an incredible 2004 planned with the launch of “This Love,” their second single and video (premiering on MTV on January 6), an upcoming tour with John Mayer and a special live performance on MTV’s Total Request Live on January 13. In 2003, LA’s Maroon 5 saw the fruits of their labors when their debut album, Songs About Jane, was certified gold and their first national headlining tour was all but completely sold out in every market. The band’s first single and video for “Harder To Breathe,” received massive airplay at Top 40, VH1 and MTV. The video… Read more »

When Benji Madden asked to borrow an acoustic guitar from a friend, he got more than he bargained for. Not only did he wind up with the guitar in his possession, but an entire band to go with it. So goes the story of New York’s Lola Ray, the second band signed to D.C. Flag, the record label founded by Good Charlotte’s Benji and Joel Madden. When Benji phoned friend Peter Robinson for a spare guitar to play an impromptu acoustic show, Robinson’s friend John Balicanta came along for the ride and managed to hand Benji a demo tape. The… Read more »

Michael Jackson Under Seige: Day 43: CBS and Jackson’s camp yesterday denied a published report that the network added $1 million to the license fee it paid the singer for a prime-time music special to get him to talk to “60 Minutes” about the child molestation charges he faces. “Categorically false” is how CBS News, in a statement, labeled the report, and Jackson adviser Charles Koppelman, who first brokered the music special in September, called the New York Times report “nonsense.” In other Weird and Wacky World of Michael Jackson news, the Nation of Islam held a news conference yesterday… Read more »

Although industry-wide album sales were down from the same weeks of last year in the two stanzas prior to Christmas, an extra gift-shopping day during the holiday frame closed 2003 on an up note. With the holiday shifting back a day, from Wednesday in 2002 to Thursday, album sales are up a whopping 20.6% over the same week of the prior year. The final week’s splurge more than compensates for the 5.8% deficit seen the week before the Christmas frame or the 0.5% gap of the year’s 50th week. Further, the 31.3 million album units sold during this Christmas shopping… Read more »

The future of the music industry is being held, quite literally, in the palm of a twentysomething’s hand. Not the “business” side of the music industry – you know, the folks you’ve perhaps heard weeping into their bowls of caviar over the 31 percent decrease in album sales over the course of the past year, a downturn the suits pin on the advent of digital music downloading and CD burning. No, the “art” side of music business is being forceably changed. Artists are either coming to terms with changes in the ways their music is distributed – or doggedly railing… Read more »