Search Results for: las vegas

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 »

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 »

DJ AM was back on the decks for the first time since surviving a fiery plane crash. The visibly scarred celebrity disc jockey, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, joined Jay-Z at a special concert Wednesday celebrating the reopening of the Hollywood Palladium, the historic venue which once hosted the likes of Frank Sinatra, “The Lawrence Welk Show,” Led Zeppelin and the Emmy Awards on its more than 11,000-square-foot circular wooden floor. The concert was 35-year-old DJ AM’s first performance since surviving a Sept. 19 plane crash with former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker at the main airport in Columbia, S.C.… Read more »

Backstage notes from the 25th annual MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. 1. After winning three Moonmen, including video of the year, Britney Spears got cold feet before she met the press. She peeked into the media room with personal assistants and camera crew in tow, then promptly turned around and left. A few moments later, Chris Brown hurried in to take her place — prompting a round of disappointed “Awwwww!” from disappointed Britney-wannabe paparazzi (a reaction that seemed to miff Brown, who maybe didn’t understand that he wasn’t being booed personally.) Never fear, Britney returned after Brown; she said… Read more »

A year after vowing never to perform on the MTV Video Music Awards again, hip-hop star Kanye West will close the show’s 25th annual ceremony in Hollywood on Sunday, joining a lineup that includes Christina Aguilera and the Jonas Brothers, organizers said. The outspoken rapper was upset by his treatment at last year’s show, when his performance was relegated to a small stage in the Las Vegas venue. West also failed to win any prizes, and accused the music cable network of exploiting Britney Spears, who inadvertently stole the show by badly lip-synching and dancing to her new tune. The… Read more »

With his spiky mohawk, cluttered canvas of tattooed skin and punk rock pedigree stretching back to childhood, Travis Barker isn’t exactly pleading to be taken seriously as a hip-hop head. A former drummer for the multi-platinum-selling power pop trio Blink-182 who also has done turns behind the kit for rock outfits including the Aquabats, +44 and Box Car Racer, he boasts impeccable Warped Tour credentials and critical props as one of modern rock’s most exciting, exacting percussion players. But a funny thing happened when Barker posted a video of himself on YouTube last September drumming thunderously in time with Southern… Read more »

Kings of Leon may be from  Tennessee, but the rock band’s music has resonated in a bigger way overseas than it has in its own backyard. The family foursome hopes that will change with its fourth album, “Only by the Night,” due September 23 via RCA. Kings of Leon’s previous records have sold a combined total of 620,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen  SoundScan, topped by second album “Aha Shake Heartbreak” in  2005 at 232,000. But overseas, the numbers are more robust on a per capita basis. RCA says the band’s albums have sold nearly 600,000 copies… Read more »

When the culture began to change in the late 1960s – when the old one-liner comics on the Ed Sullivan Show were looking pretty tired and irrelevant to a younger generation experimenting with drugs and protesting the War in Vietnam – George Carlin was the most important stand-up comedian in America. By the time he died Sunday night (of heart failure at age 71), the transformation he helped bring about in stand-up had become so ingrained that it’s hard to think of Carlin as one of America’s most radical and courageous popular artists. But he was. Carlin started doing stand-up… Read more »