Search Results for: linkin park

Radio remains one of the most powerful marketing tools available to the recording industry, despite skyrocketing costs of gaining access to the airwaves via independent promoters. While word-of-mouth, video and Internet brush fires occasionally catapult unknowns to stardom, radio remains the most reliable and efficient means of enticing listeners to record stores. Yet many fans surfing the airwaves are far from satisfied. The complaint: Consolidation has made radio even more cookie-cutter bland, with narrow, unimaginative playlists. Demographic targeting and audience testing eliminate variety, stifle regionalism and foist the least objectionable music on the public. Failing to recognize that an individual’s… Read more »

For the second week in a row, Ashanti, the new princess of R&B, will lord over the Billboard 200 albums chart. Her self-titled debut sold nearly 250,000 copies, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday (April 17), enough to keep Celine Dion’s A New Day Has Come at #2 on sales of more than 225,000 copies. Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol. 9, featuring songs by Pink, Ludacris and ‘NSYNC, moves up one spot to #3 after selling over 140,000 units. Entering at #4 are the Goo Goo Dolls, whose Gutterflower sold more than 100,000 copies in its first week.… Read more »

What Run-D.M.C. did for Adidas and Busta Rhymes did for Courvoisier, Ali is doing for the dry cleaning industry. With the title of his debut solo album, Heavy Starch, the St. Lunatics rapper reveals the secret to the distinguishable look of a St. Louis b-boy. “We wear our pants so baggy that you need to get them heavy starch at the dry cleaners so they don’t just hang all over,” Ali said Thursday from a Lunatic-packed tour bus en route to Kansas City. “I wanted to make everything [about the album] as St. Louis as possible.” If the idea of… Read more »

As the three-man DJ troupe X-ecutioners scratched through their hour-long set Monday, video images projected onto a screen above the stage. There, in grainy black-and-white, were jazz musicians straining away on trumpets and saxophones. It was an interesting choice because, like most DJs, the X-ecutioners never appear to exert themselves – their whole act is based around making daredevil wrist-flicking seem as calm as a hurricane’s eye. On a more formal level, the contrast between jazz and hip-hop DJing couldn’t be more pronounced: While most classic jazz improvisation hinges on a relatively steady beat, the X-ecutioners improvise the beat itself.… Read more »

Singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge has gone hippie, boy band and even naked for Blink-182 videos, but for the first clip with his new side project, he’s sticking with punk rock. The video for Boxcar Racer’s first single, “I Feel So,” is performance-based with “an old-school punk aesthetic,” according to the band’s MCA Records spokesperson. DeLonge and his bandmates – Blink drummer Travis Barker, Over My Dead Body guitarist Dave Kennedy and bassist Anthony Celestino – filmed the clip on Thursday at a studio in Burbank, California, with director Nathan “Karma” Cox, whose résumé includes videos for Linkin Park and System of… Read more »

While they won’t have Linkin Park and Staind along for the ride this time, Stone Temple Pilots will return to the road next month for a 16-date tour. The band, which headlined the Family Values Tour last year, will make several festival appearances and will play more intimate headlining gigs dubbed “A Night With Stone Temple Pilots,” according to the group’s management. STP tentatively plan to spend the summer working on their sixth album, but got a head start earlier this month when they laid down a track in Los Angeles. A live version of the fatalistic love song “Wonderful”… Read more »

Marilyn Manson have set The Golden Age of Grotesque as the title for their forthcoming album, the band’s namesake singer announced Thursday (March 21). Although the group is still recording, Manson described the album on his official Web site as a “genius deluge of hardcore guitar-drum violence” and “reckless electronic-punk vaudeville mixed with ’30s cabaret decadence.” Producers Tim Skold (KMFDM) and Ben Gross (Filter) are working with the group on The Golden Age of Grotesque, for which Manson said several songs are finished, including one called “Use Your Fist and Not Your Mouth.” Manson described the album last fall as… Read more »

It took the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack over a year on the charts to make it to #1, but now that it has, it can’t be stopped. For the second week in a row, the Grammys’ Album of the Year will take the top position on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling nearly 150,000 copies, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday (March 20). The self-titled debut album by boy band B2K will come in second place on next week’s chart, selling nearly 110,000 copies, and Alan Jackson will reclaim top-three status after falling into the still-formidable fifth slot… Read more »

The man of constant sorrow should have plenty of cause to celebrate, though Brandy might be kind of crabby. After 63 weeks on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack will levitate to #1, beating out the R&B crooner, who seemed headed for a chart-topping debut. Last week, O Brother, which has sold over 4 million copies since its December 2000 release, jumped from #15 to #2 after being graced with a Grammy for Album of the Year. While the album will move up on the chart with sales of 160,000 copies, it sold around… Read more »