Search Results for: nirvana

New York – Christmas sales came in the nick of time, saving the holiday selling season for most merchants at the last minute. After watching sales waver on an almost daily basis in the first half of December, most retailers say that because the weeks before and after Christmas were strong, stores could top last year’s numbers. “Christmas was late coming, but once it did, it came crushing in,” says Geoffrey Caruso, manager of the Amoeba store in Berkeley, Calif. “In the first part of December, it vacillated from day to day.” Indeed, Nielsen SoundScan numbers confirm that for the… Read more »

Anyone who visited their Web site and thought that Hearts That Hate were the next big thing out of the emo scene is about to get a reality check from MC Lars. The fictitious band has a starring role in “Signing Emo,” the second single off Lars’ Laptop EP. The song, a send-up of the bandwagon-jumping that goes on in the music industry, finds a 40-year-old, overweight and out-of-touch A&R exec named Marty feeling pressure from his boss to ink an emo band – any emo band – to the label because the boss’ daughter likes Dashboard Confessional. Just before… Read more »

New York – The Thanksgiving weekend kicked off with a bang for U.S. music retailers, turned into a whimper and rebounded nicely. “Friday exceeded our expectations, and then Saturday was softer than expected,” reports Bob Higgins, chairman/CEO of Trans World Entertainment in Albany, N.Y. “Overall, the weekend was good and we are still positive that it will be a good holiday season.” Likewise, Jim Urie, president of Universal Music & Video Distribution, reports: “We are getting a pretty consistent story from retail; overall, it was not great, but not horrible. Friday was great – in fact, better than great –… Read more »

Hot Hot Heat are getting ready to pull off the bandages and rock the dance floor once again. The Canadian hipster dance-punk act have finished putting together the much-anticipated follow-up to 2002’s indie hit Make Up The Breakdown. The band had hoped to get the new LP, Elevator, into your waiting arms by now, but for one reason or another, the release has been pushed back to April 2005. Over at the Hot Hot Heat website, the lads have posted the track list to tide fans over. Tongue-twister “You Owe Me An IOU” will be the first single to step… Read more »

ock trio Sleater-Kinney has signed with venerable Seattle label Sub Pop Records after releasing its past four albums for fellow indie Kill Rock Stars. The group will begin recording its Sub Pop debut Thursday with producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev) in upstate New York, with an eye on a May release. “We instigated it because we wanted to do something different,” vocalist/guitarist Corin Tucker told Billboard.com. “We really like the team that’s at Sub Pop now. There are people there who are really enthusiastic and putting out really good music. We’ve done a lot of records with Kill… Read more »

Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band “The Ramones” that influenced a generation of rockers, has died. He was 55. Ramone, who had been fighting a five-year battle with prostate cancer, died in his sleep Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, said the band’s longtime artistic director Arturo Vega. “He was the guy with a strategy. He was the guy who not only looked after the band’s interest but he also was their defender,” Vega said in a telephone interview from New York. Ramone, whose birth name is John Cummings, had… Read more »

Green Day will toast the release of American Idiot on Tuesday, but perhaps an even bigger cause for celebration these days is the 10-year anniversary of their breakthrough LP, Dookie. The modern-day classic not only launched the Bay Area punk trio into the mainstream, it opened the door to a mid-’90s wave of popped-up punk and provided a launching pad for the current crop of melodic pop-punkers. “[Dookie] changed my life,” confessed Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden. “It made me want to start Good Charlotte…. Right after that record came out, we were like, ‘We have to start a band in… Read more »

The judge in Courtney Love’s drug possession case set a July 23 hearing date Thursday on prosecutors’ request to have her bail set at $40,000. Prosecutors asked for the bail after Love failed to appear in downtown Los Angeles last Friday for arraignment in another case in which she is accused of hitting a woman with a bottle. Love’s attorney, Michael Rosenstein, said outside court Thursday that Love, 40, remains hospitalized in New York City. “She will 100 percent be back voluntarily before the jurisdiction to face any and all charges against her,” he said. “She’ll be back as soon… Read more »

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has logged some time behind the drum kit with Nine Inch Nails, which is recording its first studio album since 1999’s “The Fragile.” Eagle-eyed fans spotted Grohl on Nine Inch Nails’ in-studio Web cam last week, sitting behind a mixing console. His contributions are expected to appear on the Trent Reznor-led act’s long-awaited new album, “Bleed Through,” due later this year via Interscope. His presence was also tipped off by members of rock act the Exies, who are recording their next album at the same studio, Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, Calif. “Last week,… Read more »

Troubled rock star Courtney Love was taken to a New York hospital on her 40th birthday after missing an arraignment on an assault charge in California, her lawyer said. “It is not a suicide attempt, not drug-related, not drug-overdose related,” Michael Rosenstein said Friday. “It’s a gynecological medical condition for which she is receiving treatment.” Rosenstein and Love’s publicist did not return phone calls Saturday to update her condition. Photographs showed Love on a stretcher, and published reports said witnesses saw the singer being put into an ambulance outside her Manhattan apartment. The New York City fire and police departments… Read more »