Search Results for: pop will eat itself

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 »

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 »

New York, NY – The rowdy “ghetto rock” of Virgin Records band El Pus is spreading into the mainstream quickly from its strong and enthusiastic foothold in the early-adopting college market. In June, July and August, the band will take its electric, uncontainable blend of raw punk and hip-hop noise on the road coast-to-coast with the massive ten-stage 2005 edition of Van’s Warped Tour. In a recent New York Times Arts and Leisure “Playlist” feature, El Pus was credited with the rehabilitation of rock/hip-hop fusion in their Virgin debut album, “Hoodlum Rock: Vol. 1.” The Times notice praised El Pus… Read more »

Los Angeles – Nearly 45 years after Stevie Wonder’s live harmonica workout “Fingertips, Pt. 2” topped the charts, the soul visionary’s musical charm still enthralls. From preteen wunderkind to adult visionary, his musical evolution embodies a “What’s next?” curiosity that still burns brightly as fans anticipate his first new Motown album in 10 years, which he hopes will come out in April. “Hopefully, that little boy will always stay in me,” Wonder said in a recent interview with Billboard. “The part of me that’s still eager to discover; who welcomes new, unbroken ground. When that ground is being broken, there’s… Read more »

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – On Dec. 10, Profiles in History, the leading company in live/simultaneous Internet Hollywood memorabilia auctions, will offer the above original costume design sketch (by designer Bill Travilla) of the famed white billowy dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the subway scene of Billy Wilder’s 1955 “Seven Year Itch” along with an exact copy of dress itself. The sketch will sell for $80,000 to $100,000. PIH will also auction photographer Tom Kelley’s famous nude photo of Monroe autographed by her along with 500 other movie and TV items. Profiles in History: 10 High-Profile Pieces of Marilyn Monroe… Read more »

When Good Charlotte wrote “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” the song that vaulted their last album into the mainstream, they were neither rich nor famous. These days, after selling more than 3 million copies of 2002’s The Young and the Hopeless, the guys in Good Charlotte are, to say the least, in a higher tax bracket. So their latest video – for “I Just Wanna Live,” off The Chronicles of Life and Death – skewers the fact that Good Charlotte are now in the precarious position of being rich people singing a song that complains about rich people complaining,… 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 »

Some might call New Found Glory’s Steve Klein a nitpicker. Others may view the way he adds consequence to a person’s seemingly minor quirks as insightful. “If there’s something about someone that bothers you, and you keep on noticing it every time you hang out with that person, it’s like a snowball effect,” the band’s guitarist explained. “Every time, it keeps getting worse and you keep on noticing that one thing and you can’t deal with it. You have to just stop it before it gets too far along.” Such was the inspiration behind “All Downhill From Here,” the first… Read more »

Randy Jackson is a hero. And it’s not just because the music-industry veteran – who is a judge on “American Idol” – has given a lot of great advice in his Hyperion book, “What’s Up, Dawg? How to Become a Superstar in the Music Business.” He is not afraid to rock the boat by criticizing the music industry, even though he could easily coast on his success. The industry, Jackson tells Billboard, is “in the toilet” and does not seem to know how to pull itself out of it. “I think record companies are so out of touch with the… Read more »

On Jan. 6, San Francisco’s Moscone convention center pulses with all the energy of a rock concert. A crowd sprinkled with hip-hop teenagers, digerati, and aging hippies streams in to hear the annual state-of-the-Mac keynote from Apple Computer Inc. Chief Executive Steven P. Jobs. Every facet of the event bears the fingerprints of the obsessive Jobs – right down to the music that fills the air. This year, it’s the King himself, Elvis Presley. Later, Jobs rolls the tape of Apple’s famous “1984” ad that ran on Super Bowl Sunday that year – and hasn’t been broadcast since. Only this… Read more »