Search Results for: prince

Ben Folds fans will want to circle September 11th on their calendars. The same day the expatriate piano-man drops his solo debut, Rockin’ the Suburbs, will see an augmented reissue of his ex-outfit’s biggest record. Whatever and Ever Amen, originally released by the Ben Folds Five in 1997, is getting a fresh pressing replete with four rare gems, two from the ill-fated final BFF sessions. The album spawned the band’s biggest hit with the reflective ballad “Brick.” Those two tracks, one penned and sung by bassist Robert Sledge (“Prince Charming”) and the other written by drummer Darren Jessee but sung… Read more »

The old feud between rock music and organized religion has given way to a more open embrace of spirituality. But mixing the two is still as dangerous as ever – these days, appearing too religious can jeopardize an artist’s credibility and commercial appeal. “VH1 All Access: Rock & Religion” takes an in-depth look at the influence of religion on pop music – from imagery in music videos, to artists’ spiritual journeys, to the internal struggles faced by Christian roots rockers in the 1950s – when the latest edition of the hit weekly one-hour series premieres Thursday, June 21 at 10:00… Read more »

Showtime Event Television (SET) presents a concert extravaganza on pay per view when the nation’s hottest bands take the stage for ‘Stone Temple Pilots and Live at Rolling Rock Town Fair 2.0 with Deftones, Tantric and Oleander.’ The two-hour rock music pay-per-view event of the summer airs Saturday, August 11 at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. The suggested retail price is $19.95. The Rolling Rock Town Fair 2.0 concert festival in Latrobe, PA is sold out but music lovers will still have an opportunity to catch their favorite bands on pay per view when top headliner Stone Temple Pilots (STP)… Read more »

When The Spinal Tap performed Monday night at Carnegie Hall, it was as if the thirty-four-year-old British heavy metal band was playing for the first time in three days. With the three founding Spinal Tap members – David St. Hubbins, on guitar and vocals; Nigel Tufnel, on lead guitar; and Derek Smalls, on bass – Spinal Tap played “Carnegie ‘Fucking’ Hall” as if they were the same band they have always been. And yet with accompaniment by longtime keyboardist Caucasian Jeffrey Vaston, and with Skippy Skuffelton accepting the suicide mission of drums, Spinal Tap actually are still the same band… Read more »

There were few surprises when Blink-182’s Civic Tour 2001 rolled into the Warfield on Tuesday. Singers Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge belched and told poo-poo and pee-pee jokes. Kids crowd-surfed. Bras landed onstage. New songs – there were two – sounded like old songs. Even the encore was preceded by an assurance from bassist Hoppus that the band would be right back to play more songs. And yet the trio thoroughly entertained the capacity crowd of 2,500 fans with a 19-song, 75-minute set that mixed poppy punk rock with juvenile abandon. As usual, the jokes began before the music did,… Read more »

Bowing to a threatened recording industry lawsuit, a Princeton University computer scientist decided against revealing Thursday how he and other researchers thwarted security measures meant to protect copyright digital music. Edward Felten, an associate professor whose team included Rice University and Xerox-PARC researchers, had been silent for days on whether he would present his findings at the International Information Hiding Workshop in Pittsburgh. On Thursday, a frustrated Felten said he decided against releasing the information because of the potential for lawsuits against the researchers, their schools and conference organizers. He did not say what he would do next. “Litigation is… Read more »

A group of researchers who foiled four different copyright protection technologies in a contest launched last year by the music industry is now being asked by the record companies to suppress its findings, one of the researchers said Tuesday. The research group – composed of students and professors from Princeton and Rice Universities and an employee of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center – had initially planned to present its findings Thursday at a Pittsburgh conference on information security but was then threatened with legal action by the forum, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a forum representing music and technology… Read more »

The academic cracker crew led by Princeton University Computer Science Professor Edward Felten, which answered the HackSDMI public challenge of last September with ‘unqualified’ results, has received veiled threats of criminal prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) from the SDMI Foundation in hopes that the team will be cowed into withholding what it’s learned from an upcoming computer science conference. “Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge….could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” SDMI Foundation mouthpiece Matthew Oppenheim warns in a letter to the Felten team.… Read more »

Early birds catch the worms, and this year they’ll also be able to catch live performances from ‘NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Lopez and Destiny’s Child on NBC’s “Today” show. Those artists, as well as Ricky Martin, Sugar Ray, Shaggy and a host of others are slated to participate in the sixth annual “Today” Summer Concert Series, a 22-week string of free, televised concerts staged outside the midtown Manhattan studios of NBC-TV’s “Today” program. The concerts will be held Friday mornings at 8:30 a.m., with the exception of the Backsteet Boys’ July 2 performance, which falls on a Monday. The… Read more »

Yes, his brother is the Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter. But that doesn’t mean 13-year-old Aaron Carter shows him a great deal of respect. “When they’re asleep, my brother and my manager, I put shaving cream in their hands and tickle their nose and they smash it into their faces,” says the younger Carter. “I know how to get away Ö fast.” Like his elder sibling, however, Carter is becoming well acquainted with the pop charts and radio playlists. After first finding international success in 1999, his first U.S. release – last fall’s relentlessly cheerful Aaron’s Party (Come Get It) –… Read more »