Search Results for: save face

A new Internet music download site for PCs debuting Tuesday boasts the cheapest per-song rates yet but many of the same restrictions on copying that have stymied wider use of other music services. Although online retailer BuyMusic.com will offer a catalog of more than 300,000 songs from the five major record labels, users of the service will not necessarily have the freedom afforded customers of Apple Inc.’s iTunes service to transfer the music purchased to multiple computers and portable devices, or to burn it to compact discs. BuyMusic hopes to score the sort of attention that helped drive sales for… Read more »

Barry Diller’s USA Interactive sued Vivendi Universal on Tuesday over a tax dispute, saying the French entertainment company reneged on its partnership agreement with USA to save much-needed cash. USA and Vivendi formed a joint venture, Vivendi Universal Entertainment, last year combining Universal’s film, television and theme park properties with USA’s cable channels and television production company. Diller recently stepped down as VUE chairman. As part of the deal, USA has claimed Vivendi must make annual payments to reimburse USA for taxes that will become due on income it receives from the preferred shares it owns in VUE. The unusual… Read more »

The seminal album of British punk rock celebrates its 25th birthday on Monday and shows no sign of growing old gracefully. On October 28, 1977, the Sex Pistols unleashed their debut album, “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols,” on an unsuspecting world. It shot straight to the top of the album charts and stayed there for an astonishing 47 weeks. Everything about the album was designed to shock, from its provocative title, its 12 short, explosive songs and its garish pink and yellow pop art album cover. The names of the tracks were printed on the album sleeve… Read more »

Eminem may still be on probation for brandishing a gun two years ago in a jealous rage, but the bad-boy rap artist makes clear on his latest album how close he might have come to doing time for murder. In one of the most chilling passages from “The Eminem Show,” his anxiously awaited third release, the Detroit-based rapper recounts pulling an unloaded pistol on his then-wife, Kim Mathers, and a friend he claimed she was kissing outside a suburban Detroit bar. “The smartest (thing) I did was take the bullets out of the gun, ’cause I’d’ve killed ’em/I would’ve shot… Read more »

Roughly one month after the tragic death of his close friend and former bandmate Layne Staley, Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell returned to the town that made them both famous, and despite the feeling that a big hole existed where his former partner once stood, it was a rocking, if bittersweet, trip back in time. With plenty of classic AIC material in tow, Cantrell took a sparse but enthusiastic audience at Key Arena on Friday back to the halcyon days of the early ’90s – a time of lank hair, big angst and bigger guitars, before the Bizkit and its… Read more »

The “boogeyman of rap” is busting his gun, pistol-whipping one of his cheating mate’s lovers, contemplating other grisly forms of violence and taking a leak on the White House lawn – and that’s just by the midpoint of The Eminem Show. Yes, ladies and gents, “Shady’s back,” as he proclaims in his first single, “Without Me,” and Eminem still has a lot to vent. As soon as the curtain opens on Em’s third solo album, it’s clear all of the rapper’s frustrations that have been building up over the last two years since The Marshall Mathers LP are going to… Read more »

You don’t have to be old to be funky, as Snoop Dogg and Lil’ J can attest. The two young’uns share space on the “Undercover Brother” soundtrack with ’70s artists such as Earth, Wind & Fire; Kool and the Gang; and the Commodores. Snoop Dogg & Friends contribute an updated version of Parliament’s signature tune “Give up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)”, retitled “Undercova Funk (Give up the Funk),” as the first single off the album, due May 21, according a Hollywood Records spokesperson. The song, which counts former Parliament bassist Bootsy Collins as one of Snoop’s… Read more »

New Jersey natives Midtown debut at number 90 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart this week with over 11,153 units sold of their debut major label release LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE (Drive-Thru/MCA Records). The band is currently touring the country opening for Face To Face and will appear on this summer’s Warped Tour. Comprised of singer/bassist Gabe Saporta, drummer Rob Hitt and guitarists Tyler Rann and Heath Saraceno, Midtown formed in the Fall of 1998 while all were freshman at Rutger’s University in New Jersey. They have since enjoyed an unexpected and exceptionally fast ascent. In February… Read more »

Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley was found dead in his Seattle home on Friday evening. The King County Medical Examiner positively identified Staley’s body on Saturday (April 20), following an autopsy. Exact time and cause of death are pending, as laboratory results could take several weeks, a spokesperson said. Staley was 34. Police responded to a call to check on a person’s well-being at Staley’s address in Seattle’s University District at 5:41 p.m. PT on Friday, according to the police report. Upon discovering the body, which is presumed to have been there for several days, officers called investigators from the… Read more »

Many artists and fans alike cite a lack of creativity for the recent glut of uninspired rap albums. Onyx blame something else: lack of energy. The bald-headed trio who exploded onto the hip-hop scene nearly a decade ago with smash singles “Throw Ya Gunz” and “Slam” from their riotous debut album, 1993’s Bacdaf-up, hope to inject the same type of kinetic energy into the rap game as they did 10 years ago. “Right now the game is fabricated with a lot of MCs that really don’t focus on a lot of energy in the streets,” said Fredro Starr, who is… Read more »