Search Results for: the early november

California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s gay marriage ban Tuesday but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that took place before the prohibition passed are still valid – a ruling decried by gay rights activists as a hollow victory. Demonstrators outside the court booed, wept and yelled, “Shame on you!” Activists said they would go back to the voters as early as next year in a bid to repeal the ban. In a 6-1 decision written by Chief Justice Ron George, the court rejected arguments that the ban approved by the voters last fall was such a fundamental change in the… Read more »

MySpace Music announced that Lily Allen performing 3 Secret Shows on 3 continents. The British singer will put on intimate concerts for her MySpace fans in New York, Tokyo and London at no charge. Lily will kick off the global Secret Show series with a performance at The Bowery Ballroom in New York City on February 10th. The concert marks the first time a single artist will take part in multiple MySpace Secret Shows on a global level. The New York show, sponsored by TurboTax ® Federal Free Edition, signifies Lily’s debut concert celebrating the release of her new album,… Read more »

American Idol returns for its eighth season on Tuesday with a new judge, a better showcase for talented singers and a wary eye on its status as America’s most-watched television show. The five-month search for a new star kicks off with a two-night, four-hour premiere featuring the familiar blend of hundreds of hopeful, and sometimes hopeless, contestants auditioning in cities across the nation. But producers have tweaked the formula to keep viewers tuning in en masse after last year, when the numbers of “American Idol” faithful slipped to about 28.1 million per episode from an average 30.8 million in 2006.… Read more »

Assembling the White Zombie boxed set ” Let Sleeping Corpses Lie ” was “weird” and somewhat bittersweet for Rob Zombie the frontman for the defunct metal group that broke up in 1996. “The funny thing was when I was putting it together, it seemed so long ago,” Zombie told Billboard.com. “It felt like I was putting together a box set of someone else’s band. It just seemed like forever ago, and some of the early songs are, like, 20 years ago or something. It just seemed weird.” The Geffen Records set, which boasts four CDs and one DVD, came out… Read more »

NEW YORK —-  On the heels of the release of the second volume of Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo’s home recordings, the alternative rock group is now taking a look back into its own vaults. Cuomo told Billboard he has “no idea” when the tentatively titled “Odds and Ends” will be released, but describes it as “just another fun project to do. They’re great songs, but for some reason they didn’t make the final cut for (a) record. They span a vast period of time from the very beginning of our career in the early ’90s right up to the present… Read more »

NEW YORK —-  Beyonce has scored her third straight No. 1 debut on the pop album chart with the double-disc “I Am … Sasha Fierce.” The Music World/Columbia album shifted a whopping 482,000 copies in the United States during the week ended November 23, according to Nielsen SoundScan . The set, split between material credited to R&B star Beyonce and her new alter-ego, Sasha Fierce, has already spawned the hits “If I Were a Boy” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” Beyonce’s 2003 solo debut, ” Dangerously in Love ,” started with 317,000, while 2006’s “B-Day” moved 541,000.… Read more »

At the American Music Awards on Sunday (November 23), Miley Cyrus, celebrating her 16th birthday, broke character a bit, performing a saucy, seductive version of her new single, “Fly on the Wall”; Mariah Carey delivered a riveting rendition of “I Stay in Love”; and a barely lucid Scott Weiland ironically introduced Pink’s performance of “Sober,” calling her “one of the greatest artists of our time.” Later, Pink even joined Sarah McLachlan for a duet on “Angel.” The New Kids on the Block and Christina Aguilera both performed medleys of their most beloved tunes. Justin Timberlake gave us a lesson on… Read more »

November 4 was a historic night for the United States, the city of Chicago and, on another level, for C3 Presents. C3, an Austin, Texas-based promoter/event producer whose principals are Charlie Jones, Charles Attal and Charlie Walker, produces Chicago’s Lollapalooza and Austin’s Austin City Limits Festival . It now has another production credit: Barack Obama ‘s election night victory rally in Chicago’s Grant Park. “It was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever been involved in,” Jones says. “It was a humbling experience and very emotional.” C3’s relationship with the Obama campaign began during the Democratic Party presidential… Read more »

Americans have spoken, and their collective voice has summoned for change. After years of ads, infomercials, primaries, debates and an online campaign that generated a groundswell of support among the nation’s disaffected youth, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has defeated the Republican pick for president, Arizona Senator John McCain. The junior senator from the state of Illinois announced his candidacy 22 months ago, beginning his historic, barrier-busting bid for the nation’s highest office. CNN called the election for Obama at 11 p.m. ET, as the polls closed on the West Coast. He will be America’s 44th president. Obama is projected… Read more »

These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort… Read more »