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The past two years have been a turbo-charged merry-go-round for Maryland punk-pop group Good Charlotte. The band’s debut single, “Little Things,” from its eponymous 2000 album, drove the group to the top of the “TRL” heap, and a Warped tour and outing with Blink-182 helped spread the Good vibes far and wide. The group’s new single, “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” is currently heating up airwaves, and a video for the song, which features cameos by ‘NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick, Tenacious D sideman Kyle Gass and former Minutemen and Firehose member Mike Watt, is getting lots of love as well.… Read more »

A California lawmaker investigating record company accounting heard one sad song after another on Tuesday as high-profile musicians from the Backstreet Boys to Bing Crosby’s widow accused labels of robbing them of past royalty payments. At a state hearing in Los Angeles, the musicians said they had sold millions of songs or albums only to receive sparse royalties or to be told they actually owed their respective record labels money to recoup advances. State Sen. Kevin Murray, who called the hearing along with fellow Democrat Sen. Martha Escutia, called it a fact-finding event but chided record companies for not making… Read more »

Many fans credit Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger and his songs with helping them get through tough times. Tyler Connolly, frontman of Theory of a Deadman, has Kroeger to thank for just about everything. Before Nickelback were rock stars, Connolly was a struggling musician without a band, manager or record deal and with only a pipe dream of ever being recognized outside his hometown of Vancouver, Canada. Then one night at a party Connolly handed a demo tape to Kroeger, which led to an enthusiastic call from the burgeoning musician, who wanted to produce Theory. Kroeger’s contribution didn’t end there. When Alice… Read more »

Newly installed VH1 toppers Brian Graden and Christina Norman are moving quickly to put their stamp on the struggling music cable network, greenlighting an aggressive fall slate of series and specials aimed at building on the channel’s still-strong retro music brand. VH1 is also beefing up its “Movies That Rock” franchise, snagging the broadcast premiere of the Oscar-winning “Moulin Rouge” and several other theatricals. And rather than simply repurposing other networks’ music specials, Graden wants VH1 to sign A-level talent for original concert specials. The flurry of activity comes barely three months after Graden was named entertainment president of the… Read more »

They might have called their new album Sticks and Stones so that if critics trashed it they could retort by sneering, sticking out their tongues and saying, “names will never hurt me.” But that’s not the reason. For New Found Glory, names are as dangerous as flung fists, and throughout the record they reveal how damaged they’ve been by barbed words. “On the cover of the record we have a little girl beating up a guy,” guitarist Steve Klein explained recently. “When we were younger, relationships with girls were a lot easier. You could hit each other and it would… Read more »

In an attempt to explain the evolution from SR-71’s major-label debut to their upcoming release, singer Mitch Allan suggested a similarity to the progression from the Beatles’ Revolver to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Then he caught himself. “Not to compare our albums to those albums,” Allan said. “Maybe it’s more like the difference between Sugar Ray’s first and second albums.” It may not be Sgt. Pepper’s, but Allan couldn’t be happier about SR-71’s Tomorrow, which abandons the pop-punk focus of 2000’s Now You See the Inside for a more anthem-rock approach. “When people hear the first single they’re… Read more »

Mega-nü-metal bands are kinda like Microsoft. Every time they unveil a product, it’s gotta be more advanced than the last, and each new offering is accompanied with a celebration that upstages the one before. On November 15, 1999, as Korn prepared to release their fourth album, Issues, the band played a rock show at the legendary Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York, a site usually foreign to rock shows. On Monday night, to christen the release of their new disc, Untouchables, the band simulcast a one-hour concert from the Hammerstein Ballroom to 40 movie theaters across the… Read more »

No wonder pop fans are singing the blues. Radio sounds like a broken record. CD prices are heading off the charts. Labels are out of tune with the digital age. New acts fail to strike a chord with listeners. It’s time to face the music. The $14 billion recording industry, struggling through its first sales slump in a decade, faces challenges on several fronts, not the least of which is a tarnished image in the eyes and ears of fans who feel ripped off by greedy, tone-deaf bean counters. In 2001, album sales dropped 2.8% compared with 2000, the first… Read more »

It’s a long way from the stage of Madison Square Garden to an HIV clinic in South Africa, or from the thunderous roar of an adoring audience to the buttoned-down halls of the U.S. Senate. For most people, perhaps, but not for Bono. Rock and politics have been strange bedfellows for decades, from folkie Pete Seeger’s civil rights work in the ’60s to Frank Zappa’s censorship battles in the ’80s and Rage Against the Machine’s anti-sweatshop agitation in the ’90s. But whether it’s peace in Ireland or restructuring third-world debt, few rock stars have been able to devote as much… Read more »

“I’m a pervert, I like watching,” Terri Nunn says, laughing, succinctly explaining Voyeur, the title of Berlin’s first album of new material in sixteen years. “There’s a song that was a bonus track on the live record [Berlin Live: Sacred and Profane] called ‘X Girl’ that had a line, “I’m the one standing on the sidelines/I’m the voyeur on your side,’ and that line really stuck with me.” With that, Nunn and Berlin are back, continuing what they started twenty years ago with the breakout singles “Sex (I’m A…)” and “Metro,” from the gold-selling debut EP Pleasure Victim. They continued… Read more »