Search Results for: the summer set

New York – The year began with the Super Bowl halftime show fiasco and ended with aftershocks from Howard Stern flipping his detractors the bird and taunting the Federal Communications Commission with a just-try-and-get-me-now move to satellite radio. Between those two seismic events, the FCC levied a record number of indecency fines, responding to an avalanche of complaints carefully orchestrated by conservative zealots and election year political pressure. The results from the government crackdown were widespread. Top-rated personalities were fired. Zero-tolerance edicts were issued. On-air delays and indecency tutorials became commonplace. Warhorses like Pink Floyd’s “Money,” Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer”… Read more »

New York – The Rolling Stones recently concluded recording sessions for a new album in Paris with producer Don Was, who worked with them on their two previous studio releases. The band will reconvene in the New Year for additional sessions for an album tentatively due in summer 2005, Was told Billboard.com. Was described the Stones’ new music as considerably different from their recent releases, such as 1997’s “Bridges to Babylon” and 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge.” “Mick (Jagger) and Keith (Richards) are writing songs together in a collaborative fashion that probably hasn’t been seen since the late ’60s,” he said. “I… Read more »

I’m about to save the music industry from shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultants and research reports, by revealing the marketing secret behind the five-year-long surge in illegal online swapping of songs: People like to get things for free that would otherwise cost them money. And they won’t stop taking them for free just because there’s a convenient legal alternative, if that alternative requires opening their wallets. Stunned by my unique powers of insight? You shouldn’t be, yet this obvious lesson seems lost in the squabbling among record labels, quasi-legal peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and start-up companies hoping… Read more »

Just like in professional wrestling, a band’s entrance music provides a pretty good forecast of what’s to follow. When Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” filled an arena, Hulk Hogan’s irrepressible fortitude wasn’t far behind. The sound of glass shattering typically prefaced a Stone Cold-style beat-down. And this past summer, when Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best,” off “The Karate Kid” soundtrack, rained down upon an unsuspecting rock club, it meant that one of the most immodest bands around was about to deliver its musical equivalent of a jump-front kick to the head. “We thought it was the funniest thing,” explained Fall… Read more »

For someone who claims he never wanted to be on stage, Badly Drawn Boy has a hard time getting off of one. Damon Gough’s alter ego displayed his stamina with a marathon set that both delighted and exhausted a sold-out Toronto crowd. The singer-songwriter set the tone for the evening right off the top, claiming that it was “good to be back in America.” From that point on, his curious mix of affability, crustiness and wit had the audience hanging on every sung or spoken word. And there were plenty of both in the nearly three-hour performance. Backed by a… Read more »

“Back to basics” and “return to form” were some of the phrases floated by music critics worldwide when Manchester-based singer-songwriter Damon Gough, a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy, released his fourth and latest LP last summer. Not only does One Plus One Is One open with the line, “Back to being who I was before,” but it was recorded by Andy Votel – who produced Gough’s breakthrough record, The Hour Of Bewilderbeast – in a simple U.K. studio with traditional instruments, whereas its predecessor, Have You Fed The Fish?, was a product of Tom Rothrock’s ProTools palace in California. However, despite appearances,… Read more »

In an effort to stop the wholesale looting of U2’s forthcoming ‘How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb’ by illicit file-sharers, the band has partnered with MTV.com and VH1.com for exclusive, and legal, online streaming of the new album. Ever since an unfinished copy of the album went missing in France in July, the band and its label have been bracing for the album to hit the net before the Nov. 23 release date. Then last week, songs from the band’s eagerly anticipated 11th studio set began circulating online. While it’s not known for certain whether the AWOL copy was the… Read more »

New York – It’s beginning to look a lot like Jessica Simpson for Christmas. Columbia Records will release “ReJoyce: The Christmas Album” and the “Jessica Simpson Reality Tour Live” DVD on Nov. 23. Tracks on the album, named in honor of her grandmother, Joyce Adams Simpson, include “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)”; “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” a duet with her husband, Nick Lachey. The DVD, which showcases the July 30 stop in Los Angeles on her summer tour, features a 15-song set that includes “With You” and “Irresistible,” interspersed with snippets from Simpson and Lachey’s MTV… Read more »

Brandy is bidding adios to her longtime record label, Atlantic Records, her publicist said Monday. The news might have something to do with the “Top of the World” chantuese no longer being, well, on top of the world. Once a staple of MTV and urban radio, the 25-year-old R&B singer has recently been eclipsed by a new crop of teenage divas. Despite solid reviews and a huge promotional push from Atlantic this past summer for her fourth release on the label, Afrodisiac, the disc quickly disappeared from the upper echelons of Billboard ‘s pop charts after a number three debut… Read more »

The success of the Black Eyed Peas flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that the music business sacrifices long-term artist development in favor of quick hits and short-term corporate profits. Signed to Interscope Records more than six years ago by chairman Jimmy Iovine, the progressive hip-hop group’s first two albums, “Behind the Front” in 1998 and “Bridging the Gap” in 2000 earned rave reviews but failed to go gold (shipments of 500,000 copies). The first album peaked at No. 139 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 197,000 units, according Nielsen SoundScan, while the sophomore set stalled at… Read more »