Archive for November 5th, 2009
Jay-Z Announces 2010 Leg of “Blueprint 3 ” Tour
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Benett/Getty
Just hours after Jay-Z joined U2 onstage in Berlin at the MTV European Music Awards, Jigga announced dates for the second leg of his Blueprint 3 tour. Jay-Z still has four more shows left on his run on college campuses in November, but he’ll return to the road in 2010 starting February 22nd in Houston, Texas.
If you’re looking at the tour dates and wondering where’s all the New York love from the “Empire State ...
Hype Monitor: Shrinebuilder, Florence and the Machine, Fool’s Gold
November 5th, 2009
The Band: Shrinebuilder
The Buzz: Shrinebuilder may be a relatively new band, but they’re hardly up-and-comers. Comprised of members of metal titans Scott Weinrich of St. Vitus, Al Cisneros of Sleep, the Melvins’ Dale Crover and Scott Kelly of Neurosis, the group binds together the best qualities of its significant legacy, making slow-moving metal that engulfs like a tar pit.
Listen If: You’ve ever waxed rhapsodic about Master of Reality — and especially if you have done ...
Julian Casablancas Gifts Fans “SNL” Christmas Song on MySpace
November 5th, 2009
We’re more than a month away from Christmas, but Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas is feeling charitable this week. First, he released his solo album Phrazes for the Young, then he posted his upcoming Xmas single a month and 20 days early on his MySpace Music page. “Everyone seems to do a Christmas song at some point, so I always said to myself I’d do that song,” Casablancas told the NME. “I now checked that off ...
Tegan and Sara Talk “Sainthood,” Sanity and Their “Hell” Video
November 5th, 2009
Six albums and 10 years into their career as indie-pop double threats Tegan and Sara, the 29-year-old Canadian duo have put enough distance between themselves and their first releases to analyze them critically. Quite critically, it turns out. “I like to think that our career is divided into two really important times. Those first couple of records, I’ve come to terms with how embarrassed I am of them and see them as … development,” Sara ...
Amazon Names Neko Case’s “Middle Cyclone” Best of 2009
November 5th, 2009
There’s still two months left in 2009, during which some of the most highly anticipated releases of the year by Rihanna, 50 Cent, Adam Lambert and Clipse are due. But that’s not stopping Amazon.com from announcing their Top 100 albums of 2009 today, along with their customers’ list of the year’s best. Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone takes first place on the store’s countdown while U2’s No Line on the Horizon tops “Customer Favorites.” The customer ...
Pixies Celebrate 20 Years of “Doolittle” at L.A. Tour Launch
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Webber/WireImage
There are drawbacks to performing an entire album live in concert — even for the Pixies, who unfurled 1989’s groundbreaking Doolittle on Wednesday in the first of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Palladium. “You can’t skip it if you don’t like any of the songs,” bassist-singer-chatterbox Kim Deal noted onstage with a blissful grin. “You have to listen to all of them.”
The reunited Pixies began a nine-city U.S. Doolittle Tour this week in ...
Black Francis, “Weird Al,” Flea to Rock “Winston Calling” Benefit
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Merritt/GettyThe Pixies might have just kicked off the American leg of their Doolittle tour last night in Los Angeles, but Black Francis has already made plans to return to L.A. on December 8th and 9th when he headlines Winston Calling: A Rock and Comedy benefit concert for baby Winston Bertran. The first concert of the two-night benefit at the Echoplex and its upstairs venue the Echo will also feature appearances by “Weird Al” Yankovic ...
Jack White Turned Down Slash’s Request to Sing on Solo Album
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Carr/Getty(White), Dowling/Getty(Slash)
Slash has recruited an impressive roster of guest musicians to appear on Slash & Friends, the Velvet Revolver guitarist’s 2010 solo album. Pals like Dave Grohl, Flea, Chris Cornell, the Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger and pretty much every Guns n’ Roses member not named Axl Rose will make appearances on the LP. However, Slash revealed that one guy he really wanted to work with rebuffed him: The White Stripes/Raconteurs/Dead Weather’s Jack White. ...
Evanescence Return to the Stage at “Secret” New York Gig
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Noam GalaiIt was a chant that hadn’t been heard in Manhattan in more than two years, and it started a little after 9 p.m., as the anxious crowd who packed out the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom started growing more and more impatient: “EVAN-ES-SCENTS, EVAN-ES-SCENTS.” And though the last time Amy Lee floated across a stage George W. Bush was in office, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the band’s adept, hard-charging performance.
But ...
Rihanna “Ashamed” By Chris Brown Assault, Says “Love Is Blind” in New Interview
November 5th, 2009
Photo: Astute/ABC
Rihanna broke her silence and described how her relationship with Chris Brown turned violent in the first of two interviews with ABC News today on Good Morning America. “This happened to me and it could happen to anybody,” Rihanna told Diane Sawyer. “There’s a lot of women who experienced what I did, but not in the public. I just thought, ‘There goes my little bit of privacy.’ ” (Watch a clip of the ...