2006

Nine Inch Nails has drafted goth legends Bauhaus and its new Interscope labelmate TV On The Radio for its summer North American tour. The trek will begin May 27 in Ridgefield, Wash., and will feature 13 subsequent shows with TV On The Radio. Bauhaus will continue as the opening act through the outing’s July 8 conclusion in Mountain View, Calif., in tandem with another group to be announced.

Beforehand, NIN will complete a run of smaller North American markets on a tour that continues on to Greenville, S.C., tomorrow (March 16). As previously reported, the Trent Reznor-led group will also play Miami’s Global Gathering Festival on Saturday and the Sasquatch Festival in George, Wash., on May 26.

TV On The Radio’s Interscope debut, “Return to Cookie Mountain,” is expected sometime later this spring or early summer.

Here are Nine Inch Nails’ summer tour dates:

May 26: George, Wash. (Sasquatch Festival)
May 27: Ridgefield, Wash. (Clark County Amphitheatre)
May 28: Nampa, Idaho (Idaho Center)
May 30: Morrison, Colo. (Red Rocks)
May 31: Albuquerque, N.M. (Journal Pavilion)
June 2: San Antonio (Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre)
June 3: Dallas (Smirnoff Music Centre)
June 4: Woodlands, Texas (Mitchell Pavilion)
June 6: Birmingham, Ala. (Verizon Wireless Music Center)
June 7: Atlanta (Hi-Fi Buys Amphitheatre)
June 9: Raleigh, N.C. (Alltel Pavilion)
June 10: Charlotte, N.C. (Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre)
June 11: Virginia Beach, Va. (Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre)
June 13: Bristow, Va. (Nissan Pavilion)
June 14: Camden, N.J. (Tweeter Center)
June 16: Holmdel, N.J. (PNC Bank Arts Center)
June 17: Wantagh, N.Y. (Jones Beach)
June 18: Saratoga, N.Y. (Saratoga PAC)
June 20: Hartford, Conn. (New England Dodge Music Center)
June 21: Portland, Me. (Cumberland County Civic Center)
June 23: Mansfield, Mass. (Tweeter Center)
June 24: Toronto (Molson Amphitheatre)
June 25: Clarkston, Mich. (DTE Energy Music Theatre)
June 27: Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (Blossom Music Center)
June 28: Columbus, Ohio (Germain Amphitheatre)
June 30: Burgettstown, Pa. (Post-Gazette Pavilion)
July 1: Chicago (First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre)
July 2: Milwaukee (Marcus Amphitheatre)
July 3: Noblesville, Ind. (Verizon Wireless Music Center)
July 7: Irvine, Calif. (Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre)
July 8: Mountain View, Calif. (Shoreline Amphitheatre)

Source billboard.com.

New York-based indie rock act the Hold Steady has signed with Vagrant Records. The group will hit the studio in May to record the follow-up to its 2005 French Kiss swansong, “Separation Sunday,” which is expected to be out before the end of the year.

Several new tunes have been appearing in recent set lists, including “Hot Soft Light,” “Same Kooks” and “Massive Nights.” The group’s only scheduled show at present is April 7 at Warsaw in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Source billboard.com.

Before releasing his first album in six years, Ice Cube will get fans hyped with a lengthy North American tour.
Six weeks’ worth of dates are booked, starting in Anaheim, Calif., April 20. The rap legend will do several California dates, then make his way up the West Coast and across the country, with Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New York all on the itinerary.
The tour wraps back home in California at West Hollywood’s House of Blues.
Laugh Now, Cry Later is due June 6 and is Ice Cube’s first album released on his own label, Lench Mob Records.
“I’m putting my money where my mouth is because there’s nothing a major label can do for me that I can’t do for myself,” he said.
“Not being signed to a particular label, putting it out myself, not having to worry about what a company or anyone else has to think about the record, being able to just go in and do it how I feel it with no timelines or deadlines, it made me comfortable.
“I was able to recommitment myself to rhyming and rapping.”
Ice Cube hasn’t been on the road since 2000, when he appeared on the Up In Smoke tour and released his sixth album, War & Peace – Volume 2.

Source pollstar.com.

Seventeen years after the last tour by The Cars – one of the most successful and influential bands of the late ’70s/early ’80s “New Wave” era – two of its seminal members have customized a modern model that’s ready to hit the road this spring in the form of The New Cars. Joining The Cars’ original guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes for Road Rage Tour 2006 Presented by VH1 Classic, will be an all-star group of rockers: vocalist/guitarist Todd Rundgren, fellow Utopia bassist/vocalist Kasim Sulton and former Tubes drummer Prairie Prince.

Newly inducted Rock Roll Hall of Famers, Blondie will ride shotgun with The New Cars, performing classics from their new Greatest Hits- Sound Vision album (Capitol/EMI) which includes the new hit “Rapture Riders,” a mash-up of Blondie’s “Rapture” and The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm.” The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best mash-ups ever produced.” Other classics on the new CD include “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “The Tide is High” and “Sunday Girl.”

VH1 Classic Presents: The New Cars and Blondie – Road Rage Tour 2006

5/12 – Robinsonville, MS – Grand Casino Tunica Event Center
5/13 – Grand Prairie, TX – Nokia Theatre
5/17 – Phoenix, AZ – Dodge Theatre
5/19 – Las Vegas, NV – Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts
5/20 – Universal City, CA – Gibson Amphitheatre
5/23 – Alpine, CA – Viejas Casino
5/25 – Saratoga, CA – The Mountain Winery
5/26 – Reno, NV – Reno Events Center Downtown
5/27 – Kelseyville, CA – Konocti Field Amphitheater
5/30 – Englewood, CO – Coors Amphitheatre
6/1 – Hinckley, MN – Grand Casino Amphitheatre
6/3 – Highland Park, IL – Ravinia Pavilion
6/4 – Cuyahoga Falls, OH – Blossom Music Cetner
6/6 – Vienna, VA – The Filene Center
6/7 – Boston, MA – Bank of America Pavilion
6/9 – Wantagh, NY – Jones Beach Music Theater
6/10 – Holmdel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center
6/13 – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live (Universal Studios)
6/14 – Clearwater, FL – Ruth Eckerd Hall
6/15 – Hollywood, FL – Seminole Hard Rock Hotel Casino
6/17 – Atlanta, GA – Chastain Park Amphitheater
6/18 – North Charleston, SC – Oyster Shell North Charleston Coliseum
6/21 – Toronto, ON – Molson Amphitheatre
6/23 – Montreal, QC – Bell Centre
6/24 – Atlantic City, NJ – The Borgata Event Center
6/25 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Casino and Resort
6/30 – Clarkston, MI – DTE Energy Music Theatre

The Temecula Music Festival has announced all of the selections for the 2006 festival. This year

According to NME.com Courtney Love has said she is preparing to sell a share of her rights to the Nirvana back catalogue.

Love has been in London over the last week. While in the UK she’s had meetings about a new record deal, making a TV documentary, taking a theatre role in the West End, and been to various gigs.

“I have decided that I need some co-management and a strategic partner [to help me] as it’s such a huge responsibility,” Love told NME.COM of her Nirvana plans. “This is the right thing to do for my family…whoever I do this deal with, I really have to like.”

Love is also quoted in the Sunday Mirror (March 12) as saying that she’s thinking about selling “25 per cent of the catalogue for quite a lot of money.”

Love was married to Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain prior to his suicide in 1994.

Between an ugly feud among Blondie members spilling over onstage and a rancorous letter from the absent Sex Pistols, the latest Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class did not enter quietly on Monday.

The animosity even made Ozzy Osbourne, inducted with Black Sabbath, seem sedate.

As midnight arrived under the chandeliers of the Waldorf-Astoria’s grand ballroom, Lynyrd Skynyrd was performing the song that launched countless cigarette lighters, “Free Bird,” to celebrate their own induction. Famed jazz trumpeter Miles Davis completed the honorees.

When Blondie, the most commercially successful band to emerge from a fertile New York rock scene that also produced Talking Heads and the Ramones, reformed after 15 years, they didn’t include former members Frank Infante and Nigel Harrison. They sued unsuccessfully to join.

Infante, Harrison and Gary Valentine, another former member left behind in a business dispute, were barely acknowledged by former chums Deborah Harry, Chris Stein and Clem Burke as they received their awards.

Infante begged to perform with the band.

“Debbie, are we allowed?” he pleaded before Blondie performed their hits “Heart of Glass,” “Rapture” and “Call Me.”

“Can’t you see my band is up there?” Harry replied. The three rejected members walked offstage, but not before Infante groaned into the microphone.

Punk rockers the Sex Pistols had turned down the honor in a profane letter that compared the hall to “urine in wine.” Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner read the letter, and invited the band to pick up their trophies at the rock hall in Cleveland.

“If they want to smash them into bits, they can do that, too,” Wenner said.

Behind the unnerving stare of singer Johnny Rotten and the lacerating lyrics of “God Save the Queen” and “Pretty Vacant,” the Sex Pistols appeared the most shocking of the first punk-rock generation in the mid-1970s. The Pistols imploded after one album, with Rotten saying, “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” before walking offstage after their last show for decades.

Osbourne may be better known now as an addled reality TV star, but his musical legacy with Black Sabbath got its due with the band’s induction.

Osbourne has badmouthed the hall of fame for waiting a decade to induct Sabbath, a cause taken up by Metallica member Lars Ulrich in his induction. Metallica guitarist James Hetfield and Ulrich both said their band would not exist without the example of Black Sabbath.

“If there was no Black Sabbath, I could still possibly be a morning newspaper delivery boy,” Ulrich said. “No fun.”

Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Bill Ward did not perform, but Metallica rattled the walls with versions of “Iron Man” and “Hole in the Sky.”

To read more visit yahoo.com.

Radio Woodstock, founder of the Mountain Jam Music Festival, has joined forces with world renowned guitarist Warren Haynes (Allman Bros. & Gov

Lucero is set to release a re-issue of The Attic Tapes on CD and vinyl April 11th on the band’s Liberty & Lament label, thru East West. It’s a re-release of their first EP which was originally co-released by Soul Is Cheap and Lucero guitarist Brian Venable’s own label.

Alternative Press once named The Attic Tapes “One of the top 5 home recordings EVER.” The recordings capture the sound of the band at its inception better than anything else currently in print. The re-issue includes 5 bonus tracks, including the original 7″ recording of “My Best Girl” and its b-side, a cover of Jawbreaker’s “Kiss The Bottle”. The latter has become a Lucero live staple. The limited edition LP version will feature a collectable re-pressing of the band’s first “My Best Girl/Kiss The Bottle” 7″ inserted inside the vinyl album.

To celebrate this reissue, as well as to road test new material, Lucero hits the road in March for SXSW and then 3 weeks of touring in April with Langhorne Slim supporting. The band are set to enter the studio in May with producer David Lowery at Sound of Music studios in Richmond VA to record the follow up to 2005’s Nobody’s Darlings.