Multi-platinum rock band 311 have been hard at work in their own North Hollywood studio, The Hive, with legendary producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith) putting the final touches
Following up the soulful, boogie-rock of their last album “Armed Love,” The International Noise Conspiracy pick up where they left off with The Cross of My Calling. This time around they are opting for a slightly more psychedelic rock sound.
Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band pre-recorded the music that was played during their Super Bowl half-time performance on Sunday (February 1), according to one of the event’s producers. Apparently the
Franz Ferdinand have announced a tour of North America, kicking off April 13 in Seattle, WA. The band will hit the road to support the release of their new album
Tommy Keene is one of America's two great practitioners of power pop along with Matthew Sweet. Yet while the latter, as befits his name, anticipates the best is yet to come, there's an ironic contrast with Keene’s moniker: his tunes carry an ever so slight but nevertheless palpable air of melancholy.
We thought we have seen it all when it comes to ticketing companies, but this past week has been full of shocking new developments. First, Live Nation’s ticketing system crashed and burned under what Live Nation CEO Nathan Hubbard claims was 10 million requests for Phish tickets. Then, Ticketmaster’s system crashed and burned when Bruce Springsteen tickets went onsale and finally last night word came down of an impending merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation. Hey… Wha Happened?
We’re at a loss to figure out what’s gonna happen next. The love shown for Ticketmaster by Phish fans on Friday and Saturday was a sign of how screwed up the industry has become. But let’s get back to the Springsteen fiasco. Springsteen and his team issued the following statement this afternoon…
A LETTER TO OUR FANS:
We know there was much confusion regarding Ticketmaster and TicketsNow during last Monday’s on-sale dates. We were as confused as you were, as we were given no advance notice of the major changes in the Ticketmaster-TicketsNow world. (Bear in mind that we are not clients of any ticketing company, and that all those arrangements are between venues and ticketing companies.)Last Monday, we were informed that Ticketmaster was redirecting your log-in requests for tickets at face value, to their secondary site TicketsNow, which specializes in up-selling tickets at above face value. They did this even when other seats remained available at face value. We condemn this practice.
We perceive this as a pure conflict of interest. Ticketmaster is there to ensure that we have a good, fair sale of our tickets at their face value plus normal ticketing charges. TicketsNow is supposed to be a secondary site where people who already have tickets may exchange, trade, and, unfortunately, speculate with them. We have asked this redirection from Ticketmaster to TicketsNow cease and desist immediately and Ticketmaster has agreed to do so in the future and has removed its unwanted material from their and our site.
READ ON for more of Springsteen’s letter to his fans…
While Jacque-Imo’s – my favorite NoLa restaurant in NYC – closed last year, it’s nice to see another Crescent City in NYC tradition continues. Nolafunk.com’s 3rd Annual Mardi Gras Ball
The Flaming Lips – This Here Giraffe
The new God Street Wednesday feature on Hidden Track seems to take me down memory lane more than any other column on the site. I guess that’s because for me, God Street Wine’s peak came at a time when I had
nothing to do but blow off classes in college and listen to music.
[Photo by Charlie Watts]
Back in the early ’90s, God Street Wine was just as much a part of the emerging “jamband scene” as anyone including the eventually more popular Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic or Phish. Granted GSW wasn’t selling out arenas the way Phish began to in 1994, but on the “small room” circuit, GSW brought just as much to the table as anyone other than Phish at that time.
GSW had a nice mix of quirkiness – with Aaron Maxwell’s booming vocals adding a little theatrics to the mix – and straight up rock and roll. They may not have been Phish with the extended jamming and 30-minute Tweezers. And they may not have been John Popper when it came to arranging music or wailing out solos. But one thing GSW always did was write a fun song and play the hell out of it live.
READ ON for more of Luke’s essay and some live God Street Wine…
Every now and then, you get surprised. It doesn’t happen every day, getting really surprised, I mean. I raised two children (and their friends) through their teenage years so there have been times in my life I was surprised to find there was any cereal left in the cupboard in the morning. But finding a twenty dollar bill in the pocket of a two dollar shirt from the local thrift store kind of surprised isn’t as common as one might think.
Surprise is a totally perception based premise. Let’s face it. If you knock on the door and a naked, middle aged man or woman answered, your reaction would most likely be one of surprise, shock, perhaps even outrage. But if you were raised in a nudist colony (Naturalist preserve to be politically correct), your reaction to the birthday suit welcoming committee would be more along the lines of “Morning, Mom, Dad” as you brush past them to the cupboard to get more cereal. Everything’s relative.
So I had tickets to see James Morrison open for Adele Tuesday night at the Wonder Ballroom. Here was my perception of these artists prior to walking up the stairs and through the double doors into the hall. Musically, I was familiar with what I heard on the radio; Morrison’s soulful Nothing Ever Hurt Like You and Adele’s Chasing Pavements, Right As Rain and Cold Shoulder which she performed on Saturday Night Live (I had tuned in to see the Sarah Palin vs. Tina Fey stare down).
READ ON for more of A.J.’s review of Adele and James Morrison…
