Welcome to the weekly Rock Shuffle!
Bob Dylan lands his fifth career Billboard 200 #1 debut, as Together Through Life posts a 125,000-unit opening week. The Hannah Montana: the Movie soundtrack stuck around at #2 with 86,000 (down 18%), while Rascal Flatts' Unstoppable climbs one notch to #3 with 53,000 sold, despite a 22% decrease. Last week's #1 album, Rick Ross' Deeper Than Rap, takes a 67.5% second-week dive, falling to #4 with 51,000 sold. Lady GaGa's The Fame rounds out the top 5 with 40,000 (up 0.6%).
Trent Reznor's tirade on the Nine Inch Nails forum this week didn't go unnoticed by the shotcallers over at Apple. Suddenly they seem to agree that his Nine Inch Nails iPhone app is acceptable after all - it's now allowed into the iPhone App Store. Apple initially accepted nin:access last month, but Apple later rejected the app, reportedly due to the fact that it contains a link to a Podcast that features The Downward Spiral tune with actual real swearing in it. Reznor reminded Apple that The Downward Spiral song is already available to consumers – in unedited form – on the iTunes Music Store, and the tired old "content" excuse isn't going to work anymore - especially when customers can turn right around and buy the Scarface movie without a problem.Reznor confirmed the news in a Tweet Wednesday, saying: "NEWS FLASH: Apple has approved the NIN iPhone app update. Should be live in a few hours."
Guitar god Tom Morello and rapper Boots Riley popped their live cherry as the Street Sweeper Social Club in an after-hours set Tuesday night during the Roots' weekly party at the Highline Ballroom in New York City. They played a handful of songs from the group's new album, including "100 Little Curses" and "Nobody Moves (Til We Say Go)" and others from their debut album. The band also covered M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes," emphasizing Riley's hyphy drawl and Morello's homage to The Clash’s classic "Straight To Hell" guitar riff sampled on that song.Morello calls the Street Sweeper's debut a collection of "revolutionary party jams," with songs built on articulate yet funktastic tales of class resentment. The band wore matching black and red carmagnole, long coats popularized by the sans-culottes during the French Revolution, which were emblazoned with the band's C.C.C.P.-inspired logo. “This is a time when the working class is being fleeced left and right," Riley said. "More families will be homeless and more people will be jobless. They’ll need something to listen to on their ipods while storming Wall Street.”
Coldplay loves their fans. I'm not one of them, but for those of you that are, the band will give away a live CD, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, to all fans attending its "Viva La Vida" summer tour.The giveaway will begin on May 15 at the opening date of the North American tour at the Cruzan Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida. It will continue through every live show in 2009, except festival appearances."Playing live is what we love," said Coldplay in a statement. "This album is a thank you to our fans - the people who give us a reason to do it and make it happen."The nine-track live album will also be available as a download from the band's official Web site during the tour, beginning May 15. It was recorded at various cites during the "Viva La Vida" tour. Coldplay's tour wraps with two huge outdoor Live Nation-promoted shows at Wembley Stadium on Sept. 18 and 19.
Lady GaGa has compared the Beatles to the Jonas Brothers. I should end the story there, but let's dig a little deeper into this glaring display of idiocy.The singer admitted that her song "The Fame" was inspired by the Fab Four's 1969 Abbey Road album, and went on to drop the big bomb:"They were responsible for the birth of the sexual revolution for women," she gushed to Britain's The Daily Star, before adding that the Jonas Brothers are currently the Liverpool legends' equivalent.She said: "Now we have the Jonas Brothers representing the return of the superfan."Well, she's kind of right. But still, that's just a no-no. You don't mix diamonds and quartz. People get confused.
Had Radiohead followed their management’s advice, they’d no longer exist- and neither would their industry game-changer album In Rainbows, or, for that matter, the infamous “Radiohead model-” though I suspect that Trent Reznor would’ve figured things out on his own eventually.The Irish Times reported on Friday that Brian Message and two of his partners at Radiohead’s management company Courtyard Management “actually advised the band to split up,” during the early sessions for In Rainbows.
Two years after tying off their obligations to EMI, Radiohead hadn’t yet made any solid progress on a new album. There were songs written, but the band couldn’t hit the studio sound they were looking for. Seeing this, Courtyard jumped to the same conclusion that any management team would when dealing with the biggest band in the world adjusting to its first real taste of freedom in over a decade: they decided the guys should call it a day.
“I’ve been lucky to work with some great artists and Radiohead are a once-in-a-generation act,” says Message. “But you have to be honest if it’s not working. You have to have passion about what you do. I’m an accountant but I love music and I’m passionate about the artists I work with.”
Does Radiohead make a habit of relying on an accountant for career advice? Evidently not, because they’re still together, and the album they made after pissing on that idea just so happened to serve as a cultural tipping point, and started the forest fire that’s now encircled the industry dinosaurs- and closing in.The In Rainbows stunt hit the slipstream of national attention, and suddenly the concept of a streamlined relationship between fan and artist, with everything else following from that was thrust into the conversational collective.
The band never revealed the official totals from the choose-your-payment option, but the profit numbers (supplemented by various physical formats, released later, that actually cost money) are reportedly in the double-digit millions, and their tour to supportIn Rainbows was a phenomenal success by all accounts. On the West Coast leg of their tour last year, the band performed for 60,000 people in San Francisco, each of whom bought a $60 ticket. I’m not a rocket surgeon, but I’m pretty sure that’s a shitload of cash. And while Message concedes that half of that audience may have downloaded the album for free, “we get most of that money” from the shows, he says.
Former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum is delusional. He's now running around telling people that if the original band reunites, they should perform with both him and original drummer Steven Adler."If it's me on drums or Steven or whatever, if it happened, it'd be great, you know. I would actually say to them, 'Hey, bring both of us back,' you know. Let me play the other stuff. We'll have two drum kits. I don't care. If 'Appetite' ('For Destruction', the band's debut) sounds better with Steven playing it, have both guys up there. They can afford it."Exciting! Not really. Even if it were an option, Steven Adler is an alkie mess that has passed the point of no return. Besides, Axl didn't exactly leave the door wide open for a reunion option: "There's zero possibility of me having anything to do with Slash other than by ambush, " he said. There's more, but you get the jist. It's not happening.
Ozzy Osbourne has admitted he was wasted during all the three years of filming his reality television show. SHOCKER! The Osbournes featured the daily happenings of Ozzy, his wife Sharon and two of his kids, Jack and Kelly. The former Sabbath frontman would often be seen running on a treadmill and getting fit, but he says it was all a charade. Once the cameras stopped rolling, Ozzy, 60, supposedly a recovering alcoholic, would go to a room and get stoned.Sharon said: "As Ozzy will tell you, the three years that we were filming, Ozzy was stoned the whole time. He wasn't sober for one day." Ozzy revealed: "When the filming ended, I'd go in my little bunker and smoke a pipe and drink about a case of beer every day." Oh no!
Michael Jackson has been told he's too thin to perform live. Doctors have reportedly been begging the legendary singer to eat more, or risk collapsing onstage during his 50-show residency at London's O2 arena in July.Despite this, concert promoter AEG Live insist the 50-year-old star is "extremely fit" and looking forward to taking to the stage. Others claim he is dangerously underweight, however, and needs gain at least 20lbs to be considered healthy.A source told Britain's The Sun newspaper: "There are concerns Michael is too frail. He has been ordered to eat more but he refuses to and eats like a bird."
Jay-Z's appearance at the first concert in Arizona Stadium since 1977 didn't exactly go as planned, to say the least. Featuring both the rapper and Kelly Clarkson, The Last Smash Platinum Bash ended up costing the event's hosts $917,000.Tommy Bruce, outgoing president of the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, told The Arizona Daily Star that he believed the concert's poor ticket and merchandise sales could be attributed to the economy. “Nobody predicted the economy would be the way it is now last May,” he said. The contract for Jay-Z, who was paid $750,000, was signed March 24. You can go ahead and do the math yourselves on what went wrong there. The ASUA is expected to apply its entire emergency budget reserve - $350,000 - to help cover the losses.
Jane's Addiction is sitting on a pair of brand new songs that frontman Perry Farrell "can't wait for people to hear" - however, there are no plans for that to happen yet. Or so we're being told. "I think they're really good," Farrell tells Billboard.com. He calls one, "Embrace the Darkness," "a festival anthem," while "I'll Protect You" is about a pair of runaways whose paths cross.
The two follow studio recordings of "Chip Away" and "Whores" from Jane's 1987 live album, produced by Nine Inch Nails's Trent Reznor and Alan Moulder, that the group posted on the tour web site, ninja2009.com. The tracks are the first written with Jane's Addiction's original lineup, with bassist Eric Avery back on board for the first time since 1991, has recorded since 1990's Ritual de lo Habitual.
"I'll be honest with you - we started to record and things got kind of ugly," Farrell says with a laugh. "Recording is, like, the last hurdle for us. It's one of those things where the head-butting really came out when we tried to write...The way I look at it is I'm very patient. It's only been, what, 18 years? I can't expect things to be perfect overnight. There's still animosity 'cause it's 18 years' built up. That's just how we roll. But the fact we're all getting back together is a super-positive sign. I know we'll get back in there and write some more...once we've gotten to sit down and have dinner, a couple weeks on the road, get to relax with each other a bit."
