Check out the new layout on Britney’s Twitter, which features the Candie’s “Through The Lens” campaign.Britney is the #2 most followed person on Twitter! Do you follow @britneyspears?… …read full story
http://twitpic.com/19z2px – RUSSIAN ROSE GOLD VAMPIRE GRILLZ early birthday present from the haus, gravediggaz! i’ve been begging for these
OR WATCH FULL VERSION OF “TELEPHONE” HERE LITTLE MONSTERS! http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/LadyGaga/Telephone-f%2F-Beyonce–218656764
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• <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/03/17/dixie-chicks-team-with-eagles-for-first-tour-in-four-years/”>Dixie Chicks Team With Eagles for tour
• <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2010/03/17/phish-return-to-the-road-summer-2010-with-monster-tour/”>Phish Announce Big Summer Trek
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Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.
Muse are a band that like things on a massive scale, igniting big sounds on the biggest stages, with the kind of big visual effects known only to the likes of Pink Floyd and Daft Punk. That’s the Muse comfort zone, but the British trio’s special appearance Friday on a much smaller stage at a MySpace Music-presented South By Southwest show traded grand gestures for relative intimacy, without deflating the band’s soaring post-punk prog sound.
There were still laser-beams and songs delivered at arena-rock size at the outdoor amphitheater of Stubb’s BBQ in <a href="http://cheap-tickets4u.com/ResultsEvent.aspx?event=Austin“>Austin, but singer-guitarist Matt Bellamy embraced all that is the ground-level nature of the annual SXSW music festival. “We’re feeling good vibes in this town right now,” he told a packed crowd.
RS is tweeting 100 bands from SXSW 2010! Follow the action here.
The band’s hour-long set began with the ominous keyboards and revolution rock of “Uprising,” a track from last year’s The Resistance, calling for “fat cats” to succumb to heart failure while promising, “They will not degrade us, they will not control us…” The band stretched out in a variety of disparate sounds and directions, usually within a single song. Bellamy led the crowd in clapping to the straight-ahead heartbreak beat from the ’80s-style pop hit “Starlight” (from 2006’s Black Holes and Revelations), but also unfurled the galloping Spanish surf-guitar vibe of “Knights Of Cydonia,” sounding like something Dick Dale and ELP might have cooked up together for a Spaghetti Western soundtrack, before Muse slipped into the Queen-like vocal harmonies of “You and I must fight for our rights / You and I must fight to survive.”
There was a welcome bit of funk in some of Muse’s prog, and occasional, if brief guitar flourishes that echoed Hendrix, Black Sabbath and Aerosmith, demonstrating real hard-rock chops in the anxious playing fingers of Bellamy. The songs were anthemic, melodramatic and performed with all the self-confidence of a consistently platinum-selling act. There are many fans and many critics, and the comparisons to Radiohead are not often meant as a compliment. But Bellamy, bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard demonstrated that the great walls of sound Muse have spent the last decade creating can still connect to an audience at ground level.
Indie-rock quartet Metric opened the show, beginning their set with the crackle and hum of “Twilight Galaxy.” The quartet’s 45-minute set was fueled on excited postmodern pop and explosive melody. At one point, singer Emily Haines included a few whispery, spectral moments of Neil Young’s “Hey Hey, My My” as an intro to Metric’s “Gimme Sympathy,” which asks the contentious pop music question: “After all of this is gone / Who’d you rather be? / The Beatles or the Rolling Stones? / Oh, seriously.”
Haines hopped and banged a tambourine in a short sparkly dress during “Help I’m Alive,” her voice going from heavy to high and wailing, “My heart keeps beating like a hammer!” She picked up an electric guitar for “Gold Guns Girls” to slash rhythm during the intense soloing of guitarist James Shaw, stirring up a crowd of festival-goers close enough to be reached.
Muse Set List:
“Uprising” (Riff Version)
“Supermassive Black Hole”
“Resistance”
“Hysteria”
“Stockholm Syndrome”
“Nishe”
“United States of Eurasia”
“Starlight”
“Time is Running Out”
“Unnatural Selection”
ENCORE
“Plug in Baby”
“Knights of Cydonia” (Harmonica Version)
More SXSW 2010:
• RS’ SXSW Twitter Marathon: Catch the Tweets Here!
• Spoon, Broken Bells Grab the Spotlight as SXSW 2010 Launches
• Stone Temple Pilots Debut Songs, Rock With Robby Krieger at SXSW
• Broken Social Scene, Band of Horses, Drive-By Truckers Bring Big Guitar Rock to SXSW
• Hole Cover the Rolling Stones, And Courtney Love Isn’t Satisfied at SXSW
“Make a hole!” yelled one of the bouncers at Dirty Dog, where Courtney Love was about to continue her return to music with a reconstituted version of her band Hole on the third night of the SXSW Music Festival. It was creeping up on 1:15 am. The crowd was packed so tightly together stage left of the dive bar that an emergency situation seemed imminent. Just then the bouncer bulldozered an opening through a space out of thin air to accommodate Woody Harrelson, dressed in a light tan suit and matching Kangol cabbie hat, and his entourage of almost 10 deep. John Doe, frontman for the punk band X, was nearby in the crowd and grew absolutely irate. He pointed at a passing Harrelson and barked, “You fucking celebrities.”
Harrelson and crew, en route to Love’s dressing room, did an about-face minutes later, as Love had just taken to the stage. She was dressed like a wood nymph in pink, with a halo atop her long blond locks. She was telling the audience that she wasn’t doing this for them, but for herself. Then she flipped everyone the bird and said, “Suck it.”
RS is tweeting 100 bands from SXSW 2010! Follow the action here.
A sludgy, bluesy opening number led to a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” followed by a take on the new Hole song “Skinny Little Bitch,” from the forthcoming album Nobody’s Daughter, out April 27th. It sounded much better live, with Love’s raspy growl coated by new guitarist Micko Larkin’s swirls of fuzz.
Love continued with “Doll Parts,” an older song that was supposedly written in response to her first encounter with Kurt Cobain. After that, she started complaining that her voice was shot and that if she kept playing loud songs she wouldn’t be able to play Perez Hilton’s party the following night. “It’s 1:00-fucking-am and I’m an old person,” she said. “It’s time for me to get my blowjob on.”
But she broke out a few more covers, including a full-on band version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman” and an acoustic duet version of “Bette Davis Eyes” with Larkin. Elsewhere in the crowd, Matthew McConaughey, wearing a Kangol to match Harrelson’s, looked on approvingly. But Love, who wouldn’t let up about her voice, wasn’t pleased. “Worst show of my life,” she told the crowd, in parting. “I’m so glad you were here to witness it.”
More SXSW 2010:
• RS’ SXSW Twitter Marathon: Catch the Tweets Here!
• Spoon, Broken Bells Grab the Spotlight as SXSW 2010 Launches
• Stone Temple Pilots Debut Songs, Rock With Robby Krieger at SXSW
• Broken Social Scene, Band of Horses, Drive-By Truckers Bring Big Guitar Rock to SXSW
• Muse Pack Arena-Size Anthems Into Surprise SXSW Show
The big story on SXSW’s third day was the surprise Muse performance at Stubb’s, which was announced during the broadcast of the Fox show Human Target earlier in the week (yes, really) — though Rolling Stone’s own showcase featuring Band of Skulls, Jimmie Dale and Colin Gilmore, Court Yard Hounds, John Doe, Rye Rye and Nneka was a pretty hot ticket, too.
Christopher R. Weingarten of @1000TimesYes continued his Twitter odyssey yesterday, tweeting about 24 bands in 14 hours for @RollingStone. Relive his epic quest in our TwitterCam (clips range from the dark rock of Zola Jesus to the pumped-up party pop of Yacht) and catch up on his 140-character reports here:
Check out our day one and day two Twitter marathon recaps.
54) SCORPION CHILD: Local Wolfmother-styled blooz-Metal loudly shimmies all over a pre-noon crowd, beckons “scaredy-cats” to dancefloor
55) WARPAINT: Emo’s Jr. absolutely packed by noon to watch these up-and-coming art-rockers lay down spacey, bassy grooves.
56) LOCAL NATIVES: Snaky grooves, spastic energy, excellent Talking Heads cover. So why is this audience so mellow?
57) JAVELIN: Their trademark, water-damaged, rapcentric funkfuzz inspires everything from languid headnods to total spazzing.
58) BANG BANG ECHE: A 15-minute set from impossibly young kiwi synth-garage punx, walking line between savage, spasmodic and huggable.
59) ZOLA JESUS: Keyboard-saturated gothpunk at its most life-affirming and holyshitbeautiful. In the hottest sun-baked cabin in Texas.
60) ANTLERS: Cinematic rock, near-emo wail and devoted followers triumph over the blaaaaazing sun and a malfunctioning kick pedal.
61) VULTURE WHALE: Fairly brawny Birmingham garage twang. Unexpectedly deafening for guys who don’t move around much.
62) FIGHTING WITH WIRE: Gnashing Irish crunch-pop terrorizes a pub. Like Foo Fighters for ugly people (and that’s a compliment).
63) CASIOKIDS: The name of this cartoon-trance crew implies 8-bit fun, but they’ve got quite a handle on understated ambiance too.
64) WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS: “This has been our worst show so far. Glad you could be here to rub it in.”
65) EPILEPTINOMICON: Denver trio makes pulseless, charred, feedbacky, quasi-mystical emo noise for ski mask and sweater
66) YACHT: Wild, cinematic nu-new wave party devolves into random partiers storming the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen… That guy!”
67) BLACK ANGELS: Stoner-psych ramblers face comedy of gear errors; shirtless guy who offers them a gift of moss on a stick.
68) MAN MAN: Zappa-punks premiere new material that’s as hectic, fun and dangerous as their audience’s pre-show chicken fights.
69) CAROLINA CHOCOLATE DROPS: Rapidfire banjo, fiddle and beatboxing in the Driskill Hotel’s stately Victorian Room. Their newgrass cover of “Hit ‘Em Up Style” has been upgraded from “must hear” to “must experience.”
70) WET HAIR: Iowa City drone ‘n’ drum duo make appropriately planetarium-worthy ooze in the Hideout’s black box theater.
71) MUSE: The day’s big unannounced show. Appropriately anthemic, appropriately huge, appropriately packed. People that couldn’t get in catch sneak peeks from the parking garage, listen and dance from the street.
72) FREDDIE GIBBS: Midwest gangsta rap artisan delivers rapidfire rhymes, each one crystal-clear. And looks good without a shirt!
73) DONNIS: Atlanta rapper brings his usually nimble rhymes, but his stage presence is filled with bounceworthy crunk energy.
74) THE COOL KIDS: Party rappers with no shortage of anthems. But half the show is the way their minimalist beats slap against your ear
75) GRASS WIDOW: Vinyl-friendly San Fran all-girl trio where bubblegum pop and post-punk dissonance politely intertwine.
76) LITURGY: Hypnotic, occassionally blissful black Metal; even more bonechilling in tight quarters.
76) LITURGY: Show more awesome since the band was arrested, tried and acquitted for possession of weed in Fort Worth THIS VERY AFTERNOON
77) LIARS: Beefing up their sound with members of Fol Chen, working way up to art-rock legacy band. Spitting sweaty gothaboom fractals. “Let’s fuck em up with a couple of fuck-em-up ones.”
More SXSW 2010:
• RS’ SXSW Twitter Marathon: Catch the Tweets Here!
• Spoon, Broken Bells Grab the Spotlight as SXSW 2010 Launches
• Stone Temple Pilots Debut Songs, Rock With Robby Krieger at SXSW
• Broken Social Scene, Band of Horses, Drive-By Truckers Bring Big Guitar Rock to SXSW
• Hole Cover the Rolling Stones, And Courtney Love Isn’t Satisfied at SXSW
• Muse Pack Arena-Size Anthems Into Surprise SXSW Show
Good news – Candie’s has created 4 amazing Britney wallpapers for you to download from their website!Visit candies.com to pick your favorite now…. …read full story
David “Gus” Griesinger of BackstageAxxess.com conducted an interview with Dave Mustaine when the band played the Town Ballroom in Buffalo, New York on March 13. BA: “And so it was? on a day of cold wind and gloom, Megadeth came to Buffalo to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of their release of “Rust In Peace”.” Watch the chat in two parts HERE
On March 16, Chris Dahlberg of Cosmos Gaming conducted an interview with Chris Broderick. CG: “Chances are that if you’re familiar with metal that you know Megadeth in some way, whether it be through their material, live performance, or Dave Mustaine’s reputation. The group continues to be a noteworthy name in the metal world and released their newest album “Endgame” last year. They are currently in the middle of a 20th anniversary tour for the album “Rust in Peace”, and I had the chance to speak with guitarist Chris Broderick about the tour, “Endgame”, and more.” Read the interview with Chris HERE
Megadeth, Rammstein and Motörhead are among the confirmed bands for Portugal’s Rock In Rio festival, set to take place May 21-30, 2010 at Bela Vista Park in Lisbon. Megadeth is scheduled to play on May 30. Tickets are on sale now. For more information, go HERE
This one’s for the girls. The latest installment of the Martina Moments series shows the superstar and her throngs of female fans! Watch the gigantic girls night below:
Miley Cyrus photo courtesy of Universal Music.
Country music was very good to Billy Ray Cyrus. His smash debut single, “Achy Breaky Heart,” made the Kentucky native a national star and paid the bills for his family for many years, before Billy Ray successfully branched out into TV and film, most recently playing a country singer in the TV series, Hannah Montana. However, Hannah Montana star and Billy Ray’s daughter, Miley Cyrus, has some pretty harsh words for the musical genre.
AOL’s The Boot reports on an interview Miley did with Parade magazine in which she says of country music, “It scares me. It feels contrived on so many levels. Unless you’re wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and singing and whining about your girlfriend or boyfriend leaving you it’s not going to sell. I think that’s why my dad finally got out of it. You have to wear those cowboy boots and be sweet as pie. It makes me nervous, the politics of it all.”
In other Miley news, she recently recorded a duet with Poison lead singer Bret Michaels called “Nothing to Lose.” The song was recorded three different times, and one version was…you guessed it — a country version.
Thoughts? Leave your comments below!
Lady Antebellum on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at the Ryman Autitorium in Nashville. Photo courtesy of The Greenroom.
Just two years ago, Lady Antebellum was on the road for the first time on a major tour, opening shows for Martina McBride. Last year, the group played a bundle of stadiums on the <a title="Kenny Chesney Artist Section” href=”http://www.gactv.com/gac/ar_az_kenny_chesney” target=”_self”>Kenny Chesney summer tour, and Lady A is currently opening arena dates for <a title="Tim Mcgraw Artist Section” href=”http://www.gactv.com/gac/ar_az_tim_mcgraw” target=”_self”>Tim Mcgraw.
Last week, the group upped the ante a little more, taking top billing on a pair of sold-out shows at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. Playing in the band’s hometown was part of the attraction for Lady A, but it was also an attempt to test the water and see if the group could deliver a strong enough set to warrant a full headlining tour. The trio — Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood — has gone from playing about 25 minutes per show on Kenny’s tour to doing a full hour opening for Tim.
“Our dream is to become a headlining act,” Charles says. “That’s the goal and we really needed this Tim Mcgraw tour honestly just to have a longer set, to be in that big setting and to allow ourselves to have that longer set.”
Closing a show requires even more time on stage, and the Ryman dates put Lady A to the test. They filled out the show with five hits of their own — “Love Don’t Live Here,” “Lookin’ For A Good Time,” “I Run To You,” “Need You Now” and “American Honey” — and they were able to expand the familiarity quotient with an acoustic version of Luke Bryan’s “Do I” (co-written by Charles and Dave) plus covers of the Hank Williams hit “Lost Highway” and Tom Petty’s single “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
Still, the band thinks it needs just a little more to make fans feel like they got their money’s worth for a full show.
“I don’t think you can really headline until you have enough hits under your belt,” Charles says. “If we can get one or two [more] radio songs out there, whether they’re No. 1 or not — just some more material, you know — I think back when we first started and we’d have headline shows of an hour and 15 minutes and you got one song. It’s exhausting. You’re tryin’ to pace out where you’re gonna play that hit. You go the whole show, and when you finally play the hit [at the end], everybody [goes], ‘Oh, that’s right. That’s them.’ And you’re like, ‘ See you guys later!’”
Lady A isn’t sure when the headlining will begin seriously, though the stated goal of having one or two more successful singles would put them on track to take the reins on a tour around the end of the year.
They’re looking at “possibly doing some stuff in the fall,” Charles says.
In the meantime, the band’s next round of dates with Tim comes with a four-show swing through Canada starting Thursday in Vancouver.
Kellie Pickler photo by Kristin Barlowe, courtesy of Sony BMG.
Didn’t you know how much we love her? Kellie Pickler takes part in this week’s edition of GAC’s Top 20 Country Countdown, but she’s not just making a guest appearance. She’ll actually join Nan Kelley to co-host the run-down of the genre’s top videos.
Kellie knows a thing or two about making successful videos. She’s frequently among the five biggest titles on the Top 20 list, and “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You” is still at No. 8 this week, five months after it first appeared among fans’ favorites.
While she’s on the set, Kellie talks about her videos with Nan. She also chats about her brand new single, “Makin’ Me Fall In Love Again”; her recent trip to play for U.S. soldiers in the Middle East; and fellow entertainers Reba McEntire and <a title="Toby Keith Artist Section” href=”http://www.gactv.com/gac/ar_az_toby_keith” target=”_self”>Toby Keith.
Top 20 Country Countdown counts down the week’s top country videos from No. 20 to No. 1 as voted by viewers on each week on GACtv.com. A new countdown premieres every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on GAC and airs again Saturdays at 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. ET; Sundays at 1 p.m. ET; and Mondays at 10 a.m. ET. Viewers can vote for their favorite videos, as well as purchase Top 20 artists’ albums and ringtones at GACTV.com.
THIS WEEK’S CHART:
1. Zac Brown Band “Highway 20 Ride”
2. Jewel “Stay Here Forever”
3. Bomshel “19 And Crazy”
4. Carrie Underwood “Temporary Home”
5. Carrie Underwood “Cowboy Casanova”
6. Danny Gokey “My Best Days Are Ahead Of Me”
7. Lady Antebellum “American Honey”
8. Kellie Pickler “Didn’t You Know How Much I Loved You”
9. Keith Urban “‘Til Summer Comes Around”
10. Blake Shelton featuring Trace Adkins “Hillbilly Bone”
11. Gary Allan “Today”
12. Miranda Lambert “White Liar”
13. Bucky Covington “Gotta Be Somebody”
14. Chris Young “The Man I Want To Be”
15. Josh Turner “Why Don’t We Just Dance”
16. Reba McEntire “Consider Me Gone”
17. Alan Jackson “It’s Just That Way”
18. Lady Antebellum “Need You Now”
19. Toby Keith “Cryin’ For Me”
20. Easton Corbin “A Little More Country Than That”
David Nail photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.
You’ve likely heard of the rock band Train. The group has a pop hit at the moment with “Hey, Soul Sister,” and its history includes the 1999 single “Meet Virginia” and the Grammy-nominated 2001 hit “Drops Of Jupiter.”
David Nail is certainly familiar with Train. His new album, I’m About To Come Alive, is titled after a song that first appeared on the band’s 2003 album My Private Nation. David’s producer suggested they do a version of it for his album after hearing David perform it repeatedly in concert.
“I am a huge Train fan,” David told The Erie Times-News. “I had been covering ['Come Alive'] in the majority of my acoustic shows for probably two years prior to going into the studio. It was a very personal song to me, when I started singing it. It was almost eerily similar to what I was going through.”
As it turns out, David’s admiration for Train is being reciprocated. The band’s lead singer, Pat Monahan, loved David’s version of “I’m About To Come Alive.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Pat told the Erie paper. “I really love his song ‘Red Light,’ too.”
Pat’s hardly alone in that regard. “Red Light” became David’s first Top 10 single — so the general public clearly liked it. David’s industry peers did, too. The Academy of Country Music nominated “Red Light” for Single Record of the Year against the Zac Brown Band’s “Toes,” Billy Currington’s “People Are Crazy,” Miranda Lambert’s “White Liar” and Lady Antebellum’s “Need You Now.”
It’s a nice pat on the back for David, who worked at music for years before he finally broke through. While most country fans are just now becoming familiar with him, he’s actually been whittling away at the business for the last decade or so. He recorded his first album in 2002, but the project was never released.
Like the rest of his career, “Red Light” developed slowly, too. He put it out in January 2009, and it didn’t hit the Top 10 until November — 10 months later.
David finally released his follow-up single, “Turning Home,” on the one-year anniversary of “Red Light”’s release. It’s a good thing that fans are now jumping on the David Nail train, because it allows him to keep pursuing music.
“What else in the world I would do?” he said. “There is no Plan B.”
The ACM’s verdict on “Red Light” will be revealed during the 45th annual awards in Las Vegas April 18.
Dierks Bentley will host his Miles & Music for Kids celebrity motorcycle ride and concert series in Seattle on Sept. 18.
The Universal Music Group will be lowering its CD prices in an effort to attract more consumers to the CD format, according to Billboard.