Pages

Monday, October 3, 2011

Travis Barker Beat Drugs,Went Vegan [Sheknows]

Travis Barker changed his life for the better after a 2008 plane crash nearly claimed his life. 

It’s been three years since a plane crash that nearly took the lives of Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and Adam ‘DJ AM’ Goldstein. Their lives took drastically different paths after the accident: DJ AM relapsed into his drug addiction and died in August 2009; Barker found a renewed love for life.
Barker, 35, reveals all in a new Blink-182 interview in Rolling Stone magazine. Among the changes? He’s exercising daily and adheres to a strict diet.
"I've been vegan since I got out of the hospital … It's another eye opener. It changed my life in a number of ways," he told the magazine.
"I mean, I run every day now," he added. "I never ran before. In the hospital, I promised myself that [if] I ever walked again, that I would eat well and swim every day. Before the plane crash, I was battling a painkiller addiction. For years."

Both Barker and Goldstein suffered serious injuries in the crash, including debilitating burns. "I looked Death right in the face," he said of the crash that killed the pilots and friends with them on the flight.
The accident helped him get back in touch with his Blink-182 bandmates, Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge. Their new album, Neighborhoods, is the band’s first in over eight years.
"I'm sitting on a bed and the doctors are talking about possibly amputating my foot. I'm reading this letter from Tom and there's a picture of his kids," he recalled of the letter that helped them reconnect. "It was heavy," he said. "I wanted to reach out to him."
The only thing he still cannot bring himself to do is fly.
"Unfortunately I can't do as much touring as I would like because I don't fly," he said. "It's an obstacle. I'm working on it though. I'm trying to get hypnotized, trying to talk to a doctor who retrains your brain. Maybe he'll help me fly again one day."

Source

Jay-Z Calls Back-And-Forth With Lil Wayne [MTV News]

'Just Sport'


'That's rap music,' Roc mogul tells MTV News of any subliminal lyrical jabs between him and the Young Money Captain.

 NEW YORKJay-Z has a lot going on right now. The rap mogul is expecting his first child with his wife BeyoncĂ©, getting ready for his NBA Nets' move to a brand-new stadium in his hometown of Brooklyn and his Roc Nation artist J. Cole is expected to debut at #1 on the Billboard albums chart this week. 

MTV News caught up with Jay on the red carpet of his Shawn Carter Foundation's Making the Ordinary Extraordinary carnival-themed fundraiser last Thursday — see what we mean by busy? — but we had to ask him about a topic that was probably much less pressing, yet still important to fans. What exactly is going on between him and Lil Wayne?
Last month, Wayne's song "It's Good" leaked days before the release of his Carter IV album, and the Cash Money MC seemed to have a few choice words for Jay and his lady on the track.
"Talkin' bout Baby money? I got your baby money/ Kidnap your bitch, get that how-much-you-love-your-lady money," Wayne spits on the song. To many, it was a direct response to Jay's supposed jab at Young Money's head honcho and his adoptive "father," Bryan "Baby" Williams, on "H.A.M."
On the Watch the Throne track, Jay raps, "I'm like, 'Really, half-a-billi?' N---a, really, you got Baby money/ Keep it real with n---as, n---as ain't got my lady money."
Wayne recently downplayed talk of a feud between the rappers in a Vibe magazine cover story, saying music isn't about competition anymore, and adding that he didn't think there would be any repercussions as a result of his song. "Every man should know the repercussions and consequences behind whatever they do before they do it. And of course, I know there won't be any repercussions behind what I did."
Jay-Z told us he didn't want to dwell on the topic, especially considering the education fundraiser was about a positive cause. But he didn't have much to say about Wayne's "It's Good," other than that it was to be expected in hip-hop.
"That's sport, that's rap music," Jay said. "Nothing is going to change but the participants. I don't even see why that's news."

Source

[BBC] Nirvana: Nevermind Forever - Welsh bands in on a cover-up

In all the material published this month about the 20th anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind (the record which changed rock/music/the world etc etc), there was one publication which has stood out for me.
Kerrang! magazine, the go-to organ for young rock fans since 1981, has included the usual information about its genesis, importance and influence, but they've taken a brave step and included a cover-mount CD this week: a 're-imagining' of the classic album by 14 different artists, covering the tracks in order (plus a bonus of the inter-album single Sliver).

 Nevermind Forever sleeve
It's never normally a good idea to cover classic tracks, let alone whole albums. The history of music is littered with bobbins cover versions, and the successful ones are few and far between. Usually, the element which made the originals into classics has been lost. The worst culprits manage to strip all soul and emotion from the song in favour of a highly-polished sheen (All Saints doing Under The Bridge, Madonna's American Pie or Hilary Duff doing My Generation, anyone?).
Given the dangers, you've got to admire the chutzpah of a project like Kerrang!'s. It's difficult to imagine an album as dearly-held by as many people as Nevermind. And it's difficult to over-emphasise the importance of the record; it even forced a major rethink on Kerrang! itself, back in the day. On its release in 1991, Guns N' Roses had produced the sprawling, coke-fuelled twin towers of stadium rock in Use Your Illusion volumes I and II: a gargantuan testament to the excess of 1980s American musical flatulence. Skid Row, Poison and Extreme were bona fide cover stars.
Nevermind shook these bands and their ilk to the core. Honesty, integrity and dirty pants were IN; spandex, hairspray and voting Republican was OUT. Kerrang! and other rock mags ditched their mates of old and suddenly it was all about Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains and Smashing Pumpkins. I don't think I ever saw Warrant referred to again.
Tracks from Nevermind have been covered before, it's true. Tori Amos recorded a version of Smells Like Spirit, as did Take That, Paul Anka, The Flying Pickets, Miley Cyrus and Nirvana's mates The Melvins. Lithium has been done by The Polyphonic Spree and Glasvegas have done Come As You Are. And Nirvana themselves were notorious cover artists in their own right. Their best-known is probably Love Buzz (originally by Shocking Blue), and there are the covers on Unplugged In New York including Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World, but they did a couple of dozen more over the years.
Kurt was inscrutable at the best of times, and I wouldn't hazard a guess at what he'd make of Kerrang!'s idea (he called Tori Amos' Teen Spirit "a great breakfast cereal version") but as an affectionate tribute, it's pretty damned good.

 Kids In Glass Houses
There are two Welsh bands getting in on the act. Kids In Glass Houses tackle Drain You. Aled Phillips tells the magazine: "I was five when Nevermind came out. My sister taught me to hangbang to Teen Spirit. With Drain You, we thought it would be fun to recreate the middle eight, where Butch Vig recorded aerosols and a rubber duck. We bought a squeaky toy from Tesco and some Glade vanilla room spray. Smells like teen spirit..." In truth, it's a straightforward cover, with Phillips' vocals tracking Kurt's faithfully and the guitars blazing with well-marshalled distortion.

 The Blackout
The Blackout's Stay Away is a more frenetic affair, as befitting the original. Again, it's true to the original but there's a sense of fun here: the Gavin/Sean vocal partnership gets to stretch its legs and it's pretty brutal. Gavin even goes as far as to put an American inflection on his lines. Rhys of the band told Kerrang!: "Nevermind was the album that got me into playing bass. Covering Stay Away is an honour. We're a hard rock band and this song is pretty heavy so I think we've captured the same feeling and intensity."
For me, though, the stand-out track here is Evile's Lounge Act. If I accept, as I do, that this collection was never going to replicate the unified, intense, wholeness of Nevermind, then here's a cover version that does something interesting with its material. They metal it up, with an amped-up riff and a lead guitar of admirable squeal and squall.
Check out Frank Turner's On A Plain, Francesqa's Lithium, Young Guns' Polly and Rise To Remain's Breed too. Nirvana: Nevermind Forever is as close as to a quality covers album as you're going to get. But what strikes me, on repeated listening, is that this album couldn't work without the fact that Nevermind itself possessed 13 songs of almost unparalleled quality, passion and melody. What other album could allow itself to be approached in this way?

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Maroon 5 Takes This Love to Jakarta [Jakarta Globe]



Fans of American pop-rockers Maroon 5 were falling over one another to grab tickets to the band’s first ever concert in Indonesia. 

After a shaky start to their tour in March, due to yet another tobacco sponsorship controversy, tickets sold out almost immediately when promoter Java Musikindo confirmed the gig for late April. The boys are set to take their funk-inspired easy-listening sound to the stage at Istora Senayan on Wednesday night. 

Like so many other bands, Maroon 5 started with some like-minded high school friends. While the overwhelming majority of these groups are never able to make it out of the garage, Los Angeles boys Adam Levine, Jesse Carmichael, Mickey Madden and Ryan Dusick were lucky enough to attract the attention of a recording company. 

“It was really organic,” frontman Levine said in an interview with the Huffington Post last year, referring to the band’s early days. “We knew there was something special going on. I really only became a singer because I was the best singer in the band — I was never one of these ‘American Idol’ kids that wanted to be a singer. I just wanted to be in a band, that’s really all.” 



First performing under the name Kara’s Flowers, the band released an album in 1996, but were dropped by the recording company a couple of months later due to dismal sales. 

After this initial disappointment, the boys decided to put the band on ice so they could attend college — but they never lost their love for music along the way. 

That break probably provided some much needed time for their sound to mature and gain some perspective because, when they regrouped in 2000, it didn’t take long before they were signed again. After recruiting James Valentine as a guitarist so Levine could fully focus on vocals, the band changed their name to Maroon 5. A name change seemed like the right step, since the band had changed from grunge and rock-influenced tunes to a more pop-inspired, R&B vibe. 

The band’s first album as Maroon 5, “Songs About Jane,” was released in mid-2002. It was not an instant success. In fact, it took months before music critics and audiences eventually noticed the record, but word of mouth quickly snowballed. 

“Succeeding in this particular business is extraordinarily difficult, so you just have to develop a thick skin and just go, go, go,” Levine said. “We were a band for a long time before we succeeded, which I think was a good thing, sort of a blessing in disguise.” 

The album spawned four hit singles — “Harder To Breathe,” “This Love,” “She Will Be Loved” and “Sunday Morning” — and catapulted Maroon 5 into the spotlight of the music world. Unlike their Kara’s Flowers days, the band’s album shot to the top of the charts and helped them win multiple awards, including a Grammy. 

“I think that we weren’t ready musically or emotionally to be successful,” Madden said in an interview with Chart magazine of the band’s pre-college days. 

With the popularity of “Songs About Jane,” the band felt pressured to deliver an equally successful follow-up album. Dusick, the drummer of the original line-up, then left the band in 2006 because of health reasons and was replaced with Matt Flynn. 

With fresh talent on board, the band delivered “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” in 2007, while “Hands All Over,” the band’s latest effort, was released in September. 

Patience, hard work and a good dose of self-confidence have brought Maroon 5 to where they are today. 

“You can say what you want about our band, but at the end of the day, there’s not another band currently out that sounds the way we do,” Levine said. 

But fans should beware: Levine recently stated in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that he believed Maroon 5 had reached its peak, and that they would probably only record one more album before going their separate ways. 

“Eventually, I want to focus on being a completely different person because I don’t know if I want to do this into my 40s and 50s and beyond,” he told the magazine. 

Ticket-holders for Maroon 5’s performance in Jakarta should count themselves lucky — it seems the band’s first performance in Indonesia could well be their last.

Maroon 5 
Wednesday, April 27 
Istora Senayan, Gelora Bung Karno 
South Jakarta 


Source : JG

Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson 'Doesn't Care' About Rolling Stone Cover [UG News]

For many bands, to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine is the fulfilment of a lifelong dream. For Iron Maiden front manBruce Dickinson however, it's just a drop in the ocean. Speaking to Argentinean website Vorterix.com, the legendary metal vocalist outright dismissed the front cover appearance of the band's mascot, Eddie on the Argentinean version of the popular music periodical: "Do I care? No! What's bigger? More magazine covers or being bigger in the heart of your fans? To me it's much more important that we stay close to our fans".

Bruce, it would seem, doesn't have much time for awards, or mainstream media either: "We got a Grammy this year – I think it's 'cos we're still alive. If they were going to give us a Grammy they should have given us one about 1986, but they gave it toJethro Tull, and it took another 20 years... The mainstream media don't understand metal. Unless you are a fan, unless you really understand the music, it's difficult to give it the coverage it deserves."
Iron Maiden is currently on the European leg of their Final Frontier world tour, in support of the album of the same name that was released last year. Dickinson is once again piloting the band from show to show in their customised Boeing 747 Jet, Ed Force One. The band's shows in Buenos Aries and Santiago from last month were filmed for an upcoming DVD release. Maiden drummer Nicko McBrainhas also been involved in a charity single orchestrated by Deep Purple front man Ian Gillan and Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. The single, titled "Out Of My Mind", also features ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord.

Source : UG News