Reel Big Fish, voted Southern California’s best-looking and most radical band of cool dudes in a recent nationwide poll (OK we made that up…) releases a new full length DVD this summer, titled, appropriately enough, Reel Big Fish Live! In Concert! Reel Big Fish Live! In Concert! is available today, July 21 on Rock Ridge Music for a very fan-friendly price.
The live concert DVD was filmed before a sold-out, hometown crowd at the Grove of Anaheim this past January and features 20 classic Reel Big Fish songs, as well as all of the hilarious in-between-song-banter-and-shenanigans that fans have come to expect.
Reel Big Fish has also lined up another killer summer tour for ‘09. The veteran ska-rock outfit is currently hitting cities across America with 2-Tone legends The English Beat and Orlando, FL-based reggae/ska punks The Supervillains.
Reel Big Fish front man Aaron Barrett says the band is amped to be touring with one of its musical idols. Barrett explains, “We are so excited to be playing with one of our favorite bands of all time and one of the biggest influences on our music! We LOVE the English Beat. This tour is a dream come true for us!”
The English Beat front man Dave Wakeling responds, “I was thrilled many years ago to be invited to play at Reel Big Fish’s first album release party, and we are thrilled again to be touring with them now that they are bona fide Skadfathers!”
The trek kicked off July 3rd in Royal Oak, MI. More dates are being confirmed daily and will be posted on www.myspace.com/reelbigfish
Formed in the suburban garages of Orange County, CA in the early 90’s, Reel Big Fish has gone on to release 6 full-length studio releases, headline countless tours in North America (as well as Europe, Asia and Latin America) and amass combined sales of over a million albums. In other words: these guys are sort of a big deal.
Reel Big Fish’s latest album, a compilation of cover songs entitled, Fame, Fortune, and Fornication is out now on Rock Ridge Music.
Here’s a sneak preview of their hit “Sell Out” from the DVD!
Are you in need of proof that Ska is in fact not yet dead? Look no further than the debut from Montreal band Stepper. The best way to in fact prove that a genre still has life is to not be ashamed of your influences and to simply do it well. Stepper? Check.
Recorded at Blackbird Studios in Nashville under the guidance of Grammy award winning producer George Massenburg, Way Out is filled with upbeat(obviously) tunes that are tight and well crafted. It’s a fun album to listen to especially if you happened to be a fan of 3rd wave ska music from its late 90’s heyday and will definitely leave you humming certain melodies long after you stop listening. Numerous songs feature a harder rock edge which is a welcomed addition to the sound and should quickly remind you of Reel Big Fish. Inspired guitar playing, tight horn lines and 3 different vocalists taking turns at the mic keep the entire album fresh and unpredictable. Standout tunes include “Turn Up Your Soundsystem”, “Running From Home” and “Bring Us Together”. Ska may not be as popular as it once was but who gives a shit when the tunes are good right? Exactly.
Stepper hits the road this summer for short tour, be sure to keep an eye out and catch up with them online:
http://www.myspace.com/steppermusic
Check out the band in the studio recording “Running From Home”:
New York, NY- February 3, 2009 – 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 on their ninth studio album. The highly anticipated record, Uplifter, is set for release via Volcano/Jive Records in late spring.
This is the band’s first album in over three years – and their first with producer Bob Rock. 311 will hit the road in support of Uplifter with Spring & Summer tours across the US. 311’s Spring Tour will begin April 15 and 311’s Summer Unity Tour will follow in June.
311 formed in Omaha, Nebraska in 1990 and is vocalist/guitarist Nick Hexum, vocalist/DJ SA Martinez, lead guitarist Tim Mahoney, drummer Chad Sexton and bassist P-Nut. To date, 311 has sold over 8.3 million units in the U.S alone, with 5 albums in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Top 200 Sales Chart and 7 singles soaring into the Top 10 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Chart (including the #1 singles Down, Love Song and Don’t Tread On Me).
The band’s celebratory live shows & incessant touring schedule have earned them a massive grassroots following nationwide. Since its inception in 2004, 311’s annual summer headlining amphitheatre run, Unity Tour, has become one of the largest modern rock concerts of the summer. Support acts on the past five Unity Tours have included Snoop Dogg, The Roots, Papa Roach, The Wailers, O.A.R. and Matisyahu.
For more information on 311, their upcoming release and for the most up-to-date tour stops point your browser to www.311.com or www.myspace.com/311.
Here’s 311 performing a classic tune:
Reel Big Fish’s cover of “Take On Me” might be one of the greatest covers of all time. Which is what makes this new cover album, Fame, Fortune and Fornication so interesting.
The OC’S original skanking pranksters, Reel Big Fish have just released their new album, a 10 song serving of high-energy cover songs which they’ve dubbed, Fame, Fortune and Fornication. It includes the band’s signature ska take on such classics as Poison’s “Talk Dirty To Me”, Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”, John Mellencamp’s “Authority Song” and The Eagles’ “The Long Run.” For good measure, Reel Big Fish pay tribute to their early ska/reggae forefather’s with versions of Desmond Dekker’s “Keep A Cool Head” and Toots and The Maytals “Monkey Man.”
Here they are playing their version of Poison’s “Nothin’ But A Good Time”
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.Reel-Big-Fish.com
Sister site WatchMojo.com had a chance to ask the Californian ska band some questions:
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette
Just don’t get too carried away with your iPod karaoke.
Published: Tuesday, April 29
Is it just me, or is everyone plugged in these days?
“Nine out of 10 people workout with an iPod or MP3 player,” said Melanie Shernofsky, group fitness coordinator at Montreal’s Mansfield Club.
The same could be said for the many runners and walkers who are tuned in to their own playlist while cruising the streets of their neighbourhood.
Yet despite the apparent spike in music appreciation amongst the fitness crowd, exercising to music isn’t new. People were skating around roller rinks to the tunes of Buddy Holly and jumping to the beat of the Pointer Sisters in aerobics classes long before Amy Winehouse took top billing on the iPod of most gym rats.
Why is music such an integral part of the exercise experience?
“Music takes us away from the physical discomfort and the process of exercise itself,” said Jim Gavin, a clinical health psychologist from Concordia University.
Indeed most exercisers will tell you that music is a pleasant distraction during a workout. Some even go as far as saying they can exercise longer and harder when listening to music than without. And while there is a general consensus that music can make the minutes go by faster when running on a treadmill, there is little data to suggest that you can workout longer or harder while listening to your favourite tunes.
Numerous studies have evaluated the heart rate and time to exhaustion among exercisers listening and not listening to music. The majority noted no significant difference between the two. Which means exercise duration and intensity weren’t affected by music. What was affected, however, was how hard the exercisers perceived they were training while music was playing.
Study after study notes that exercisers perceive their level of exertion to be lower when music accompanies their workout compared to those who exercise in silence. Also interesting to note is that the affect is greater the harder you exercise. In other words, the tougher the workout, the more music helps you hang in there.
“Music tends to separate us from what we are physically doing and leads us further away from how we are feeling,” says Gavin.
Not all music is equal in its distraction, though - at least where exercise is concerned. A 2006 study of 128 undergraduate students noted a preference for faster, more upbeat music as the intensity of the workout increased. No surprise there. Footloose beats out James Blunt’s You’re Beautiful every time when the going gets tough. Nike’s iPod sensor combo even allows runners to program their own “power” song that can be pressed into play when the feet need a little extra incentive to keep moving.
Yet as powerful as music is, not everyone appreciates the distraction. Yet another study noted that among runners, novices were more likely than veteran runners to benefit from listening to music during their training runs. The elite runners actually found music to be an unwanted diversion, which suggests that the disconnect between mind and body is not considered beneficial for runners who use their body’s feedback to continually gauge and modify their intensity.
Of course, there are other uses for music in the exercise field. Yoga instructors often play music as a form of relaxation, helping participants to de-stress and slow down their hectic pace in tune with the mindful approach of the practice.
Group exercise instructors have long been known to count on music not just to motivate, but also to keep everyone in the class moving in synch. In fact, the addition of music to group exercise classes is what characterized the aerobics boom in the 80’s - back in the day instructors spent hours choosing the right music to motivate and the right moves.
Interestingly, with personal MP3 players now all the rage, music lovers don’t need group exercise classes to supply musical motivation. In the age of self-selection, exercisers can create their own workout playlist with their favourite tunes that can be updated at will. This means they can find all the motivation they want on their own iPod, making a solo run on the treadmill just as motivating as a group exercise class.
Shernofsky thinks that’s a good thing.
“For people who don’t like to exercise, music can be a great motivator.”
It also means that anyone with two left feet or an aversion to a Madonna, Christina Aguilera and Mariah Carey re-mix played at 150 beats a minute can now workout to the beat of their own drummer.
That being said, there are some rules that go along with plugging in during exercise. Don’t tune out to the extent that you aren’t aware of your surroundings. Keep alert and listen to your body and what’s going on around you. And whatever you do, limit your iPod karaoke to places where you aren’t likely to be overheard. Not everyone is a fan of Bat Out of Hell sung at full volume on a beautiful Sunday morning (don’t ask).
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2008
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24358965/wid/11915829?GT1=40006
By Jake Coyle
Mon., April. 28, 2008
NEW YORK - You’re sitting at home online and suddenly you get an irresistible urge. You absolutely have to belt out R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” and share it with the world.
You now have that ability, thanks to the new MySpace Karaoke, to be launched Tuesday by the social networking site.
MySpace Karaoke (ksolo.myspace.com) debuts nearly two years after Fox Interactive, a division of News Corp., which owns MySpace, purchased the karaoke site kSolo.com. The combination of MySpace and kSolo allows users to upload audio recordings of them singing everything from R. Kelly to Richie Valens to their profile page.
MySpace co-founder and president Tom Anderson (known by many as the friend that comes automatically with a MySpace account) said MySpace and karaoke are a natural fit.
“It is in part because music is so popular on our site,” said Anderson. “But also because karaoke is such a fun and social thing, which is what we’re about too. It’s not as much fun to go to karaoke alone, but when you do it through the Internet or on your MySpace page, then you can share it with people.”
Recordings can be prominently displayed on one’s MySpace page and receive ratings from friends (and, presumably, fans). As of Monday afternoon, the most popular song to sing was Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel.”
MySpace Karaoke and kSolo — the first major karaoke site — are just two destinations of a small industry of online karaoke sites. SingShot, owned by Electronic Arts, and Bix, owned by Yahoo!, are also big names in karaoke on the Web.
And YouTube has, of course, been the largest repository of people dancing around their bedrooms and singing their favorite songs. While MySpace Karaoke doesn’t currently have a video option, Anderson says it’s in the works and that it will include a split-screen duet feature.
Users need only a microphone to sing into. MySpace Karaoke gives them the music to sing over (with vocals removed) with the lyrics scrolling across their computer screen. There are also numerous effects that users can play with to alter their recordings.
Right now, the site has between 2,000 and 3,000 songs available, all of them licensed from music publishers. The difficulty of managing those rights has been the reason for the delayed launch, Anderson said.
“It was quite difficult,” he said. “The rules and the licensing changed over time and became more complicated since MySpace is a global company. There’s different rights in different territories.”
But Anderson thinks having those rights puts MySpace at a distinct advantage.
“On MySpace, we actually filter and take down content (without licensing),” said Anderson. “At some point, YouTube is going to be forced to — or pay the rights holders because they’re breaking the law when they do that.”
As recordings have begun to pile up, there’s a wide variety of quality.
Said Anderson, “You’ll find equally horrible and equally good ones.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7329323.stm
MySpace in online music project
Networking site MySpace is to launch an online music service in partnership with three major music companies.
The new service MySpace Music is being launched with Universal Music, Sony BMG Music and Warner Music.
Users of the new service will be able to listen to music and watch music videos free of charge, while paying a fee to download music.
The website will also make money from advertising and selling merchandise like ring tones and concert tickets.
However, the exact terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The one major record firm excluded from the partnership was EMI.
The new music service is seen as a possible competitor to Apple iTunes Music Store, which has dominated the digital music market.
The music industry has been concerned about a lack of competition for iTunes in the digital music market.
Music firms see a new entrant in the music download market as a positive change.
“This gives a great new lease of life for the download market,” said Thomas Hesse, Sony BMG president of global digital business.
Page last updated at 17:19 GMT, Thursday, 3 April 2008 18:19 UK
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/03/07/artists-raid.html
Canadian musicians and songwriters are applauding an RCMP raid on a company accused of being a modern-day pirate operation and one of the biggest music bootleggers in Canadian history.
RCMP investigators raided the Winnipeg-based shop of Audiomaxxx.com on Wednesday and seized 200,000 CDs and DVDs as well as computers, label-making machines and burning towers capable of copying 11,500 discs a day.
“We’re looking at cube vans and U-Hauls worth of CD and computer equipment. It’s a lot,” RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Line Karpish said.
The material seized included recordings by big-name artists such as Nelly Furtado and Shania Twain, but also smaller artists, the RCMP said. The RCMP’s three-year investigation began after the Canadian Recording Industry Association received a flood of complaints.
Association president Graham Henderson estimated one-third of all the pirated music in Toronto may have originated from Audiomaxxx.com. The bootlegged goods were also being shipped to North and Central America, Europe and the Caribbean, according to an RCMP news release.
“The largest seizure that I can remember was about 10,000 discs seized from a commercial operation in Toronto a year ago. This was 20 times as big,” Henderson said.
Independent producers and smaller record labels, including some from the Caribbean, played a big part in pushing the industry and the police to investigate, Henderson said, because their market was being undercut by the material made in Canada.
There has been big buzz about the bust at Canadian Music Week, the country’s international music conference, taking place in Toronto this week, he added. “At all levels, I’m getting high fives.
“This was striking at the livelihoods of independents and music publishers and songwriters, as well as the Celine Dions and Sean Pauls of the world. They’re very, very pleased,” he said.
Keri Latimer, Winnipeg-based singer-songwriter with the alt-country quartet Nathan, was happy to hear an alleged pirating operation had been shut down.
But the success of such companies is a sign of the times, she said.
“Kids that are downloading music, they’re used to doing that for free,” she said. “I think it’s hard to change that sort mindset — once you’re used to doing it, you can’t see anything wrong with it.”
Winnipeg musician Steve Bell, who co-owns Signpost Music, agreed, saying he doesn’t think people value music as much as they once did.
“I think more and more music products are being devalued, and that’s really frustrating, especially for small producers, guys like me who are trying to make a living off of selling tens of thousands of CDs, not hundreds of thousands,” he said.
“Basically a company like that couldn’t survive if people weren’t wanting a lot for a little, and that kind of mentality is hurting a lot of people.”
Lindsay Gillespie, who owns a company in Toronto that manufactures CDs for independent artists and labels, said the income lost to music piracy is crucial to many of his clients.
“The amount of money that they can make at the merchandise table … can mean the difference between a hotel room and sleeping in the van, ” he said.
Charges are pending against a 31-year-old Winnipeg man, and police are investigating three other individuals.
The Audiomaxxx.com website was not working Thursday evening, and the company’s owner and his family did not return phone calls.
Under Canada’s Copyright Act, it is illegal to copy CDs and DVDs for sale, rent, distribution or public exhibition without the copyright owner’s permission. It is legal, however, to make copies of music recordings for the copier’s private use.
With files from The Canadian Press
Good news for music lovers of all types 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7250594.stm
Music ‘can aid stroke recovery’
Listening to music in the early stages after a stroke can improve a patient’s recovery, research suggests.
The researchers compared patients who listened to music for a couple of hours a day, with those who listened only to audio books, or nothing at all.
The music group showed better recovery of memory and attention skills, and a more positive general frame of mind.
Writing in journal Brain, the Finnish team who studied 60 patients said music could be a useful addition to therapy.
Lead researcher Teppo Sarkamo, from the University of Helsinki, said music could be particularly valuable for patients not yet ready for other forms of rehabilitation.
It also had the advantage of being cheap and easy-to-conduct.
Quick action
The study focused on 60 stroke patients who took part in the research as soon as possible after they had been admitted to hospital.
The aim was to offer music therapy before the changes in the brain that can take place in the aftermath of a stroke had a chance to kick in.
Most of the patients had problems with movement and with cognitive processes, such as attention and memory.
Patients in the music group were able to choose the type of music they listened to. All patients received standard stroke rehabilitation.
After three months, verbal memory improved by 60% in the music group, compared with18% in the audio book group, and 29% in the non-listeners.
Focused attention - the ability to control and perform mental operations and resolve conflicts - improved by 17% in the music group, but not at all in the other two groups.
In addition, patients in the music group were less likely to be depressed, or confused.
Mr Sarkamo said: “Other research has shown that during the first weeks and months after stroke, the patients typically spend about three-quarters of their time each day in non-therapeutic activities, mostly in their rooms, inactive and without interaction, even although this time-window is ideal for rehabilitative training from the point of view of brain plasticity.
“Our research shows for the first time that listening to music during this crucial period can enhance cognitive recovery and prevent negative mood, and it has the advantage that it is cheap and easy to organise.”
However, he admitted that further work was needed to confirm the study, and that it should not be assumed that music therapy would work all patients.
He said: “Rather than an alternative, music listening should be considered as an addition to other active forms of therapy, such as speech therapy or neuropsychological rehabilitation.”
Possible theories
The researchers said it was possible that music directly stimulated recovery in the damaged areas of the brain.
Alternatively, it might stimulate more general mechanisms related to the ability of the brain to repair and renew its neural networks after damage.
Or it might specifically act on the part of the nervous system that is implicated in feelings of pleasure, reward and memory.
Dr Isabel Lee, of The Stroke Association, welcomed the research.
However, she said: “Further research into the effect of music on stroke patients needs to be undertaken before any widespread use, as presently the mechanisms of any effect remain unclear.”
PLAY
