On the heels of the release of their new album, Crash Love, perennial rockers AFI have announced a new string of tour dates, taking them throughout the West in January. Fans who have checked out the band’s East Coast dates have been treated night after night with a mix of old and new songs spanning AFI’s massive eight album catalog. Included as a staple each night is Crash Love and live-set opener “Torch Song,” which AFI recently released an exclusive demo of via Google’s La La music platform.
Also new from AFI will be a release of a 5 song pack on Rock Band which will be available 11/17. The downloadable addition to the game will include “Love Like Winter,” “The Leaving Song Pt. II,” and Crash Love favorites “Beautiful Thieves,” “End Transmission” and “Medicate.”
Tour Dates:
November 03 Tulsa, OK Cain’s Ballroom
November 04 St Louis, MO The Pageant
November 06 Kansas City, MO Uptown Theater
November 07 Chicago, IL Riviera Theatre
November 09 Detroit, MI The Fillmore
November 10 Toronto, ONT, Canada Sound Academy
November 12 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
November 13 New York City, NY Roseland Ballroom
November 15 North Myrtle Beach, SC House of Blues
November 16 Atlanta, GA Tabernacle
November 18 West Palm Beach, FL Pompano Beach Amphitheatre
November 19 Lake Bueuna Vista, FL House of Blues
November 21 Houston, TX Verizon Wireless Theater
November 22 Austin, TX Stubbs
December 4 Dallas, TX Nokia Theatre
December 6 Denver, CO Magness Arena
December 8 Salt Lake City, UT In The Venue
December 11 Oakland, CA Oracle Arena
December 13 San Diego, CA Viejas Arena
December 15 Winnepeg, MB Canada Winnipeg Convention Center
December 16 Saskatoon, SK, Canada Prairieland Park
December 18 Edmonton, AB, Canada Shaw Conference Center
December 19 Calgary, AB Canada Big Four Building
December 21 Victoria, BC, Canada Save On Foods Centre
January 16 Reno, NV Knitting Factory
January 18 Boise, ID The Big Easy
January 19 Missoula, MT Wilma Theater
January 21 Spokane, WA The Big Easy
January 22 Seattle, WA Showbox SoDo
January 24 Vancouver, BC The Commodore
January 25 Portland, OR Roseland
January 27 Fresno, CA Rainbow Ballroom
January 30 Tempe, AZ The Marque
January 31 Las Vegas, NV House of Blues
For the latest information and tour dates from AFI visit www.AFireInside.net or www.MySpace.com/AFI.
Cyber rockers POWERMAN 5000’s new album, Somewhere on the Other Side of Nowhere, is finally hitting stores this week. The collection finds the band returning to the hard groove of their earlier work which included hits like “When Worlds Collide” and “Nobody’s Real.” “We made this record with a clear vision and a purpose,” explains frontman, Spider. “We wanted to reclaim a sound we created and represent certain influences as only a band like Powerman 5000 can.
While writing, we would watch ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Ultraman’ films to ensure the sonics were on point. We knew that this record needed to sound like the footsteps of a giant robot!”
“On the surface, this album is a big fun electro metal romp…though there are bigger concepts hidden within. A quote from HG Wells sums it up best, he said, ‘Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature.’ That is an ongoing theme in the songs, our inability to find a place in our own world. I couldn’t be happier with the results. I finally feel like we have made a record that not only is exactly wanted we wanted it to be, but also a record that the fans are going to love!”
The band has released 2 singles from the new album so far, “Super Villain” and “V Is For Vampire,” and recently filmed a video for the latter with horror film director Robert Hall.
Check out Somewhere on the Other Side of Nowhere, in its entirety, below:
F.L.Y.’s (Fast Life Yungstaz) beat gets you moving from the start! Enter to win your own copy!
“Know Your Enemy,” the first single from Green Day’s upcoming eighth studio album, 21st Century Breakdown, is available now. After teasing fans with a snippet of the track, the full version has finally hit iTunes for the world to hear.
21st Century Breakdown, which will be released by Reprise Records worldwide on May 15th, is the best-selling trio’s first studio album since 2004’s two-time Grammy Award-winning punk-rock opera American Idiot, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, spawned five hit singles, and went on to sell more than 12 million copies worldwide. In a recent feature, Rolling Stone called 21st Century Breakdown “even more ambitious than American Idiot” and “a record of die-hard punk ideals…tightly scripted, continually ascending classic-rock excitement.”
U2 should have got Justice to produce their latest album. In this remix “Get On Your Boots” is transformed from an admittedly boring single to a unique and complex tune that is far better than the original! Check it out at Stereogum:
Get On Your Boots (Justice remix)
Can’t wait for next week to arrive? Check out a sneak peek of P!nk’s Funhouse before it hits stores. Listen in full now on MTV.com’s The Leak. P!nk co-wrote each song and worked with everyone from Max Martin to Tony Kanal (of No Doubt) to Butch Walker on what she calls her “most vulnerable album to date.” With its mix of sad, thoughtful love songs and fun, upbeat, feisty rock anthems. P!nk achieved exactly what she wanted to on Funhouse. “It feels good to get people not just emoting and releasing all that energy, but getting angry and motivated too. It’s group therapy.” Pre-order Funhouse now at iTunes and get a bonus track!
Last month, Danish noiseniks The Raveonettes announced a string of digital-only releases for the home stretch of 2008. Fresh off the success of February’s critical smash, Lust Lust Lust, the band coupled the announcement with a free remix EP featuring Lust re-envisionings, before offering up the electronic-influenced Sometimes They Drop By in late September. The series continues today with the release of Beauty Dies, which further cultivates the Rave’s signature guitar-led noir rock sound.
Listen to The Raveonettes’ Beauty Dies
In other Raveonettes news, the band will follow up their EP series with a short run of dates on both coasts, stopping in Boston, New York, and DC, before making a trip out West to play San Francisco and LA. All dates below.
Raveonettes Tour Dates:
01-15 Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
01-16 New York, NY – Webster Hall
01-17 Washington, DC – Black Cat
01-23 San Fancisco, CA – Bimbo’s 365 Club
01-24 Los Angeles, CA – Henry Fonda Theatre
Interscope Records artist James Morrison will be releasing his new album Songs for You, Truths for Me on September 30th. This album is the follow up to James’s debut album Undiscovered, which sold more than two million albums worldwide and became the biggest selling British male solo artist of 2006.
A testimony to the strength of the songs on James Morrison’s debut album Undiscovered is that it yielded no fewer than five singles – You Give Me Something, Wonderful World, The Pieces Don’t Fit Anymore, Undiscovered and One Last Chance. The songs were simple yet beautifully written, each giving James’s raw, bluesy voice a platform to work its powerful magic. There was no bullshit, no clichés, no schmaltz. And a lot of people liked that.
Undiscovered went to No 1 in Britain, Top 20 in America and won him the 2007 Brit Award for Best Male (he was also nominated for Best Single and Best Newcomer). James’s debut sold over two million copies worldwide and he became the biggest selling British male solo artist of 2006. He was just 21 – but had already accumulated enough life experience to give his candid folk-soul songs genuine emotional content. By many people’s standards he’d had a tough, itinerant childhood, a broken family and endless house moves – although he’d be the first to shrug and say it was no big deal. But he’d also admit that most of the emotion in his singing has come from his upbringing.
James’s reputation as a must-see live performer soared. Following his jaw dropping, first ever TV performance on Later With Jools Holland he went on to play amazing shows to adoring crowds: including the V festival twice in one day – in 2006 so many people came to see him in one of the smaller tents that he was invited to give an impromptu performance on the main stage; last year he played a full set on the main stage. Then there was the Royal Variety Performance, the Concert for Diana and the more traditional 3 sold-out UK tours. He did the Peace One Day concert at the Royal Albert Hall – and had one of those moments where he suddenly realized that his life had changed forever. “Just before I went on I was watching Yusuf Islam and I thought, I’m on after Cat Stevens! I remember being at home with my dad listening to his albums during the darkest times, the best of times…” James has subsequently provided vocals on Yusuf’s new album.
He toured Europe, Australia and Japan, did three separate tours of America, gigging coast to coast. He also supported John Mayer on his large outdoor ‘sheds’ tour in the US. He gave an acoustic rendition of You Give Me Something on national TV on NBC today as well as Jimmy Kimmel and performed on Jay Leno’s show twice at the host’s invitation. James loved the musical appreciation in the American South, in particular. “People were awesome in Alabama – really friendly, loud and lairy. Even if you play a quiet song, afterwards they just go YEAH!!!”
It was an amazing time. But sometimes, when he wasn’t onstage, or with the band, he’d feel an acute sense of being increasingly cut off from the people who mattered: his friends and family back in Cornwall – where his mother had finally settled with James, his brother Laurie and sister Hayley when James was 11, and where James had refined his self-taught singing and guitar-playing by busking in Newquay. Most importantly of all, he missed his long-term girlfriend Gill, who had inspired You Give Me Something and, during a rocky patch in their relationship, The Pieces Don’t Fit.
The further James Morrison travelled, both physically and career-wise, the more he craved the people he loved. “Everything I’d felt close to just disappeared,” he says. “You do lose your mind a bit; you haven’t got any routines. And sometimes all I’d think about on the road would be Gill – but we’d lose contact. So when I got home it’d feel like we were starting again.”
He finally stopped in August 2007. For two weeks. And then he sat down to write and record the Notoriously Difficult Second Album. And at first it did prove difficult. He tried to write rockier, harder tunes – as glimpsed on Undiscovered’s Call The Police, which touched on the subject of domestic violence. “I went for something with a bit more electric guitar but in the end it just sounded contrived.”
The pressure was on and it was making him try too hard, too self-consciously. “As soon as I’d get something good I’d think about it and screw it up.” And then the penny dropped: “Just go for what you’re feeling at the time. That’s how I worked on the first album, and in a way I think that’s some of the reason why people liked it. It wasn’t trying too hard.”
And so the people who really made him feel, the ones who became the subjects of his songs on Undiscovered – his family and friends – his relationship with each of them, and the new chapters in all their lives, became central to the new album. James went with whatever and whoever was on his mind, and took it from there. The songs began to flow.
“I’ve called the album Songs for You, Truths for Me because that’s what I feel it is. It’s songs for Gill and everyone else. But for me they’re truths. They’re how I feel. I’ve got a song called Love is Hard. In fact, there are three songs with ‘love’ in the title – and I never thought I’d do that, but that’s the way it went. Love is Hard is about when you’re deep in it and it hurts a lot of the time. You’re fighting, or not always agreeing, you might be away from each other and you’ve still got to be strong. So the album’s a collection of truths I’d learnt in the previous year. It just turned out that way: I knew I didn’t want to write about being on the road. I can only write about what I feel.”
In the end, James enlisted many of the same collaborators from Undiscovered to work with him on Songs for You, Truths For Me hooking up once more with co-writers Martin Brammer, Steve Robson and Eg White. He also added a new fan, One Republic’s Ryan Tedder to that list. The Nashville string quartet feature once again. “I know we work well together now – it’ll take a lot for me to work with someone new.”
There is also a notable collaboration on this record, one of the only things his debut album didn’t have, a fantastic duet with Nelly Furtado on the epic Broken Strings.
Songs for You, Truths For Me is a classic James Morrison record that once again showcases his distinctive, raw, soulful style – but takes it to the next level. “It’s less playful, more to the point,” he says. “But I haven’t consciously gone for a different sound. With me, it always comes down to the lyric, the melody, and the rest flows from that. But I’ve definitely tapped into my feelings about life more on this album, rather than writing about characters on the bus (Wonderful World), or whatever. I was just letting stuff flow through me.”
James Morrison’s big, unashamedly romantic heart and generous spirit shines through like a beacon. Songs For You, Truths For Me sees the wide eyed soul-boy become a wiser man. With this he shines once more on a brilliant new collection of songs and cathartic truths.
James Morrison official site:
http://www.interscope.com/jamesmorrison
and on Imeem:
http://www.imeem.com/jamesmorrisonmusic
and MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/jamesmorrisonmusic
Check out this widget with all your favorite Collective Soul songs on a loop! yaaaay!
Tony Lucca is an innately gifted singer/songwriter with a resume any musician would find gratifying. He’s written and self-produced five studio albums, three EPs, several live recordings and a popular DVD. He’s won the L.A. Music Award for Best Male Singer/Songwriter. His music has been featured in film and television (including Friday Night Lights, Brothers & Sisters, Shark, Felicity and Kevin Costner’s “Open Range”). Lucca has been seen on E! Entertainment, A&E Biography and performed numerous times on NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly. He’s performed with notable artists including pop icons *NSYNC, Marc Anthony and Joss Stone, as well as indie favorites Josh Kelley, Jason Mraz and Bob Schneider. He’s galvanized an international following and has sold out premier venues coast-to-coast, including Joe’s Pub in New York and the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.
Lucca, however, isn’t just any musician. He’s an earnest, diligent artist who consistently strives to grow and create music that he and his listeners can find both meaningful and entertaining.
He’s been in bands since he was 10, recording in the studio since 13, then started touring and performing for fans around the same time he got his first drivers license. It wasn’t until the Michigan-native turned 18 and moved to Los Angeles that he realized his true potential as a legitimate artist. After familiarizing himself with the landscape, Lucca began writing and recording music with some of the most talented artists and players around.
Tony’s work has spanned a wide range of genres and musical styles: from a jazz-infused pop sound (reminiscent of Steely Dan’s Aja period) to a very woodsy, Laurel Canyon style (influenced by Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne), all while maintaining a consistency of texture and tone entirely his own. His lyrics and vocal quality are instantly identifiable, even to those who have heard his music once or twice.
Lucca’s latest offering is a robust collection of rock-n-roll rhythms, soulful vocals and thought-provoking lyrics that keep you listening start to finish. Come Around Again is as fresh and emotive as it is classic and familiar. From the titillating opening track, “Foxy Jane” to the sweeping and inspired “Maybe We,” Lucca shows the depth and breadth of his creative musings. In “Close Enough,” he displays an astute sense of awareness of the goings-on in today’s social and political climates. “Father Time” and “Pretty Things” reflect Lucca’s appreciation for a well-told story of heartbreak in the same vein as Jackson Browne or the Black Crowes. Finally, he closes the record with a simple, haunted rendition of the late Chris Whitley’s “Wild Country,” taking aim at what can only be assumed to be his relationship with the recording industry as he bemoans the “compromises I can’t comprehend.”
Come Around Again is a must-have for any Tony Lucca supporter and quite possibly the best introduction to his brilliant ongoing career.
http://www.myspace.com/tonylucca
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