Warner Brothers Records is celebrating its 50th year as a label with an album of current artists covering classic cuts from the label’s archives, and while I suppose there’s some appeal to hearing Taking Back Sunday play a Tom Petty track, let’s be real: Who is going to pay for that privilege in the Internet age?
When Ozzy Osbourne declared himself “the prince of fucking darkness” on a 2002 episode of The Osbournes, he may as well have simultaneously relinquished the title. The MTV hit quickly dissolved 30 years’ worth of mystique and danger as it revealed him to be in reality a doddering old family man. But when Ozzy rose to fame in the ’70s, every other rock star had an interest in the occult (or at least Hobbits), and heavy metal was still genuinely thought of as the province of Satanists, not nerdy gearheads. But who could be pop music’s reigning prince of darkness in the era of rock star transparency, when every famous musician has a whiny MySpace blog? Since it’s Halloween, we decided to think of a few options:
At this point, we’ve all heard that Lil Wayne is going to dominate the charts next week, approaching the long-forgotten one week/one million sold mark last achieved by 50 Cent in 2005. More »
Disturbed’s Indestructible took this week’s top spot on the album charts, selling 253,000 copes in its first week and coming out atop a heap of debuts that included the latest Now cash-in comp, Weezer’s latest attempt to get money from the nerds who read Digg, and Jewel’s play for the country crowd. I just hope that there’s at least one person out there who bought Indestructible based on its cover alone, because really, that is something to behold.
HITS Daily Double’s chart predictions for the coming week are slightly good news for the music industry, with five albums selling in the six-digit range, and bad news for humanity, what with Disturbed taking the top spot with around a quarter of a million copies sold of their latest album,… More »
It all started when Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weinman mocked Disturbed’s sound check, claiming the body-modification champions were “practicing where they were going to walk and when they were going to put their leg up on the monitor and pose.” Disturbed has since responded, saying a) all they do is make sure the guitarist is under the spotlight for his big solo and b) how the hell did some dillweed punk guitarist get into the room during their sound check anyway? Sez the happy dude pictured to the left: “It’s called production — it’s what any big professional band that isn’t just punk rock… Not to say that there is anything wrong with punk rock, because I have my roots in it, but you can’t compare the two styles of a show.” But Weinman isn’t buying it.
Based on first-day sales, Hits is predicting that Weezer’s red self-titled album will move about 150,000 copies in the coming week, a total that’s good enough to give Rivers Cuomo and Co. the No. 2 spot on the coming week’s album chart. What’s the predicted No. 1, you might ask? More »
Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Ben Weiman recently described watching body-piercing enthusiasts Disturbed practice their turn-turn-kick-turns before a show in England. “[They were] practicing where they were going to walk and when they were going to put their leg up on the monitor and pose. That was weird for us. There are times where I don’t even know where I am.” Hey dude, maybe if you worked on your on-stage theatrics you’d be as big as they are! Don’t hate just cuz you’re not down with the sickness! Oooh-wah-ah-ah-ah!
While seeing Disturbed in an “intimate setting” is nearly the least appealing idea I’ve heard all day, a recent Rolling Stone blog post brought up an odd topic for conversation–is their label keeping them from performing new material?
