In keeping with the minimalist spirit of this clip (and its antecedent), I’m just going to say, “Awesome.” More »
About one-third of my Saturday was spent in the general environs of Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, whose parking lot played host to the New York area stop of the skate/punk/emo/exercises in branding festival known as the Warped Tour. Not only were there some 100 bands playing condensed sets during the course of those eight hours, there were merch tents (one for each band on the traveling bill), signings, acoustic sets, petitions to sign, skaters performing tricks, free energy drinks, pro-vegetarianism propaganda, shutter-shade vendors, and a store with Barack Obama-branded items. Not to mention the chance to play Rock Band alongside the session musicians backing up this country’s current No. 1 song. After the jump, a rundown of the day. It will be somewhat disjointed, in honor of every single one of my joints aching after being subjected to parking-lot asphalt for most of the time.
Since many people find it hard to tell the great from the godawful when it comes to 21st-century mainstream rock, welcome to “Corporate Rock Still Sells,” where Al Shipley (a.k.a. Idolator commenter GovernmentNames) examines what’s good, bad, and ugly in the world of Billboard‘s rock charts. This time around he discovers a trio of modern rock heroes releasing a hit single under everyone’s noses, finally hears a certain blog-buzz band thanks to their rock radio crossover, and tries to figure out what makes one brand of strident political mersh-punk different from another.
Over the last few weeks, Billboard‘s Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart has seen a new entry by one of modern rock’s biggest mainstays, but it took me a while to figure that out, since said superstars are operating incognito.
On Tuesday, Against Me! singer Tom Gabel was apparently so irked when he saw someone had defaced an article about his band that was hanging in a coffee shop in his home state of Florida that he decided to start banging some poor sucker’s head into the counter:
UPDATE: As I was just informed in an e-mail from someone at Warner, the CD Tom Breihan bought is apparently defective. Hooray, Warner isn’t Sony BMG–at least not yet! Now about those unplayable promo CDs… More »
Warner Bros. Records claims that Tom Breihan’s seemingly DRM’d-up Against Me! CD is defective, and that there’s no copy protection on the commercially released copies; still, as Breihan notes, the fact that there’s any doubt at all should give the record industry at least some pause. More »
You’ll have to wait a few more months to hear New Wave, the forthcoming record by Florida punks Against Me!; but trust us when we say it’s well worth the wait, and that it will compel you to print up anti-war pamphlets and renew your MRR subscription. More »
