While you’re enjoying Jarvis Cocker tomorrow night (I’m looking at you, Maura), be sure to enjoy the festivities a little extra thinking of the sort of festivals we get here in flyover country. Phoenix’s abysmally programmed “active rock masquerading as alternative” station announced its one-day festival lineup and it’s a doozy, with a few tolerable acts mixed in with some of the worst acts you could imagine being forced to watch in the midst of a working farm in the middle of nowhere.
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.
MySpace is claiming that it has facilitated 500,000 downloads of Pennywise’s new album Reason to Believe, which the social-networking service is offering as a free download to users who “befriend” the music-via-SMS company Textango. More »
