The Sounds are playing an invite-only, new-album-preview party at Santos Party House in NYC tonight (4/30). I have some tickets to giveaway. If you want them, email BVCONTESTS@HOTMAIL.COM (subject: Sounds). Include your first and last name. And like Janelle Monae, The Sounds are also touring with No Doubt this summer. All dates below...

Continue reading "The Sounds - 'secret show' tonight & other 2009 tour dates"

by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Of Montreal - First Time High (Reconstructionist Remix of "An Eluardian Instance") (MP3)

Janelle Monae @ Irving Plaza, 2008 (she opened for Gnarls Barkley) (by Bao Nguyen)

Janelle Monae has an upswept hairdo that's part R&B pompadour, part Mohawk, and perfectly strategic. For most of an afternoon [SXSW] party set at Peckerheads, a club with nonexistent sightlines, the crest was the only part of the petite singer visible from 10 yards away -- a shame, since she has some sharp dance moves.

But her voice was vivid as she belted socially conscious neo-soul songs, rapped about feeling like a stepchild and an outcast (she has worked with OutKast) and crooned a melismatic version of the ballad "Smile." And for her finale, after singing about apathy that turns people into the "walking dead," she gave everyone a chance to see her: fearlessly jumping into the crowd and surfing it from front to back to front. [NY Times]

Of Montreal has other shows scheduled too. That includes a stop at Sasquatch. All dates are listed below. The track above is from the band's Jon Brion Remix EP, which came out on Polyvinyl in January.

This June, Janelle Monae will kick it up a notch (exposure-wise) when she opens several dates for the newly reformed No Doubt, who have a nearly-three-month tour planned. The band brings Monae along when it plays NYC-area shows at PNC Bank Arts Center on June 26th and the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on June 27th (all dates below). No Doubt is also at work on a new, sixth album - their first in nine years, due in 2010 (in case you were wondering).

Other bands opening on the No Doubt tour include Paramore, The Sounds, and Bedouin Soundclash.

Of Montreal videos, and all tour dates, below...

Continue reading "Janelle Monae opening for Of Montreal and.. No Doubt (dates)"

"Yeah, we're getting really good at mergers and acquisitions at this point, so we've had a lot of companies that we've acquired and had to integrate. But we're working on our ability to do this much quicker. We have to keep some of these systems distributed; sometimes you just can't directly integrate them. You've got to keep running them to better integrate them into the overall enterprise."
[Joe Manna, CIO of Live Nation]

"Mr. Billy Corgan was busy in Washington today, first appearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary in a hearing on the Performance Rights Act, then delivering a letter in support of the controversial Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger. You can read Billy's words to the committee here, but essentially Corgan told congressional leaders that radio should pay performers, not just songwriters, for tracks played." [Stereogum]

"Bono said he had no opinion on the mega-merger." [Chicago Sun Times]

"I had a long conversation with a promoter who told me that with regard to a show he was promoting, Ticketmaster was guaranteeing the secondary market for the act." [Bob Lefsetz]

"In a meeting last May with more than 100 ticket brokers, Ticketmaster's then-chief executive, Sean Moriarty, acknowledged that the ticketing giant had used TicketExchange to sell 160 Neil Diamond tickets over two shows at marked-up prices." [Wall Street Journal]

"No Doubt is sticking it to Ticketmaster by selling 10% of the tickets for its North American Tour directly to fans. The goal, according to Jim Guerinot, No Doubt's manager, is for fan club members to buy tickets instead of 2nd party distributors such as TicketNow, the legal scalping division of Ticketmaster. This is the same problem Bruce Springsteen and his fans have been pissed about for weeks." [New York Press]

"AEG CEO Tim Leiweke slammed the proposed Live Nation, Ticketmaster merger, saying that it is 'not good for the industry.'" [The Busines Insider]

"Come on! Only Gene Simmons got into this business for the money. The rest of you were enraptured by the music. Can't you get the public on the same page? Can't you turn everybody into a club rat? Can't we get everybody to go out and see live music on a regular basis? Or do we have to wait until the labels fail, independent promoters are broken and every ticket is sold on TicketsNow and StubHub?" [Bob Lefsetz]

Continue reading "Bono, Billy Corgan, No Doubt, Bob Lefsetz, AEG, others chime in on Live Nation & Ticketmaster"