Category: Artists (Page 232 of 262)

It’s a sad day for British pop fans

April 4, 2006 / Will Harris

Martin Gilks, the original drummer for the Wonder Stuff, has died.

Gilks was also the original drummer for the Mighty Lemon Drops, but he was kicked out of the band – possibly for not cutting his hair – and found his way behind the kit for the Stuffies. When they broke up after Construction for the Modern Idiot, he moved with a few other members onto the band We Know Where You Live, then left performing in favor of music management. He did reunite with the Stuffies for their 2000 reunion gigs, then proceeded to serve as the band’s manager ’til 2004, at which point he split with the group (which wasn’t much more than Miles Hunt and Malcolm Treese, anyway). He was involved in a motorcycle accident this past weekend and died yesterday as a result of his injuries.

Sad news. Recent albums by the Stuffies haven’t been any great shakes, but, oh, how wonderful those original four albums were. If you don’t own Never Loved Elvis, your CD collection is woefully complete.

Alternative, Artists, News, Rock

Madge hits the road…

April 3, 2006 / Will Harris

…and The Chauffeur checks his calendar to see if he can make any of the dates.

According to the article on Yahoo, Madonna is threatening to turn the whole world into a dance floor…but it’s really less the whole world than a handful of dates in a handful of countries. In the States, she’s doing the Big City Boogie, hitting most of the usual suspects – San Jose, Fresno, Phoenix, Chicago, Montreal, Hartford, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Miami and Los Angeles – but not doing much for the kids in the sticks. Not terribly surprising, given her stature, but, still, it’d be nice if she hit some of the smaller markets as well…

Artists, Concerts, News, Rock Babes

31 from Juliana Hatfield

April 1, 2006 / Captain Capm

If you’re a Juliana Hatfield fan, you might want to visit her website, as she’s once again offering up 31 never-before released tracks for downloading. She’s presenting them with an honor system, in which her site spells out the problems between record companies suing file sharers and file sharers wanting everything to be free. If you like, you can grab all the songs (or as many as you like) and keep them, or make a donation through PayPal of whatever amount you like in exchange. There are indeed plenty of good songs here to be heard, and for 31 cents you can’t beat ’em. No, I jest.

Artists, News, Songs

Sometimes Bad Is Bad

March 30, 2006 / Deb Medsker

Okay, over the years there have been innumerable concert tours featuring a variety of similarly-themed (or even not-so-similarly-themed) artists sharing a single lineup: Rockfest. Lollapalooza. Monsters of Rock. You get the picture.

The demand for these types of shows is both reliable and understandable. What is not so understandable, however, is why anyone thought it would be a good idea to trot out bland vanilla-pop white-boy wannabe soulsters Huey Lewis and the News, pair them with sappy overwrought overrated snooze-inducers Chicago, and send the whole boring kit and caboodle out on tour.

Never mind that the Boys of Blah will be launching fits of narcolepsy left and right all across the country, disappointing legions of the former forensics team captains and Glee Club members who used to listen to them. The real problem here is one of marketing: What do you call a tour this achingly, willfully, obscenely boring?

Many options come to mind. None of them, however, seem particularly encouraging with regard to drawing ticket buyers:

The Heart of Rock & Roll Is Not Here
Snoozefest 2006
Critters of Crap
Kings of the Wuss Frontier
Government-Approved Purveyors of Rocklike Auditory Modulations
25 or 6 to Snore

I’m sure you can come up with several better ideas than these. I’d love to hear them. Whoever submits the best suggestion will receive a free copy of Chicago’s “XXX,” or a bottle of Lunesta, whichever I can track down a free copy of first.

Artists, Concerts

Back from oblivion, at least for a little while

March 30, 2006 / Will Harris

Doug Powell is one of the most underrated singer/songwriters in the business…both by major labels and, unfortunately, most consumers. Fortunately, however, his fellow musicians know who he is.

Powell got his first break because, in his words, he “assaulted Jules Shear” with a tape of his songs, which led to Shear producing a demo for Powell in hopes of scoring him a deal with Elektra. The plan failed – Elektra took a pass – but, by 1994, he had a deal with RCA, for whom he recorded Ballad of a Tin Man. Unfortunately, he was dropped before it was released. By ’95, however, Mercury picked him up and released the album, possibly because he’d appeared on the radar by touring as an opening act for Todd Rundgren. Perhaps predictably, Mercury threw little effort into promoting the album, then dumped him when it flopped. Since then, he’s released albums through Not Lame and Parasol, but, after his 2004 release, Day For Night, he more or less retired from the music biz to write a book on Christian Apologetics and work on his Master’s Degree.

Fortunately, he’s coming back…if only with an odds-and-sods collection of demos and rarities, to be released through Paisley Pop Records. Still, somethin’ is better than nothin’. Plus, he’s written some songs for the New Cars…which, at last, gives us a good reason to root for their success.

Artists, News, Pop