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The details for this year’s Farm Aid concert have been announced, and as always, it involves Dave Matthews.
Matthews, who’s also one of the charity’s board members, will be performing at the benefit, slated to take place Sept. 22 in Hershey, Pa. He’ll be joined this year by John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Jack Johnson, ALO, Pegi Young and the Survivors, and Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real. READ FULL STORY »
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Want to see a wide array of FM hitmakers in one place? Then Clear Channel has your back.
The broadcasting giant has announced the lineup to its annual iHeartRadio Music Festival, scheduled to take play Sept. 21-22 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas
The artists on the lineup come from a broad array of genres, and most of them are heavy-hitters: Taylor Swift, Aerosmith, Rihanna, Usher, Bon Jovi, Lil Wayne, Green Day, Miranda Lambert, Mary J. Blige, and Shakira are all on the ticket so far.
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The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and Florence + the Machine are three of the biggest names slated to play the 2012 Austin City Limits Music Festival. The entire 130-act strong lineup was announced for the October event. Click below for the rest of the talent: READ FULL STORY »
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Skeptics had little faith in Coachella’s plan to stage the festival with identical lineups on consecutive weekends for the first time this year, but the folks putting on the show ended up laughing all the way to the bank.
Coachella 2012 was a wild financial success, and thanks to the specter of a deceased rapper, became the most talked-about weekend in the desert since Roger Waters lost track of his inflatable pig.
It only makes sense, then, that the same plan will be executed in 2013. Next year’s Coachella will run on April 12-14 and again on April 19-21. Advance passes go on sale this Thursday morning for $349, though you can dole that out in installments using their payment plan.
When you consider the additional money you’ll spend on travel, lodging, food, water, and a healthy supply of sun-blocking floppy hats, that’s a not-unserious chunk to invest in a festival that as of now (and most likely, for the at least next six months) has exactly zero confirmed acts.
Luckily, the Coachella lineup tends to follow a pattern every year, which is why there are a few safe assumptions about who you’ll see in Indio next year.
Jay-Z is in a Philadelphia State of Mind. The rapper has announced a two-day music festival in Philadelphia. It’ll feature nearly 30 acts “that embody the American spirit” across three stages at Fairmount Park on Sept 1. and Sept. 2, which is Labor Day weekend.
Jay-Z was joined by Mayor Michael Nutter on Monday atop the city’s art museum steps, made famous by Rocky. The “Budweiser Made in America” festival will benefit United Way Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Tickets go on sale May 23 and will include rap, rock, R&B, Latin and dance performers.
The New York-born rapper says 70 percent of the acts are confirmed. A feverish crowd of fans was on hand, chanting his name. When one yelled out that Jay-Z’s was the best, the rapper paused and said: “I agree.”
Read more:
Jay-Z burns through SXSW
Jay-Z and Beyonce both reportedly working on new music
Jay-Z plays Carnegie Hall, brings Alicia Keys, Nas, and ‘Glory’ with him
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For a lot of hip-hop fans, Tupac Shakur never really died.
Some legitimately believed that, like Elvis before him, Shakur actually faked his own death to duck out of the spotlight. For others, tracks like “California Love” and “I Get Around” simply lend him a less literal kind of immortality.
Of course, that was before the man himself “materialized” on stage at the closing night of the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and stole the entire Coachella conversation. “Tupac hologram” almost instantly became one of the most-searched phrases on the Internet, and now more information is emerging about the exceptionally weird technological trick pulled off by headliners Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the hologram was crafted by the Digital Domain Media Group, the visual effects house co-founded by James Cameron and responsible for cutting-edge film tricks in movies like Titanic, Tron: Legacy, the Transformers series, Real Steel, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. READ FULL STORY »
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Who didn’t Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg trot out to close the Coachella Festival on Sunday night? The full retinue was a veritable Hip Hop Hall of Fame: 50 Cent, Eminem, Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, Kurupt, Warren G, Nate Dogg (via montage tribute), a two-story LED projection of Frank Sinatra, and a Tupac Shakur hologram. All that was missing was gin and juice gratis for every audience member.
Of course, the West has never been shy to throw up the “W” and the Dogg and Doc delivered a bell-ringing performance to please the hometown crowd. Backed by a full band, the set list was both party-to-go and paean to the last two decades of gangsta rap. After all, when Andre Young dropped The Chronic 20 years ago, the genre retained its marine blue menace and instilled fear into the hearts of sweater-clad suburban parents. Today, Dr. Dre is a gangsta eminence grise and savvy headphone entrepreneur. Meanwhile his one-time sidekick Snoop Dogg has starred in movies, television shows, and leased his star wattage to more products than Ron Popeil.
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We’ll have the full run-down of ups and downs from the final day of the first weekend of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival shortly, but the biggest news from Sunday night’s festivities was Tupac Shakur’s return to the stage.
Though the legendary rapper was murdered in 1996, Shakur stole Sunday night’s weekend-closing set by Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg. Appearing as a hologram (as previously rumored), Shakur (or rather, his pixel-mongering image) materialized for the purpose of filling in his verse on “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” as well as taking a solo on “Hail Mary.”
It was a pretty impressive bit of scene-stealing, if only because that stage also saw drop-ins from superstars like Eminem, Wiz Khalifa, and 50 Cent. Check out Tupac’s ghost performing “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” below. READ FULL STORY »
Sahara Tent heats up during Sebastian Ingrosso’s set
Day 2 of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival got underway Saturday. Here’s some of the highlights:
The Sahara Tent: This is Coachella’s electronic music stage (a.k.a. the restlessly chewing gum while applying vapor rub tent). Nothing makes rock music look worse than watching a crowd merely nodding their heads to dour indie chords at the Mojave Tent, then diving into the bouncing scrum of happy rollers in the Sahara Tent. On Saturday, French house music producer and DJ David Guetta took the stage with 1980s video-game-style lighting effects. Though his strobe-filled intro was almost obnoxiously long, Guetta’s fans were delirious as he launched into “Titanium,” dropping the audio so fans could scream the “fire away, fire away” chorus. I had to squeeze through a lot of crowds at Coachella, and Guetta’s audience was so tightly jammed they take the award for Most Impenetrable. But for sheer mindless electronic euphoria, I much preferred Sweedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso’s set — a high-energy Red Bull-blast from start to finish.
Though the Sahara Tent had some of the happiest Coachellans, outside the tent were some of the most miserable as the night wore on. What goes up, must come down. Or vice versa.
Praying to the Coachella Dry Heave God
Celebrities. READ FULL STORY »
The blues don’t do sunshine. So with severe desert wind and slanting rain showers marring the first day of Coachella, the voodoo children stole the show. Neither Gary Clark Jr. nor the Black Keys will be mistaken for bourbon in the paper cup, Delta blues bootleggers, but both ensured that the genre of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters has a healthy future with the Instagram generation.
This isn’t your great-grandfather’s finger picked, hellhound on your trail, Mississippi blues. It’s not the rollicking funk of the great Chicago masters like Muddy and Elmore James. And it builds beyond the bruised vinyl psychedelia of your pops’ favorites like Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Cream. This is the blues as it jukes and moans in the modern era. Watch Gary Clark Jr, a 28-year old, ax-wielding wunderkind from Austin. Every generation has its chosen one and right now, this is Clark’s time. He has been co-signed by the proper guitar gods (B.B. King, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy) and got his start thanks to Clifford Antone, the Austin club owner who helped the Vaughn brothers become the baddest.
