The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Phoenix, Blur and The Stone Roses are set to headline Coachella 2013.
The Postal Service, Wu-Tang Clan and Vampire Weekend are among the other acts scheduled to perform. Click below for the full lineup or check out Coachella.com. READ FULL STORY »
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Dave Grohl’s ready to pay tribute to the recording studio that helped launch his career.
Starting on Thursday, the Foo Fighters frontman will host “Dave Grohl Presents Sound City,” a series of shows on SiriusXM that celebrate the output of California’s Sound City Studios. There are nine shows in total, each focusing on a different epoch in the studio’s history from 1970 to 2011.
“I’m grateful to SiriusXM for giving me the opportunity to share all this great music and to let people know what got me excited about Sound City in the first place,” Grohl said in a press release.
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By Kyle Anderson and Nolan Feeney
When the second day of Lollapalooza 2012 began on Saturday, it was just another ridiculously hot morning in Chicago—but by the time the final notes had been played in Grant Park, it had become historic.
For the first time ever, the entire festival was suspended due to inclement weather, and all of the festival’s attendees—the official number at the time of the storm was 60,000, plus 3,000 staff—were evacuated for two and a half hours while a vicious thunderstorm passed through.
At about three o’clock local time, word started spreading that a nasty storm front was headed in the direction of Grant Park, and that everybody should brace themselves for the worst. Only a few minutes later, the organizers of Lollapalooza did the bracing for everybody.
A number of bands, including Neon Indian, were forced to end their mid-afternoon sets early to make way for the announcement that everybody had to leave the grounds due to the oncoming weather. What at first seemed like an alarmist case of over-protection ended up being right on, as the wind and rain ripped through Downtown Chicago for a solid hour.
The festival attendees who didn’t fill the bars and restaurants surrounding Grant Park were lead to a trio of underground parking garages that served as shelters during the storm.
The gates were re-opened at around six o’clock, with a new schedule and a slightly extended curfew. Most everybody was allowed to go on later, with the headlining acts given the go-ahead to play until 10:45, just under the cutoff time for noise in Grant Park. In the end, only a handful of acts were cancelled outright, including Temper Trap, Alabama Shakes, Chairlift, the Dunwells, B.o.B., J.J. Grey and Mofro, and Paper Diamond.
By the time the music was back on, the crowd had thinned only a little; most people seemed to stick out the storm. Though the fields had deteriorated quite a bit — a number of people standing in front during the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ set were in ankle-deep water).
Still, the resilience of the crowd (and the cooler temperatures post-storm) definitely played into both of Saturday night’s headliners. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.com
This weekend, the music world once again turns its annual attention to Chicago’s Grant Park, where Lollapalooza will spread its freaky tentacles across eight stages, dozens of food booths, and countless pairs of ruined shoes.
(If you’re not there, you may miss the falafel and the mud, but you can still watch nearly all of the performances on your laptop via the Dell-sponsored livestream and archive on YouTube,)
This year’s headliner crop is a weird collision of veteran rockers (Black Sabbath, Red Hot Chili Peppers), huge dance artists (Justice, Avicii, Kaskade), and extra-emotive folks from the hip-hop world (Frank Ocean, Wale, Childish Gambino).
With the undercard full of the usual indie-fied suspects, Lollapalooza 2012 looks a lot like the eclectic stew of alternative energy that Perry Farrell first envisioned when he invented the thing in 1991.
With that in mind, there are a handful of questions going into Lollapalooza weekend that should be resolved by the time Jack White plays his last note on Sunday night. Here are the five you need to consider at the dawn of the weekend.
Is this my last chance to see Black Sabbath?
It’s possible, though technically this isn’t actually the full Black Sabbath, as drummer Bill Ward elected to stay home on this particular reunion jaunt. READ FULL STORY »
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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 »
Image Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.com
About 12 hours after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Red Hot Chili Peppers gave it away, gave it away, gave it away… for Obama campaign volunteers at Cleveland’s House of Blues. As Cleveland’s Plain Dealer writes, the band performed a special 45-minute concert for 1,200 liberal-minded music lovers. Tickets were free, provided a would-be concert-goer had worked in an Obama phone bank.
A video montage of Obama speeches paved the way for Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, and Josh Klinghoffer’s set. In between hits like “Under the Bridge” and “Can’t Stop,” Kiedis urged the audience to register voters and declared his support for our 44th president. From Blood Sugar Sex Magik to stumping for a sitting POTUS — who says a rocker’s edge dulls with age? READ FULL STORY »
On their way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guns N’ Roses got together for one more gig.
Axl Rose missed it.
The hedonistic hard rockers, who became the world’s top music act amid endless dysfunction, members of Guns N’ Roses reunited for three songs on Saturday night before 6,000 fans, many of whom were thrilled to see at least most of the band’s original lineup jam on classic hits like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Paradise City.”
Rose, the band’s frontman and ringmaster of the G N’ R traveling sex, drugs and rock and roll circus, declined to attend the induction, saying he didn’t want to be part of the ceremony because it “doesn’t appear to be somewhere I’m actually wanted or respected.”
He was hardly missed. READ FULL STORY »
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Coachella kicks off its first of two weekends in just a few days, which means that festival season has officially begun. And ever since Lollapalooza put away its touring circus format in favor of shacking up for one huge weekend in Chicago’s Grant Park, it has become the cornerstone of the summer concert calendar.
The past few Lollapalooza lineups have followed some sort of theme. Last year was the year that dance music got much bigger (deadmau5 was one of the main stage headliners), while 2010 was the year of pop (featuring Lady Gaga and a host of other nods to the bubbly mainstream). This year’s collection of bands doesn’t seem to have much of a tether, though it could be the loudest lineup in recent memory (or at least since that year that Metallica headlined). The sorta reunited Black Sabbath headline (drummer Bill Ward remains on the sidelines), along with the Black Keys, Jack White, At the Drive-In, Florence + the Machine, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Other highlights include the Shins, Justice, Passion Pit, Sigur Ros, Frank Ocean, Delta Spirit, and the reunited Afghan Whigs. The undercard also consists of about-to-break acts like Alabama Shakes, Gary Clark, Jr., the Growlers, the Jezabels, LP, Bear in Heaven, and Michael Kiwanuka. They’ve even got that ridiculous band that won that Rolling Stone contest, the band with the number one song in the country, at least one former American Idol contestant, and Franz Ferdinand (who are still a band, it turns out).
Since Lollapalooza Perry Farrell is gaga for hot beats, there’s also a pretty awesome round-up of people from the dance world booked on his personal stage, including Calvin Harris and Santigold. Check out the complete list of performers below. READ FULL STORY »
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South by Southwest is right around the corner, and Coachella’s already prepping its polo grounds for a two-weekend extravaganza, which means it’s time to look forward to that third major warm-climate festival: Bonnaroo.
Manchester, Tenn.’s second most exciting tourist attraction (we see you, Old Stone Fort!) will take place June 7-10 this year, and its newly announced lineup is as impressive as ever. Perhaps the biggest headliner are Radiohead (who are also doing Coachella); also on the top of the masthead are the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Phish, who are no strangers to Bonnaroo’s muddy festivities.
Some of the fest’s bigger acts — many of which you may remember from the Grammys — include Skrillex, the Shins, Bon Iver, Bad Brains, the Civil Wars, comedian Aziz Ansari, and the reunited Beach Boys (hopefully without Foster the People, though they will be there too).
Of course, there’s many, many more. Check out the full list of artists below:
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The Music Mix’s dream that Axl Rose’s cornrows be permanently retired to a museum in Cleveland came one step closer to realization today with the news that Guns N’ Roses will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next April.
The band’s fellow Hall of Fame newbies are the Beastie Boys, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Small Faces/The Faces, the late singer-songwriter Laura Nyro, and hippie troubadour Donovan. The list of nominees who didn’t get the electoral nod this year is made up of Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, the Cure, Heart, Eric B. and Rakim, Rufus with Chaka Khan, Donna Summer, War, Freddie King, and the Spinners, at least some of whom may now be available for birthdays and bar mitzvahs on April 14.
Taken on a case-by-case basis, it’s difficult to argue with many of the choices. Guns N’ Roses, the Beasties, and the Chili Peppers are all hugely popular and have enjoyed many-chaptered careers, even if the most recent parts of the Roses’ tale have resembled chapters in a book about horrific car accidents.
And Nyro and Donovan certainly added their own hues to rock’s rich tapestry, although I know my colleague Rob Brunner would have preferred the Cure or Erik B. and Rakim get inducted over the latter. You could reasonably argue that Faces members — and previous Hall of Fame inductees — Ron Wood and Rod Stewart don’t really need another gong on their mantelpiece. But had the pair only ever recorded “Stay With Me,” they would have gotten my vote (if I had one): READ FULL STORY »
