† NillaMora †

From HIM MySpace Blog

JOIN THE OFFICIAL HIM YOUTUBE PAGE

See the new video for “Kiss Of Dawn” and more at HIM’s official youtube page. Click here to check it out and join up to find out when more clips show up.

GET THE “KISS OF DAWN” SINGLE NOW

You can buy the ‘Kiss Of Dawn’ single now at all digital stores including iTunes. Click here to get it in the US iTunes store. You can also get it in iTunes in other countries as well.

Source: http://funeralofhearts.com/

31 July, 2007

New Jersey emo band My Chemical Romance have announced one of their biggest UK tours to date, playing at some of the country's largest arenas.

Although only playing four dates in total, the band will be playing some of the UK's biggest venues, namely the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle, the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre, the Hallam FM Arena in Sheffield and the O2 Arena in London.

The tour will kick off on Sunday the 11th November and finish at the O2 on Thursday the 15th.

Tickets will go on sale at 9:00am, this Friday 3rd August. For the full tour dates and to purchase tickets, see the My Chemical Romance page here on Ents24.

Source: http://www.ents24.com/

by Pat McGuire | 07.31.2007

“When rock and roll is dead, the whole world is gonna explode.” Somehow it’s more haunting to hear those words spoken by a dead guy. And even further, it’s doubly spooky when that dead guy turned out to be right.

    Kurt Cobain was a lot of things we knew about and a lot of things we didn’t. Genius, druggie, screamer, sage—you know the drill. And so often when someone in the public eye is taken from us too early, we’re force-fed hastily compiled posthumous albums, unfinished symphonies and overbearing journals (ahem) to supposedly remind us why we loved the artist while he/she was on this Earth. Sure thing, $hakur. But until director AJ Schnack’s new experimental film, Kurt Cobain About a Son, we really didn’t know what the spirit of our anti-hero Son, as they say, smelled like.

    Taking audio of Kurt’s voice from 25 hours of previously unheard interviews by music journalist Michael Azerrad (at the time working on definitive biography Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana), About a Son features Kurt’s musings on his personal life. Included are tales of childhood delinquency, chucking rocks at cop cars and sleeping on friends’ porches, not to mention, ironically, his ruminations on the severe distaste he’d developed toward journalists. The visuals comprise, almost entirely, lingering, candid shots of the three Washington cities in which Kurt lived—Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle…and that’s about it. Crazy, huh? Not at all.

    The viewer adapts to the format quickly, and is soon enraptured, waiting for Kurt’s voice to return, just as we would eagerly anticipate the star of any film. The shots are beautiful and multi-layered: a left-handed guitar stands defiantly among a forest of righties in a music store; a “Teens” placard hangs innocently in the Aberdeen library; a barge called Youth Spirit floats by through muddy water. And the soundtrack is a collection of tunes by Kurt’s influences—from Queen to the Melvins to Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World”—dispersed throughout the eerily pleasant ambient score crafted by producer Steve Fisk and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard.

    Through all this, Schnack creates a wondrous, dream-like cinematic state, with Kurt’s voice serving as our guide, comic foil, tragic hero and focal point all at once. But where the film succeeds most markedly is in its ability to connect the audience to the subject. Distanced as we always thought he was, here we can listen to Kurt becoming comfortable as the film progresses. And strangely, it doesn’t feel one bit odd to see a film about Kurt Cobain that uses none of his music and doesn’t depict him visually until its final seconds. But when we finally do see him in hauntingly stark black and white courtesy of legendary Northwest music scene photographer Charles Peterson, it’s not as an icon, nor a hero, nor a martyr; quite simply, it’s as just another person. Kurt, somewhere off in his “Leonard Cohen afterworld,” is smiling.

What was your relationship like with Kurt before the interviews?
I had done a Rolling Stone cover story on Nirvana, and the subtitle was “Inside the Heart and Mind of Kurt Cobain.” To my knowledge that was the first article to really connect his childhood and his divorce and all that to the screaming and the music. We hit it off with  that interview. Before that, all I knew about Kurt was that he was a junkie and he screamed and made great music. I’d never known someone who was a heroin addict before, so I was pretty green.
    I think he liked the take of that article, so when the opportunity came up to do a book, Kurt agreed. I said, “There’s no way you’re going to have approval over the manuscript.” And he said, “Oh no, that would be too Guns N’ Roses.” That’s how it all started. The first interview was like, “What’s your full name, when were you born, who were your parents?” and we went from there.

One of the first things I noticed about the film was how funny Kurt was.
That’s the whole idea of the movie—that he was a guy, and he said things that could make you laugh. That’s something that was lost in the horrible black cloud of his final months. When you laugh, that’s when the film has won, because it’s brought you back to the idea of Kurt as a guy you could hang out with.

And he was so young.
He had just turned 26. And with so much fame and money and attention coming to him at such a young age, you’re really figuring stuff out at a rapid rate, or you’re not. But given all that, he was very insightful. He managed to instill that wisdom and his observations, feelings and sensitivities into the music. That was his gift; he had a feel for himself and—for lack of a better word—his generation. People got that from the music, and as it turns out, from the film. That is one of the cool epiphanies of the film—that this stuff was actually on his mind.

It wasn’t like it only came out when he was being interviewed by a journalist.
Ours weren’t your regular interviews. These were conducted at a kitchen table at one o’clock in the morning at his house. The place is dead silent; it’s just two people talking, very intimate. In the film there’s one point where he starts yelling about journalists and I have to remind him that I’m a journalist too, and he gets sort of flustered.
    Nirvana were home from touring and about to record In Utero, and that’s where he was: home. I would fly out there and he’d say, “Come on over,” and we’d just hang out, watch TV, he’d play me some music he was working on, and then say, “Yeah, I’m ready,” grab a pack of smokes and just talk until the sun came up. After that we’d sit without saying anything for half an hour and watch the biplanes landing on Lake Washington.

From the window in the opening shot?
Yeah, where he first starts talking and says, “I’m not going to open up to anyone like this ever again”—that’s shot out that window.

How did you and AJ Schnack meet?
I was in a documentary AJ did about They Might Be Giants, and whether you care for them or not, it was really brilliant and inventive. In passing, I mentioned to him that I had these tapes, and he called me later and asked about using them in a film. I’d thought about it for a few years. I didn’t tell him then, but I had a very specific idea of what I wanted, which was Kurt’s being the only voice in the film and having some sort of abstract visuals and ambient music to accompany it. It would be a very cool art movie; not a documentary, just a visit once again into the heart and mind of Kurt Cobain.
    It was important that AJ didn’t know Kurt. That was a selling point, because he didn’t have an axe to grind. He called me back a few weeks later with something strikingly similar to what I’d originally envisioned, only better. He had the idea of shooting the specific locales and also of putting in the soundtrack. We started funding and began shooting the film. It was serendipitous.

It’s a film that someone who was ignorant of Kurt’s life, or even Nirvana, can enjoy. Saving any image of Kurt until the film’s end is so powerful, and I wonder what it would be like to watch the film without already knowing the outcome.
I think you might be able to guess the ending. There are all these elements—the score, the soundtrack, his voice, the visuals—and these things are synergistic, they add up. You’ll hear Queen, and then see the logging mill where his dad worked, while Kurt’s talking about his childhood. You make connections, and the film is very poetic that way. It’s more than the sum of its parts, which is a lot of what poetry is about. I think that’s the only way we could really achieve the impact we wanted, by trying for something poetic.
    But for that reason, the complexity of the way things play off each other means that you can watch it a few times. Granted, I’m a special case, but I’ve seen the movie 10 times and the other morning I watched the opening sequence and tears were streaming down my face. I couldn’t stop. I’ve seen this movie and should be hardened to it by now, but it just keeps getting to me. When someone kills themself, it’s such a mess, there are so many unresolved things, and it took a movie to resolve this for me. If nothing else, I got some peace out of it, and I think a lot of other people will, too. Kurt touched a lot of people very deeply, and there are a lot of unresolved feelings out there. You see this movie and you can start to make sense of what happened, to reconnect with him as a human being, and maybe it will sharpen your eyes to someone else who this is happening to.

Are the three cities in the film the same cities that Kurt knew? If they are different, did he help change them?
If you grew up there you’d definitely see a difference. Seattle is way more built up now than it was even 10 years ago. Those three places are different, and yet they’re still the same. There’s an Aberdeen-ness that will endure for the next century, and there’s an Olympia-ness that should endure for the next decade or so. That was AJ’s idea, to extract their essences—to sum up each place as a character in the story, something that helped make Kurt who he was. Even down to using different film stocks for each city; there’s a definite color palette for each section—the greens and greys of Aberdeen, for example.
    Where you’re from has a lot to do with who you are. And that’s why I think Kurt could relate to anyone of a certain age and social standing; he had something very universal and his music will continue to make an impact on people for many years to come. But I don’t know if he’s really influenced those places. Aberdeen is a very particular place—I don’t think you’re going to see many monuments to Kurt around there. Olympia is still a K Records town, not a Kurt town. And Seattle is a major international city.

Did your relationship with him change when you pressed “record”?
People think of Kurt as a very guileless indie rock guy, but it’s important to bear in mind that he grew up on the Beatles, Black Sabbath, and Queen, and those people embraced stardom and thought a lot about their image. So when the tape recorder was rolling, I have no doubt that Kurt had certain points he wanted to get across or an image he wanted to convey, even if it was an anti-image. But there were also long stretches where it was just two guys talking around the table at four in the morning. You can’t maintain your media messaging over the course of 25 hours, so there were major portions of time where he was speaking extremely candidly. There were parts where he was mythmaking, but you just can’t sustain that. In virtually every soundbite in the film, he’s being candid and conversational; he’s not talking as if he’s giving a press conference.

Did you object at all to having your voice in the film, minimal as it is?
I wanted the voice to be Kurt, but it was important to show that these were conversations. It wasn’t like he was sitting alone in his room talking into a tape recorder, so we had to establish that. Sometimes when I laugh at something he’d said, it helps explain why he’s being so candid, because there’s a rapport there. Obviously he trusted me enough to tell me these things and to know they wouldn’t be twisted around, which is remarkable considering how much of everything else he’d said to journalists had been [distorted]. I mean, he blamed journalists for losing custody of his child.

Did he really think he was unworthy of it all?
In the movie he says, “I really thought that I had something to offer to music.” He thought he was a decent songwriter. He understood that he was good. It’s just that he’d grown up on people who had embraced stardom gladly, and I think originally he had those dreams. He mentions in the film that he thought he could be president someday; he was an ambitious, confident child. But later he would meet Olympia punk rock, which makes a show of being self-effacing—there’s a label there called Kill Rock Stars—so he became imbued with that philosophy. For every ambitious thing he did or said, he had to cover it up with some indie doctrine. But no, he understood his work as an artist, and there’s absolutely no shame in that. And furthermore, he was right.

On a macrocosmic level, what is the big lesson to be learned from this film?
It’s nice to know we can go anywhere and people are pretty much the same. Even though the landscape may not be what you know or have ever seen, you can listen to this guy talk and go, “Wow, I kinda feel the same way.” There’s a connection that a lot of people may not realize they can make with Kurt Cobain on a truly personal level. This film could almost be about anyone…a bricklayer, an accountant; if done right, you can relate.
    Kurt wasn’t impervious; all the stuff that happened to him had a toll. He was different from us because of his celebrity, and he was talented and rich and good-looking, but that stuff hurt him just like it would anybody else. The really important lesson is this: In the end, after all the sensationalism and mythmaking and gossip, Kurt was just a guy. Somebody who wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom like everybody else. He was a real person.

July 30, 2007 at 4:30 PM (EDT)

My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way has announced the release date for the first issue of his comic book series, The Umbrella Academy. First promised in July of 2006, the series will be published by maverick publisher Dark Horse, home of Hellboy and Conan which became films, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Terminator and Star Wars which took the opposite route.

Gerard described the storyline to MTV:

A closet space alien has adopted seven extraordinary children to save the world. He never tells [them] from what. He's a really bad father, and he dies of a heart attack, and they are all kind of stuck to figure out the rest."

The biggest idea with the comic for me was, number one, writing a comic, I've been wanting to write one. It's fun. I think I can say something I can't necessarily say with my music. But also, I wanted to get people into comic shops, people who normally wouldn't [go], because I love the medium.

Way is no fly-by-night comic book geek either, mentioning an obscure Watchmen reference that appeared on the band's major label debut, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.

He also addressed fan speculation about the band's follow up to The Black Parade:

We're not working on a record, We're touring and getting some distance from writing music. We'll finish out touring, take a break and then come back and write. It will be quite awhile before there's another My Chemical Romance album.

Comic news sites Newsarama and Comic Book Resources each spoke with the frontman on the project. The CBR feature displays numerous pages of art from the first issue.

Source: http://www.punknews.org/

Gerard Way at Comic-Con 2007

Photo: MTV News

"We're going to have to find something completely new to say, and that could take some living, some touring, some hardships." — My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way

My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way has always loved comic books.

His first job, in high school, was at a local comic book shop in New Jersey. He didn't actually collect a paycheck each week — his compensation came in the form of free comic books. He idolized the likes of Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Frank Miller and Grant Morrison. Long before the band was formed, Way attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he majored in illustration and cartooning. He wanted to be a comic book artist so badly that he later interned at DC Comics.

That dream never panned out, which is perhaps for the best. Now that Way has made a name for himself as the leader of My Chemical Romance, it's been much easier for him to launch "The Umbrella Academy," a new book he's been working on with artist Gabriel Bá. The volume hits stores through Dark Horse Comics on September 19 (see "My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way Gets Graphic, Pens Comic Book Series").

(Watch Gerard talk about his plans for his own comic.)

Way unveiled the book over the weekend at San Diego's Comic-Con 2007 (see "Comic-Con '07: Big News On 'Iron Man,' 'Watchmen,' 'Star Trek,' 'Spidey 4' Amid Carnival Atmosphere"), where he admitted that it's kind of hard to describe just what "The Umbrella Academy" is all about.

"It's much like when we were starting the band — the band was very hard to explain to people, and they just kind of had to hear it," he said between signings. "I tell people they just have to read the comic. But in short, a [closeted] space alien has adopted seven extraordinary children to save the world. He never tells [them] from what. He's a really bad father, and he dies of a heart attack, and they are all kind of stuck to figure out the rest."

The series starts off when the members of the Umbrella Academy, now well into their adult years and disbanded, learn that their adoptive father, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, has died. When news of a world-ending threat is made public, the former team members must put their differences aside and unite to do what they've been trained to do — save us all from impending doom. Think "X-Men," but with a more gothic feel.

"The biggest idea with the comic for me was, number one, writing a comic," he explained. "I've been wanting to write one. It's fun. I think I can say something I can't necessarily say with my music. But also, I wanted to get people into comic shops, people who normally wouldn't [go], because I love the medium.

"A lot of books had a very big impact on me, and they kind of shaped my lyrics, the band's aesthetic, everything," he continued. "There's a song called 'The Ghost of You' on [2004's Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge], which is named after a perfume ad in the 'Watchmen' [graphic-novel series]. Comics have been such a big part of me and the band for such a long time, and I just want people to check out comics."

As for the rumors that My Chemical Romance had begun writing material for the follow-up to 2006's The Black Parade, Way said there's no truth to them.

"We're not working on a record," he said. "We're touring and getting some distance from writing music. We'll finish out touring, take a break and then come back and write. It will be quite awhile before there's another My Chemical Romance album. We said a lot of what we wanted to say with Black Parade, so we're going to have to find something completely new to say, and that could take some living, some touring, some hardships. It's all about finding what the next thing is for yourself, for your band, and we're still searching for that. We'll be searching for a while, I think."

The band has quashed its beef with Marilyn Manson, which is good, Way said, "because I hate talking about it." A couple of months back, Manson said in an interview with The London Paper that he'd written the song "Mutilation Is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery," from his new album Eat Me, Drink Me, as an attack on My Chemical Romance. Said Manson: "I'm embarrassed to be me because these people are doing a really sad, pitiful, shallow version of what I've done." Way later responded that nothing Manson could say would bring the band down, writing it off as Manson using the MCR name to promote his latest LP.

"There's really nothing going on there," he said. "We played a festival in Norway with them, and [guitarist] Frank [Iero] just went up to them, said hi and asked if there was anything wrong. They said no, and that was the end of it."

Source: http://www.mtv.com/

07/30/07

The director of a much-anticipated Kurt Cobain documentary is rush-releasing the project so it can be considered for an Oscar.

A.J. Schnack has posted a message online announcing that Kurt Cobain: About A Son will open in New York, Los Angeles and Cobain's native Seattle, Washington in October.

The screenings mean the film, which follows the life of tragic Nirvana frontman Cobain, will be eligible for the Oscar race next year.

The documentary features audio of Cobain recounting his life in interviews carried out by journalist Michael Azerrad for his book Come As You Are.

Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard co-wrote the film's score.

-Kurt Cobain Pictures

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)

Projekt Revolution was the biggest all-day festival of Shoreline Amphitheatre's summer season.

The 10-hour show, which took place on Sunday at the Mountain View venue, featured two acts that can each headline arenas and amphitheaters and one that appears destined to reach that level. Respectively, those bands were Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday.

In comparison, Shoreline's other rock festivals _ Live 105's BFD, the Warped Tour and Ozzfest _ combined to offer just one arena-caliber headliner, Ozzfest's Ozzy Osbourne. What they lacked in big names, they had to make up for with bountiful lineups.

Given the bill, it's easy to understand why such a huge crowd _ more than 16,000 fans _ turned out to party at Projekt Revolution.

The tour's origins stretch back to 2002, when Linkin Park decided to organize a trek with Cypress Hill and Adema. The tour returned for outings in 2003 and 2004, featuring such acts as Mudvayne, Korn, Snoop Dogg and Less Than Jake. Now, following a three-year hiatus, the Revolution has returned with what is undeniably its strongest lineup to date.

Linkin Park, as the tour founder, ranked the headlining spot and did a fairly good job with its 90-minute set. My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday, however, both managed to upstage Linkin Park with their offerings.

The concert began just before 1 p.m. out on a second stage erected in the parking lot. That's where head-banging early birds baked in the sun and  enjoyed Styles of Beyond, the Bled, Mindless Self Indulgence and other purveyors of hard sounds.

The main stage opened right around 4 p.m. with electronic act Julien-K and really got hopping once the next band, HIM, took the stage. The Finnish group _ which ranks as the only act from that country to score a gold record in the United States was a heck of a lot of fun in concert.

Led by vocalist-songwriter Ville Hermanni Valo, HIM (originally known as "His Infernal Majesty'') combines a solid foundation in pop hooks and catchy melodies with an aggressive pop-metal sound. To that, they add some well-rehearsed metal theatrics and an attitude that screams, "We are rock stars!'' The whole shebang makes one feel like HIM is playing a joke on the crowd _ like, at any minute, the band might break out giggling _ yet the music is never a laughing matter.

The best part of HIM's set was the seriously sexy and alluring cover of Chris Isaak's classic "Wicked Game,'' which can also be found on the band's full-length studio debut, 1997's "Greatest Love Songs, Vol. 666.''

Taking Back Sunday was up next and delivered a 40-minute set that ranked as the day's best offering. Still touring in support of its third CD, 2006's gold-certified "Louder Now,'' the Long Island quintet gave every impression that it should be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.

The energetic hardcore/emo troupe opened with a ferocious version of the latest album's "What's It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?'' and then proceeded to up the ante with each song in the set. Lead singer Adam Lazzara was a formidable front man, conjuring visions of such all-time greats as Dave Gahan and Roger Daltrey, as he whipped about his microphone and crawled along the stage in fits of passion.

By the time it was all said and sung, Taking Back Sunday had proven that it is one of the most exciting young acts in rock, one that seems destined for much bigger things.

Next up was My Chemical Romance, which drew the greatest response from the crowd. These New Jersey goth lads have skyrocketed in popularity since the release of 2006's "The Black Parade.'' The concept CD is one of the few discs in recent memory that has a chance to be considered a "classic'' when folks look back upon this era of music. Or, perhaps, it will simply be remembered as a copycat of Green Day's "American Idiot'' _ time will tell.

One thing is certain, "Black Parade'' is an album that the listeners at Shoreline hold very near to their hearts. It was even more fascinating to observe the audience, as the fans screamed out every word to each song and pumped their fists wildly in the air, than it was to watch the group's performance.

The connection that the fans felt to the music was what really made this set memorable. For my money, however, My Chemical Romance came across too polished and whitewashed like what a goth band would sound like on a Disney Channel program. In fact, it won't come as a complete shocker if the group's next album includes a duet with Hannah Montana.

Linkin Park closed the affair with a 90-minute dose of old hits and new songs from the recently released "Minutes to Midnight.'' That album has been another huge success for the band, selling some 623,000 copies in its first week on shelves. To put things in perspective, that was the highest first week tally of any release this year.

Despite the new album's impressive sales figures, fans at Shoreline still seemed most interested in hearing tracks from the band's debut, 2000's "Hybrid Theory,'' which was awarded the rare "diamond'' ranking (signifying sales of 10 million).

Count this critic among that group. The group was at its best when it was delivering rap-rock hybrids like "Crawling,'' "One Step Closer'' and "With You,'' nuggets that called for a mix of Mike Shinoda's rhymes and Chester Bennington's howls. The tracks from the new album didn't feature nearly as much rapping and, not coincidentally, were somewhat disappointing.

Overall, however, Projekt Revolution did not disappoint.

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com

Did Kurt Cobain play computer games? History remains strangely silent on the issue. It's hard to say whether he'd approve of Nirvana tracks being licensed out for use in musical rhythm games then. Still, that's what's happened, with news of two separate games that'll allow fans to play along with Nirvana classics.

The first is Rock Band, EA's upcoming music game that lets you thrash along on drums, bass, guitar AND vocals. The entire Nevermind album has just been confirmed as one of the titles you'll be able to download after the game has been released. Investing in the game plus all its peripherals just got a lot more justifiable in my eyes.

Meanwhile, mobile game publisher Gameloft is releasing Guitar Legend, which can be loosely described as being a Guitar Hero for mobile phones, with well-timed button-presses replacing plug-in axe accessories. Nirvana's 'Heart-Shaped Box' is one of the tracks included, along with Deep Purple's 'Smoke On The Water' and Iron Maiden's 'Run To The Hills'. Rawk!

Source: http://techdigest.tv/

'I still listen to Slayer once a week,' says frontman, chalking up new LP's serious sound, lyrics to 'musical exploration.'

By James Montgomery, with reporting by John Norris

Jul 27 2007 8:01 AM EDT

Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl Photo: MTV News

"To be able to get a room to silence with an acoustic song is sometimes more powerful than all the lights and lasers and amps in the world." — Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl has been in the rock business for more than 20 years now, and during that time, he's seen many so-called "musical movements" come and go. Thus, he's particularly amused by the current generation of emo-punk acts bounding across stages worldwide. After all, he's been doing this for so long that he remembers emo the first time it came around.

"I have a funny relationship with emo," he said. "I'm from Washington, D.C., and in the mid-'80s, the hardcore scene changed from what it was — Bad Brains and Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys and MDC — to a bunch of new bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace, which Ian MacKaye was the singer for. Everyone started labeling it 'emo-core.' So I went to Rites of Spring's first show, and it was a revelation. I'd never heard anything like it, and it was a really emotional experience. But in D.C., we all hated that 'emo-core' tag."

(Watch Dave Grohl talk about his emo past.)

It should come as no surprise, then, that Grohl has placed a song called "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" smack-dab in the middle of the Foo Fighters' upcoming Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace album, due September 25. After all, Grohl has always struck us as the kind of rock star who's aware of the inherent silliness of being a rock star — the kind of guy not afraid to take a few potshots at those who take themselves a tad too seriously. So the song must be a sort of piss-take on this current crop of raccoon-eyed emo boys, right?

Wrong.

"The title has nothing to do with the song — it's placed right in the middle of the record, where there's a lot of dark stuff. It's a pretty heavy record. We have a couple bummer tunes," Grohl said. "I felt the album needed something to sit in the center and balance it. So we had this lighthearted song, and I called it 'Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)' because it seemed like a little ray of hope in the middle of all this despair."

It is statements like that from the normally jovial Grohl that provide the first hint that perhaps Echoes isn't your run-of-the-mill Foo Fighters effort. Building on the musical ground they excavated on 2005's double-discer In Your Honor (see "Dave Grohl: The Gambler") and the foundations laid during the Foos' acoustic tour last year (see "Dave Grohl Gets Personal At Foo Fighters Acoustic Show In Hollywood"), the new album finds the band inhabiting a vast new sonic space, equal parts quiet and loud, refined and raw.

"The acoustic side of In Your Honor was about breaking out of this formula we'd been caged in for years. We wanted to try something new to expand the sound of the band, like a whisper-quiet acoustic song or this wall-of-noise rock stuff and anything in between," he explained. "And the acoustic tour, going out with eight people — I'd never played with strings and Mellotrons and vibes, and we were doing all these new versions of old songs. I realized all this melodic and instrumental potential, like, 'Wow, man. Imagine if we could do this with rock songs.' So I started writing [this new album] with that in mind. Like, 'I'm not scared of a string quartet. I'm not afraid of playing piano.' "

That sonic seriousness is coupled with a newfound heaviness to Grohl's lyrics, which he attributes in part to the birth of his daughter, Violet Maye, last year. And after heading up the band for nearly 13 years, he feels like the Foo Fighters are finally ready to test new terrain, which is why they opted to give their sixth studio effort such a, well, sensitive handle.

"It's tough to name a record," he said. "A lot of bands go into the studio with the title already in place, but we sort of figure it out when we're in there, and when we're done, you try to find this slogan to sum up the whole album. It's strange, especially for an album like this, where it's really diverse and the music is moving in different directions and there are different lyrical themes. So I think it needed a beautiful title, something that represented grace and sound and beauty."

And it is statements like that that might have Foo fans a little worried. Have fatherhood and a newfound appreciation for "arrangements" finally caused Grohl to go soft?

"Not at all. I still listen to Slayer once a week," he said. "But a lot of people who came to see us on our first tour in '95 might have been 22 then, and now they're as old as me.

"It's all about musical exploration," he continued. "We have moments of kick-you-in-the-teeth rock stuff, but there's a lot of power in that lower dynamic too. To be able to get a room to pin-drop silence with an acoustic song that means something is sometimes even more powerful than all the lights and lasers and amps in the world."

Source : http://www.mtv.com/news

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl Photo: MTV News

(Watch Dave Grohl talk about his emo past.)

Dave Grohl knows all about angst and emotion. After all, he was a key part of the most angst ridden band to arguably ever don a flannel shirt. So, you would think he can relate to all the young guys like My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco who wear their emotions on their sleeve while carrying the "emo" rock torch forward. And, he does. But, he also knows that sometimes you need to lighten up and just rock out.

On the new Foo Fighters record, Grohl takes a friendly jab at the genre with "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)." The drummer turned guitar-playing frontman is quoted as saying: ""The title has nothing to do with the song - it's placed right in the middle of the record, where there's a lot of dark stuff. It's a pretty heavy record. We have a couple bummer tunes. I felt the album needed something to sit in the centre and balance it. So we had this lighthearted song, and I called it Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running) because it seemed like a little ray of hope in the middle of all this despair."

It's always been interesting to me to think about this evolution of music. I grew up on the music of the 70s and 80s that was full of booze, women and other excesses. Rock was rock and "emotional" tunes were left for "light fm" radio. And, even though I have my down moments, I'm a generally optimistic person so I always wondered what the grunge kids from the 90s were so upset about. Life is good. Enjoy the ride. And, if you're angry about something, get involved and do something to impact change. It's quite therapeutic - maybe even more so than a late night dashboard confessional.

Source earvolution.com/:

By George A. Paul, Staff Writer

07/29/2007 08:57:54 PM PDT

Brian Molko, of Placebo, performs during Projekt Revolution at the Glen Helen Hyundai Pavilion in Devore July 28, 2007. (William Vasta / Correspondent)

Brian Molko was the first musician to allude to the Projekt Revolution tour moniker from the main stage. "We are Placebo from London and we come in peace," said the androgynous singer/guitarist.

CONCERT REVIEW
Projekt Revolution tour featuring Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance
When: July 28
Where: Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen, Devore

Photo Gallery: Projekt Revolution, 07/28Although there was no subversive activity going on in Devore on Saturday, more than 20,000 concertgoers did turn up at Hyundai Pavilion to watch some of the hottest names in alt-rock music - notably Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance.

These days, it doesn't get any bigger than Linkin Park, a NuMetal survivor from the early '00s. On the Rick Rubin-produced "Minutes to Midnight," the sextet went in a more atmospheric direction, downplaying the aggressive sonic approach that became a Linkin Park calling card.

The CD debuted at No. 1 and sold an astounding 600,000 copies - a feat that hadn't been achieved since last Christmas. Meanwhile, first single "What I've Done" was lodged atop Billboard's Modern Rock chart for nearly four months.

Then there's My Chemical Romance. The emo/goth-tinged New Jersey rock group is touring behind platinum seller "The Black Parade," a critically acclaimed concept album about death. It was one of 2006's crowning achievements.

Early on at Glen Helen, the moderate sized crowd was well-behaved; no problems with local police officers were reported by mid-afternoon. Several My Chem fans wore face paint and dressed up in high school marching band-type attire, a nod to the band's leader Gerard Way.

Merchandise booths did big business, with long lines throughout the day. Unbelievably, one concessions area ran out of Papa John's Pizza for two hours around 3 p.m.

More venue restrictions than usual were in place (or maybe it was just business as usual for the 2007 season): few items were allowed in the gate and all water bottles had to be emptied into plastic cups before entering the orchestra section. Staffers also were extra vigilant about people's seat locations in that area.

Linkin Park delivered a powerful performance, led by lead vocalist Chester Bennington's mighty roar. Joe Hahn worked his turntable skills with a scarf over his face.

Obscured by a curtain, the members were initially seen in shadow playing the brief instrumental "Wake," the first of eight "Midnight" tracks. It dropped to reveal a steel industrial building-type stage setup. A beaded curtain projected various images.

Chunky guitar riffs were at the fore during down-to-my-last straw sentiments of "Given Up," where Bennington repeatedly screamed "put me out of my misery." Older radio hits ("One Step Closer," "Crawling," "Numb") packed a wallop, but several quieter new numbers ("Little Things Give You Away," "In Pieces," the "Joshua Tree"-era U2 grandeur in "Shadow of the Day") proved to be equally compelling.

"Pushing Me Away" got an effective acoustic treatment with only Bennington and co-vocalist/guitarist Mike Shinoda, while "Breaking the Habit" started in a similar way before the band joined in. Toward the end of the 90-minute set, Shinoda thanked fans for their patience and continued support. "One Step Closer" was among the encores.

My Chem was fiery - both literally and figuratively. During their allotted hour (everyone else got 30-45 minutes), flames shot up and pyro ignited. Even without the theatrical underpinnings of regular headlining gigs, the guys were still riveting.

The proceedings kicked off with a frantic "This is How I Disappear." Singer Gerard Way, clad tastefully in black, worked the stage with a vengeance and snarled like the rabid dogs shown on the backdrop. Frank Iero took his frustrations out on his electric guitar on "Sharpest Lives." Fans went crazy and sang along loudly during the hit "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" as Way spat out the lyrics.

Way did a verse of The Doors' "People are Strange" before the Damned-styled insanity in "House of Wolves" and drummer Bob Bryer's kit rotated. The bombastic "Welcome to the Black Parade" featured everything from piano and militaristic drums and Queen-styled guitar work from Ray Toro. A definite highlight.

Other highlights included the German music hall vibe in "Mama," "You Know What They Do," where Way planted Iero with a big kiss amid a key lyric, the singalong "Teenagers" and emotional closer "Cancer."

Elsewhere, Taking Back Sunday emerged with all guns blazing for "What's it Feel Like to Be a Ghost" and continued to impress on a clutch of hard-edged, melodic alt-rock songs ("A Decade Under the Influence," "This Photograph is Proof," "You're So Last Summer," "Make Damn Sure"). Leader Adam Lazzara took awhile to warm up, but eventually did his usual showmanship routine (lassoing the microphone cord, adopting an announcer shtick).

Finnish goth-metal group HIM is immensely popular here. 2005's "Dark Light" CD went gold and has some appealing tunes ("Rip Out the Wings of a Butterfly," "Vampire Heart"), but few managed to wow in an outdoor setting. Ville Valo, clutched a cigarette for most of the set and sang in a low croon about suicide and death. A moody take on Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" was snoozeville.

Placebo's dark sex and drug-filled rock tunes are akin to walking through a seedy nightclub unsure what is around the next corner. From the droning early hit "Pure Morning" and a harrowing "Meds" (as in "you forgot to take your") to feedback guitar-laden "Nancy Boy" and primal "Taste in Men" (featuring guitarist/bassist Stefan Olsdal's interpretive dancing), the trio was a rush from start to finish.

 Source : dailybulletin.com/

by Travis Hay 

July 27, 2007 7:00 a.m.

As previously reported, music journalist Michael Azerrad is releasing a film about Kurt Cobain tiled "Kurt Cobain: About a Son." The film has no footage of Nirvana or Cobain (except for one shot of Kurt at the end) and features only images of Seattle, Olympia and Aberdeen being shown while snippets of interviews Azerrad did with Cobain are played over them. It is scheduled to be released in October.

An excerpt of the film made its way onto the Internet and you can view it below. However, a warning to those with sensitive ears, there is some objectionable language in the clip.

In other words, don't click play if you don't like swear words.

But first, here is a clip from a music news show that explains what the movie is about. It also features footage from the film and the bad words are bleeped out.

Here is the aforementioned leaked clip. Again, don't click play if you have sensitive ears!

Source : http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/

Kerrang! have obtained the full tracklisting for HIM's upcoming new album 'Venus Doom'. The full tracklisting for 'Venus Doom', which is released in the UK on September 17 through Warner Bros, is as follows:

01. Venus Doom
02. Love In Cold Blood
03. Passion's Killing Floor
04. The Kiss Of Dawn
05. Sleepwalking Past Hope
06. Dead Lover's Lane
07. Song Or Suicide
08. Bleed Well
09. Cyanide Sun

According to frontman Ville Valo, it will be their heaviest album yet. Venus Doom will still be comprised of Valo's allegorical lyrics, comparable to HIM's older albums. He has also noted that the music on Venus Doom will be comparable to Metallica and My Bloody Valentine. The longest song on the album is 10 minutes long, while the shortest song is 4 and a half minutes. The album was produced by Tim Palmer (Ozzy Osbourne, Dredg) and Hiili Hiilesmaa (The 69 Eyes, Apocalyptica).

The album's cover artwork [picture] was painted by artist David Harouni. Ville Valo purchased one of Harouni's paintings at New Orleans' Harouni Gallery and later asked Harouni if it could be used as the cover for "Venus Doom." "Venus Doom" will be a 2-Disc release with one CD of music and a DVD of bandwork.

The band played the track "Dead Lovers' Lane" live at the Give It A Name Festival in Birmingham, England, April 28, 2007 and in Glasgow, Scotland, April 29. The band also played the tracks "The Kiss Of Dawn" and "Passion's Killing Floor" at the July 7, 2007 concert at Brussels, Belgium.

Also the band filmed the music video  for the first single off the album, "The Kiss Of Dawn" starting June 21 in the Los Angeles area. Meiert Avis, who directed HIM's previous video Wings of a Butterfly, was the director. The production team put out a casting call for a "beautiful girl (model type) to perform in the lead role of the video". Auditions were held on June 19. Ville Valo has stated that the song "Kiss of Dawn" was for a "close friend who committed suicide soon after the band wrapped the recording sessions for Dark Light". Sheet music for the song "The Kiss of Dawn" was posted on their official website prior to the release of the album, giving fans from the US the chance to submit a video of themselves playing the song from their own perspective.

The 3 winning videos will be featured on HIM's upcoming live DVD and the winners will receive a signed copy of said DVD. The song "Passion's Killing Floor" is on the Transformers soundtrack, which was released on July 3, 2007.

A secret key at Heartagram.com, "February 12, 1961", can be entered and 40 seconds of "Love in Cold Blood" can be heard. This could be a reference to the date on which the Soviet Union launched Venera 1 towards Venus.

07/27/2007

Source : ultimate-guitar.com

by  Steven Friederich

July 27, 2007 8:05 a.m.

AUBURN -- Call it Ozzfest lite, if you want.

But, truth be told, Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution probably had better, more energetic bands than Ozzy's "Freefest" this year.

But that's what you get what you charge a few bucks for fans to get into a venue, rather than have your diehard fans spend countless hours at a computer only to be rejected.
Bands rocking the nu metal's summer tour 2007 debut, here at the White River Amphitheatre, included My Chemical Romance, HIM, Taking Back Sunday, Placebo and Julien-K and The Bled, among others.

Not that the Linkin Park crew is entirely without their own generosity. Not at all.

Is Link Park's graduation from playing alongside the likes of Limp Bizkit and Korn to performing alongside the like of My Chemical Romance and Taking Back Sunday a good thing? Discuss. Photo by Steven Friederich

As Linkin Park rapper Mike Shinoda pointed out to the thousands of fans in attendance, a buck from each ticket goes to the American Forest for the Global Relief Event. (There was also a global warming awareness booth prominently on display during the festival).

"I love this (Bleeping) planet," lead singer Chester Bennington succinctly put it.

"We also converted most of our fleet of trucks and buses into biodieisel for this event," Shinoda said. " … And those two things alone are worth about 350 tons of carbon dioxide that we didn't waste."

"That's like if we had one car and didn't drive 400,000 miles or 14 times around the earth," Bennington said.

"And that's just the biodiesel part," Shinoda added.

Here's a photographer's notebook of the event, as I saw things while snapping dozens upon dozens of photos, with a select few posted with this review and its accompanying photo gallery (the rest at my Flickr page, courtesy of www.stevenfriederich.com ).

LINKIN PARK

Busting out with "One Step Closer" and continuing on from there with "Somewhere I Belong" and "Papercut" kept the audience ramped up. At first, it seemed like half the amphitheatre was empty --especially during all of the other acts -- but as soon as the rap-rockers showed up, so did the fans.

In droves.

About the only down time was toward the middle of the set, which combined a lot of slow songs. But ending on "Bleed It Out," along with the encores "What I've Done" and "Faint" more than made up for the choke point mid-way through.

Observation: A good chunk of the audience were emo-laced guys wearing girl's jeans. That's a far different crowd than when Linkin Park was kicking it with the likes of Korn and the evils of Limp Bizkit.

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

Unfortunately they only played an hour-long set.

That's a far cry from the nearly two-hour set the band put on in Seattle at the WaMu Theatre in May. It was at that performance they quite theatrically dressed entirely in band uniforms from their Black Parade album with an entirely choreographed stage presence.

This time around lead singer Gerard Way sported shades and looked like he had just woken up from a long slumber. Yeah, they played most of their hits. But they didn't play them all. They didn't have time. Although the biggest highlight from MCR were their guitar players who really seemed to come out of their shell from their last Seattle performance.
Favorite quote from Way: "Wave those (bleeping) jazz hands!"

My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way: "Man I hope all this sun doesn't cause me to burn to a cinder like it did those vampires in Blade. Photo by Steven Friedrich

TAKING BACK SUNDAY

It's surprising given how often the lead singer strangled himself with his own microphone cord during just a one-hour set that he hasn't killed himself by now or done serious damage. That aside, his truly dynamic stage presence carried the show, and really sucked the audience into their set. Knowing that this guy popped off all the major hits while basically doing a suicidal dance makes this a remarkable band.

PLACEBO

These guys really became the most forgettable act on the main stage. Audience members seemed to enjoy themselves but no one seemed as interested in them compared to every other act on the main stage. It's not necessarily their fault but it seems like they were, perhaps, miscast in Projekt Revolution. And that, perhaps, they catered to an older crowd.

This is a '90s band that is basically making a comeback and here they are trying to get into this niche of these emo and rap-rock fans. That's not to say they should be kicked off the tour, it just was weird.

HIM

Don't smoke, kids. Or you'll end up with a voice that sometimes cracks up like Ville Valo. Although he does have a sly smile and more often than not just plain rocks. The rabid guitarist and others on stage were great to watch, reminding me of a bunch of hamsters on crack, continuing to jump up and down.

JULIEN-K

Made up of the former members of the '90s band Orgy (remember their cover of Blue Monday?), they gave as truly dynamic performance with crisp, clear vocals, great engineering and just this really neat British rock sound.

The best bet out of their performance was thesong "Technical Difficulties," which actually can be found on the Transformers Soundtrack.

MINDLESS SELF INDULGENCE

What can I say? The lead singer, Little Jimmy Urine, is a moron. The music is mediocre and I truly, truly wish I could have enjoyed the music more but the lead singer just kept talking in between each song, ranting these homophobic, racial derogatory statements that truly had no place at this concert. Plus he said stupid things all the time -- "Just because you're wearing black doesn't mean you're black." What does that mean?

Major props to the female bassist, Kitty, who crowd dived and seemed to get the audience pumped up despite the lead singer's lackluster attitude. My favorite quote of his? "Shut up. I'm a tortured artist. I'm so tortured I might write a hit record." Good luck to that.

MySpace and Dark Horse Comics Launch ''MySpace Dark Horse Presents'' at Comic-ConMySpace and Dark Horse Comics Launch ''MySpace Dark Horse Presents'' at Comic-Con (Graphic: Business Wire)

Online Resurrection of the Famed Comic Book Anthology Series to Feature Comics Including Joss Whedon (Creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) & Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)

(Click to enlarge)

By BusinessWire

By Lesley Savage

7/26/07, 5:45 pm EST

Since a bit of footage from Kurt Cobain: About a Son hit the Web, there’s been a lot of speculation about the movie, due in October. So we got the scoop straight from the film’s co-producer, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana author Michael Azerrad, who first met Cobain to interview him for a Rolling Stone cover story.

You’ll hear only one voice in About a Son — Cobain’s — and there’s no footage of Nirvana or even Kurt himself in the film, which Azerrad reiterated isn’t a documentary but a retelling of Cobain’s life in his own words. “It was more about bringing him into the realm of a three-dimensional human being, not the cartoon rock icon,” says Azerrad, who drew from a bank of more than twenty-five hours of previously unheard audio tape for the project, which was directed by AJ Shnack. “It’s not a look back at Kurt, it’s a look into Kurt.”
The visuals are comprised of award-winning cinematography shot on 35 mm film of the three Washington cities in which the rocker lived throughout his life: Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. One final image of Cobain shows up at the end of the film, but Azerrad declined to reveal it (“It’s like giving away the end of Harry Potter”). There’s no Nirvana music on the soundtrack, either. Instead, the film is set to an emotional original score by Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and a collection of Cobain’s favorite artists including Queen, David Bowie, Mudhoney and Iggy Pop (the soundtrack will get a September 11 release on Barsuk).

“We haven’t really heard him speak at length, so just to hear his voice is such a tremendous insight into his personality,” says Azerrad, who adds that many people have left screenings in tears. Cobain drops a lot of hints about his impending suicide in the tapes, but Azerrad says he probably chose not to believe it when the pair were spending hours together talking candidly. “You’re so close, or it’s just so improbable, that you just sort of ignore it,” he says. “So, if there’s a practical lesson in the film it’s that — listen to him speak, he was telling people what he was going to do.”

Photo: Micelotta/Getty

Source : http://www.rollingstone.com/

Thursday July 26, 3:00 pm ET Starting July 25th, Zvents Visitors can Win Tickets for This Highly Anticipated Tour With Headliner Linkin Park

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, visitors to local events search engine Zvents, can enter to win tickets to the Projekt Revolution tour featuring Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, and more. The promotion, co-sponsored by new media marketing agency Fanscape and tour sponsor NowWhat.com, gives fans the opportunity to be a part of a cutting-edge music experience at one of fifteen different concert venues nationwide from August 14 to September 3, 2007.

To enter, fans must visit the Zvents website to register, selecting from the available dates, which show they would like to attend. Tickets will be given away in each of the following markets: Virginia Beach, VA, Wantagh, NY, Cuyahoga Falls, OH, Darien Center, NY, Bristow, VA, Toronto, ON, Clarkston, MI, Mansfield, MA, Camden, NJ, Hartford, CT, Syracuse, NY, Holmdel, NJ, Noblesville, IN, Tinley Park, IL, and Englewood, CO.

Fifteen lucky winners will be randomly selected to receive one pair of tickets to an upcoming Projekt Revolution tour date. The sweepstakes is open to all U.S. residents.

San Mateo based Zvents is a leading event search technology company, which brings its users local content and encourages them to contribute, share and promote events with friends. "Zvents is excited to be a part of this huge collaborative event which brings together an intense group of musical talent," said Ethan Stock, Zvents CEO and co-founder. "Our goal is to help fans connect with the performers that they are enthusiastic about."

Co-sponsoring the sweepstakes along with Zvents is NowWhat.com, a tour sponsor and provider of exclusive Projekt Revolution content, which can be seen at www.NowWhat.com/music, and Fanscape, one of the online marketing companies for the tour.

Also available on Zvents are tour dates, artist images, profiles and more. Fans can easily access this by searching for their favorite bands on www.zvents.com.

About Zvents

Zvents helps users discover things to do. As the leading event search technology company and developer of the Zvents Media Platform, Zvents' events search engine powers media and publishers with dynamic local event content and a reverse publishing platform. Zvents provides a complete and compelling user experience, enabling users to find, contribute, share and promote events. The company aggregates rich event information from the open web, user-contributed content, and links high-quality editorial content from partners with its local event index. For information, visit www.zvents.com.

About Fanscape

Fanscape is a leading new media marketing agency focused on reaching and activating the newest generation of web and mobile savvy consumers through online and wireless media. Aimed at producing measurable results, Fanscape offers a variety of below-the-line services including: email marketing, internet-based grassroots marketing, online publicity, website partnership integration, online promotions, sponsorship & branding opportunities, and mobile campaigns. http://www.fanscape.biz.

Zvents
Joy Wong Daniels, 650-288-0884
joy.wong@zvents.com
or
Fanscape
Michelle Sandoval, 323-785-4208
MichelleS@Fanscape.com

Source: Zvents

July 26, 2007

Launch Radio Networks reports: Director A.J. Schnack has posted a message at his online blog announcing that "Kurt Cobain: About A Son", Schnack's documentary about the late NIRVANA frontman, will open in New York City on October 3, Los Angeles on October 5 and Seattle on October 10. According to The Daily Swarm, the screenings will allow the film to meet Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences requirements to be considered for the upcoming Oscar nominations, which stipulate that a film must be screened theatrically at least once during the year of nomination.

The film will play in New York at the IFC Center, in Los Angeles at the Nuart Theatre and in Seattle at the Varsity Theatre.

"Kurt Cobain: About A Son" consists of footage of the three Washington state towns where Cobain lived — Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle — overlaid with recordings of his voice. The recordings are from a series of interviews done by journalist Michael Azerrad for his book "Come As You Are".

The movie's score was co-written by DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE frontman Ben Gibbard. A soundtrack album will be released on September 11.

Watch a minute-long clip from the film below.

Source : blabbermouth.net

 

The soundtrack for a documentary about the late Kurt Cobain, set for a Sept. 11 release through Barsuk, will feature songs from some of the former Nirvana frontman's favourite artists and his musical contemporaries.

About A Son is based on more than 25 hours of interviews conducted by journalist Michael Azerrad, the author of 1993's Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana. The interviews are combined with footage of Washington cities Seattle, Aberdeen and Olympia, where Cobain spent most of his life, shot by director AJ Schnack.

The soundtrack features excerpts from those interviews, along with songs by the likes of Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Mudhoney and Mark Lanegan. The film's score was written by Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard and Nirvana producer Steve Fisk.

About A Son made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. The film will open in New York City on Oct. 3, in Los Angeles on Oct. 5 and in Seattle on Oct. 12. Additional cities and opening dates are expected to be announced soon. A DVD release will follow.

Here are the tracks on About A Son:

01. Steve Fisk and Ben Gibbard — "Overture"
02. "Never Intended" (interview excerpt)
03. Arlo Guthrie — "Motorcycle Song"
04. The Melvins — "Eye Flys"
05. "Punk Rock" (interview excerpt)
06. Bad Brains — "Banned In D.C."
07. Creedence Clearwater Revival — "Up Around The Bend"
08. Half Japanese — "Put Some Sugar On It'
09. The Vaselines — "Son Of A Gun"
10. Butthole Surfers — "Graveyard"
11. "Hardcore Was Dead" (interview excerpt)
12. Scratch Acid — "Owner's Lament"
13. Mudhoney — "Touch Me I'm Sick"
14. "Car Radio" (interview excerpt)
15. Iggy Pop — "The Passenger"
16. Leadbelly — "The Bourgeois Blues"
17. R.E.M. — "New Orleans Instrumental No. 1"
18. "The Limelight" (interview excerpt)
19. David Bowie — "The Man Who Sold The World"
20. Mark Lanegan — "Museum"
21. Ben Gibbard — "Indian Summer"

date: 07/26/2007

Source : http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/

Check them out Kiss of Dawn FOH.com Gallery You need to register to be able to view ALL the pictures and be a part of one of the LARGEST HIM Communities out there on the internet.

Source : FuneralOfHearts.com

    

Click on the albums to get more informations on the Limited Edition, Special Edition, and Regular Edition of Venus Doom and how you can pre-order them TODAY!

Source : funeralofhearts.com/

July 24, 2007

H.I.M.'s video for their new single, "Kiss of Dawn", has been posted at YouTube. The clip was shot last month in the Los Angeles area with director Meiert Avis, who has previously worked with U2, AVRIL LAVIGNE, JENNIFER LOPEZ and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, in addition to helming H.I.M.'s "Wings of a Butterfly" video.

Fan-filmed video footage of H.I.M. performing "Kiss of Dawn" live at VK Club in Brussels, Belgium on July 7, 2007 has been posted at this location.

"Kiss of Dawn" is the first single off H.I.M.'s new album, "Venus Doom", due in North America on September 18 via Sire. The CD was recorded with producer Tim Palmer (U2, SWITCHFOOT, HOT HOT HEAT) and co-producer Hiili Hiilesmaa at Finnvox Studios in Finland.

With "Venus Doom", the band's sixth album, H.I.M. fans can anticipate a decisively heavier sound, influenced by BLACK SABBATH, old-school METALLICA and SOUNDGARDEN, among others.

"Venus Doom" track listing (not confirmed):

01. Venus Doom
02. Love in Cold Blood
03. Passion's Killing Floor
04. Kiss of Dawn
05. Sleepwalking Past Hope
06. Dead Lover's Lane
07. Song or Suicide
08. Bleedwell
09. Cyanide Sun

"Passion's Killing Floor" is included on the soundtrack album to Michael Bay's "Transformers", which came out on July 3 via Warner Bros.

Source : blabbermouth.net

New single and biggest UK show to date for 30 Seconds To Mars

Musician and actor, Jared Leto, fronts the American rock band 30 Seconds To Mars, who are releasing their third single 'From Yesterday' on August 13th. The track is taken from the band’s latest album 'A Beautiful Lie'.

'From Yesterday' is released as a special limited numbered edition 7" picture disc with an exclusive, previously unreleased acoustic version of 'A Beautiful Lie' recorded for NRJ in France on the 'b' side.

The release of 'From Yesterday' is the latest instalment of 30 Seconds To Mars' plan for world domination. The band has just confirmed their biggest UK show to date - at Brixton Academy on September 14. The show is already close to selling out.

Live Dates:
11/08 - Summersonic, Tokyo
12/08 - Summersonic, Osaka
14/09 - Brixton Academy, London

The single ‘From Yesterday’ is out on 13 August

www.thirtysecondstomars.com

Source : http://the-raft.com/

25/07/2007

The whole debacle explained here

Yesterday we heard that...

"Dani Filth, Cradle Of Filth's vocalist, in a state of advanced drunkenness, was arrested after the Metalcamp show in Slovenia. Dani allegedly strated to throw the scene ventilators into the security forces and the audience, making the public hoot him.

The setlist was four songs shorter for this reason and the band retired quietly from the stage. Dani was the only one left on stage, trying to break the floodlights, in order to throw them away. Let's hope Dani will be released until August 16, when the band is supposed to take part in Stufstock Festival (Romania)"

Today we hear that...

"The organizers of this year's Metalcamp festival, which took place July 16-21, 2007 in Tolmin, Slovenia, have released a statement to BLABBERMOUTH.NET regarding the rumors that CRADLE OF FILTH frontman Dani Filth was "arrested" following his band's performance at the event.

According to a report posted on the Romanian web site Metalhead.ro, Dani, "in a state of advanced drunkenness," grabbed several portable fans (the kind used to control ventilation) from the stage and threw them at the security guards and the audience, which caused the crowd to start booing him. As a result the group's concert was cut short by "four songs" and the band "quietly" left the stage.

CRADLE OF FILTH arrived to Tolmin on Thursday evening [July 19], one day before their performance. Since we, Master of Metal (Metalcamp promoters), are good friends with Dani and the crew, it was a very happy reunion. Everyone was in a very good mood as the atmosphere at Metalcamp festival area is really frendly and relaxed.

The next day CRADLE OF FILTH started with the usual festival duties such as interviews and press conferences and photo sessions, and, of course, performed the main stage at Metalcamp festival. I guess the best explanation is that Dani just had a bad moment and was not in the best mood. However, it was never his intention to act against his fans or Metalcamp festival. Later on he explained that the [group's set] was shortened [by] three songs because of bad communication with his sound guys on the stage. Any rumors about Dani being taken to jail are far from truth.

07/25/2007 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
courtesy of NME.com

The Kurt Cobain documentary which features voiceover from the Nirvana frontman himself is due to be released in the U.S. in October.

AJ Schnack's documentary film Kurt Cobain: About A Son is set to come to cinemas in New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle in early October.

According to Schnack's blog: "The film will open in New York at the IFC Centre on Wednesday, October 3 at Landmark's Nuart in Los Angeles on Friday, October 5 and in Seattle at Landmark's Varsity on October 12. Additional cities and dates will be announced soon."

The film sets impressionistic images of Washington state cities Seattle, Aberdeen, and Olympia to audiotape interviews of Cobain conducted by journalist Michael Azerrad for his book Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana. ,P> An original score for the film has been composed by Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard.

The movie had its U.S. premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival last month.

The soundtrack, which features David Bowie, the Melvins, and Scratch Acid, will be released by Barsuk Records in the U.S. on September 11, reports The Daily Swarm.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE GAME!

BURBANK, Calif., July 25, 2007 - With the recent release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the popular series by J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, 20Q.net, Inc. and Radica USA Ltd., a subsidiary of Mattel, Inc., are calling all Muggles.

In an effort to develop the game and help "teach" 20Q™ about the world of Harry Potter, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, 20Q.net and Radica are encouraging Harry Potter fans to visit http://20Q.net and "train" this timeless game of 20 questions with characters, places and objects from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Radica will manufacture and distribute the new 20Q™ Harry Potter game later this year.

Earlier this year, the three companies announced plans to introduce the newest version of the popular 20Q™ handheld game, 20Q™ Harry Potter, based on the popular movie and book series.

20Q™ is an artificial intelligence engine, website, company and phenomenon. Originally available only online, the game had players simply think of an animal, vegetable, mineral or other item, and 20Q™ attempted to guess what they were thinking of in 20 questions or less. Each time the online training game is played, 20Q™ "learns."

20Q™ Harry Potter is the most recent edition to the popular handheld game that has been described as "spooky" and "deceptively addictive." Based on the original 20Q™ game that won over millions of players from around the world, 20Q™ Harry Potter asks fans to think of people, places, and things from the books and films. The goal? Try to stump the game's remarkably clever and precise artificial intelligence with knowledge of Harry's wizarding world.

by Jonah Weiland, Executive Producer
Posted: July 24, 2007

"The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite" #1 on sale September 19

One wouldn't expect the alternative medium of choice for a musician of Way's success to be comic books, but once you get to know him it all makes sense. This isn't a guy who started a band simply to be famous; it really is about the creative process with Way.

“The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite” #1, the first issue of Way's first comic series, debuts from Dark Horse Comics this September 19th, written by Way with art by critically lauded artist Gabriel Ba (“Casanova”) and covers by James Jean ("Fables"). Much like Way's band, his comics series is hard to define – sure, it's got superpowered individuals wearing costumes, but the Umbrella Academy isn't your normal super team.

CBR News spoke with Gerard Way and his editor Scott Allie back in February of this year, and with the release date fast approaching, we reconnected with Way to get an “Umbrella Academy” update.

Gerard, where in the world do we find you today?

I am actually in Portland, Oregon.

Are you up there meeting with Dark Horse?

Yeah, I'm actually moving here in September. I just finished packing up my whole life at my parents and as soon as I finished – it took me like a week – I got on a plane and came here. I like to write here anyway. I've done this once before where I came up, holed up in a hotel and I script.

Where are you moving from?

Really, no where, but all my stuff was back in Jersey with my parents.

"The Umbrella Academy" #1, page 1

It's interesting you mention that you're moving to Portland because earlier this week we ran a story about the Portland comics scene, so the timing is quite perfect. Obviously New York and Los Angeles are major centers of comics creators and publishers, with Portland home to a number of publishers and a large group of comics talent. There really seems to be a great creative community up there.

That's really what attracted me. The main thing I look for in a place to live or have been looking for since I started traveling a lot is where are the artists and where are the artists I feel like I connect with. Los Angeles has quite a few places, but I don't know that I function too well out there. I'm not a very LA person. When I got to Portland, though, I discovered a lot of very cool artists and it's a lot more my speed. I like trees and stuff like that, too.

Considering how dry it's been in LA the last year, the number of trees is definitely dwindling!

Yeah, but I should say I really do love LA. I get along pretty well there, but I think after a while it would stop making sense to me because I'm not someone looking for more attention. When you're in my situation, you're either part of the circus or you're not part of the circus and I'm not. It's just harder in Los Angeles not to be part of the circus.

There's a lot of truth in that. I grew up in LA myself. I've traveled all over the world and each time I go abroad it reinforces just how bizarre a town LA is, so I completely understand where you're coming from.

"The Umbrella Academy" #1, page 2

I know a bit about the book from reading previous interviews here on CBR, but I always like to hear directly from the author himself what the book is about, so if you don't mind give me the pitch on “The Umbrella Academy.”

The main thing you should know is that it's not an easy book to describe, but I think that's great and part of what works. When I started the band, I couldn't describe the band's aesthetic and that worked. I wanted to create a book that was something that I wanted to read and see. That's where it began and is the basis for whatever I do creatively.

The nuts and bolts of it are you're dealing with all these extraordinary kids who were born with amazing powers, about 44 of them, and this weird space alien adopted as many of them as he could, but you don't know what his agenda is exactly. He found seven of them and raised them to basically save the world. He was a really bad father — you know he's an alien and doesn't really know how to raise kids. So you end up with these really mal adjusted kids that are for the most part failures, emotionally and physically. One of them dies and they all end up leaving home and disband. The book begins when the father dies of a heart attack and they all come together for the funeral. Things snowball from there.

It's hard to call it a super hero book, because it's really not. Especially when you see the pages that are coming in from Gabriel. I guess it has the trappings of super hero books as people are wearing costumes and there are powers, but it doesn't feel at all like a super hero book. Nor is it a slice of life book. It's heavily inspired by “Doom Patrol,” and I guess I'm injecting a lot of that into it. There's a lot of personal things going on, but they're fighting very bizarre things and sometimes they're even fighting concepts and not necessarily super villains. When it comes down to it I think it's really a mouth piece for what I've been through and seen and being a part of a slightly dysfunctional family — in my case a rock band — and carrying a lot of weight around on your shoulders and feeling all sorts of pressures and having a desire not to be part of that circus.

"The Umbrella Academy" #1, page 3

You brought up a couple of interesting things – you brought up how it's inspired by “Doom Patrol,” which is another dysfunctional family of sorts. You also spoke about how the death of their adoptive father really launched this team, despite the fact they didn't have a good relationship with their father. If you don't mind me asking, have you experienced significant loss like that in your life?

Yeah. The death of my grandmother was the turning point in my life. A defining moment. It was literally right before we were about to record “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.” It completely changed everything and it gave me a certain sense of purpose I didn't have before. I was dealing a lot with loss and sometimes death is kind of a starting point. The journey from that death in making “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge,” then going on tour and gaining a lot of clarity about death, it changed my perspective and I started to be OK with it and accepted it. I saw the beginnings of things following that death. Of course, the biggest difference in my grandmother's death and the death in “The Umbrella Academy” is that I had an amazing relationship with my grandmother and she's the one person who fostered all this creativity in me. You write what you know and that's one thing I know, now. It takes you a long time to realize that, but once you get there people start to connect with that.

One thing that follows with dealing with the death of a someone close to you is a gaining of personal fortitude, and it sounds like that's another message you're bring with these characters – that as messed up as they are, there's an inner strength they find that keeps them going and ultimately brings them back together.

Right and there are so many issues between the characters just from the way he poorly raised them. Yeah, it kind of forces them to face each other and forces them to face these issues, while at the same time trying to figure out how the world is about to end. It's like this really strange doomsday clock over a situation that involves a lot of interpersonal problems and they're really the only people who can stop it, all the while a lot of them hate each other.

"The Umbrella Academy" #1, page 4

Yeah, there is a fortitude that's gained from dealing with death and it completely changes who you are. It either turns you into a person who feels sorry for themselves for the rest of their lives, or you find this new kind of strength and you learn how not just to deal with that death, but everything in life. I find that's a really interesting subject.

You also mentioned earlier how you carry around the weight and pressures of being in a top-selling band. Is working on “The Umbrella Academy” a cathartic process for you since it allows you to get away from that circus?

Completely. More importantly, it's an outlet. So, maybe not so much getting away from it, it forces me to face it and deal with it. These are characters that have, for the most part, gone through very similar things. You're in a situation you fell into and you're great at what you do and love what you do, but people start to misinterpret you or miss the point. I think the deal with “The Umbrella Academy” is that in the story a lot of people over the years who were looking at these characters, and they're now in their 30s, a lot of people missed the point of them and a lot of people didn't quite get it and misinterpreted them and it became this thing that it wasn't. When it stopped feeling special, they separated. Anyone who's in a band that you start for the right reasons should be able to relate that, but really it's applicable to everyone's lives.

I know you're a life long comic fan and you've been something of a booster for comics your whole life, too. At the same time, though, when you began on this journey with “The Umbrella Academy” and decided you wanted to do this, did anyone at your label or in your management sort of wince or question why you wanted to make a comic book?

No, in fact a lot of people, the band included, to them it was almost the natural progression for me. When they heard I was going to do it they were like, “Well, of course you are.” All of the skills I bring to “The Umbrella Academy” I've also applied to the band – my heavy sense of design and writing. It's almost like every tool I used with the band could just as easily be used with a comic, a novel or a movie. They were all very excited for me. That's just the sort of person I am.

"The Umbrella Academy" #1, page 5

I've had offers to act in movies and they expected me, knowing who I am, to turn that stuff down, but when it came time for me to chase something down that I really wanted, they understood. “Of course he's not going to be an actor and live in Hollywood. He's going to write comics and live somewhere weirder!” [laughs]

Portland in this case! One interesting aspect of the opening of this series is that you don't tell an origin story for these characters, per se.

Right. I find origin stories to be kind of boring. It starts in the middle of things happening, at a certain point of their lives that's their defining moment and how they're brought together in pretty fantastic ways. There's even stuff that happens with the biology of the characters that bring them together.

You've obviously poured yourself into comics your whole life, but I'm assuming before this you haven't scripted comics that much before getting into “The Umbrella Academy.”

I haven't. I was much more a designer and when I was doing comics my scripts were always very loose because I was drawing them. That's not the case now. That was the biggest hurdle to get over. My editor, Scott Allie, was a major help and one of the greatest collaborators I've ever worked with and a fantastic editor. He trained me immediately. I had an idea how it was done, then I sent him my scripts and he said, “You actually know what you're doing, but let me show you how to tweak it and refine it.” Over the course of writing two or three issues, I feel like I've gotten really good at it. It was hard work. When I was doing the first issue I kept thinking, “Man, comics are hard work!”

What do the members of the band think of the book thus far?

They love it. I think they're excited about it because it's something totally different than what I do with the band and we've made a very big point of that. We've kept the band and the book as separate as can be because the book, if it's going to survive and have series after series, it needs to do so on its own merits or it'll just end up being something that people like myself who read a lot of comics don't respect. It's got to slug it out for itself.

"The Umbrella Academy" #2

I think my band mates enjoy seeing me do all these crazy things that I couldn't necessarily do with the band. I mean, come on, I've got 12 year old kids practically fist fighting the Eiffel Tower. That's something I could never do with the band. And when they read the comic the band's just like, “Wow, this is nuts!”

They don't try to get involved by offering up how they would handle certain characters themselves?

It's funny you ask that. Ray [Toro] read the first issue and he literally was coming up to me and saying stuff like, “I think you should remove this ellipse and this and …” It was really amazing because it's exactly how he and I work together on music. Like, “It'll be more sinister if you get rid of this or that…” and he was right. I love that he was able to pick it up, love it and then offer up sound advice. He comes from a filmmakers background, he's a great editor in terms of film, so a lot of what he does is applicable to what he does here.

I've seen in a number of interviews with you that folks get really excited when they learn you once interned at DC Comics. Do you have any interesting stories you can tell from those days?

Well, I worked in editorial, in the FedEx room, which is the photocopier room, too. So, me and two other guys, Joe and Lateef, and Lateef later went on to edit “Impulse.” So, we're working there, I photocopied a bunch of stuff and the great thing about that is I got to see a lot of really amazing stuff up close, like “Stardust.” I held a lot of those originals and I photocopied a lot of those originals. “Preacher” was also really huge at the time, so I got to photocopy those for the editors and I got to see all this artwork up close. I guess I learned a lot about storytelling by reading every page I copied, sometimes without any word balloons.

Umbrella Academy art by Gabriel Ba

It was fun. I kind of became a weird little mascot in a lot of ways. The funniest story is they had a big Christmas party that I went to at the Roseland, which is a giant venue that bands play at and I got completely wasted! [laughs] It was all of Warner Bros. so DC Comics were there, all of Time Warner in this huge place and I got totally drunk and I ended up throwing up in the bathroom. This one editor, who I always thought didn't like me, was being very cool and brought me a glass of water while I'm throwing up wasted. And I said to him, from inside the stall while he's standing on the outside of the stall, “Man, I always though you hated me!” He was like, “No, what are you talking about?” So, that was weird to come back to the office after that.

Can you mention his name?

I honestly can't remember. I think he's still there. It's been close to ten years now, so a lot of those names kind of blur together. A lot of the guys who I worked closer with like Joe Cavalieri, who's my friend, and Eddie Berganza, Axel Alonso, Mike Carlin, Maureen McTigue, I remember them, but this was a guy who I didn't have that much dealings with.

Now, considering your history with DC, how and why did “The Umbrella Academy” end up with Dark Horse?

Umbrella Academy art by Gabriel Ba

Because to me Dark Horse is the company that has defined what modern comics is and defined this new format of limited arcs in limited series. Stories that have a definite ending, but they take a lot longer to get to because the work comes out in graphic novel form – pamphlets them graphic novels – and they come out when the artist has something to say. If you look at your favorite comics, they're generally limited arcs – “The Dark Knight Returns,” “Sin City” and “Watchmen” are good examples. Some of them have sequels, but they come out when the author has a story to tell. I find that fascinating and since Dark Horse defined this, they made it their thing with guys like Mignola and Eric Powell.

Plus, I wanted to be somewhere more indy, more mom and pop, more like a family. I still have a lot of love for the other publishers, but they're corporations and that's' cool, but I wanted to do something very creator owned where it's a bit different, as opposed to having to crank out monthly books. I'd never make my deadlines under those circumstances. I've always loved Dark Horse books, especially as an adult I think I really made the right choice for what I wanted to do.

Source : http://www.comicbookresources.com/

by Travis Hay at March 19, 2006

Former SPIN columnist and current major label employee Sarah Lewitinn, aka Ultragrrrl, made a rather interesting post on her blog a few weeks back regarding My Chemical Romance. Personally, Lewitinn's SPIN column never really appealed to me. I always saw it as a bit of bragging on her part, sort of a way of showing readers how cool she is by using her ink space to declare "I'm so much cooler than you because I get to hang out with rock stars and you don't."

All personal bias aside, I completely respect and admire her post on My Chemical Romance because it did to me what solid music journalism is; it made me think. In a nutshell she heavily questioned a majority of music journalists' abilities to do their jobs (something I do on a regular basis) and threw out an interesting and somewhat controversial conversation starter for music fans in their 30s:

My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana

Yeah, I know, it's a bit of a tough pill to swallow at first. But if you think really hard about it and take off your Seattle music fan blinders, it's true. She begins by operating under the premise that:

Most music journalists have no clue whatsoever what kids like. They're 35 year old men writing for other 35 year old men who think they're actually writing to 21 year old college kids.

I find it incredibly hard to imagine that the average 35 year old rock journo can relate to MCR. But you know, it's not for them to understand or relate to. It's for them to accept, and until they do, they will be absolutely irrelevant to anyone who matters.

Amen sister! That sentiment somewhat sums up why publications like Rolling Stone are usually completely off base when it comes to writing about hip hop and urban culture. It also explains why younger, knowledgeable and qualified music writers often get overlooked for jobs by music publications and newspapers because a writer applies who thinks the last record by The Rolling Stones was 2005's best album.

The whole older music journalist phenomenon doesn't make much sense to me considering newspapers and magazines are constantly trying to find ways to attract younger readers in order to survive and maintain relevant, yet they hire older writers to cover music and pop culture, two of the topics that are most likely to attract younger readers. I think a paper would want to hire younger journalists to cover topics that have cultural impacts on its younger readers. It would benefit the paper because 1) the reporter will better be able to understand the cultural effects of the issues and 2) be able to write in a manner that appeals to younger audiences.

Anyway, back to what former Miss UltraGrrrl posted on her blog. She continues in a follow-up post:

Nirvana probably seemed like they made a larger cultural impact because you were LIVING it. You were a teenager or perhaps a bit older, and to you, nirvana was probably your life... which is what MCR is to the kids. Lord knows all I could think about was Nirvana when I was a teenager. It drove my parents up the wall. But in my school, the kids that felt the same way I did were few and far between in relation to the kids who were into Phish, DMB, the Dead, and hip hop.

Now, if you don't believe that MCR is this generation's Nirvana, then just who exactly is? Fall Out Boy? The Killers? MCR might not have much of a cultural impact that is visible to non-teenage listeners, but comparing the impact to Nirvana, which rid the world of Michael Bolton, Michael Jackson and hair metal, isn't too far out of line.

I go to a lot of all-ages shows and I've covered numerous concerts where the target audience is between the ages of 13-21 and I can't tell you how many MCR tee-shirts and jackets I see. At last year's Taste of Chaos concert young girls were wearing black shirts and red ties with red and black makeup on, mimicking the look of MCR singer Gerard Way. These were young, teenage girls dressing like their punk rock hero, and the kicker is that MCR hasn't really been in the mainstream for more than a couple of years.

So Seattle music fans, while I know you are all highly protective and partial to Saint Cobain and the way he changed the face of music (I include myself in this grouping) it appears the perspective of an outsider may have shed new light on things.

You can read Lewitinn's entire blog post here but you have to scroll down the page to the March 7 entry to see the MCR/Nirvana post. If you're like me it made you think a little bit, so please let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear them.

Source : http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/

by  Travis Hay at July 24, 2007 5:50 p.m.

As you already know, Projekt Revolution is coming to town tomorrow. It's a great chance to see some of the bigger names in modern rock, showcasing 11 bands. One of the headliners, My Chemical Romance (a band some think is the closest thing this generation will get to Nirvana ), was in town earlier this year. Ear Candy correspondent Steven Friederich was there and took some fantastic pics of Gerard Way and the rest of the MCR gang. Here they are for your viewing pleasure so you can do a little Internet prefunking for tomorrow's daylong rock extravaganza.

All photos by Steven Friederich

It could be because Buzznet is currently upgrading the video system.

or that the video is buffering. buffering (another word for loading ) is the process of storing information before displaying it. Any media played from websites are buffered, meaning bits of it are downloaded first and then played. 

Your problem can caused be any of these:

The website from which you are playing the video is experiencing heavy bandwidth traffic, or is busy. This can delay the buffering process.

Your internet connection can't download the data fast enough.
Another program is competing with your internet bandwidth usage. Examples are P2P programs (Emule, limewire....), download managers

so play the video only after the buffering is complete (when the video ends) close programs like emule while surfing the net and check you internet connection, and changing your cache bandwidth might help (Click start > control panel > internet options > general tab > settings button. Adjust the slider to increase cache. But this won't really help with streaming video.)(You can check out your bandwidth at sites like http://www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/)

Source : http://www.yahoo.com

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copy the code and paste it in the custom stylesheet area (NOT IN THE Shout Out OR IT WILL SHOW UP THERE!!!)

click save and you're done

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July 20th, 2007 by Alex

Q) So obviously, it’s been a dramatic couple of months, three months here, with everything that’s gone on. What is your general sense of things and what happened and, I guess, were you surprised by the way John and Rocky kind of handled things?

A) Well, I wasn’t really, yes, I guess I was surprised that things are handled, but it’s something that had been building for a long time. I wasn’t even sure what you were talking about when you said, “Dramatic couple of months.” I was like, “Hey, which thing is he talking about?” I am also married and I’m stoked about that. It all sort of happened in the same weekend, actually, with the lineup change and getting hitched and all that stuff and finding Will and Troy. But yes, honestly, it’s once, again, been something that is very, very good for the band and we are feeling a lot healthier. We’re out there enjoying each other and we’re out there because we want to be out there, not because we have to be or because we’d rather be somewhere else. It’s made everything a lot better. It’s made the shows definitely a lot better because everyone enjoys playing the music, so everything feels really good right now.

Q) Do you see is this the line-up of Evanescence now? Can you see making an album with Troy and Will?

A) Troy and Will are both very passionate and creative. I love playing with them. Actually, I feel like we are creative with the music that’s already there, and I think there’s definitely potential there for us to write together at some point. I would love to. I don’t even know what to say right now. We just wanted to really work on making sure that the tour for the rest of The Open Door was set and we’re set now. So, I just don’t want to get in the way of what they want to do with Dark New Day because I actually really admire and respect the band. I think their music is really great. I just want to leave it up to them, but we’re definitely having a great time playing together and I hope we get to play together a lot more. I would write with both of them; I think they’re very talented.

Q) Is there new music around yet for Evanescence?

A) Not like songs. I don’t know how to put it, but it’s the spin that they put on the songs that are already there and sort of formulating intros and in-betweeners of songs and things like that that we just couldn’t do before. It was like we were sort of trapped, playing song after song and everybody’s trying to get off …. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s a little bit of a rebirth for the band right now; it’s good.

Q) Are you at all documenting the tour? Are you planning DVD, live album, anything like that?

A) Actually, we have been documenting. I haven’t really figured out exactly what I want to do with it yet. We got a bunch of pictures and I finally right now decided, okay, I’m just going to put a ton our pictures up because there’s too many priceless photos from us in Japan, Russia and all over the place that are really fun with fans and stuff like that. I think it would be cool to make a DVD. I just don’t want to do it any time really soon because we did do one on the last album. Every time we put something out, I just want it to be something new. I don’t really want to make the same product again, so I think we need to find a creative way of doing it, so it’s something different.

Q) Why did you decide to do Family Values, as opposed to maybe your own tour for the summer?

A) Well, we are going to do our own tour at the end of the year, so it’s kind of the right thing to put. We couldn’t decide whether to do our own tour right away or do something after. Since this is available for the summer, it’s definitely good for us to hit more people. I think that being able to be a part of a festival with a lot of other good bands is a good thing. And it’s fun; it’s the whole summer vibe. There are so many festivals going on, and I think Family Values is a really, really great one to be a part of because not only are there, like I said, a ton of great bands, but it’s $10. So, I think if I was going to choose which show I would go to this summer, it would be Family Values, so that’s the one we jumped on.

Q) Can we expect any collaborations on stage?

A) Not as of yet. I know people keep asking if I’m going to do the acoustic version of "Freak On a Leash" with Korn and I, obviously that’s totally up to them and I haven’t heard anything about it. I’ve seen the set that they’ve been playing this summer. We played three shows together in Europe and it’s awesome and heavy and I wouldn’t be surprised if they just want to play all their songs heavy and sort of skip the whole acoustic thing, so don’t plan on it. But if they ask me, I’m totally willing.

Q) Are you surprised at how many different radio formats have embraced Evanescence? You guys, in the early days even in Christian formats, but now it’s rock, hits, adult contemporary. You’re all over.

A) I think it’s really cool. I definitely think that’s a huge compliment for us and it’s something that makes sense to me because musically for me as a writer, I listen to everything. I listen to stuff on every format we’re played on, so it makes sense to me that our music touches all those people because I’m definitely influenced by music all the way across the board. But I think it’s a very cool thing.

Q) A lot of people are actually comparing Kelly Clarkson’s sound and new album to you. Are you flattered or offended by that?

A) I haven't heard that yet. I’ve heard, I guess, the single, but that’s it. So, I guess, I have to listen to it. I’m not a person who has Kelly Clarkson CDs in my collection, but I never want to just look at somebody and judge them and say, “Okay, I’m not going to buy your CD.” It doesn’t mean the music can’t be good, so I’ll check it out.

Q) You’re co-headlining with Korn. Korn actually headlined the first Family Values tour. Are they offering any words of wisdom from their experience to you?

A) No, we haven’t really talked. I think they’re awesome. We love playing with them; we’ve played with them quite a few times just one-offs and festivals and things during summers past and this summer. It’s really cool to be on stage with people that you admire so much and that inspire you. I think that is actually the best thing about doing a festival, really, as an artist. It’s because you get to go out each day and kind of go to a show, you know? Stand on the side of the stage and watch what the other bands are doing and sort of go, “Oh, that’s really cool.” But I get inspired of what you could do better, so yes, they’ve been doing this since, I guess they started this thing.

Q) You're a classically trained pianist, it’s obvious. Your voice is, though, so unforgettable. It’s haunting, it’s beautiful. Were you trained professionally to sing as well?

A) Thank you, no. I actually was a big choir nerd from the beginning of as soon as it was something we could do in school. I think probably when I was 13 years old all the way through high school and when I did take college for one whole semester, choir is really the big thing in my life. I love it. I think a lot of what I learned there was not only how to warm up the right way, but how to blend your voice and not always try to be standing out. How to make it fit, I don’t know, as an instrument with other instruments. I definitely learned a lot in choir, but I’m not really vocally trained. No, I’m sort of self-trained.

Q) What can people expect from Evanescence’s performance at the Family Values Tour in terms of production and such?

A) Thank you for asking. Actually, we’ve been all over the country this year and honestly for most of touring The Open Door, we’ve been all over the place. I think we hit every inhabited continent in six months and that’s not even an exaggeration; that’s the real truth. That’s just my awesome quote. So, we’ve been having to tour around with sort of a minimized production. I don’t know if, that’s not right grammar-wise, but with minimized production. It’s cool because now finally, we have the opportunity to spend some more money and get some rad set going. My lighting director and I got together and brainstormed and came up with some, a really cool set idea. It’s all basically LEDs and mirrors and things and it’s just going to be really, really cool. We’re just hoping that we’re going to be on late enough that we get the sun down and it’s not all in the light.

Q) How are you going to blend in your old music material with the newer and why does it all seem to work well together?

A) I think it works great together. It’s still Evanescence. The Open Door and Fallen are different, definitely, but I think they also fit really well together. We play about probably 50/50 of both albums.

Q) Do you keep in touch with your ex from the band Seether?

A) No. Unfortunately, I think keeping in touch with ex’s is really hard and if you can make it work there’s probably something going on that shouldn’t be going on. No, that hasn’t worked for us. I don’t have any hard feelings whatsoever, it’s pretty old news. But no, we haven’t been able to keep in touch.

Q) What is it about Korn that made you want to join with them for this tour?

A) I’m definitely inspired by them musically. I loved them when I was younger, too. I remember going, I think, to Family Values a long, long time ago when I was probably 17 years old or something, if that’s right. Maybe it wasn’t Family Values then, maybe it was just Korn, but it was something that was very exciting for me. And especially them live, I think is something that’s really inspiring. I just don’t see the downside. I think they put on an amazing show and the other bands on the bill, there’s a lot of other bands that are going to be really exciting to see this summer.

Q) In the music of Evanescence, there’s a lot of spiritual overtones. Naturally, a lot of people would misrepresent that with religion, but from your opinion, how would you differentiate spirituality from religion?

A) That’s a really hard question. For me, music is spiritual. It’s definitely something that, I don’t know, is really deep inside me. I think when you’re soul searching and putting it into art, that is a spiritual thing and music has always been that for me. It’s definitely me sort of either trying to find myself or fix my problems somehow, just by talking about them. It’s therapeutic and definitely something really special, so I do look at it that way. I don’t know how else to put it other than music is just really, really close to my heart and the whole point, really, for me lyrically especially, but also musically is sort of this deep soul searching. It’s cool. It just comes out that way and I think that’s why a lot of people connect to it on a level that makes them feel like they can be so close to us.

Q) Do you listen to other music other than metal? Is there a lot of soul music that inspires you?

A) I don’t listen to a lot of metal, that’s for sure. I really do listen to all kinds of music, how can I even say? It changes all the time. I sort of go through moods. Right now I just got married two months ago. So, I’m listening to John Mayer a lot and a lot of, I guess I’m feeling like I’m getting older and sappy. I love Tori Amos, I always have. To me, she is very passionate and heavy. I don’t know; it all depends on how you listen to stuff. I love Depeche Mode. I love Korn and I love Nine Inch Nails. I love Soundgarden so much. Why don’t they get back together? It doesn’t mean I don’t listen to Marvin Gaye and love it a whole lot. So, there’s definitely a whole lot of music that I embrace. It doesn’t matter what genre, what feeling, as long as it's real.

Q) Are there certain songs that you didn’t expect that you would grow to love more than others, or that you are looking forward to playing every night?

A) There’s a song that’s not a single and will be a single and I don’t know, I don’t know if it could be a single. It’s called "Your Star" and it’s on The Open Door. I remember when Jay and I were writing it, we loved it so much. Well, we loved all his songs so much. When you write every song, you think it’s the single for like two weeks and you’re obsessed with it and then, you get over it. "Your Star" was definitely one that was special when we were writing and dreaming of playing it live and how awesome it would be. Then, when we first started touring, of course, Terry had had a stroke and a lot of the songs were harder for him than they had been before. That was one of the songs we couldn’t play originally when we were touring this album. As his arm has improved and his playing has improved, we finally decided we were going to start really practicing it and try to play it. We started playing it probably, I don’t know, four months ago or something. It’s become the favorite of the set every night and we ended up putting it at the end and making it the big finale. Every night when we play that song, it’s not only the most fun and passionate because it’s difficult to play and it’s heavy, fun and groovy, but it always reminds me of how lucky we are to have Terry and how grateful I am that he’s been able to recover and shred again.

Q) And you mentioned that it’s not going to be a single, do you guys have in mind what you want to do for the next one?

A) Yes, the next single’s going to be "Good Enough," which is very, very different than any song that we’ve ever made. We actually just shot the video in Budapest.

Q) Can you tell us a little about the video?

A) I don’t know if I can. It’s not finished yet; we’re still working on all the production, but it’s very cool. We worked with someone who’s awesome at special effects and has done a lot of really big things so there are some real special effects. A lot of it, it’s not CG at all. It’s actually really, really real special effects going on. I don’t know, I don’t want to say what it is.

Q) It's a very interesting time in your life when you just get married. You never experienced it before. Are you worried at all or think about how this may affect your writing?

A) Right now, I’m not writing. When you’re writing, I definitely kind of delve back into the times when I’ve hurt when I’m writing. It’s really hard for me to write when we’re on the road just because I’m so focused on the show and the production of the show and the songs and how we’re going to fill up all the time in between the songs and everything else. There’s so much going on. Plus, interviews every day and sound checks, there’s just too much going on for me to really zone out and get alone with the piano for hours on end and write a song. It hasn’t affected me in any kind of bad way and I definitely think it’s okay to be happy. It feels good to be happy and it doesn’t mean that I can’t write anymore.

Q) Do you think this will be the most diverse group of fans you’ve seen at a concert? You’re going to have your rap metal enthusiasts from back in the day, your Top-40 fans and I’m sure you’ll have some old Pantera metal heads. I was wondering, do you think you will have seen a group of fans this diverse in any live show you’ve ever played?

A) I definitely think we have. Especially, I think, just now on our last tour in Europe, we went all over the place. We were in Scandinavia, the Middle East and Europe all together. Every show you play is with a different band or a different group of bands because it’s a festival. We not only play with Korn. We also played with Iron Maiden, Lamb of God. I’m trying to think – I know there were some that were completely different, bands I never heard of from Norway, France and all kinds of other stuff. I definitely have seen a lot of different crowds and there is a distinct difference between the pop crowd who just wants to hear "My Immortal" and the metal crowd who just wants you to get off the stage usually. So, I think it’s going to be great. I think we fit pretty well into this despite what people think. I’m not really sure what people think. I think if people have seen us live then they understand that we fit here. But I don’t know, I’m excited. It’s always fun to turn people around because I feel like we do have the ability to do that at our shows.

Q) As a woman who’s getting hard rock play on radio, did you think it was a little bit tougher to make that crossover to getting play on the same stations as Korn, your Static X's, your Lamb of Gods and bands like that?

A) I think we definitely did face some, I don’t know, what’s the word, prejudice in the beginning, sexism, whatever it is. I just remember when "Bring Me To Life" was a single that we were trying to push at radio and get play. When they were going to the big stations that think they know everything in the big cities a lot of them were saying, “Look, you’ve got a song that the first power of any first ten or fifteen seconds of is a girl on the piano. There’s no way we’re going to put this on active rock or whatever it is.” But I think, I hope, this is me maybe just being idealistic. I think that really good music is going to speak for itself. I think it was a great song and the fact that it picked up really, we owed to the fact that fans were calling and going, “Wow, why aren’t you playing this song? This song rocks. They’re playing it on this other station in this other town and I’m listening to it on the Internet. It’s incredible; you should play it.” Then, it sort of caught up and became a hit. I hope, honestly, that that can happen with great music still. But if something is good even though it’s different, it can be good – that’s how we grow and change and find new eras of music.

Q) You have talked a lot about being a perfectionist when it comes to writing and recording music. Does that apply to live shows as well, in terms of rehearsing and talking about production, things like that?

A) I wouldn’t call it being a perfectionist. You can’t be a perfectionist when you’re talking about the live show. The whole point, it’s live, and stuff’s going to happen and stuff’s going to be different every night. I think that’s what’s cool about it is we’ve already made the recordings and they’re perfect. They’re finished and they’re like that forever and you can listen to CD any day and it’s going to sound exactly the same. When you come to a live show, you get those little; I guess you’d call them mistakes, because they’re there. Mistakes and changes and parts when you know the music moves you so much that you just have to do the solo differently or whatever. I think that’s what makes it good is that you can just do whatever you feel, live.

Q) You've also talked about how the first album was a little more simple and a little more accessible. Is there a sense of relief with the reception fans have had for this album?

A) Yes, definitely, I would say relief is a good word, also just kind of excitement. It makes me happy and it makes me love our fans more. You have to know that the hardcore fans are pretty much usually going to like whatever you do, just because they love you and they’re happy to hear something new. At the same time, it definitely has the opportunity to go the other way and go, “Ah, this sucks, nothing’s ever going to be as good as the first album,” and all of that. I don’t feel like there’s been very much of that, which makes me very happy because I definitely did write a lot more on the second album than on the first one. I definitely did take a lot of chances with writing with Terry and the way that we wrote and the way we abandoned structure and that sort of thing a lot of the time. So, I think it’s really cool. Yes, I’m very happy about the reception to the new record. I love the fact and appreciate the fact that when we go and play a show it seems like most of the time people are singing along to the new singles as much as the old ones.

Q) Outside of Evanescence, how has 2007 treated you so far?

A) Really good, I think. I don’t even mean to say, “I think.” It’s been really good. Life wouldn’t be life without its ups and downs. And, of course, with the band changes, that was the only really hard thing for me, making the call and having to make the call and sort of everything that went on that made the call have to be made. Other than that, everything has been really good. We’ve toured, like I said, all over the place and gotten to see a lot of new countries and a lot of new fans and a lot of old fans, too. Getting married kind of trumps it all. It has been a very good year so far.

Q) What does music mean to you?

A) That’s such an impossible question. Why do people ask that question? Music means so much to me it would take me three hours to answer.

Q) Has the success you've experienced in the music industry so far kept you happy? Have you found happiness through everything? Is it comforting to you?

A) I’ll put it this way – I found happiness, but I definitely don’t attribute it to my success. I don’t mean to say that I don’t appreciate the success, I’m not very, very grateful for it and glad to have it, but success will not bring you happiness, that’s for sure. It has made life a lot more complicated and a lot of music, especially when you become successful is business. And I think that’s one of the saddest things of all. I think the hardest struggle for me is having to unplug my phone half the time and just turn off and remember that I’m an artist. I’m a musician and that’s it and I don’t want to do the business all the time. You know that when you do that you’re probably being taken advantage of because you’re not on the ball. So, I think the success is what makes it hard because people are constantly trying to take advantage of you. I have found happiness by remembering to stay grounded and by remembering the success isn’t the most important thing in life and by taking chances knowing that I might lose the success, but being okay with that, if that makes sense. You’ve got to have a life separate from it, for sure.

Q) What's the worst thing about riding the tour bus?

A) Well, being the only girl on the bus most of the time usually means there’s pee all over the floor and on the seat and seat’s up and that’s pretty miserable. So, I’m basically the cleaning lady of the bathroom all the time.

Q) Are there any other artists that you would like to collaborate with or work with?

Q) There’s definitely a lot of artists that I would love to collaborate with, but it would just have to be the right project. I definitely don’t want to do any more of those ballad duets with some guy. I think it would be really great to do something unexpected with somebody that does, how do I put this...with someone musically who’s completely different than Evanescence or than me, to be able to come together and make something really cool that’s not like either of us. I don’t know who...I couldn’t put my finger on it yet.

Q) If a local band came up to you and asked you for advice, what would you give them?

A) There’s so much advice I would go back in time and give myself. I would really just say, “Stick to your guns and trust your instinct.” If you’re the one that created the thing, then you’ve got to know what’s best for the music. There’s a lot of people that are going to tell you what will be better, how to change what you’ve made, how to make it more commercial, to make shorter and more to the point and everything. That’s not satisfying. You need to stick to what you know is the best thing, what you know sounds best and feels best to you because chances are people out there buying records are more like you than the big guy in the office with the cigar.

Q) What was your favorite stop onThe Open Door tour?

A) I went different places for the first time so that was really cool. I really liked the way we went through Russia, that was something new. I don’t know if that’s my favorite, darn, we went to Israel. I think that something that, I forget exactly the number of bands, it’s like 50% of bands that book to play there end up canceling for obvious reasons. So, when you actually get there, the fans are incredible. We were having a really, really great show and the fans were so awesome. I was sick and kind of blew my voice out because I was not only sick, but extra excited because the fans were awesome so by the end of it, I was just croaking, but it was the best.

Q) Do you ever find when you’re playing a song live that it takes on a life of it’s own, different from when you initially recorded it?

A) Yes, definitely, especially lyrically. I think for me, depending on what I’m going through in my life, the lyrics take on new meaning. I don’t know if I can give a great example, but, actually I can’t. I can, I just don’t want to be mean. There’s a song called "Lacrymosa" on our album and actually from a Mozart song. When I wrote it, originally, it was kind of about this hard relationship and breakup that I was going through a couple years ago. Now when I sing it live, I realize how perfectly it fits with how I feel the recent band members leaving. As I sing it, it means it so much to me and it’s like I’m singing it about that. I think it’s really great how your life can change and you can still appreciate a piece of music and just see it in a different way.

Q) One of the great things about Evanescence is you have this ability to sort of blend different genres and, like you said, draw from classical with all these different types of music and yet you have an ability to make it sound like it’s your own. Is that a reflection of your own taste in music? What type of music did you grow up listening to?

A) Definitely Evanescence is a big melting pot of different kinds of music that I love and that I’ve been inspired by. But, yes, there’s also more that’s not in there, definitely. I love, when I was growing up and when I was formulating ideas for Evanescence, I was obsessed with the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet and Danny Elfman and Tim Burton movies and that was a big part of it. I would just listen to the scores and then at the same time I loved Soundgarden and Depeche Mode and Bjork, he was huge. I liked Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins and all kinds of, there was so much music right then, to me, that was so good. I guess I still listen to more music from back then than I do music that’s current.

Q) What do you feel that the state of music is right now?

A) I think it’s a little confused. I don’t think rock is dead or anything like that, I just think that we're definitely going through a weird period with, I think, the Internet. A lot of bands are struggling and luckily a lot of new bands that I think a lot of times you would never hear are coming through, which is cool. If you have the time and if you know what you’re doing you can Internet and just go to MySpace and search bands that don’t have record deals. I think that is really cool. At the same time, labels are, I think, pushing signed artists to do things more and more and more that they wouldn’t want to do and put out less music and everything else and water it down because they’re so afraid of losing money. So, I don’t know. I don’t have a ton of bands brand-new that I absolutely love right now. I love Muse. We’ve been listening to that a ton backstage lately. They’re not that new, but I love them. I think they’re incredible.

Q) What kind of music did you play at your wedding? Did you have a band?

A) We had a little band and they were really good. It was just actually two guys playing guitar and singing. They kind of sang half the time, mostly it was just guitar. I don’t know, it was like from Pink Floyd to Cold Play. There was all kinds of really cool, eclectic great music. My dad’s a musician. He plays a billion different instruments; he’s a music man. So, he found these guys and I don’t know what he told them, I don’t know. It was all really, really, really good. I was really happy and I was surprised. I was really scared. We got married in Arkansas and he got a band that lives there and I was really afraid, but it turned out great.

Q) Did you guys have a wedding song?

A) No, not really. It wasn’t really like that. It was really just, it was really small, hung out with family, basically and listened to music and had a little champagne.

Q) How much influence do you have when you’re making the videos on how they turn out?

A) A ton! I’m kind of a freak about it. I’ve written treatments before and sometimes, we do that and sometimes, we don’t. It’s hard. Sometimes when I’m writing a song, it has to be really specific in my mind. Other times, I don’t and I’m kind of confused and want to have a third-party idea. If you find a great director, their head could be just so creative, it is the best, coolest ideas that I’ve ever heard. Mark Webb is the guy we used for "Call Me When You’re Sober," and that one was not my idea. It was one of the ones I was the most hands-off on, like the actual treatment. But I love it; it’s one of my favorite videos. I step back. I was like, “Okay, he thought of something really great.” We talk about it together or I’ll have an idea and it’ll be a scene out of it. For "Lithium," I pretty much wrote the treatment; from rain to snow. I don’t know. I definitely want to be able to guide the thing and make it something like what’s in my head.

Q) How is it being the female, the frontrunner of your band, how is that for you?

A) I don’t know it any other way. I definitely don’t feel like I get treated badly or anything. I think at this point, I don’t know. We definitely get treated pretty well. In the beginning, I don’t know what you mean by the question, by being the leader of my band and being a girl, because I don’t feel like I can’t be a good leader. Within the band, the dynamic of that, I don’t think is weird. I think that definitely as far as just getting respect from the public as a writer was the hard part for me. I feel like I’ve gotten it now, but for a long time in the beginning, it was a tough fight; definitely when Ben was in the band, because it was very important to him for some reason to prove to everyone that I wasn’t doing anything, but that I was just up there singing and that there was some mastermind guy behind the whole thing. By the time he left the band and we made another record, it was really good and we sort of proved everything he said wrong. I think that that changed for us and just the fact that the music is good and there you go.

Q) Would you ever collaborate with a hip-hop artist and if so, who?

A) I would! I listen to people that are way too cool to hang out with me – Dr. Dre. I like the older rap. There’s not a lot recently that’s my favorite. I guess I can’t say that; there’s definitely good hip-hop out there now. That’s sort of what’s dominated the airways the past few years. I don’t know. That’s the kind of thing that I would, when I was answering a question earlier about going and doing a collaboration with somebody completely unexpected. Actually, when we were writing one of the songs on the album, we were just goofing around, middle of the night. Terry and I would stay up until 6:00 in the morning working on a song and then sleep all day. The middle of the night, we were playing and jamming and just, “This would be so awesome. Oh, let’s do this.” We pulled NWA out and actually took part of it and put it in with one of our's song and played them on top of each other. It was really, really cool. It was just for fun, but then, of course, for 20 minutes got the most bad ass thing I could. Dr. Dre could come in and like produce a song and be part of it. I’m sure that he’s way too cool to work with us.

Q) How many songs will Evanescence be playing on the Family Values tour and how does the band decide what the first and last songs will be?

A) Actually, I can’t really answer that. We’re leaving on Monday and we have three or four rehearsal days as a band and we’re going to try to just tighten everything up and try to practice and work out all the songs. We have 60 to 65 minutes, so it will be a pretty full set. I don’t know, it’s all Evanescence music. We’re trying to think of one cover and we’re all sort of brainstorming right now. I have a couple ideas; I don’t want to give it away. I want to do something that’s definitely very different for us and nothing like us. So, we’re working on it.

Q) Do you plan on using any fog machines or pyrotechnics or anything like that to enhance your show?

A) We usually use fog, but I don’t know since a lot of the stuff is outdoor and I think the sun is still going to be setting while we’re onstage. I’m not really sure about that. We do have a really cool set design for this tour; it’s brand-new and we haven’t … yet, so it’s going to definitely have to be some crew rehearsals for getting it all up and down fast enough. It should be really cool. It’s a whole wall of mirrors and a whole bunch of lights playing off of the mirrors and doing a lot, they’re sort of like fun-house mirrors. So, it should be really trippy and weird.

Q) How did the various lineup changes back in the Spring affected the band's momentum or rhythm?

A) I feel like it’s made us a lot better. I feel like before, since things were at a point that they were so bad, that something like that had to happen with the lineup change and that’s never something you want – it’s a last resort. It’s kind of like a relationship. When you try and try and try to make it work and hopefully it does and sometimes, it just doesn’t work anymore and you have to break up. The fact is that it did happen and that now we have Will and Troy, who are such passionate players and such cool guys. When we’re up there now we’re having a lot of fun. I think when you’re onstage and you’re in a rock band, you’re playing in front of 10,000 people, you should be having fun. I think that that has made the show a lot better and given the show the ability to really grow and evolve. We are changing things more often now and getting more creative with the set because it’s not like we’re limping through and having a hard time working together. We enjoy working together and we enjoy playing, so I think it’s really given the band the kick start that it needed and a real breath of new life.

Q) It sounds like you pretty much got married and then quick started getting ready for the tour. As a newlywed, you get married then you’ve got to take off. How does that affect the new marriage thing?

A) Well, we had one week. We went on a honeymoon for a week, so it’s not like we straight to tour the next day. It’s not too different from that because we pretty much came back from the honeymoon, repacked our suitcases and then went to Europe on tour. It’s a little harsh. I think it would be more normal to be at home cooking and cleaning and talking about where to put the china cabinet for the first month or two, but we love it. It’s fun to be able to be together and have an adventure and who knows how long this sort of thing is going to last and how long you’re going to be able to have these opportunities. My husband’s been able to take time off and come with me and then, we’ve been able to have a great time together, so it’s all good.

Q) Could you tell us how you got involved with the Johnny Cash video and what made that so attractive?

A) Yes, I love the song! Johnny Cash is actually not somebody, I’ll just admit this, not somebody that I listen to a whole lot in my life. It’s definitely a little bit before my time. We started doing these interesting covers that really were awesome to me, like more recently, obviously. But it’s not something that I was big into and then I heard the song, "God’s Going to Cut You Down" and loved it. It’s so creepy and real and amazing. I fell in love with the song and got this weird mass e-mail from, I guess, the director [Tony Kaye] that went out to a lot of different people that are in the video that he wanted to be in the video. It just went out and said, “Hey, if you want to be a part of this we want to show different people in the industry,” whatever, I don’t know, in black, representing darkness or the "Man in Black" paying homage to the "Man in Black" in some way. I don’t know – I just thought it sounded amazing and I really, really loved the song and it was the weirdest shoot I’ve ever done because I didn’t see anyone else. We shot for like ten minutes and it was over. I think it was really cool. It’s definitely something different for me and I’m glad I did it.

Q) You’ve obviously collaborated with a lot of different artists. Which one has been your favorite so far?

A) I think the Korn collaboration is my favorite so far. "Freak On a Leash" is a song that I’ve known for years and would listen to in my car before we ever got signed. It’s really amazing to me that I can actually be considered to appear with people like that and that they would have called on me to do a different version of the song. I think it sounds really amazing, and I’m just really proud to have been a part of it.

Q) Are there any of your songs that you’ve gotten sick of playing live or you won’t play?

A) There are songs we don’t play. Sick of, yes, it’s hard to really say that and then I go out and turn around, do them. I guess if there’s one song that, I don’t know, I definitely am sick of "My Immortal." I would never listen to the song by choice. There’s something really special about actually playing it to a big audience because since everybody knows it. So many people do love it, to have everybody singing along and just to have that many people singing the same song at the same time is just a weird, awesome, amazing, creepy feeling. It’s worth it and it makes the song good again, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to it for fun.

Q) With all of the bands getting back together like The Police and The Spice Girls, which one are you most excited for?

A) The Police, we’re going. We’re going to the New York show and we were trying to get tickets. This has been the big talk of the band and crew for the past couple of months is how we’re going to get Police tickets because they all sold out instantly. We finally got our hands on Police tickets and Terry just went and said it was incredible and he wants to go again. I think Tim is going this weekend so everybody, I think, has jumped on and everyone’s found their own way to get to The Police. That’s the one that everyone’s been talking about.

Q) Are there any other ones that you saw?

A) Actually, last night I went and saw, let me try to say her name right – Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries and it was awesome. She’s incredible! I loved The Cranberries and I was way too young to go really see them and they didn’t come to our town. It was really cool to see her, but I really like her new music. It’s really cool! It’s strange and it gets really heavy sometimes, but it’s very sincere and I think she’s awesome. So, I don’t know if you call that reuniting, because it’s not that, but it’s kind of the same thing. I thought she was incredible.

Q) You've talked a lot about the transition in the band with the new guys coming and John and Rocky leaving. There’s been a lot written about exactly what went into it, a lot said from both sides. For the record, what you think kind of went wrong?

A) It’s actually pretty simple. John and Rocky joined the band after Fallen was written and afterFallen was recorded. And they joined the band to be touring members of the band. I don’t think that that means they should be treated any less and not have their picture on the album and all that stuff so they definitely were brought on like full members. We had every intention of keeping them around forever. After Ben left the band, there was sort of this new feeling that we would all really be a real band and all write together and everything would be perfect and happily ever after. When it came time to write The Open Door and we tried to write together, their writing, and actually Will’s writing, too, it just didn’t work. It didn’t fit with Evanescence at all. It was really, really difficult to write together. Terry and I bonded really well as writers. I think that something that maybe not a lot of people know is that most bands the whole band doesn’t just get together and write a song. It’s written by one or two or three people out of the band and that’s about it. This is the case with us. It wasn’t like we could really just sit down and write together and that was very, very hard for John and Rocky and they became just very bitter about it, but decided to stay in the band anyway and stay on as just live guys. They got to play on the record and everything, but it just wasn’t enough for them and they weren’t satisfied creatively, which is definitely understandable to me. I’m very creative and I guess I wouldn’t want to be a part of something where I couldn’t be creative either. So with touring, the more it went out and the more the new album did well, the more they expressed that they didn’t like the new music. That they were unhappy or they would rather be somewhere else and were trying, I think, to get record deals with different side projects that they had going on at the same and that sort of thing. They weren’t planning on leaving us high and dry, so we went ahead and just made the cut where we could manage it and not cancel any shows. Not fun, but something that definitely had to happen and ever since, it really has been a much happier thing being in Evanescence. It’s not so much of a downer every day.

Q) One of the things that happened with you and Ben, one of the sticking points was that Ben wanted to go in a more accessible direction. But do you think he wanted to be more adventurous? He wanted to be a little more innovative and I guess I thought I’d ask how you think The Open Door reflects where you wanted to go in terms of being adventurous and being a little more innovative?

A) I think it reflects it in every way. I think all you have to do is listen to the two albums back to back, and you’ll hear that exactly. I don’t even know how to put it other than I think Fallen is a great record and I love it. I don’t think I could have done better back then. With a lot of the growing that I’ve done personally and definitely musically also, it’s just a more mature, more interesting record, period.

Rap-rockers Linkin Park resurrect Projekt Revolution tour

By: Mike Meyer

After a three-year hiatus, Linkin Park is bringing back their Projekt Revolution tour, which also coincides with the release of their new album Minutes To Midnight. Also on the bill are My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM and Placebo.

The most notable change is that the normally rap-friendly tour is devoid of hip-hop artists in its latest incarnation.

“I personally noticed in the past with the exception of maybe Cypress Hill and Snoop Dogg, there was enthusiasm of the hip-hop artists, but there really wasn’t a lot of overall excitement and I personally felt like the show kind of went into a lull in some cases and I really wanted this to be a really exciting, energy filled; I want the band to be able to feed off of the crowd,” Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington said. “I don’t want to have to warm them back up after a show.”

Putting together a festival tour like Projekt Revolution takes more than a year, Bennington said, beginning with a wish list of potential bands.

“It was a lot easier this year for us to put this tour together because all the bands seemed really excited about doing the tour and it was like My Chemical Romance was on my list from the beginning,” Bennington said. “Taking Back Sunday was on the list from the very beginning and we just kind of went through and it was really great because almost like literally, I think, 90 percent of the bands would do it. And we only ran into a snag in a couple of areas in the second stage where bands felt like they should have been on the main stage, but that’s just a judgment call on our part.”

When asked if Projekt Revolution might continue as an annual tour even without Linkin Park headlining, Bennington was noncommittal.

 “I mean, it’s difficult to think that other bands will have the philosophy that we have,” he said. “I think that there are groups out there that are open and willing to let the other bands just go for it and not limit production and keep the ticket prices down, not make as much money. It’s a difficult tour to put together in a lot of senses because of those reasons and I think that maybe one day it can be something where we can step aside and let it become its own thing, but I think for now, as we’re building its reputation and it’s getting more respect I think it’s going to need us to be at the steering wheel kind of guiding the ship.”

Projekt Revolution Tour feat. Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo, Cricket Pavilion, 2121 N. 83rd Avenue, Phoenix, 602.254.7200, Aug. 1, 1 p.m., $25-$70

Source : http://media.www.ecollegetimes.com/

You won't hear Shaun Morgan's side of the 'Call Me When You're Sober' story on October 23's Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces.

By Chris Harris

Jul 18 2007 8:02 AM EDT

Seether's Shaun Morgan

Photo: Benny Haber

Filed under: HIM News — jennefer at 3:40 pm on Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Jul 17, 2007 06:00 ET

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - July 17, 2007) - Finnish rockers HIM are set to release their second full-length album for Sire Records, entitled "Venus Doom," in September 2007. The band recorded the album with producer and long-time friend Tim Palmer (U2, Switchfoot and Hot Hot Heat) and co-producer Hiili Hiilesmaa at Finnvox Studios in Finland. Palmer also worked on HIM's 2005 album "Dark Light."

With "Venus Doom," the band's sixth album, HIM fans can anticipate a decisively heavier sound, influenced by Black Sabbath, old-school Metallica and Soundgarden among others. HIM is out on the road all summer with Linkin Park on the latter's Projekt Revolution tour.

The cover art for "Venus Doom" was painted by artist David Harouni. Singer Ville Valo purchased one of Harouni's paintings at New Orleans' Harouni Gallery (where the artist represents himself) and later asked Harouni if it could be used as the cover for "Venus Doom." Harouni (whose work can be viewed at http://www.harouni.com) agreed and now counts himself as a HIM fan. Also we now have recent photographs taken by renowned photographer Perou, who has also shot Marilyn Manson, Sigur Ros, and David Beckham.

Hailing from Finland, HIM have been on the rise since the early '90s. With a blend of goth and hard rock, the band, which features Valo, Mige, Linde, Burton and Gas, has taken the music world by storm. Their mélange of melodic hooks and melancholy lyrics made them a fan favorite in Finland where they sold out clubs before ever releasing an album. The HIM craze spread to the U.S. two years ago with "Dark Light" selling more than 45,000 records its first week of release and attaining gold status, making HIM the first band from Finland to sell 500,000 albums in America.

Having completed two triumphant headlining tours with sold-out dates across the country, be sure to catch HIM this summer on the main stage of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour. For tour dates visit: http://pollstar.com/tour/searchall.pl?By=All&Content=Projekt+Revolution&go_green.x=16&go_green.y=15

SOURCE: Warner Bros. Records

17/07/2007 22:32

Finnish goth rocker VILLE VALO discovered the cover art for HIM's new album VENUS DOOM during a shopping trip around New Orleans, Louisiana. The singer stumbled upon artist Harouni during a trip to America and decided one of his paintings would be perfect for the group's new release. After buying the art piece, Valo asked Harouni if he could use it for his band's cover, and, after listening to Him, the artist agreed. A band spokesman says, "Harouni now counts himself as a Him fan."

Source : http://www.contactmusic.com/

(Journal thumbnail by phantomgate (deviantART))

(Soundbuzz, Tuesday July 17, 12:59 PM)

One of the world's biggest rock bands - My Chemical Romance, will return to Australia and New Zealand this November / December. Returning to headline their biggest shows to date, My Chemical Romance will take over arena stages in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and in New Zealand the band will headline for the first time ever in Auckland.

2005 saw My Chemical Romance's first ever Australian tour as part of Green Day's American Idiot Stadium Tour. They secured a legion of Australian fans, and since then the band has hit their Renaissance. 2006's release of 'The Black Parade' saw My Chemical Romance ascend to a new level. The band was named Best International Band at the 2007 NME Awards. NME also awarded the album high accolades, raving: "This is one to file alongside 'American Idiot', 'Doolittle' and 'Nevermind' on your greatest US rock albums shelf".

Tickets go on sale this Friday, July 20th.

Source : http://au.launch.yahoo.com/

MCR is one of the headliners of the tour, which comes to Cricket Wireless Pavilion Aug. 1 and features 11 bands of varied genres performing on two stages. Linkin Park organized the concert, which has been going strong since 2002, and Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington said MCR was a first choice from the beginning, considering the band's popular success in recent years.

MCR released its sophomore album, The Black Parade, in 2006, and the album already has achieved platinum status. The album is a concept record focusing on a character called "The Patient," and Way said the band chose to create an epic record in reaction to a lack of ambition MCR's members saw from other bands.

"Our growth spurts have been so dramatic with each record because we couldn't wait to get to a record like this," Way said. "And I pretty much think that we can't wait to get to the next in that regard."

MCR is also known for its loyal fan base, which is featured in the band's current video for the song Teenagers and make up more than 1 million MySpace friends of the band. Guitarist Ray Toro attributes some of the band's success to the connection the members have made with admirers.

"I think the most important part for a lasting career is to be in touch with your fans and cultivate that strong relationship with them and be very honest about who you are and be honest with your music," Toro, 29, said. "The sky is the limit from there."

According to MCR members, they are in good company with the other bands on the Projekt Revolution tour because they believe all the groups genuinely look to cultivate relationships with the crowd.

"Every single band seems very genuine and honest to me," drummer Bob Bryar, 27, said. "If you do a festival, which we've been doing a lot of lately, you'll run across those bands and you can see right through it, who is really there to put on a great rock show and who really connects with their fans. If you look at this lineup, every single band does."

Source : http://www.azcentral.com/

Teenagers

With lyrics that admit that the percentage of the population who dig Plan B and Bratz dolls are pretty scary (we're talking to you, Joss Stone) and music that sounds like Axl Rose getting his corn rows done by Gary Glitter, could 'Teenagers' be the point where MCR finally ditch Old Lady Emo for her younger, less flatulent daughter? DINGDINGDING! Congratulations, you've just won a stripy glove and some Emily The Strange stationery! None the less this sounds like one of those mockney 'Knees Up Mother Brown' Blur B-sides from 1995 - and how dangerous is that, Daily Mail?

Source : http://www.nme.com/reviews/

Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance also enjoy chart success

The Enemy have shot to the top of the UK album chart with their debut album 'We'll Live And Die In These Towns'.

The Coventry trio are celebrating their first Number One after keeping Interpol off the top with their new album 'Our Love To Admire'.

The victory rounds off a good week all round for indie acts with Arctic Monkeys and My Chemical Romance all charting in the Top Ten of the UK singles chart.

The Sheffield four-piece jumped 18 places to Number Five with 'Fluorescent Adolescent' while the emo rockers went in at Number Nine with 'Teenagers'.

Kate Nash also stayed in the Top Five, dropping one place to Three with 'Foundations' while Rhianna's grip at the top remains firmly in place for the ninth week running with 'Umbrella'.

Foo Fighters have re-entered the Top 40 after their 2005 single 'Best Of You', leapt from 173 to 38 following last weekend's Live Earth concert.

Elsewhere in the album chart, The Smashing Pumpkins went in at Number Four with 'Zeitgeist'.

This week's top ten singles are:

1. Rihanna ft Jay-Z - 'Umbrella'
2. Fergie - 'Big Girls Don't Cry'
3. Kate Nash - 'Foundations'
4. Timbaland - 'The Way I Are'
5. Arctic Monkeys - 'Fluorescent Adolescent'
6. Avril Lavigne - 'When You're Gone'
7. Enrique Iglesias - 'Do You Know'
8. Hoosiers - 'Worried About Ray'
9. My Chemical Romance - 'Teenagers'
10. Natasha Bedingfield - 'Soulmate'

The heartagram is the name of a trademarked symbol of HIM. It is a combination of a heart and a pentagram. Valo created the heartagram the day after his twentieth birthday. The heartagram has been falsely associated with satanism. Valo has said that "the heartagram stands for HIM as a band, as an entity, and for 'love metal' in general." ^[8]

Many fans of the band have heartagram tattoos or tattoos of other HIM emblems (such as the single heart on Valo's right wrist). Fan-submitted photos of such tattoos decorated the lyric booklet for the limited edition of Dark Light.

Ville Valo has allowed his close friend, Jackass star and professional skateboarder, Bam Margera to share the license on the image and Margera is accordingly entitled to use it for his promotional purposes, for example most of his Adio shoes have the symbol.

Because of this, many people think it is Bam's logo. Even so, it has been profitable for the band because it gives them a lot of publicity, and according to Ville in one of his interviews, more people know the band because of the symbol and Bam than because of their music. ^[9]

The video game comedy troupe Mega64 parodied the Heartagram, and HIM, in the episode Ode To Sue on their second DVD with the Horseagram, a combination of a horseshoe and a pentagram, in which one of the main characters, Dr. Poque, explains awkwardly about how he really likes the band, TIM, and what the horseagram on his beanie represents. ^[10]

At the end of the music video for the song DARE by Gorillaz, the Heartagram can be spotted on the wall of Murdoc's bedroom.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/

The Heartagram

The idea of the heartagram belongs to Ville Valo. It is a design based on a heart and the pentagram, and it symbolizes Love and Evil. It combines these two elements, in the way the album titles do. Ville has a tattoo of the heartagram on the back of his neck, Mige on his left hand and Gas on his left leg. For the album Love Metal, the heartagram is placed inside a circle. As Ville says, this was done because this brings forward the design and completes it, but does not mean that if it isn't in a circle, it's not a heartagram. Like with other older symbols- e.g. pentagram- that are surrounded by a circle. In the music video of Buried live by Love, a flashback is made, in the time where the idea of the heartagram was conceived. In this, the pentagram seems to be connected with a heart- the heart from Greatest Lovesongs Volume 666.

Many people associate the heartagram with Bam Margera, thinking it to be his personal logo, but it's not. In truth, Bam has legally licensed use of the heartagram from Valo. Though Bam has met and become friends with Valo and even directed four of the band's videos (and his own version of “Heartache Every Moment”), that is the full extent of Bam's personal involvement with HIM. He is simply a big fan who adorns himself with their logo to show his love and appreciation of the band.

Source : http://hhs.wcs.k12.va.us/

Written by Matt Dupree
Published July 13, 2007

Sometimes amidst all the fun and merriment of the music industry, we forget what it's really all about: money. Sure, it's nice to get them toes a-tappin' and them houses a-rockin', but it don't mean a thing unless those record execs can purchase their weight in blow on a semi-daily basis. And for this reason, I bring you news from the harsher, yuppier side of the biz. This is news from the machine 

My Chemical Romance: After Marilyn Manson said that some of his lyrics were cutting remarks to the band, frontcunt Gerard Way responded that it was a hollow statement because Manson was trying to promote his new record. I also feel that MCR is a big black bag of dog-vomit, but I've got a blog to promote so my comment doesn't count either.

Also, does that mean that Manson wrote that song on the album and those lyrics on the album to promote the album? That is so meta. In other news, Gerard Way announced he would be getting married and that the band has a new album coming out. 

.  

The Used: “Singer” Bert McCracken has a developed a node on his vocal cords and will likely have to undergo major surgery, which will then probably alter his voice forever. THAT, my friends, is the power of prayer. And now that that mission has been accomplished, I can turn my attention to the looming problem of Matchbox 20’s upcoming album. 

10:20AM Thursday July 12, 2007

My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way at the Big Day Out in Auckland earlier this year. Photo / Richard Robinson.

Summer will start with a bang this year, with two big bands announcing New Zealand dates today.

Children of the 60s will be thrilled to hear the Beach Boys are coming to town this November, playing one show at Vector Arena and another at TSB Stadium in New Plymouth.

Joined by special guest Christopher Cross, the Beach Boys will play all their hits of yesteryear on Saturday, November 18, in New Plymouth, before repeating the performance in Auckland the following day.

Tickets on sale July 24, via Ticketek (New Plymouth) and Ticketmaster (Auckland) outlets.

Meanwhile, the youth of today are in for a treat when emo rockers My Chemical Romance return for one show only in December.

After performing to a sold out crowd at this year's Big Day Out, My Chemical Romance will play one night only at Vector Arena on December 6.

Tickets on sale from Friday, July 20, from all Ticketmaster outlets

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/

The cover to ‘Venus Doom,’ the new album from HIM coming 9/17 (and 9/18 in the US) has been officially released. Click Here to view it.

Source: http://funeralofhearts.com/

By Gary Graff Fri Jul 13, 3:14 PM ET

DETROIT (Billboard) - Evanescence leader Amy Lee says that recent lineup changes have made things "more fun" and "a lot healthier" for the band -- which bodes well for its jaunt on the upcoming Family Values Tour with headliner Korn.

Lee, who in May replaced drummer Rocky Gray and guitarist John LeCompt with Will Hunt and Troy McLawhorn, both from the group Dark New Day, told reporters earlier this week that "when we're up there now we're having a lot of fun, and I think when you're on stage and you're in a rock band playing in front of 10,000 people, you should be having fun.

"Troy and Will are both very passionate and creative. It's given the show the ability to grow and evolve. We're changing things more often now and getting more creative with the set. It's really given the band the kick-start it needed."

Lee said she "can definitely see writing" with Hunt and McLawhorn in the future but isn't yet ready to commit to any specific direction for Evanescence's next album. "I just don't want to get in the way of what they want to do with Dark New Day," Lee said. "I actually admire and respect that band. I think their music is really great."

Evanescence is, in fact, focusing most of its energy on preparing for Family Values, which kicks off July 20 in Maryland Heights, Missouri. Lee said the group will have a new stage set for the tour, "a whole wall of mirrors, sort of like fun-house mirrors, and a whole bunch of lights playing off the mirrors. It should be really trippy and weird." The group is also trying to come up with a cover to include in its 65-minute set, "something very different for us and nothing like us. We're working on it."

There's no word yet on whether Lee and Korn will re-create the acoustic version of "Freak on a Leash" from the latter's "MTV Unpluggged." "Obviously that's totally up to them," she said. "I don't plan on it, but if they ask me, I'm totally willing."

Lee said that Evanescence plans to release a new single, "Good Enough," from its 2006 album "The Open Door" and shot a video for the song in Budapest, Hungary, during its recent overseas tour.

After Family Values wraps on September 20, Evanescence likely will embark on its own headlining tour.

Reuters/Billboard

Source : http://news.yahoo.com/

Posted on July 13 2007

The Frontier Touring Company announced today the return of My Chemical Romance, undoubtedly one of the world’s biggest rock bands, to Australia and New Zealand this November/December. Returning to headline their biggest shows to date, My Chemical Romance will take over arena stages in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and in New Zealand the band will headline for the first time ever in Auckland.

2005 saw My Chemical Romance’s first ever Australian tour as part of Green Day’s American Idiot Stadium Tour. They secured a legion of Australian fans, and since then the band has hit their Renaissance. 2006’s release of The Black Parade (Warner Music) saw My Chemical Romance ascend to a new level. The band was named Best International Band at the 2007 NME Awards. NME also awarded the album high accolades, raving: “This is one to file alongside 'American Idiot', 'Doolittle' and 'Nevermind' on your greatest US rock albums shelf.”

Alternative Press declared The Black Parade as “…MCR's whole raison d'etre rolled up into one mega-decibel calling card.” This praise translated Down Under where The Black Parade has been their most successful release to date. The album debuted at #3 on the Australian ARIA Album Chart and has since been certified platinum. These successes have been surpassed in New Zealand where the album debuted at #1 on the RIANZ album chart.

Kerrang! readers voted My Chemical Romance as the best live band of 2006, which is a sentiment reiterated by all after witnessing the band on stage. My Chemical Romance made a triumphant return Down Under earlier this year as one of the Big Day Out’s headline acts. They were undeniably one of the punters’ favourites on the tour. A Blunt Magazine review of a performance announced them as undoubtedly being “…one of the greatest live bands in the world.”

2007’s return of My Chemical Romance promises to be one of the biggest arena spectaculars for the year. Drowned In Sound could barely contain their excitement over a recent performance, gushing: “By the fourth song, we’ve already been hit with flame throwers, industrial-sized sparklers, a revolving drumkit, a rainstorm of black and white confetti and a light show that would make even the most stable of us slightly epileptic.”

My Chemical Romance have a history of selling out shows, and the trend will only continue on their most spectacular tour to date. Don’t miss your chance to see one of rock’s finest bands this year! Tickets are on sale Friday 20 July. For exclusive pre-sale information please head to frontiertouring.com

Wednesday 28 November: Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Ticketek 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au

Friday 30 November: Sydney Entertainment Centre
Ticketmaster 1300 883 622 or www.ticketmaster.com.au

Saturday 1 December: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Ticketek 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au

Monday 3 December: Adelaide Entertainment Centre
Ticketek 132 849 or www.ticketek.com.au

Thursday 6 December: Vector Arena, Auckland
Ticketmaster 09 970 9700 or www.ticketmaster.co.nz

Source: http://www.accessallareas.net.au/

ADELAIDE'S all-to brief taste of rockers My Chemical Romance at this year's Big Day Out confirmed what many of the band's local fans have known for a while.

Singer Gerard Way and his band of minstrels put on one hell of a show.

Finally, after two east coast tours, Adelaide will get to see the band in full flight, when My Chemical Romance plays a headline show at the Entertainment Centre on December 3.

Way is delighted to be bringing the band's full show to Australia.

"We're only agreeing to go places if we can bring our production. Especially in places like Australia, we have a great time there, we've played a few times and we want to step it up."

The highly theatrical show sees My Chemical Romance perform two sets - firstly, in full costume, as its alter-ego band the Black Parade where the band perform the latest album, also called The Black Parade in full, in the order the songs appear on the album.

Then, after a brief intermission, the band return for the second segment, free of the black marching band uniforms, to perform as My Chemical Romance. It is here they bang out older favourites such as Helena, I'm Not Okay (I Promise) and The Ghost of You.

Though the upcoming Australian tour is likely to be one of the last chances the band has to perform as the Black Parade, Way says he's content to just live in the now and not spend his time worrying about the future.

"This is probably the first time in the band's career where I'm not personally putting a big pressure on thinking about what's next," Way says.

"I'm thinking about what it's like to exist in a band and tour so much and keep your sanity and make sure the shows are great. Now it's about really giving a lot to the fans. Every show at this point now is solely about them. So I'm not really thinking about music."

Before it's solely about their Australian fans, My Chemical Romance will tour North America as the No 2 act on Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution package tour.

They've done the Black Parade headline thing in the U.S. already, says Way, so it'll be fun to be a support act again. They did that just recently for Muse - helping the Brits reopen London's Wembley Stadium.

Way, who says he feels "naked" when performing in front of another band's audience, jokes that the Muse experience "was more terrifying than naked!"

It reminded him of the time when My Chemical Romance was barely three months old, and received a last-minute call to open up for emo supremos Jimmy Eat World in New Jersey.

"That was for 15,000, and we had just played a basement for like eight kids," he laughs.

"So playing Wembley felt a lot like that show. We came out and it was like 'Woah, this is a lot of other people's fans'."

The sheer scale of the Muse show, and the numbers they attract, is not neccessarily an aspiration for My Chemical Romance. It's more an inevitability, says Way.

"I guess deep down in the pit of my stomach I kind of know that we'll have that one day. We've just gotta keep working as a band to get that."

In the meantime Way is going to continue to explore all of his talents.

Music is just one creative pursuit the 30 year-old enjoys. Later this year Way will see a comic book series he created The Umbrella Academy hit the shelves in the U.S.

With all his time dedicated to work, there's still one thing Way needs to take care of.

"I'm still homeless, and it's starting to get to a point where it's getting really old, and I really need to settle down somewhere," he says.

"I'm a very unattached person so I could kind of drift wherever I want, which is a great, liberating feeling. But sometimes when you're home off the road, if you don't have a home, you start to feel like you're still on tour."

* My Chemical Romance plays the Entertainment Centre on December 3. Tickets go on sale July 20 from Ticketek.

Source: http://www.news.com.au/

A hint of Queen and a dash of Iron Maiden, the music My Chemical Romance churns out is electrifying. Since the success of My Black Parade has not gone to their head, it's time for another album. Ray Toro, the band’s lead guitarist, in conversation with Mathures Paul

When a group's music is described as "a weirdly catchy hybrid of goth, glam, metal and punk", you have to be open minded to appreciate its tracks. Though some media reports have labelled My Chemical Romance's music as "alternative rock", "pop punk", "punk revival" etc, the band describes their efforts as "violent, dangerous pop".
Listening to their album will remind you of the music of Queen, Iron Maiden or Beastie Boys. Elements of the fantastic and theatrically astounding creep into the band's music, making it a journey into the unknown, a place where thoughts of return tickets can be abolished. The group's most recent album from EMI, The Black Parade, is a treat for the ears.
When the group went into the studio to record The Black Parade, preconceived notions as to the album's final version were absent. Nothing in life can be planned. "You never decide on the number of songs before going into the studio. We just kept writing until we felt we had nothing more to write. The best songs are usually easy to pick out from the rest," says Ray Toro.
Formed in 2001, My Chemical Romance features Gerard Way (lead vocals 2001 to present), Ray Toro (lead guitar, backing vocals, 2001-present), Frank Lero (rhythm guitar, backing vocals, 2002-present), Mikey Way (bass, 2001-2007, on hiatus) and Bob Bryar (drums, 2004-present). It was only a few weeks after the 9/11 attack that Way and Pelissier decided to form the band. When the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre, Way's approach to life changed, making him pen Skylines and Turnstiles. My Chemical Romance's first practise session was at Pelissier's attic, where the songs Our Lady of Sorrows Cubicles were recorded. Once the group was signed with Eyeball Records, Frank Lero heard their music and decided to join. One of the first bands to offer free downloads through PureVolume and MySpace is My Chemical Romance. The band has a huge following and their songs are different from the usual stuff you hear.
The Black Parade is a celebration of life and death. A serious thought runs through the album making the listener feel that pent-up emotions have inspired the lyrics. "I think these themes are universal. Everyone can relate to them. Everyone has thought of what comes after death," adds Toro.
A sequence of events has led to The Black Parade becoming popular. On 22 August last year, the group played before a packed London Hammersmith Palais. When the name of the album was announced, 20 people dressed in black capes started roaming around Hammersmith. Just before the band took the stage it announced that instead of My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade would perform, leading to mob fury. By the time the confusion was cleared up, The Black Parade had connected with the audience.
So, where does Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge end and The Black Parade begin? Is it a continuation of the last album? Or is the concept of this album completely different? "I wouldn't say the two are connected. Revenge is a very loose concept, it was never fully realised and for the better I think. There were more important things to write about."
Moving back in time, Roy recalls the reaction of the band members when they heard their first track being played on the radio. "It was Vampires. We heard it on our local college radio station. WSOU. It was incredibly exciting. I remember all of us huddled in a car with the biggest smiles on our faces. "
Before starting work on the next album, Ray Toro's most important task would be to "get some rest...”

by Tim Cashmere - July 12 2007

My Chemical Romance

Darlings of the troubled youth of today, My Chemical Romance, are set to return to Australia for the third time.

The band, last here in January for the Big Day Out tour, will play their biggest ever Australian shows in November and December.

The band's third album 'The Black Parade' saw the band leap ahead in the complexity of their arrangements and depth gaining almost universal acclaim, even from media traditionally skeptical of the rock of choice of kids these days.

You can check them out at:

NOVEMBER
28 – Entertainment Centre, Brisbane
30 – Entertainment Centre, Sydney

DECEMBER
1 – Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
3 – Entertainment Centre, Adelaide
6 – Vector Arena, Auckland

sOURCE: http://undercover.com.au/

Stuff.co.nz | Thursday, 12 July 2007

Get those black fringes ready. Emo-rock act My Chemical Romance have announced a New Zealand show in December.

The band, fronted by black-fringed front man Gerard Way, will play Auckland's Vector Arena on December 6.

The band thrilled their New Zealand fans earlier this year with a midday set at the Big Day Out.

It's the latest in a long line of goth-themed acts to announce shows in New Zealand.

Marilyn Manson is playing the Auckland Town Hall on October 3, and The Cure is playing Vector Arena on August 14.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/

GERARD Way will not be tied down. It's not that the My Chemical Romance frontman wouldn't like to be, it's just that he hasn't quite figured out how to do it.

Selling a few million copies of his band's latest album, The Black Parade? Easy done. Real life, that's the hard part.

"I constantly have to redefine what real life is for myself," says Way, half an hour after stepping off stage at a German gig where My Chemical Romance supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"I'm still homeless, and it's starting to get to a point where it's getting really old, and I really need to settle down somewhere.

"I mean, I'm a very unattached person, so I could kind of drift wherever I want, which is a great, liberating feeling. But sometimes when you're home off the road, if you don't have a home, you start to feel like you're still on tour."

Only a month ago, things appeared to be different.

Spotted wearing a ring on his left ring finger at a European festival, Way admitted he was engaged.

The lucky lady was reportedly Eliza Cuts, a stylist for the band.

So is Way now attached to a person, if not a place?

"No I'm actually not. So . . ." he pauses, the noise of the Chili Peppers taking to the German stage filling the silence. "Sometimes things don't work out," he eventually says.

While the pressures of life as a touring musician would be obvious contributors to the split, Way refuses to make excuses.

"I don't know how much of it is being in a touring band or how much of it is other things. You know, it's easy to always chalk it up to being in a touring band, but it's hard to say.

"It's just that things, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work. You just roll with it."

If Way is rolling with it, his fans have been a little more, shall we say, hysterical about the engagement.

The message board meltdowns went something like this: "She is one lucky bitch!"

"He broke my heart and I thought that once I met him I would be the one."

"I just died a little bit inside."

"Way to break every little goth punk girl's heart, Way." And that's just the printable stuff.

"I got a little bit of wind of it," Way says of the frenzy that greeted news of his engagement.

"I think it was big news more so for the fact that people really couldn't figure out my sexual orientation for the last six years," he says, laughing.

"So I think that, if anything, it gave them a lot of answers.

"When we were on Taste of Chaos (tour), there were people I met in other bands that didn't even think I had relationships or anything, they thought I was some bizarre dude that just locks himself in a coffin every night."

He was considered by his Taste of Chaos screamo peers, Way surmises, as "some kind of bizarre, over-driven, asexual weirdo".

It's not hard to imagine Way – whose latest extracurricular activity has been creating a comic book series called The Umbrella Academy, due out in September – getting so caught up in his music and drawing to not notice the willing ladies knocking on the door of the tour bus.

But surely, given the obsessive nature of My Chem's devotees, and their ever-increasing numbers, Way eventually woke up and began to take advantage of the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll that had landed on his doorstep?

"No," he says. "The drugs – for sure. But the drugs were different – I had always had a problem with drinking, being in a band or not.

"I didn't take advantage of any of that stuff, like groupies, because I was in a committed relationship at the time (the band began) for a long time, and I had a lot of respect for who I was with.

"Aside from that, it never interested me. It was all about the show, the creation, the moment and the movement. So I didn't really care. Being very unattached right now, I still don't care about that stuff."

In contrast to Way's all-too brief engagement, the singer's little brother, My Chem's bassist Mikey, was married in March.

Since then, My Chem have been touring without Mikey, allowing him to settle into married life with his wife Alicia. (Way assures that his brother will be back on deck by the time the band reaches Australia in late November).

At 30, Way is three years older than Mikey, and admits that watching his younger brother get hitched provoked some strange feelings.

"It's an interesting perspective because, being the oldest, people assume you're getting married first, you're going to have kids first.

"So, it was definitely a sign that I was getting older, even before my birthday," he laughs.

Way hit the big 30 in April.

"I actually really looked forward to it, and I was very content. I got a sense of peace from turning 30," he says.

"I've met a couple of people who are obsessed with retaining their youth and Botox and everything. Each one of those age lines is an experience. Each one of those grey hairs is a good or a bad time you had to go through.

"I think it's gross that you would want to reverse the ageing process, when in fact ageing is what makes you more and more special."

The ageing process has certainly worked its magic on My Chemical Romance's music, as the great leap between their breakthrough, 2004's Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, and last year's staggering rock concept album, The Black Parade, showed.

And yet, the band's next musical movement is the last thing on Way's mind.

"This is probably the first time in the band's career where I'm not personally putting a big pressure on thinking about what's next," he says. "We have big dreams, but our big dreams were, being a cult band, having our own audience, playing a long time, and having something really small and special.

"So once we exceeded all that rather quickly, we really stopped thinking about what was next."

What is next is a tour of North America as the No.2 act on Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution package tour. Way is looking forward to being a support act again.

They did that just recently for Muse – helping the Brits reopen London's Wembley Stadium.

Way, who says he feels "naked" when performing in front of another band's audience, jokes that the Muse experience "was more terrifying than naked".

It reminded him of the time when My Chemical Romance were barely three months old, and received a last-minute call to open for emo supremos Jimmy Eat World in New Jersey.

"That was for 15,000, and we had just played a basement for like eight kids," he laughs. "So playing Wembley felt a lot like that show. We came out and it was 'Woah, this is a lot of other peoples' fans'."

My Chemical Romance play the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on November 28, tickets on sale July 20.

Source: www.news.com

Linkin Park Announce Projekt Revolution 2007 Line-Up

Amidst a groundswell of rumors and anticipation, Warner Bros. artist Linkin Park confirmed today the fourth installment of Projekt Revolution beginning July 25th and culminating on September 3 in Denver at the Coors Amphitheatre (routing below). Fans can expect to see Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday, HIM, Placebo and Julien-K on the Main Stage and Mindless Self Indulgence, Saosin, The Bled, Styles of Beyond and Madina Lake on the Revolution Stage. Tickets go on sale nationwide on May 19th. The few dates not announced due to radio shows will be announced shortly. Tickets will be available at www.livenation.com.

Produced by Live Nation and partnered with Major League Baseball, "Halo 3" for Xbox 360, Monster Energy Drink, etnies and NowWhat.com, Projekt Revolution is a unique tour experience that merges a variety of music styles personally selected by the band. "I couldn't be happier with the group of artists joining us on Projekt Revolution this summer..." says co-vocalist Chester Bennington. "Linkin Park is thrilled to be joined by this amazing group of artists and I know the audience will share in our excitement." Previous Projekt Revolution alumni include Korn, Snoop Dogg, Cypress Hill, Xzibit, Mudvayne, Adema, Blindside and DJ Z-Trip.

Projekt Revolution and Music For Relief have been working hard at making this event an environmentally conscious effort. Besides making the tour a "Green" tour, Projekt Revolution and Music For Relief will be donating $1 from each ticket to give to American Forests for their Global ReLeaf program to plant trees to help reduce global temperatures.

This past weekend, Linkin Park performed some of the new tracks from their forthcoming release, "Minutes to Midnight," to a sold-out crowd of 40,000 at the Bamboozle Festival in NJ. Currently, they have the #1 track at Alternative and Active Rock radio and have sold more than 275,000 downloads to date of the first single, "What I've Done," the catalyst of what is sure to be the year of Linkin Park! Their third studio album, "Minutes to Midnight" (Machine Shop/Warner Bros.), releases May 15.

Linkin Park is Chester Bennington (vocals), Rob Bourdon (drums), Brad Delson (guitar), Joe Hahn (DJ), Dave "Phoenix" Farrell (bass), and Mike Shinoda (vocals). They have earned two Grammy Awards, the first for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002 with their hit single "Crawling" and the second for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration with Jay-Z in 2006 for the innovative "Numb/Encore." Linkin Park has sold 40 million records worldwide since their debut in 2000. The diamond-certified "Hybrid Theory" has alone sold more than 18 million copies. In addition, Linkin Park established Music For Relief in January 2005 to help aid victims of world catastrophes and combat global warming. For more information on Linkin Park and Music For Relief, please log on to www.linkinpark.com or www.musicforrelief.org.

About The Main Stage Artists

My Chemical Romance -- singer Gerard Way, guitarists Ray Toro and Frank Iero, bassist Mikey Way and drummer Bob Bryar -- are a New Jersey-bred quintet whose latest album "The Black Parade," an epic theatrical concept album about mortality, shot to Number Two on Billboard's Top 200 album chart, scanning more than 240,000 copies its first week of release. Now platinum-certified, it was named "Album Of The Year" by Blender Magazine, and the band's "best album yet" by Entertainment Weekly. Rolling Stone, which ranked it in their Top 20 Albums of 2006, called "The Black Parade" "a rabid, ingenious paraphrasing of echoes and kitsch from rock's golden age of bombast." The first single, "Welcome To The Black Parade," spent eight weeks at the top of the Alternative / Modern Rock Radio Charts in the U.S., while the second single, "Famous Last Words," was a Top 5 Alternative / Modern Rock Radio Charts hit and is YouTube.com's most viewed music video in the history of the website. For more information on My Chemical Romance, please visit www.mychemicalromance.com or www.myspace.com/mychemicalromance.

Taking Back Sunday -- singer Adam Lazzara, guitarist/singer Fred Mascherino, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Matt Rubano and drummer Mark O'Connell -- are a New York-based melodic hardcore quintet whose latest album, "Louder Now," skyrocketed to Number Two on Billboard's Top 200 chart a week after its April 23, 2006 release, scanning more than 157,000 units. Now gold-certified, the album has spawned two blockbuster Modern Rock hit singles "MakeDamnSure" and "Liar (It Takes One To Know One)," led to three sold-out tours and a MTV Video Music Award nomination (The MTV2 Viewer's Choice award) for "MakeDamnSure." The album, which captures the intensity generated during their explosive live performances, was voted "Album Of The Year" (2006) by Kerrang! Magazine. The band has sold 2.5 million records worldwide, with "Louder Now" marking their third consecutive gold album. Taking Back Sunday end each year with a personalized Holiday Card that is sold to their fans with all proceeds being donated to benefit cancer related charities chosen by family members who have been affected by the disease. For more information on Taking Back Sunday, please visit www.takingbacksunday.com or www.myspace.com/takingbacksunday.

HIM -- After conquering the rest of the world with chart-topping albums and sold-out tours that have seen them play before literally hundreds of thousands of fans over the last decade, Finland's finest, HIM, are proud to join Linkin Park on America's Projekt Revolution. They are currently in the studio ready to release their second full-length for Sire Records, out in September. The New York Times has hailed the band as becoming "one of the most popular loud rock bands in Europe by finding sweetness in heavy-metal doom and new-wave gloom." They are the first band from Finland to sell 500,000 copies in America (for their last record "Dark Light"), making them a gold-record selling artist. For more information on HIM, please visit www.heartagram.com or www.myspace.com/heartagram.

Placebo -- From collaborations with David Bowie, Michael Stipe, Robert Smith and Frank Black to headlining festivals all over Europe, South East Asia, and South America, over the past decade Placebo (Brian Molko - vocals and guitar, Stefan Olsdal - bass, and Steve Hewitt - drums) have slowly but surely grown into one of the biggest and best international rock bands on the globe. Following the success of 2003's "Sleeping With Ghosts," which reached Top 10 in 21 countries, sold 1.6 million copies worldwide and firmly re-established the band's foothold in the USA, their newest album, "Meds," is described by the band as a back-to-basics project with the elemental feeling of a first album. Following the path paved by their previous albums, "Meds" reached No. 1 status in France, Mexico, Austria, Greece, Chile, Switzerland and Belgium. Hailing from London, England, the band was also honored last year with the Kerrang! "Classic Songwriters Award." With a storied ten-year history, the darkly romantic and musically adventurous Placebo has been an acknowledged influence on such young bands as My Chemical Romance, Panic! At The Disco, AFI and Aiden. For more information on Placebo, log on to www.placeboworld.co.uk or www.myspace.com/placebo.

Julien-K is the brainchild of two of the founding members of the platinum-selling group Orgy; Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck. Fusing the elements of dark electronic club music with styles of modern rock & pop, Julien-K is at the forefront of the electronic music scene. Joined by drummer Elias Andra and studio collaborator and cohort Brandon Belsky on keyboards & vocals, Julien-K push the boundaries of what traditional electronic music is supposed to be with explosive live performances that are larger than life.

Executive Produced by Chester Bennington, their debut album "Death to Analog" provides a sweeping landscape of musical influences and themes that pull the listener into their world on a first listen; A world where technology is fused with artistic expression in a way that has not been attempted before. The first single, "Kick the Bass," subversively assaults you this summer. For more information on Julien-K, please visit www.julien-k.com or www.myspace.com/julienk.

About Revolution Stage Artists

Mindless Self Indulgence -- The New York City-based punk/industrial/hip-hop group Mindless Self Indulgence consists of singer/songwriter Little Jimmy Urine, guitarist Steve, Righ?, bassist Vanessa, and drummer Kitty. The group's over-the-top sound debuted on their 1999 album "Tight," and their equally outrageous live shows won them opening spots on tours with Rammstein and Insane Clown Posse. For more information, please visit www.mindlessselfindulgence.com or www.myspace.com/mindlessselfindulgence

Saosin -- Southern California quintet Saosin have been tearing up stages around the world since the Sept. 26 release of their debut self-titled album on Capitol Records. In support of the release, Saosin has performed to ecstatic crowds along the Taste of Chaos Tour, both international and North America, and also alongside Senses Fail and Bleeding Through. For more information on Saosin, please visit www.saosin.com or www.myspace.com/saosin.

The Bled -- Inspired by groups like Refused and the Mars Volta, Tucson-based post-hardcore quintet The Bled burst onto the national scene with their 2005 Vagrant debut, "Found in the Flood." Previous to the Vagrant deal, The Bled had been on Fiddler, where they issued the 2003 album "Pass the Flask." For more information on The Bled, please visit www.thebledsite.com or www.myspace.com/thebled.

Styles of Beyond -- Well-known and respected artists, Styles of Beyond, earned their stripes from their famed appearances on the "Wake Up Show." What followed are two landmark independent albums, "2000 Fold" and "Megadef." After reconnecting with longtime friend, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park, SOB contributed their signature rhymes on several tracks from Shinoda's "Fort Minor" album. Now, the quartet has the perfect platform and increased visibility as they work on their Mike Shinoda, Executive Produced breakout album, titled "Rocket Surgery" on Machine Shop Recordings/Warner Bros. Records. For more information on Styles of Beyond, please visit www.stylesofbeyondmusic.com or www.myspace.com/stylesofbeyond.

Madina Lake -- Fusing the forceful guitars of heavy metal with crisp harmonies, electronic accents and the melodic conceits of indie rock, Madina Lake is a conceptually ambitious group whose songs tell the stories of the imaginary community of Madina Lake, a secluded hamlet in the woods where life is much as it was in the 1950s. The band Madina Lake was formed in Chicago, IL, in 2005 by vocalist Nathan Leone, his twin brother Matthew Leone on bass, Mateo Camargo on guitar and programming, and Daniel Torelli on drums. For more information, please visit www.madinalake.com or www.myspace.com/madinalake.

About Live Nation

Live Nation is the world's largest live music company. Our mission is to inspire passion for live music around the world. We are the largest promoter of live concerts in the world, the second-largest entertainment venue management company and have a rapidly growing online presence. We create superior experiences for artists and fans, regularly producing tours for the biggest superstars in the business, including The Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, U2 and Coldplay. Globally, we own, operate, have booking rights for and/or have an equity interest in more than 160 venues, including House of Blues® and Fillmore® music venues and prestigious locations such as Nikon at Jones Beach in New York and London's Wembley Arena. Our websites collectively are the second most popular entertainment/event websites in the United States, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. In addition, we also produce, promote or host theatrical, specialized motor sports and other live entertainment events. In 2006, we connected nearly 60 million fans with their favorite performers at approximately 26,000 events in 18 countries around the world. Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, Live Nation is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, trading under the symbol "LYV."

About the Partners

Major League Baseball Properties and its MLB Authentic Collection music-marketing program "Access To The Show" are returning to the summer festival circuit for another season of live music and entertainment. The "Access To The Show" tour, featuring the MLB Road Show, is designed to showcase the MLB Authentic Collection line of apparel both on-site at concert venues and in retail outlets. The MLB Authentic Collection includes the exclusive jerseys, headwear and outerwear identical to what is worn by players on all 30 Clubs.

The MLB Road Show is a high-tech tractor-trailer that's completely outfitted to give fans a chance to have an all-encompassing baseball experience. The truck includes pitching and batting cages, video game kiosks, an MLB Authentic Collection merchandise display and Internet kiosks where concert-goers can purchase MLB licensed products directly through the Shop section of MLB.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball.

Monster Energy supports the music scene. From the top concert tours like Projekt Revolution to up-and-coming bands on their quest to break through. The bands are pounding down Monster more than ever. Check out the entire Monster line-up -- Original Monster Energy, Monster-Lo Carb, Monster Assault and the new Monster/fruit juice hybrids Khaos and M-80.

"Halo 3" for Microsoft's Xbox 360 is the hugely-anticipated sequel to the highly successful and critically acclaimed "Halo" franchise. In this third chapter of the "Halo" trilogy, Master Chief will face his greatest battle, launching an epic mission to stop the Covenant, destroy the impending Flood threat and ultimately save mankind.

Xbox 360 is the most powerful video game and entertainment system, delivering the best games, the next generation of the premier Xbox LIVE online gaming network and unique digital entertainment experiences that revolve around gamers. Xbox 360 has a catalog of more than 160 high-definition games and is available in 37 countries. More information can be found online at http://www.xbox.com/xbox360.

etnies, established in 1986, is the first skateboarder-owned and operated global action sports footwear and apparel company. etnies not only pushed the envelope by creating the first pro model skate shoe, but it pioneered technological advances and changed the face of skateboard footwear forever.

Today, etnies' vision is to remain the leading action sports company committed to creating functional products that provide the most style, comfort, durability and protection possible. etnies stays true to its roots by sponsoring a world class team of skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding, moto x and BMX athletes and continues its dedication by giving back to each of these communities. For additional information, visit www.etnies.com. They recently announced with Chester Bennington and his co-owned Club Tattoo, tattoo and body piercing parlors, their footwear collaboration, named Ve'cel.

NowWhat.com will be onsite with an interactive booth where concertgoers can stop by to get their free online photo, win great prizes, and pick up their net decoder card to enter the daily and grand prize sweepstakes online. Plus, concertgoers can log on to NowWhat.com after the show to watch exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from the tour!

American Forests helps people improve the environment with trees and forests. It is the nation's oldest nonprofit citizens' conservation organization. American Forests is a world leader in tree planting for environmental restoration, a pioneer in the science and practice of urban forestry and a primary communicator of the benefits of trees and forests. American Forests helps people plan and implement local actions to restore and maintain healthy ecosystems and communities. American Forests is on the World Wide Web at www.americanforests.org.

Music For Relief -- Linkin Park established Music For Relief in 2005, following the tsunami in Southeast Asia, to aid victims of natural disasters. Since its inception, Music For Relief has raised over $2 million for the victims of the tsunami tragedy and hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Music For Relief also recognizes the capability of global warming to increase the strength of some natural disasters and therefore endeavors to help prevent and reduce future natural disasters by reducing greenhouse gasses, seeking renewable forms of energy and educating the public about climate change.

By Larry London
Washington, D.C.
09 July 2007

It is quite an accomplishment to find success as either an actor of a musician. It becomes even more noteworthy if you can combine the two. Jared Leto has managed to do just that. His band, 30 Seconds To Mars, has released their second album, "A Beautiful Lie", and earned a MTV Music Video Award for the song "The Kill". VOA's Larry London sat down with 30 Seconds To Mars when they visited Washington, D.C.

30 Seconds to Mars has toured all over the world, from the U.S. to Asia. Jared Leto, songwriter and lead singer, says the band has been inspired by its foreign travels.   "When you take your life out of its comfortable context and insert it into a place and a time that's alien to you, you can't help but learn things about yourself; about other people,” says Leto. “We certainly learn things about each other as a band. Personally, creatively. Those are the things that are most amazing to fill your life with."

A trip to Africa had a special impact on Leto and the band. "Was It A Dream?" was one of the songs written there.

"Four of the songs on the record were actually written in Africa,” says Leto. “The interesting thing about Africa is you really notice the beauty of nature, which is everywhere. Also a lot of the failure of man."

 Leto and the band are currently on an international tour, which includes dates in Japan in August. Their current single is "The Kill."  Leto first gained attention as an actor in the TV show, "My So-Called Life." He has since acted in several films, including "Girl Interrupted" and "Fight Club".

Leto explains his dual careers.  "Since I was a little kid my brother (Shannon) and I would play music. It was just a natural progression. For me, I went out to California, and happened to get some work in films and that was incredible. I am very proud of the things that I've done. We've also always been interested in music."

One of Leto's music videos for 30 Seconds to Mars

Although Leto says he has no plans to make films featuring music, he obviously has an advantage over most musicians when it comes to making a music video.

"One goal I have is to make a video for every song on this record.  The Who, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, bands that really put a visual element to their music. They seem to kind of elevate one another. It would certainly be an exciting thing to do in the future."

Though their current tour is the focus of the band now, Leto sees future opportunities for acting.  "At some point, these guys are all going to want a break. Instead of taking a break, I'll just work and make another film, which I'm very proud of as well. I'm not a closet musician or a closet actor [someone who doesn't pursue either vocation on a full-time basis]."

Source: http://www.voanews.com/

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