There’s been plenty of rumors circulating online about the future of Lala, an online music service, since Apple acquired the site in December. Well, these rumors can be put to rest. Apple is shutting Lala down. I received the following email from Lala just a short while ago: Dear Leor G., The Lala service will … [Read more…]
The video for M.I.A.’s new single, “Born Free,” has been online a little more than 24 hours, and it’s upped the stakes for NSFW videos. The video was banned by YouTube and is causing quite a ruckus across the Internet. A lot of the online conversation is focused on the video’s meaning. Some think it … [Read more…]
Late Sunday night, famed Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert posted one long article. Actually, it wasn’t so much an article as it was a screenplay. Ebert opened his vault and unloaded part of the script he wrote for a Sex Pistols-focused movie. Originally titled “Anarchy in the U.K.” and later retitled “Who Killed Bambi?,” the … [Read more…]
What is one expected to do when the economy’s in the tank and it seems harder and harder to make a decent living in your chosen industry? In music, the route to a sustainable existence appears to be written in the ads. Or, so it seems in the case of the Black Eyed Peas, a … [Read more…]
With its plain name and its immediate sound, the Montreal quartet Think About Life does not necessarily lend itself to SEO: Here is a band concerned only with making good music. “The one thing that I find is really driving the underground music scene is the Pitchforks,†says singer Martin Cesar. “It’s whether you get … [Read more…]
It’s not easy being a rapper from Wisconsin. Just ask 23-year-old hip-hop lifer Juiceboxxx. Music journalists and bloggers have spent years trying to pin down the Milwaukee wordsmith’s ecstatic dance rap with one pigeonholing term after another. Nerdcore. Hipster rap. Back in 2007, the Phoenix’s own blog dubbed Juiceboxxx (who will drop by Good Life for a … [Read more…]
The Green Day-inspired rock opera, American Idiot, is now open for business. And the reviews are good [via The New York Times]: A pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions — bring on the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, please! — only to transcend them through the power of … [Read more…]
Ever since Radiohead released In Rainbows in a pay-what-you-want format, bands and record labels have sought out new ways to use the Internet to their advantage. Often times, this occurs in the form of PR agencies emailing bloggers links to “exclusive” MP3s, which then become recycled throughout the blogosphere. Then there are the Nine Inch … [Read more…]
White Stripes frontman Jack White gets a lot of attention, tons of accolades and his face on the cover of just about any music-related publication he could want. Why? He’s an artist who manages to draw so much sound out of a relatively spare set-up. “The White Stripes sound so loud with just two musicians,” … [Read more…]
Billboard is reporting that Gang Starr’s Guru has died: Rapper Guru has died aged 43 after a long battle with cancer, according to statements published online. The New York MC – whose real name was Keith Elam – suffered cardiac arrest on March 2 and had been in a coma. Guru’s passing is a major blow … [Read more…]