4 Rock

Canadian band, Nickelback, has decided to extend their current tour most likely based on the success of their current, chart topping album, “All the Right Reasons”. The new album, the 5th full-length album Nickelback has put out, sold over 317,000 copies in the week ending October 9th 2005 (Nielsen SoundScan). This is good news for a band that is no newcomer. The band has put out 5 full-length albums in addition to a slew of EPs and other shorter albums in the past.

I love the music business and I love that people don’t care. 50 Cent is due to release the soundtrack for his upcoming movie, Get Rich or Die Trying, on November 5 but he leaked Hustler’s Ambition earlier last month and has now released Window Shopper. 50 Cent’s movie is currently awaiting a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. Apparently it is too violent even for an R rating…which comes as a total shock.

It is amazing really. How many bands can MTV grab a hold of and make into the next N’Sync or Backstreet Boys? I guess I didn’t really think about things that way when I was younger, but these days things are different in the music world for me. Every time I watch MTV or see a new “band” on television I have to wonder just how many of these “boy band” types of bands can we have in this world? I guess a lot. Not that they really qualify for a boy band, but I was reading Yahoo Buzz and noticed a band called Relient K. So I went to the Relient K website only to find that clicking the enter link takes me to a page with a db error. Now, either Relient K’s fans are assaulting their website at 7:50 in the mornin on a Wednesday or they need to get a better webmaster. I guess that doesn’t come in the band in a box package.

I was up north of Calistoga this past weekend water skiing and I say Sunday Morning on CBS. I think the last time I watched this program was about 15 years ago. Anyway, they have a music editor on the show and he made some really pompous comments about music, but one of the artists he did profile was Ray Lamontagne. I first listened to Ray LaMontagne a few months ago when KFOG here in San Francisco profiled him and had him in the studio to do a live session. Well, I picked up his album, Trouble, immediately and even found the live KFOG recordings on iTunes and picked those up too. The man is really good. The story goes, that Ray went away to a small shack in the woods for 5 years and when he came back, he had written all of these songs. Well, after seeing him on Sunday Morning, you believe the story. He kinda looks like the Unibomber. But, seriously, go and get his album. It doesn’t really matter what kind of music you listen to, I can guarantee that you will like his stuff.

More about Ray LaMontagne:
raylamontagne.com
Yahoo! Music
EZ Board

Great news for Journey fans everywhere (c’mon, you know you love them), Journey has been back in the studio. The cool part is that it is just over the bridge from where I live. Now if they could just get Steve Perry back into the mix. Here is a press release that the band put out a few days ago:

Source: www.journeymusic.com

JOURNEY SIGNS WITH SANCTUARY RECORDS GROUP; ‘GENERATIONS’ ALBUM SET FOR RELEASE OCTOBER 4

August 18, 2005 - JOURNEY -guitarist Neal Schon, bassist Ross Valory, keyboardist Jonathan Cain, singer Steve Augeri and drummer Deen Castronovo—are pleased and proud to announce that they have joined forces with Sanctuary Records Group. The label will release the band’s 13th studio album, GENERATIONS, on October 4 to U.S. retail outlets. “The Place In Your Heart” will be serviced to radio in the upcoming weeks. Keep your eyes on this site for updates.

The 14-track GENERATIONS album—which will include a 10-page booklet with new photos and lyrics–was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, CA, where the band recorded 1986’s multi-platinum RAISED ON RADIO. Their first new recording since 2002’s RED 13 four-song EP and 2001’s full-length ARRIVAL album, it’s truly what loyal Journey fans have been waiting for. “There’s a real sense of harmony and melody on this album filled with heartfelt lyrics,” proclaims keyboardist Jonathan Cain. “It has the ballads that people would expect from us and the rock & roll that I think has the Journey signature sound to it. There’s something for everybody. There’s a mix of fun, playful songs along with some solid rock tracks. I don’t think it’s going to disappoint anyone.”

It certainly has not been disappointing to reviewers who have already had a chance to hear the album, thanks to the earlier overseas release date of August 29 on Frontiers Records. One writer declared: “GENERATIONS is present and future, and beforehand, an album from an inner musical quality that will pass the test of time.” While another called it “…a must-buy for melodic rock fans.”

The band turned to an old friend, Kevin Elson, to produce GENERATIONS. He’s the man responsible for the band’s multi-platinum ESCAPE, DEPARTURE and FRONTIERS albums, as well as their double-platinum CAPTURED live album. It was Schon’s idea to enlist Michael Fraser (Metallica, AC/DC, Aerosmith) to team up with Elson to engineer the sessions.

The album title, GENERATIONS, represents the constancy of Journey’s followers old and new throughout the past 30 years. “There’s a whole new generation that has become fans of ours,” says Valory. “For the last seven years in particular, I’ve been noticing that there are younger fans at the shows. Being that Journey has been popular for so long, there are at least three if not four generations of Journey concert-goers and listeners. We find people older than us and kids in the front row. So many of the lyrics on the album address the lives of these people.”

In an interesting twist, GENERATIONS is the first Journey album in which all the band members get a shot at being the frontman. “Everyone is singing at least one, if not two songs on the new album,” says Valory, “we’ve been doing that on the past few tours and the audiences love it. We’re spreading the talent around. I like to think of it as a blossoming of new singers who’ve just been playing their instruments before.”

As a sign of gratitude to their devoted fans who helped put Journey in the top 30 best-selling music groups of all time (having sold over 75 million albums worldwide), copies of GENERATIONS have been exclusively given away free with the purchase of a ticket at most of the concerts along the U.S. tour route, which is currently underway and concludes October 9 in Los Angeles at the Greek Theatre.

To make the retail release even more special, the Sanctuary version will include two new songs (“The Pride Of The Family” and “Never Too Late”) that aren’t on the CD being given to fans at the concerts. Check out the band’s website for the latest U.S. tour dates. Here’s the complete track listing:

Faith In The Heartland
The Place In Your Heart
A Better Life
Every Generation
Butterfly (She Flies Alone)
Believe
Knowing That You Love Me
Out of Harms Way
In Self-Defense
Better Together
Gone Crazy
Beyond The Clouds
The Pride Of The Family
Never Too Late

I didn’t know rapper and ex-lil lady of the Notorious B.I.G., ‘Lil Kim, is going to jail. I was just reading about something else and I caught a headline. Apparently, she lied to a grand jury investigating a shooting in Manhattan, NY. There was other testimony by other members of the Junior M.A.F.I.A. that she was indeed present at the time of the shooting. Apparently, ‘Lil Kim fought back and won a court judgement preventing one of those witnesses from publishing a DVD with her name and likeness in it which was reported to be about he involvement that night. You can read more about Lil Kim at EiTB24.com.

After a two night “health break” for lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day were back at it last night in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At least ticket holders for the cancelled shows are not being left out in the cold. In an announcement on the Green Day website they announced a “make-up concert” is in the plans:

It was announced today that Green Day had to regretfully postpone a performance scheduled for this evening at the Nutter Center in Dayton, OH due to illness of a band member. Ticket holders for this evening’s concert are asked to hold on to their tickets as both band and promoter are working to reschedule the postponed concert. The new date will be announced later this week.

Other Green Day Websites:
Music of Green Day
GreenDay.com

Canadian chart watcher ChartAttack just ran a really funny piece on AntiMusic.com’s recent “worst songs of all time” poll. Topping the list is Limp Bizkit’s All for the Nookie. We all have our own opinion about Fred and the gang, but I am pretty sure I can think of a few songs that are worse than that one…but, it still has to hurt.

Here are the top 40 selling CDs from The Billboard 200â„¢ album chart for the US this week.
(Numbers in parentheses represent chart position last week, number of weeks on the chart, and chart peak)

Billboard Top 40 (Last Week/Weeks on Chart/Chart Peak)

1. Various Artists ‘Now That’s What I Call Music! 19′ (-/1/1)
2. Mariah Carey ‘The Emancipation of Mimi’ (5/15/1)
3. R. Kelly ‘TP.3 Reloaded’ (1/3/1)
4. Coldplay ‘X&Y’ (4/7/1)
5. Bow Wow ‘Wanted’ (3/2/3)
6. The Black Eyed Peas ‘Monkey Business’ (8/7/2)
7. Carly Simon ‘Moonlight Serenade’ (-/1/7)
8. Mary Mary ‘Mary Mary’ (-/1/8)
9. Gorillaz ‘Demon Days’ (14/9/6)
10. Foo Fighters ‘In Your Honor’ (11/6/2)
11. Kelly Clarkson ‘Breakaway’ (13/34/3)
12. Slim Thug ‘Already Platinum’ (2/2/2)
13. Ying Yang Twins ‘USA (United State of Atlanta)’ (9/4/2)
14. Gwen Stefani ‘Love. Angel. Music. Baby.’ (12/35/5)
15. Toby Keith ‘Honkytonk University’ (18/10/2)
16. Missy Elliott ‘The Cookbook [EXPLICIT LYRICS]’ (7/3/2)
17. Mike Jones ‘Who Is Mike Jones?’ (15/14/3)
18. Rascal Flatts ‘Feels Like Today’ (16/43/1)
19. B5 ‘B5′ (-/1/19)
20. Carole King ‘The Living Room Tour’ (17/2/17)
21. George Strait ‘Somewhere Down in Texas’ (10/4/1)
22. The All-American Rejects ‘Move Along’ (6/2/6)
23. System Of A Down ‘Mezmerize’ (19/10/1)
24. Keith Urban ‘Be Here’ (20/44/3)
25. Fall Out Boy ‘From Under the Cork Tree’ (24/12/9)
26. 50 Cent ‘The Massacre’ (21/21/1)
27. The Killers ‘Hot Fuss’ (25/58/7)
28. Green Day ‘American Idiot’ (23/44/1)
29. Sugarland ‘Twice the Speed of Life’ (26/27/16)
30. Soundtrack ‘Hustle & Flow’ (31/2/30)
31. Jack Johnson ‘In Between Dreams’ (32/21/2)
32. Shakira ‘Fijacion Oral’ (33/7/4)
33. Soundtrack ‘The Dukes of Hazzard - Music From The Motion Picture’ (-/1/33)
34. Pretty Ricky ‘Bluestars’ (34/9/16)
35. Common ‘Be’ (36/9/2)
36. Dave Matthews Band ‘Stand Up’ (27/11/1)
37. Weezer ‘Make Believe’ (39/11/2)
38. The Offspring ‘Greatest Hits’ (29/5/8)
39. Backstreet Boys ‘Never Gone’ (30/6/3)
40. Audioslave ‘Out of Exile’ (38/9/1)

Copyright (2005) Billboard/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

It appears that the 3-day passes for the 2005 Austin City Limits show have sold out. So, you are SOL if you were planning on going for all three days and wanted to save some money with the passes. There are a limited number of one-day passes left, so you best get yourself set up if you are planning on going.