April 26, 20169 yr Metal is the most popular form of music in the world since so it is popular in so many different countries. Pop is the most popular form of music in many countries, but the pop differs so much between cultures that it is not the same genre across cultures.
April 27, 20169 yr There was a shocking amount of Dream Theater and Pantera available on Korean karaoke machines.
April 27, 20169 yr Metal is the most popular form of music in the world since so it is popular in so many different countries. Pop is the most popular form of music in many countries, but the pop differs so much between cultures that it is not the same genre across cultures. Depends on the country. Japan embraces what we would call "wierdness", partly in an effort to distinguish themselves from us. Korean pop stars try their damndest to act, and even look.... American. It's true that some have American ancestry, but not as many as it appears.
April 28, 20169 yr you cant knock the enquirer or tmz, they are all over celebrity pop culture news. they are thee source these days, despite some knee-jerking misfires they bring the news, ie., monica lewinsky. who would have thought they would presage the modern era of newsgathering, which is basically a rugby scrum. the whole 1983 purple rain music debut show is up now -- for the moment: http://youtu.be/s-O-LsD7czo
April 28, 20169 yr Yeah I mean it wouldn't totally surprise me if Prince had AIDS, because he lived in that time when it was a bit more rampant and people weren't as careful as they are now. That said, who knows if we will ever get the full picture on that in particular. It came out he had presciption pain killers on him and that he was an opiate pill addict for a long time to deal with the pressure and stage fright, so he very well could have overdosed. Rolling Stone has Prince as I believe the 27th greatest artist of all time and the 33rd greatest guitarist of all time. In today's world of pop and mainstream music, there isn't an artist out there as talented as Prince was. He literally did everything and learning more about the history he had an unprecedented string of successes. He is the only person to have had the #1 movie, #1 song and #1 album out at the same time. He has so many hits and a ton of other songs he wrote and produced. To put aside the absolute greatness of his song Purple Rain, he had so many other songs that were hits in the 80's that nothing can touch today, like "I could Never Take the Place of Your Man". I mean, who makes music that good these days? No one!
April 28, 20169 yr ^ you got that 100% right for sure. and there are the live performances, which are consistent over all the years and basically untoppable. you really got yr $ worth with that guy. he owned the stage and it was always clear he loved every minute of it. a very joyous show is how i would put it. i read he got hooked on the pain meds because he hurt his hips wearing the high heels and performing all these years. and then that he wouldnt get the surgery he really needed, which i guess was hip replacement, so very serious, because religious reasons. that would make it pretty much inevitable he gets hooked on pain pills. aids wouldnt surprize anyone though. in fact, the first thing people were saying in the hood were i was working when i heard he died was "it was the hivvy." well, right after, "who killed prince?" of course. ha.
April 28, 20169 yr The other thing about Prince that blows my mind is how he was in character at all times. I saw a documentary about this music talking to critics and people who worked with him throughout the 80's and into the early 90's. He was a complete workaholic and his music engineers and other people seemed like they had a love hate relationship with him because he worked them to the bone to get the sound exactly right. About his character, he had people quit his band in the early years before he really blew up because he told them they must be in character at all times, that means full attire whenever they are out in any type of public setting, otherwise they would be fired. Prince doesn't have a lot of interviews and I've only seen or heard a couple where he isn't in full character. One was a short one with Chris Rock and the other was when he was talking on the radio to a host somewhere about the Chappelle Show skit. I had read that in the last few years he was starting to open up more and more as his own self to the public, which makes him dying even harder for people to take. I wish I would have been able to attend one of his dance parties at Paisley Park, but you know he would always announce it the day of or the day before. I also heard he could regularly be seen riding his bike around the neighborhoods of Chanhessen and Minneapolis and would attend a lot of live shows in the Minneapolis theatres. That's what is so cool about him too is that he never stopped repping Minneapolis, it was home to him and he never fully abandoned it for LA or New York, though he did live in LA for awhile in his life as well as Spain, but he considered Paisley Park and Minneapolis his home.
April 29, 20169 yr ^ yeah i would do the same thing. weird al might be the only guy freakier than prince. well, creepier anyway. i regret that we didnt try to stop by paisley park when we went to mpls last summer. we purified ourselves in lake minnetonka basically right above it, but it was purple raining that day, so we headed back into town to the cc club. so not a bad afternoon of homage to mpls music legends, but unlike poor bob stinson, who knew prince would die? i cant remember exactly what prince said when he announced his biography or autobiography a couple months ago? unfortunately it didn't seem like it was written yet, which is a shame. i have feeling he really would have opened up, as he was starting to do in recent years. damn. well, at least we have the great band bio 'trouble boys,' which is highly recommended.
April 29, 20169 yr Weird Al always asks for permission from the artists he parodies, and he's been asked many times over the years, "Were they any artists that said no?" He never mentions Prince by name but always drops a hint that Prince would not allow Weird Al to parody any of his songs.
April 29, 20169 yr Weird Al always asks for permission from the artists he parodies, and he's been asked many times over the years, "Were they any artists that said no?" He never mentions Prince by name but always drops a hint that Prince would not allow Weird Al to parody any of his songs. Coolio gave permission. Then rescinded that permission AFTER Weird Al made "Amish Paradise."
April 29, 20169 yr Weird Al always asks for permission from the artists he parodies, and he's been asked many times over the years, "Were they any artists that said no?" He never mentions Prince by name but always drops a hint that Prince would not allow Weird Al to parody any of his songs. Just that fact that he hasn't done one, is all the reason you need to know that he asked and Prince said no. He would have obviously done one by now if he gave his permission.
April 29, 20169 yr wait, in touch says it was murder! http://www.gossipcop.com/prince-murdered-killed-murder/
May 8, 20169 yr On a recent Conan appearance Weird Al sez Paul McCartney turned down "Chicken Pot Pie": No way to envision where he would have gone with a music video spoof of the original James Bond sequence: Nor does Weird Al say if he intended to spoof the original James Bond sountrack version or the circa-1991 Guns N Roses version.
May 21, 20169 yr Calvin Harris sustains "minor" injuries, but apparently significant enough that he can't press play on his laptop and cancels two big shows: https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/news/dj-calvin-harris-suffers-minor-injuries-los-angeles-182837498.html?ref=gs&ref=gs Iggy Pop chimes in on the joke that is electronic music and DJ'ing: http://www.nme.com/news/iggy-pop/93690
May 24, 20169 yr Calvin Harris sustains "minor" injuries, but apparently significant enough that he can't press play on his laptop and cancels two big shows: https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/news/dj-calvin-harris-suffers-minor-injuries-los-angeles-182837498.html?ref=gs&ref=gs Iggy Pop chimes in on the joke that is electronic music and DJ'ing: http://www.nme.com/news/iggy-pop/93690 Calvin Harris is only on the A list radar because of Taylor Swift, but to be fair there's plenty of injuries that would preclude sitting up or being around loud music and bright lights. Not to mention pain meds.... Sorry, Iggy, but you sound exactly like Frank Sinatra bashing the Beatles, before he reached the decision that the 60s weren't all that bad with the "help" of Mia Farrow.
June 5, 20169 yr quite a bargain and pedigree for a nyc apt! http://nypost.com/2016/06/02/miles-davis-old-uws-apartment-on-the-market-for-495k/
June 24, 20168 yr We Yanks get to celebrate the UK giving the EU the stiff middle fing with a reprise of this 40 year-old stinker: Seriously, the best thing the Sex Pistols ever did, in my opinion. It all begs the question...why does mainland Europe's music suck so much? England and Ireland can get it done, but nobody else. The very format of the English language -- with its endless opportunities for real-time bonkers improvision -- instills in its speakers a full-time spirit of whimsy and caprice.
June 25, 20168 yr Justin Bieber sprains ankle in Cincinnati, wears Backstreet Boys shirt while performing at U.S. Bank Arena: http://www.wcpo.com/entertainment/justin-bieber-sprains-ankle-playing-basketball-before-cincinnati-show-at-us-bank-arena
June 25, 20168 yr Ralph Stanley dies :-( http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/entertainment/ralph-stanley-obit/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qmr8NpP6chE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34HjnwdIfw8 http://www.mainstreetpainesville.org/
June 28, 20168 yr It all begs the question...why does mainland Europe's music suck so much? England and Ireland can get it done, but nobody else. The very format of the English language -- with its endless opportunities for real-time bonkers improvision -- instills in its speakers a full-time spirit of whimsy and caprice. Because the British are rebellious by European standards, the Irish and us even moreso.
July 7, 20168 yr Wednesday's Guns N Roses concert at Paul Brown Stadium was massively under-attended. I looked at tickets online and they were definitely selling upper deck seats, but when I rode my bike down there and peered at the show from Second St., there wasn't a single person sitting in either upper deck! The club level did look reasonably full, and I assume that the floor was full also, but I doubt there were more than 25,000 people there, and the attendance might have been south of 20,000. That means the promoter lost huge money, like over $1 million! I could tell they were in trouble when all the radio stations started giving away tickets every day several weeks ago. I biked around the stadium until I found the best place to listen for free, which was the suspension bridge, and I listened to about eleven or ten songs. Everything from Appetite rocked but everything from Use Your Illusion dragged, i.e. Estranged and Civil War and Coma, except of course the two covers. Somehow, 25 years later, only 4 or 5 songs from that quadruple LP still hold up, and two of them are covers! Rocket Queen sounded great, with an extended 4-5 minute jam in the middle.
July 7, 20168 yr Breaking news...if you observed the concert from outside the stadium like I did, you weren't aware that Steven Adler rejoined the band for the first time since like 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7sInic8ZFA
July 7, 20168 yr Everything from Appetite rocked but everything from Use Your Illusion dragged, i.e. Estranged and Civil War and Coma, except of course the two covers. Somehow, 25 years later, only 4 or 5 songs from that quadruple LP still hold up, and two of them are covers! Rocket Queen sounded great, with an extended 4-5 minute jam in the middle. Too many epics on the Illusions. You can't get away with over half the record being like that. It was way too indulgent. I think Axl breaking his foot back in April killed the sales momentum of this tour. People wanted to see Axl run all over the place at top speed like he did when he was 25. Seeing footage of him singing from the throne with AC/DC freaked people out.
July 7, 20168 yr Also, this show was on a Wednesday night. Sure, it's the summer, but a lot of people have to work in the morning. Also, people can't turn it into a mini-event with their friends, i.e. inviting their brothers or old friends into town to go together. Last year I went to see the Rolling Stones in Columbus on a Saturday with a group of like 12 guys that all came in from different areas of the state. I also saw that same tour on a Wednesday in Nashville, and that stadium was also completely sold-out. So it is possible, but it's obvious that the Rolling Stones are still a way bigger act than Guns N Roses. The whole dilemma with stadium tours is that their so god-awful expensive that a band has to do two shows per week, meaning one must be in the middle of the week. What's even crueler is that the stadiums are so big that you basically can't do back-to-back shows in the bigger cities, except for the absolute biggest, like the back-to-back shows they did in Las Vegas and Mexico City earlier in the year.
July 7, 20168 yr The whole dilemma with stadium tours is that their so god-awful expensive that a band has to do two shows per week, meaning one must be in the middle of the week. What's even crueler is that the stadiums are so big that you basically can't do back-to-back shows in the bigger cities, except for the absolute biggest, like the back-to-back shows they did in Las Vegas and Mexico City earlier in the year. They are averaging 4 shows a week. Every other day. There are most-likely two stadium setups, with the main production traveling with the band. The weekend focus is usually on the big markets where they can get away with multiple shows. http://www.pollstar.com/resultsArtist.aspx?ID=51552&SearchBy=guns%20n%20roses
July 7, 20168 yr The tour dates changed since it was first announced so I was going by memory. I just read that they added a bunch of shows. Cincinnati was one of the original shows and that date didn't change so I didn't look this up. So yes there are obviously two entire stage set-ups leap-frogging one another across the country. So instead of 22 truckloads of stuff, there are actually 44 trucks traveling or idling as we speak for the sole purpose of moving these two stages for the next few months. They added so many shows that it no doubt diluted some of the mid-market shows, especially Cincinnati, because the Detroit and the two Chicago shows were so close. So somebody in Indianapolis was in nearly equal driving distance from four different shows on the same tour. Are you going to do a weekend trip to Chicago or drive down to Cincinnati on a Wednesday and then drive home afterward to get up for work? Pretty easy decision.
July 7, 20168 yr Duff's wife is a big Reds fan and Ohio native. I haven't seen an attendance number for Cincy, but KC had 25K, Detroit and DC about 40K. They had some crazy expensive ticket packages. I didn't go but I heard that they blocked off the upper level and move people to the middle level.
July 7, 20168 yr Apparently they nearly sold out Soldier Field two nights in a row, so two 60k shows. So they had something like $10 million in ticket sales last weekend. Check out this article, which claims it costs somewhere between $1.2 and $1.8 million to stage each date in a stadium tour. That figure of course is entirely independent of the fee paid to the band, and any band big enough to stage a stadium tour is going to get a guarantee. I assume that the contract dictates that they forfeit some of the guarantee if the band doesn't take the stage on time, runs over, etc. That's what makes Guns N Roses, specifically, such a liability. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6229377/how-billy-joel-and-jason-aldean-saved-six-figures-by-splitting-tour-cost I'd estimate, given these figures, that the show in Cincinnati broke even on production but the promoter is out whatever the band was guaranteed.
July 8, 20168 yr Apparently they nearly sold out Soldier Field two nights in a row, so two 60k shows. So they had something like $10 million in ticket sales last weekend. Check out this article, which claims it costs somewhere between $1.2 and $1.8 million to stage each date in a stadium tour. That figure of course is entirely independent of the fee paid to the band, and any band big enough to stage a stadium tour is going to get a guarantee. I assume that the contract dictates that they forfeit some of the guarantee if the band doesn't take the stage on time, runs over, etc. That's what makes Guns N Roses, specifically, such a liability. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6229377/how-billy-joel-and-jason-aldean-saved-six-figures-by-splitting-tour-cost I'd estimate, given these figures, that the show in Cincinnati broke even on production but the promoter is out whatever the band was guaranteed. Your link is broken, but I can imagine what it is about. Sure sharing expenses between two artists on a stadium show is huge. The labor cost goes to nearly half for each show. As for GNR, the Cinci show may have been a break even, but thats what the promoter has to do to get the Chicago, New York, Boston and Toronto. It's cheaper to play a breakeven date than put everyone in hotels.
July 8, 20168 yr Apparently they nearly sold out Soldier Field two nights in a row, so two 60k shows. So they had something like $10 million in ticket sales last weekend. Check out this article, which claims it costs somewhere between $1.2 and $1.8 million to stage each date in a stadium tour. That figure of course is entirely independent of the fee paid to the band, and any band big enough to stage a stadium tour is going to get a guarantee. I assume that the contract dictates that they forfeit some of the guarantee if the band doesn't take the stage on time, runs over, etc. That's what makes Guns N Roses, specifically, such a liability. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6229377/how-billy-joel-and-jason-aldean-saved-six-figures-by-splitting-tour-cost I'd estimate, given these figures, that the show in Cincinnati broke even on production but the promoter is out whatever the band was guaranteed. Your link is broken, but I can imagine what it is about. Sure sharing expenses between two artists on a stadium show is huge. The labor cost goes to nearly half for each show. As for GNR, the Cinci show may have been a break even, but thats what the promoter has to do to get the Chicago, New York, Boston and Toronto. It's cheaper to play a breakeven date than put everyone in hotels. Here is the link: http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6229377/how-billy-joel-and-jason-aldean-saved-six-figures-by-splitting-tour-costs I do find the finance behind touring to be pretty interesting and hate to see anyone lose money, even bands I don't like. It's like seeing someone spend a lot of money to build-out a restaurant and then the thing is closed 18 months later. I have been to a few stadium shows but have never had good seats. The upper deck at stadium shows definitely sucks more than being up in the rafters at an arena show. Actually now that I think of it I've never had good seats for any big show!
July 8, 20168 yr I was there. Show was great. I would guess attendance was around 25K--maybe a bit more. The 75% of the lower two decks that were open were full, as was the field. Figure that the stadium holds 65K, and you have blocked off the upper decks, but have gotten some back on the field, and I'd guess that was around where it ended up. The Wednesday point is definitely valid--a concert that ended at 12:15 or whatever meant that today at work was rough.
July 8, 20168 yr One advantage that GNR had when they were filling stadiums in 1988 is that their fans had way fewer responsibilities at the time.
July 10, 20168 yr One advantage that GNR had when they were filling stadiums in 1988 is that their fans had way fewer responsibilities at the time. Sadly that's pretty much all stadium acts today. Hopefully some younger bands will take root and carry the torch.
July 11, 20168 yr Thing with say, The Stones, is that their fans are often old enough and in enough power at their jobs to tell work to "suck it" for a few days. Your average 35y.o. GnR fan might not be.
July 11, 20168 yr When I saw The Rolling Stones in Columbus last year, I actually saw an old lady walking out of Ohio Stadium with a walker when we left. But very few fans were more than 10 years younger than the band. Few 60+ year-olds go to stadium rock shows. That band succeeded in picking up a whole extra generation of fans who weren't alive in their heyday because the music still resonated. I don't think that happened with Guns N Roses. Somehow they were the biggest band in the world for about six years but then the ugly circumstances of their disappearance meant there wasn't more music and so there wasn't more depth to the band's legacy. There was no late-heyday disco record that was actually pretty damn good, for example. Like if Axl had died in a plane crash, the band would be perfect legends. They put out slightly more material than Nirvana, but I guarantee that if Curt was still walking this planet there would have been turnover in that band, an insatiable public demand for the return of the classic lineup, and 2-3 albums of total crap. It comes down to the fact that there are a fair number of people who hate Axl Rose whereas nobody really hates Mick Jagger. They might not care about Mick Jagger, they might not watch him when he appears on TV, but they don't hate him. The guy I sit next to at work was stationed in San Diego in the early 80s and claims to have seen Motley Crue several times before they broke, but he hates Guns N Roses because he hates Axl. I think pretty much everyone who is slightly older than Axl Rose completely hates him. I talked to another guy about a month ago who is also older who said Guns N Roses reminds him of KISS, and he hates KISS. Also, The Rolling Stones never got fat (and neither did the former Beatles). The fact that Axl got fat and Slash got chunky is a big deal. The playing doesn't matter. I mean, just imagine a fat Mick Jagger or Keith Richards or Paul McCartney. You can't, anymore than you could have imaged a fat Axl and Slash back in 1993. Here is an article on the finances of the tour: http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-the-guns-n-roses-summer-stadium-tour-too-ambitious-1467931049
July 11, 20168 yr One advantage that GNR had when they were filling stadiums in 1988 is that their fans had way fewer responsibilities at the time. Sadly that's pretty much all stadium acts today. Hopefully some younger bands will take root and carry the torch. Playing live is way less important than it used to be and much of its importance is carry over from tradition. Also, the most popular bands aren't as big as they used to be, the popularity playing field is more level since the power of the gatekeepers is severely diminished. The stadium show is fading into history and indeed arena shows are taking its spot.
July 15, 20168 yr Mick Jagger, 72, still laying the pipe: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3691150/Nothing-fazes-Sir-Mick-Jagger-72-set-father-ballerina-girlfriend-Melanie-Hamrick-29.html
July 15, 20168 yr Mick Jagger, 72, still laying the pipe: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3691150/Nothing-fazes-Sir-Mick-Jagger-72-set-father-ballerina-girlfriend-Melanie-Hamrick-29.html The Strom Thurmond of rock and roll. :)
July 21, 20168 yr This appeared to me tonight as a "suggested video": Definitely better than I remember. When this thing came out I and nobody else on this side of the ocean knew what the hell a Ford Fiesta was. And thanks to the internet my suspicions were confirmed -- "bonnet" means hood...but no yank had any way of knowing that back in 1994. So their fame seemed to have been propelled mainly by their name -- which might have in fact accelerated the drift of casual indie-type fans from Metallica after the black album -- but then they wrote little songs so riddled with British winks that nobody here got the jokes.
July 21, 20168 yr This appeared to me tonight as a "suggested video": Definitely better than I remember. When this thing came out I and nobody else on this side of the ocean knew what the hell a Ford Fiesta was. And thanks to the internet my suspicions were confirmed -- "bonnet" means hood...but no yank had any way of knowing that back in 1994. So their fame seemed to have been propelled mainly by their cheeky name -- which might have in fact accelerated the drift of casual indie-type fans from Metallica after the black album -- but then they wrote little songs so riddled with British winks that nobody here got the jokes. LOL I saw them live when they came to town. All female Britpop band on the harder edge of the genre, "Stutter" was one of my favorite songs. Back then, if you wanted to hear good new pop-rock you had to look up British bands, there were a ton of excellent ones like the Manic Street Preachers who never really made a dent here. Elastica's fame was largely driven by the fact that the singer was in a relationship with Blur's singer.
July 21, 20168 yr i remember seeing a Manic Street Preachers video on 120 Minutes but that was the extent of my knowledge of the band. Then didn't one of the guys dies or something?
July 21, 20168 yr Definitely better than I remember. When this thing came out I and nobody else on this side of the ocean knew what the hell a Ford Fiesta was. And thanks to the internet my suspicions were confirmed -- "bonnet" means hood...but no yank had any way of knowing that back in 1994. At my high school library there was a British-made motorcycle encyclopedia that cut off in 1977. I'm pretty sure the librarian only kept it around because it had a big chart of British motorcycle and automobile jargon/slang compared with their American counterparts. "Kerb" vs. "curb", "tyre" vs. "tire", "bonnet" vs. "hood", "hood" vs. "roof", "boot" vs. "trunk", "aluminium" vs. "aluminum", "kicker" vs. "kickstarter" "clocks" vs. "gauges" etc.
July 21, 20168 yr i remember seeing a Manic Street Preachers video on 120 Minutes but that was the extent of my knowledge of the band. Then didn't one of the guys dies or something? Vanished, presumed dead. They were good and quite popular there. Kind of a cultivated bad boy vibe, they had Traci Lords do backing vocals on a song.
July 28, 20168 yr I loved this song! I think I was in the 1st grade. Okay the 2nd :| lol http://www.mainstreetpainesville.org/
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