Funny? You bet, but they're tight, talented

Arts & EntertainmentNo matter how much Tenacious D fans insist it's not Jack Black who makes the band, it really is Jack Black who makes the band. Kyle Gass — the...

Published: 2007-02-18 Provider: Seattle Times

My Chemical Romance Shine Some Darkness in Tempe for Tour Opener

For a complete gallery of photos from this show, click here. Normally a preppy college town baked in desert heat, Tempe, Arizona was bathed in darkness Friday night thanks to the black-clad denizens who descended upon Tempe Beach Park for My Chemical Romance’s tour kickoff. The band eschewed their black-and-white Black Parade uniforms for casual street clothing and tore through a ninety-minute set that focused primarily on 2006’s The Black Parade. However, the New Jersey-based band, playing as part of the two-day Circle K Tempe Music Festival, went back to their 2004 breathrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge for its opening and closing numbers: impassioned versions of breakout hits “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena,” respectively. Frontman Gerard Way gains a little more confidence with each passing tour, and for this show he channeled the spirit of Mick Jagger: shimmying across the stage, stopping to wiggle his hips on a catwalk that projected into the mosh pit. During “This Is How I Disappear,” his bassist brother Mikey Way (wearing a fantastic T-shirt that announced, “Mikey Fuckin Way”) violently shook his head as Gerard encouraged the audience to raise their right hands. “Thanks for coming out to the fucking rock show,” Gerard said while introducing “Dead!” “Are you all ready to die?” Luckily, nobody bit the dust before the band closed the show in mid-tour form. The group that began in garages in New Jersey has graduated to one of the top arena acts in the country, and its members wear it awfully well. The kids, as they say, are all right. [Photo: Mark Peterman for RollingStone.com]

Published: 2008-03-31 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows

Breaking Artist: Black Tide

Fronted by a 15-year-old singer-guitarist who’s flunked seventh grade three times, Black Tide are a quartet of headbanging Miami prodigies who like to rock like it’s 1989. Find out more about the band, which will be playing this summer’s Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival, over at the Breaking blog.

Published: 2008-04-30 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Breaking

Black Eyed Peas Reject China Boycott

Black Eyed Peas rapper will.i.am has nixed claims the band won't play a gig in China - despite calls for artists to boycott the country over its terrible human rights record. [...] Read more!

Published: 2008-04-29 Provider: StarPulse

Fricke’s Picks: Black 47

The Fighting Irish Iraq (United for Opportunity), by the New York Celtic-rock band Black 47, is an unashamedly topical wallop of the early-Seventies Jersey-bar E Street Band and the Combat Rock-era Clash, laced with the mourning siren of Uilleann pipes. The album is as blunt in its frontline detail as it is in title. “Much of Iraq is written from the viewpoint of Black 47 fans who have served over there,” according to the album credits, and the cordite and emergency-channel chatter confirm that. “The Hummer took the bend at forty plus and then/The IED cut the door and driver to pieces,” guitarist-songwriter Larry Kirwan sings with tremulous shock in “Stars and Stripes,” a roughed-up echo of the homesickness in the West Indian folk song “Sloop John B.” There are “mortars in minarets,” and “even the dead are rigged to ignite” in the drinker’s waltz “Battle of Fallujah,” while the chorus is a bitter toast: “Here’s to the old men back in the States/Don’t ever let on that they used you/When you’re down in the dirt with your heart in your mouth.” But Iraq is not merely anti-war. It is pro-life — as in quick, safe return, because with every extra day of Fox News patriotism and Beltway paralysis, the only guaranteed surge is in body count. “I can’t believe it’s so peaceful/In only moments, it’ll be hell … I hope I see the sunrise in Brooklyn again,” Kirwan sings in the night-patrol lament “Sunrise in Brooklyn.” That’s not protest. It’s prayer.

Published: 2008-02-29 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Fricke's Picks

Maxim To The Black Crowes: "Sorry About That Sorta-Bad Review" [Mea Culpas]

Maxim has extended a virtual olive branch in the direction of the Black Crowes, after the magazine copped to running a middling review of the band's new album Warpaint before its reviewer even had a...

Published: 2008-02-26 Provider: Idolator Keywords: black crowes,Maxim,mea culpas

'Maxim' issues mea culpa for incomplete Black Crowes review

Maxim magazine has apologized for publishing a negative review of the Black Crowes' new album by a writer who hadn't listened ...

Published: 2008-02-26 Provider: USA Today

Live Review: Black Tide, All that Remains, House of Blues, Hollywood

Black Tide's live show packs a one-two punch of classic metal virtuosity and raw, rock and roll attitude. At the Sunset Strip House of Blues last night, the band proved not only can they write

Published: 2008-02-26 Provider: Artist Direct

Black Crowes expose fake review in Maxim

The Black Crowes are lashing out at Maxim magazine for reviewing the band's new album, apparently without actually hearing it first.

Published: 2008-02-23 Provider: Canoe

Kate Nash Brings Black Kids On Tour

The unsigned status of Black Kids—and their lack of an actual album—hasn't kept the band from landing on two hype-raking tours in the UK. First up (after some one-off shows and a handful of free Vice Live dates from January 29 through February 1): a

Published: 2008-01-14 Provider: Artist Direct

Pharrell Helps The Hives Capture Imaginary Hits On Black And White Album

The Hives enlisted Pharrell to create their Black and White Album, a concept LP collecting the greatest hits of a "band that didn't even exist."

Published: 2007-09-21 Provider: VH1 Keywords: Tyrannosaurus, Artist, Album, Hives, The, VH1, Imaginary, <i&gt;Black, Album<i&gt;, Pharrell, Capture, Movies, Helps, Radio, White, Best, Ever, Hits, News, Rock, Week, And, A-Z, on, TV,

Black Lips Take Brooklyn By Storm — With A Circus In Tow

The Black Lips led a 200-strong parade — complete with burlesque dancers and marching band — to their gig in Brooklyn on Wednesday.

Published: 2007-09-21 Provider: VH1 Keywords: Artist, Shadow, Album, Index, Ultra, Hard, VH1, Movies, News, Rock, A-Z, on, TV,