It is not every day that you walk into your first period class as an aspiring musician and walk out with a manager, but that is exactly what happened for members of the Florida pop group Mark & James.
For some, summer means no school, endless hours of basking in the sun, and milking your parents for money before you go back to "adult duties" in the fall. For me, though, it means paying absurdly high prices on Ticketmaster to see some of pop music's biggest acts perform extravagant sets in not-ideal-for-live-music venues, like NBA arenas. To help you decide what to check out this summer, here are few of my picks.
Matt Pond called me in a whisper aboard his tour bus Saturday afternoon.
You have probably never heard of Estelle, but you will shortly.
Blame it on the blogs. Blame it on the fickle keyboard elitists who promised us that Tapes 'n Tapes was the second coming of Pavement, the perfectly refined seed of Frank Black and Kim Deal, the revolution that would reclaim the Minneapolis post-punk high ground long abandoned by the Replacements.
Nightmare of You is not a hardcore band (however misleading their name may be), it is not a pop-punk band and the members are not fighting against their roots.
After the Raconteurs got burned a few years back for proclaiming to NME that "Broken Boy Soldiers" would be their answer to Nirvana's "Nevermind," they apparently decided to dial down the hype machine.
The mission seemed simple enough: In an age of torrent files and Hype Machine, I set out to see if there was any music left uncorrupted by the ongoing wars between corporate America and 20-something hipsters downloading off or blogs or the "OC" soundtrack series.
Rushed to release several weeks early due to bootlegging, Gnarls Barkley's "The Odd Couple" is anything but rushed.
First, the rationalization.
We're really judgmental.
Sitting in the veritable '60s opium den that is the Avenue office, we hazily looked around the room.
It would be hard to jump on the R.E.M. bandwagon at the release of their 14th full-length album.
Somehow, against the odds of the one-hit-wonder factory that dominates the current hip-hop marketplace, Snoop Dogg has pushed on through to a 16-year career. And while his lazy cohort Dr. Dre has only managed to throw us two albums in as much time, Snoop is still relevant on his ninth opus, "Ego Trippin'."
Canada is on a roll. "South Park" cracks are down, hockey attendance is up and their dollar is making ours the new peso.
My Spring Break was awesome.
Erykah Badu has never been one to conform to R&B's norms musically, stylistically or otherwise. It's only appropriate that on her first studio album in three years, "New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)," she manages to find cohesion amidst myriad sounds and influences.
When a band decides to release a DVD of its live act, it usually has something to offer for the viewer at home.
Short, Sapphic songstress Kaki King has entered uncharted territory with her fourth full-length album, "Dreaming of Revenge."
Solutions by The State News
