NEW BOYZ TO JOIN CHRIS BROWN ON NORTH AMERICAN FAN APPRECIATION TOURBurbank, CA – Ben J and Legacy of The New Boyz will join multi-platinum recording artist Chris Brown on an 18-city North American Tour. When "You're A Jerk" hit the internet earlier this summer, the group had no idea how fast the song would pick up. Within days of uploading, youth across the country were recording hundreds of

The other night me and my homies from Magic City Clothing went out to the Diesel Music show at the Paris theater out here in Miami Beach. The whole thing was beyond fresh. The tickets were free first of all, but the trade off was that you had to wear the wrist bands they give you everyday until the show. You know I wasn't with that. So my homie G who scooped tickets with me, got mcgyvor with it, and took both of ours off without [...]

The summer of 2003 was a hot one in eastern Washington, and my concrete bunker of an apartment contained the heat like no other. Granted, the above image wasn't shot by yours truly until 2004, but it sure seemed hot enough to ignite even the least combustible of items. I wrapped up my undergraduate that December, which was cold as Antarctica, and upon that milestone I moved to Seattle. It was a good year for the Northwest; many of my favorite albums came from Seattle labels like Sub Pop and Barsuk. As for the list, I've [...]
New in from What What Records, Ed Orable feat Spoek's Dance No More gets a Monkey Safari remix, but fails to ignite a pretty much repetitive plodding track, not a floor shaker, more of an irritant that just screams for some invention and oomph to it! Check out the mixtape though as it's rather good and makes up for the naff track given to me for review! Ed Orable Feat Spoek - Dance No More - Monkey Safari Remix Mixtape: 1. Lazy Flow - [...]
By Tobi Vail, musician, influential DIY punk zinester, activist and feminist theorist from Olympia, Wash. Beth Ditto on the cover of NME. ( courtesy of NME ) Like countless others, I watched Britney Spears' meltdown in early 2007 with an obsessive eye. What did it mean that her decline had been [...]

As you know by now, we at NPR Music sent out a series of questions to people in the music, arts and entertainment communities. We wanted to get a sense of people's thoughts and feelings pertaining to the last decade in music, and what their thoughts were about the future. One question we asked was: What is the one song, movement or artist that sums up the decade for you, and why? Our respondents had a variety of answers, from Kanye West to M.I.A. to Beirut. Please add your [...]

As you know by now, we at NPR Music sent out a series of questions to people in the music, arts and entertainment communities. We wanted to get a sense of people's thoughts and feelings pertaining to the last decade in music, and what their thoughts were about the future. One question we asked was: What is the one song, movement or artist that sums up the decade for you, and why? Our respondents had a variety of answers, from Kanye West to M.I.A. to Beirut. Please add your [...]
Some DVD and CD reviews coming your way soon, but today it's a pre-holiday cleanup of things that have been cluttering up my desk, my email, and my mind. Another NYC show that sounds amazing: Fire + Fire / Black + Gypsy: The Sounds and Stories of Two Cultures Bound by Rhythm and Race at Symphony Space Nov. 19 and Nov. 21. Day of Show: $35 / Advance: $30 / Symphony Space Members: $25 As part of the yearlong Extremely Hungary festival, [...]

Move over JLS - Nicole Jane set to Gatecrash the party with smash "Is It Me" "A beautiful track" - Dev, BBC Radio One "I listen to Is It Me and all I can do is smile" - Hattie Collins, The Observer "Is It Me is getting the biggest response in clubs by MILES. A message to other R&B groups: STEP UP!" - Firin Squad, Kiss FM After nearly four million MySpace plays, being the [...]

As part of our ongoing end-of-the-decade coverage, we sent out a survey to various people in the music, arts and entertainment communities. Here is another question we asked: What does "indie" mean to you? Discuss our respondents' answers and leave your own in the comments section. Douglas Wolk, writer: That's very simple. "Indie" is short for "independent." Independently released music is not directly financially dependent on any of the four major labels (WMG, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal). "Indie" does [...]

Funky UK hip hop gets full-on dance remixes. Both sides win. One of the most successful hip-hop acts to emerge from Great Britain, Stereo MC's formed in London in 1985, when rapper Rob B. (born Rob Birch) and DJ/producer the Head (Nick Hallam) formed the Gee Street label as a means of promoting their music. Gee Street soon signed a distribution deal with the New York-based 4th & Broadway label, and a series of singles followed before Stereo MC's' debut album, 33-45-78, surfaced in 1989. [...]

By Tom Huizenga Conductor Marin Alsop ( Tracey Brown ) Let's face it, the world of classical music is fairly far off the radar screen for most people in this country. Still, [...]

The first three tracks of Parade provide the perfect introduction to Afternoon Naps , a rust belt pop band that has been bringing sunshine pop to their gloomy post-industrial climes since 2006. "Plum City Fight Song," the band's homage to their hometown, begins the album with a healthy dose of guitarist Tom Dechristofaro's Moz-lite vocals, while the third tune, "The Day We Started," provides a crash course in the moonstruck glee of keyboardist Leia Hohenfeld. Sandwiched between these songs, "Beach Bums" finds the duo sharing the vocal burden more equally, a combination as blissful as it is [...]
Last week, I had the opportunity to chat -- and, by chat, I mean "chat via the Internet" -- with a handful of independent record labels' owners and managers. I wanted to discuss the role of the label in a time when fewer people seem to know or care what labels their favorite musicians or bands are on. Furthermore, and perhaps this has always been true, we may not even know what exactly a label does . At the beginning of this decade, record labels were still a way of indexing artists; of positioning them [...]
ARGENTINA: Zonaindie Entre Ríos - Frontera Finally we get the chance to showcase this great indie-pop band from Buenos Aires on MAP. Entre Ríos is a musical project led by Sebastian Carreras (vocals, keyboards, guitar) that has been around since 1998. Their first albums were recorded with Isol as the main singer, but since her departure in 2005 they've featured different guest vocalists live and in the studio. Frontera is a MAP-exclusive [...]
Modern electronic-rock music, inaugurated in the early 1960s, is, and always has been, a joint enterprise of British military intelligence and Satanic cults. On the one side, the Satanists control the major rock groups through drugs, sex, threats of violence, and even murder. On the otherside, publicity, tours, and recordings are financed by record companies connected to British military intelligence circles. Both sides are intimately entwined with the biggest business in the world, the international drug trade. The so-called "rock stars" are pathetic puppets caught in a much larger scheme. From the moment they receive their first recording royalties, the [...]

The Music Alliance Pact is a collective of 34 of the world's top music blogs and webzines from 34 countries spanning six continents. Every month, each of these 34 sites picks one hot local song that gets posted on all these great blogs and zines. This month we picked Kolkata experimental rock act PINKNOISE 's 'Dream Dream' as the Indian representative on this massive international indie mixtape. The song comes from the band's soon-to-be-released live DVD. You can download 'Dream Dream' along with 33 other tracks from regions as diverse as Denmark, Brazil and Portugal [...]

Penúltima edición del MAP de este año, esta vez con la participación de una banda que ya venía haciendo ruido desde hace tiempo. Nuestra historia rockera es larga y grande, es algo que quizá estábamos olvidando, pero aquí están Los Protones dándonos un boleto de ida y vuelta a nuestros inicios con un rock instrumental que se acopla perfectamente con más de una circunstancia que vivimos a diario, son garage, surf, o como quieras llamarlos con la esencia sesentera en sus venas. Próximos conciertos *20 nov 2009 22:00 Concierto pro fondos 2do [...]

Once more, here is November's edition of the Music Alliance Pact . For those of you who don't know about MAP, it's a collection of music blogs from around the world who band together once a month to shed light on up-and-comers from their home countries. It's sort of like the WTO without the human rights violations. No new MAP countries were added for this edition, so we're sitting solid at 34 countries. If you'd like to be considered, drop by the comments section with a link to your site and I'll [...]

We're so excited about this month's Music Alliance Pact we could explode since it gives us the exclusive privilege of inviting the world to download an incredible song by Scotland's best new band of 2010 and makes us want to use exclamation marks in a frenzied fashion!!! As ever, each country's mp3 selection and the words that go with them come courtesy of the individual blogs, who simultaneously post the entire collection you see below on their own sites. Here for your pleasure then is the world's greatest monthly mixtape... SCOTLAND: [...]