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Sonic Moodswing weekly radio show is exploring the hidden meanings of some rock classics as well as some underground cult-classics .... you'll never hear these songs quite the same again: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen Lola – The Kinks American Pie - Don McLean and more...... Playing 7-9 eastern tonight: Winamp or iTunes: listen Windows Media: listen Real Audio: listen

WASHINGTON - Rock star Bruce Springsteen endorsed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama for president Wednesday, saying "he speaks to the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years."

A live UK music venue today dodged a fine after members of the Rolling Stones lit up cigarettes on stage in defiance of the smoking ban. The Stones are rounding off their two-year Bigger Bang world tour with a trio of dates at London's O2 Arena. On the first date, officials had to tell the band to stub out their cigarettes after the guitarists, Keith Richards and Ron Wood, performed while smoking.

Freepers: Major Los Angeles radio station, Star 98.7, is having a band contest, and one of the contestants is a popular rock band with Christian roots called "The J Band." You can help them out, and help them spread their message by taking a minute to go to the website and vote for their video. With all the trash out there, it's good to see a band with some good messages get a break. Visit the site to vote, and simply scroll down until you see, "The J Band": http://www.star987.com/pages/rock_star_vote.html?feed=204416&article=2403680 You can also visit www.jband.com for more info on the...

The Day the Music Died By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM Published: July 12, 2007 MICHAEL BELLUSCI’S quotation in his high school yearbook was, “It ain’t rock if it ain’t loud.” Growing up in Flushing, Queens, he played guitar and drums, idolized Jimi Hendrix and performed in cover bands. Later, he went on the road as Ringo in the musical “Beatlemania.” These days, if his left ear happens to be covered by a pillow, Mr. Bellusci, 47, hears the alarm clock as a faint tick, tick, tick, not a blaring BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. In cacophonous restaurants, he watches people’s mouths so he can...

In the 2000 film "Almost Famous," young William Miller (Patrick Fugit), the stand-in for writer-director Cameron Crowe, somehow turns his first assignment for Rolling Stone into a month-long trek across the country with the mythic band Stillwater, transforming a rote profile into a star-making cover story while pausing just long enough for a tryst with three gorgeous "Band Aids" (Fairuza Balk, Anna Paquin and Bijou Phillips). If that really was life for the magazine's journalists in the '70s -- and Crowe swears his movie is accurately autobiographical -- it certainly isn't anymore. "Dude, this looks like Enron or something," says...

SMASHED HITS Pop lyrics re-appraised by the Magazine A Whiter Shade of Pale, a number one single in 1967, is at the centre of a legal dispute. But what do the words mean? - "Great intro, uh?" - "They nicked it from Marvin Gaye." - "He nicked it from Bach!" This description of Procol Harum's 1967 hit A Whiter Shade Of Pale is from the film The Commitments, but it might also end up as an exchange in the Royal Courts of Justice, where former members of the band are trying to settle a royalties dispute over the song -...

LOS ANGELES -- The father of late Doors singer Jim Morrison has broken his silence to share memories of his estranged son, who once sang about killing him and joked that his family was dead. George Morrison, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, is one of the contributors to The Doors by the Doors, an authorized memoir released this week. The book's author, rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres, also interviewed the band's three surviving members and Jim's younger brother and sister, among others. "We look back on him with great delight ... The fact that he's dead is unfortunate but looking back...

WASHINGTON--Baby boomer and former President Bill Clinton is laying plans to celebrate his 60th birthday in grand style with a charitable fundraising extravaganza in New York late next month that will include an invitation-only concert by the Rolling Stones and contributor packages that run to $500,000 and higher. Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, who has generally avoided high-profile participation in her parents' political and philanthropic activities, is serving as co-host of the three-day party. She will host a Saturday brunch on a weekend that also features a golf tournment at the Bayonne, N.J., Golf Club, multiple receptions and a dinner at the...

The odd northern soul single might have sold for $10,000, but a 60s garage punk record fetching that amount has not been seen until now. But this is what "Boy, What'll You Do Then", by Denise & Company, a 1966 recording on the Wee label out of Oakland, California, recently sold for. This raucous recording, only the second copy known to exist, was initially featured in an eBay auction, where it garnered intense interest from collectors and received bids of over $4,000, until the item pulled by the site due to incorrect auction procedure. A dealer then privately bought the...

The former home of Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett, who died in July, has attracted huge interest from potential buyers undeterred by the reclusive singer's patchy home improvement efforts. Dozens of people have viewed the 1930s house in Cambridge, England, which in the delicate words of the estate agent "provides an excellent opportunity for sympathetic improvement and updating." The walls are painted a patchwork of pink, orange, brown, blue, turquoise and lavender, while cheap wooden shelves cling precariously to the walls of every room. Barrett's decorating has done little to deter people from taking a look, with 40 viewings last...

Judge Sides With Original Supernova In 'Rock Star' Suit Ruling requires Tommy Lee's band to change name following show's finale. David has defeated Goliath. According to a Tuesday (September 12) ruling by San Diego Judge John Houston, the producers of CBS' "Rock Star" are going to have to come up with an alternate name for Supernova, the band made up of Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee, Voivod's Jason Newsted and former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Last month, the original Supernova — an Orange County, California, punk trio — filed for a preliminary injunction in San Diego's U.S. District Court...

Thanks to the Libertines, the audience now think it's their right to charge the stage. Dave Simpson on rowdy bands, unruly fans and riotous gigs [snip] The crowd suddenly started killing each other," he sighs. "Bottles were getting smashed over people's heads. Bodies flying everywhere. It was pure chaos." Drummer Mince Fratelli took refuge in the women's toilets, while the ill and bewildered singer was escorted from the dressing room by a policeman. You won't see this sort of thing in stadiums, where crowd barriers and security teams hold sway, but small to medium-sized venues are increasingly having to deal...

TUPELO, Miss. — Rockabilly singer and songwriter Jumpin' Gene Simmons, who worked with Elvis Presley and had a top 20 hit in 1964 with the bouncy "Haunted House," has died. He was 69. He died Tuesday at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo after a long illness, according to Holland-Harris Funeral Directors. Simmons — not to be confused with the Kiss bassist with the same name — was in show business for more than 50 years, working with such names as Sam Phillips and the Bill Black Combo. More recently, he co-wrote "Indian Outlaw," which became a big hit in...

The celebrities will be on risers along the side of the hall, while the main floor, emptied of seats, will be given over to fans, to roam and hoot and jeer as they please. Which raises the question: What if some wild fan abandons his network-designated station and rushes toward the beautiful people? “He should be encouraged at all points to storm the stage and to create a television moment that people will talk about at the water cooler the next day,” said Hamish Hamilton, one of the producers. “Or even better, that people will download and put on...

COLONIE, N.Y. -- As the live beat of Beatles classics begins bouncing off the walls of the Elks Lodge, a man with a gray mustache stands before his drum set and speaks up in a Liverpool lilt. "Let's take you back," he tells the crowd, "to the days when I used to play with a bunch of guys by the names of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison." Ringo Starr's playing the Elks club? No. Meet Pete Best, the drummer booted from the band just before Beatlemania exploded. John, Paul, George and new guy Ringo went on to become voices...

Face the music, parents Posted: August 12, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By David N. Bass © 2006 News flash: What teens watch, listen to and read affects their thinking and behavior. Sound common-sensical? In years gone by, it was. But today, in our increasingly permissive culture, otherwise well-intentioned parents often ignore the obvious. Some even downplay the notion that the media influence behavior at all. Kids are resilient, right? They can see the fakery in lurid music and risqué movies. But such sentiment rings hollow in the face of those nagging things called "facts." Yet another study highlighting this reality...

WESTPORT, CN, USA -- Despite the fighting in Lebanon, English rock band Deep Purple says that it plans to perform at the Baalbek Music Festival outside of Beirut later this year. A press release from the band confirmed that Deep Purple would indeed honor its July 28 performance near the war-torn city, also promising an immediate makeup date should the festival's promoter choose to cancel the show. Deep Purple is currently one-quarter of the way through a planned two-year world tour and to date has not canceled a single show, a trend that it hopes to continue. Ian Gillan, lead...

On a recent Monday, six people — soon enough four, then two — were browsing the bins of compact discs at Norman’s Sound and Vision, a music store on Cooper Square in Manhattan, around 6 p.m., a time that once constituted the daily rush hour.A decade ago, the number of shoppers might have been 20 or 30, said Norman Isaacs, the owner. Six people? He would have had that many working in the store. “I used to make more in a day than I probably make in a week now,” said the shaven-headed Mr. Isaacs, 59, whose largely empty aisles...

LONDON - "When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now," sang Paul McCartney on "When I'm Sixty-Four," a jaunty tune from The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper" album. A spokesman would not say how McCartney planned to spend the day, but he could be excused for skipping a party. It has been a traumatic year, in which the former Beatle split from his wife of four years, Heather Mills McCartney, amid lurid headlines about their relationship and her past. "People seem to be interested in him as a celebrity, but not as a musician," said Beatles historian Peter Doggett...

PITY the conservative rock fan. So many musicians are ganging up on the president. Bruce Springsteen is on tour playing protest songs. The Dixie Chicks just put out an album with a song that finds them standing firm against President Bush. And the Rolling Stones last year released a song calling the president a hypocrite. But to prove there is still some music for conservative rockers, National Review has published a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs. John J. Miller, who compiled the list, explains the criteria: "The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as...

BE WILD, NOT EVIL: THE LINK WRAY STORY A tribute by Jimmy McDonough © 2006 Link Wray seemed so strong, so invincible, like he'd be lurking around forever, just wailing away in some East Jesus s**thole, terrorizing another doomed amp while he stuck the neck of Screamin' Red in the dazed faces of a new batch of converts. I guess I took him for granted. The music business sure did. Link is the music for the midnight ride. No question about it, he sounds best when you have somewhere to go. Tearing down the highway in some s**tbox of a...

  Canteen Music Dedication  Click for our National Anthem!(remove your caps please!)Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore dimly seen thro' the mists...

Led Zeppelin’s classic ‘Stairway to Heaven’ has been voted the best guitar solo of all time.The rock behemoth fought off competition from Van Hallen’s ‘Eruption’ and Guns n Roses’ ‘Paradise City’ which were number two and three respectively. The list was based on 2,000 votes in a poll conducted by Total Guitar magazine. Magazine editor Stephen Lawson said: "Everyone loves to play air guitar when they hear the moment in a song where the guitarist rocks out." The full Top 10 is as follows:1. Led Zeppelin – ‘Stairway to Heaven’ 2. Van Halen – ‘Eruption’ 3. Guns N' Roses –...

Ah, March, the time of year when the music business heats up, the world's hot bands descend on Texas and the hipsters get their marching orders on which groups to worship for the next few months. By the time you read this, Racket will be in Austin, wallowing in the rock and roll phantasmagoria of South By Southwest – more than 1,100 bands playing on probably twice that many stages amid fields of fajitas, kegs of Lone Star, breakfast tacos by the ton and caramel-colored oceans of Shiner Bock, all at the world epicenter of twitching, frenzied, clench-jawed hype. While...

WASHINGTON -- Those gruesome news reports from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony the other night remind me of a conclusion I came to a few years back. Rock and Roll is dead. Rest in peace. Through the years the peace of the grave has crept up on a lot of rockers, usually years before they arrived at the average life expectancy of almost any type of adult human being, including skydivers and inebriated jaywalkers. Given how preachy the average rocker became by the late 1960s, this is ironic. In their warbles they lectured ordinary Americans on what...

SAN FRANCISCO--In 1970, 20-year-old student Bill Sagan had his first real brush with rock and roll history at an early Led Zeppelin concert at Chicago's fabled Aragon Ballroom. Now the entrepreneur owns one of rock's biggest treasure troves of recorded shows by Zeppelin and other history-making bands, and he's beginning to share it freely online. Since 2002, Sagan has owned the full archives of legendary promoter Bill Graham, whose concerts featuring performers such as the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and others helped define the late 1960s and early '70s. Late last week, Sagan began putting excerpts from...

I'm posting this in hopes of getting opinions and advice about my growing annoyance of being bombarded with loud hard rock music everywhere I go. It's in grocery stores, department stores, even dentists offices, and it's ALWAYS on TV, in practically every single commercial. What's worse, I got a job at a major chain department store that caters to mid-America. It's not Penny'S but it is on a par with Penny's/ The sotre plays mostly rock and roll all day long. At night it's nothing but hard rock. The Killers, Lynrd Skynrd, Blondie, Billie Idol, Swiftfoot, ZZ Top, and on...

Copenhagen, Denmark — Guitar player Link Wray, who invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarists, has died. He was 76. A native of Dunn, North Carolina, Wray's style is considered the blueprint for heavy metal and punk music. Wray's is best known for his 1958 instrumental Rumble, 1959's Rawhide and 1963's Jack the Ripper. His music has appeared in movies like Pulp Fiction, Independence Day and Desperado. His style is said to have inspired many other rock musicians, including Pete Townsend of the Who. David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Steve Van Zandt and Bruce Springsteen have...

As the Rolling Stones ``Bigger Bang'' tour moves across the country with the force of a financial hurricane, it is time to ask the troubling question that will not be heard from the lips of the group's lascivious logo. Do the Stones owe reparations to African-Americans? Seriously. Consider the Stones' company profile: There has never been a black member of the group. Even the most drug-addled Stones fan knows that their product is a pirated version of African-American music. In some cases the group paid royalties to living artists such as Chuck Berry whose works they copied. In most other...

Steven Van Zandt, Tommy Ramone, Debbie Harry, Ted Leo, Jesse Malin, and more band together to save the beleaguered NY landmark. Debbie Harry performs Blondie classics at CBGB, hopefully not for the last time. / Photo by Lane Brown If the graffiti-splattered, poster-covered walls of CBGB could talk, aside from asking for a good scrubbing, they might wax nostalgic about an era when they watched the Ramones grow up and fantasized as Debbie Harry sauntered across the stage. With those legendary walls facing possible demolition in a month, the venue's owner kicked off a month-long campaign on Monday to save...

Link Wray's Border Blues Was the surf guitar legend the target of racial profiling? Surf rock legend Link Wray was to perform live at the unlikely venue known as The Yale Hotel this past Sunday. When I first saw the one lone poster slapped to a pole with electrical tape at the last minute, I figured it was nothing more than some mediocre Link Wray cover band. I reasoned if it truly were Link Wray, I would have known about it far in advance, and it wouldn’t be at Vancouver’s number one "greasy-white-guys-with-mid-life-crises-trying-to-play-the-blues" bar. When I discovered that Wray really...

A new rock group featuring former members of The Clash and Generation X has taken a novel approach to the issue of piracy by urging their fans to copy their music. Carbon Silicon make all their recordings freely available online, and actively encourage bootlegging or filming of their gigs. They even attack the current waves of litigation surrounding illegally copied music in their song Gangs Of England, which includes the line, "if you want the record, press record". "What we're talking about here is fans who are sharing music," Tony James, formally of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Generation X -...

A old propaganda song wrapped inside a new package. First click the following link and then click a red button in the lower left corner. Click Here.

Rock shock: Nation's No. 1 oldies station changes formats NEW YORK It's the day the music died. W-C-B-S F-M in New York, the top oldies station in the nation for more than three decades, stunned its legion of listeners by abruptly switching formats this weekend. Goodbye, Buddy Holly and the Beach Boys. Hello, Duran Duran and Jet. The station had switched to an oldies format in 1972, initially as a bastion for the doo-wop sounds of the '50s. Although the playlist changed over the years, W-C-B-S F-M always remained the outpost for classic Top 40 radio in the nation's largest...

Hasil Adkins. That's pronounced "hassle." Never has a name been more apropos - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Adkins, who died April 26, was his own beast, musically and socially. Adkins was one of rock 'n' roll's great characters, the cultural missing link between Ernest T. Bass and Jerry Lee Lewis, replete with a downwind slaughterhouse whiff of Hank Williams and Sid Vicious. He was a brawling boozehound and a law-breaking hellion who lived in rural West Virginia, a musical menace from the cinematic fringes of Deliverance. He was also the unwitting archetype of the doublewide, downwardly mobile...

NEW YORK (Talon News) -- Rock music magazine Rolling Stone rejected an ad on Wednesday for a new Bible translation designed to reach "spiritually intrigued 18- to 34-year-olds" because it was deemed too religious. Zondervan, the largest Bible publisher in the United States, was hoping to purchase space in the popular secular magazine to attract their target consumers for the new "Today's New International Version of the Bible," which is due to hit bookstores in February. Doug Lockhart, who serves as the executive vice president of marketing for Zondervan, said he purchased the ad in Rolling Stone last July in...

Linda Cummings arrived at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in a white, backless, nearly see-through mini-halter dress, white fur jacket and white high-heeled go-go boots. Not exactly site-specific attire, but then again, she is Johnny Ramone’s widow. Various celebs milled about, including Anthony Kiedis, who showed up wearing a Johnny Ramone–style hairdo to go with the anorexic-model type on his arm. The crowd included everyone from mohawked gutter punks in leather jackets and bondage pants to businessmen in three-piece suits. They had all come for last Friday’s unveiling of the Johnny Ramone memorial statue. Ramone (born John Cummings) died in September from...

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Danny Sugerman, longtime manager of the Doors and the principal caretaker of the Los Angeles band's legend, died Wednesday in West Hollywood after a long battle with cancer. He was 50. Sugerman became involved with the Doors as a teenage fan during the group's heyday in the late '60s. He worked as a go-fer for the band, and idolized flamboyant lead singer Jim Morrison. After Morrison's death in Paris in 1971, he became increasingly involved with the surviving members' career and eventually served as their manager. At his death, he was partnered with co-manager Jeff...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Late punk guitarist Johnny Ramone is being immortalized with a bronze statue at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Ramone, co-founder and guitarist of The Ramones, was 55 when he died of prostate cancer on Sept. 15, 2004, at his Los Angeles home. The statue is near the grave of bandmate Dee Dee Ramone, who died of a drug overdose in 2002. The Johnny Ramone monument, created by artist Wayne Toth, shows Ramone playing his Mosrite guitar and it features the words, "If a man can judge success by how many great friends he has, then I have...

Greg Hassall and Charles Purcell do battle over the fab four. FOR OK, Ob-la-di Ob-la-da is the most annoying song ever written. And you won't find Revolution No 9 on too many iPods. But how many bands' dud tracks can you count on one hand? The Beatles deserve their place in the pop pantheon. They revolutionised the way pop music was written, recorded and talked about. They were funny, charismatic, hungry to learn and unafraid of controversy. They matured spectacularly over seven tumultuous years, then quit on a high note with the peerless Abbey Road. They were a genuine band,...

Two very different Texas institutions are set to spar over an image almost as seminal as the state flag. Last month, Red River punk/garage nexus Beerland received a notice from attorneys for cosmic cowboy shrine Luckenbach, informing them Luckenbach considered Beerland's logo an infringement on their trademark. Owner Randall Stockton begs to differ, saying the star-in-oval design – perhaps you've also seen it representing Lone Star Beer, the Lone Star Cafe, and Jerry Jeff Walker – should belong to nobody; or, rather, that it belongs to all Texans. "There's just so many people who affiliate themselves with Texas that use...

Access Hollywood didn't report Clark's condition or where he had the stroke. Last April, Clark announced he had type 2 diabetes, formerly called adult-onset diabetes, since 1994, but kept it a secret from everyone except close friends and family. Clark is now a spokesman for the American Association of Diabetes Educators and the pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co. Clark, 75, was a Philadelphia radio disc jockey in the early 1950s, when he took over a local show, American Bandstand, on WFIL-TV. Clark's show was later syndicated nationally and he moved to Los Angeles as his entertainment empire expanded. In 1973,...

Lennon, the new musical about John Lennon's life set to open next August, will have two unpublished songs that Yoko Ono, Lennon's widow, has given to Don Scardino, writer and director of the production. The songs, India, India and I Don't Want to Lose You, exist only on private recordings that Lennon made in his last years. I Don't Want to Lose You, a slow, introspective ballad, was one of three songs Ono gave to the surviving Beatles when they reunited in the early 1990s to complete a few Lennon songs for The Beatles Anthology. An electronic hum in the...

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and his rock 'n' roll band, Capitol Offense, will headline the Jan. 20 inaugural ball hosted by Free Republic, a grass-roots conservative news, analysis and activism forum, in Washington. It's a repeat performance for the 49-year-old Mr. Huckabee, whose gubernatorial term expires in 2007. Because of the high-spirited show put on by his band at the 2001 Free Republic Inaugural Ball and Count the White House Silverware Party, guests left other inaugural balls in favor of the governor's less-formal gig, which, this year, honors the U.S. armed forces.

How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!) Yard sales are like junior high dances. You show up full of anticipation, bump into a lot of people, and then leave disappointed. But in both cases, an ineffable sense of possibility spawns return, over and over. Maybe this time I'll slow dance with Tiffany Pfeiffer. Maybe this time I'll find a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Maybe my life will change within the hour. And so earlier this year, with flickering expectation, Warren Hill...

The worst (read best) rock 'n' roll animals never grow up. They act like idiots and we let them get away with it because they make great music. In rock 'n' roll it's always better to burn out than fade away into "maturity" -- i.e. making tame and crappy music. Guitar Wolf - (from left) Billy, Toru and Seiji - perform in July at Ebisu's Liquid Room. But some of these animals seem indestructible. Think Iggy Pop, Keith Richards and the rockers I'm meeting today, Japan's toughest and most hardcore hoodlum band -- Guitar Wolf. Tonight, the permanently sunglassed Seiji...

For two days in October, the John Kerry campaign came to a brief stop at a hotel and conference center on the high-plains sprawl of suburban Denver, where the candidate holed up with his staff and prepared for his second debate with George Bush. While the traveling press idled over endless buffets in one of the hotel dining rooms, Kerry and his closest advisers sequestered themselves behind closed doors, getting ready for the next night's crucial events. The morning's calm was broken when Kerry's press advisers began circulating word that the candidate would soon be making a statement about the...

NEW YORK - They played the obligatory classics: "Hungry Like the Wolf" and "Girls on Film." But when Simon Le Bon ripped into the chorus of the new single "(Reach Up for the) Sunrise," the sun suddenly illuminated Times Square as if to officially mark a new day for Duran Duran. As the original five members performed for "Good Morning America" last week, it seemed the planets had finally aligned for a band that had been ignored through its ever-changing lineup and lackluster albums of the past ten years. The British quintet once created a fan hysteria that was compared...

Win or lose, Sen. John F. Kerry [related, bio] has pulled off something people have tried to do for more than a decade: reuniting the surviving members of Nirvana. Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, who made rock history in Seattle with the late Kurt Cobain, will appear today at a Kerry rally at the Stardust Casino in Las Vegas. Grohl will perform with his band, Foo Fighters. Novoselic, an activist who authored ``Of Grunge and Government,'' will speak. Also expected are Kerry's daughter, Alexandra, stepson, Chris Heinz, and Tom DeLonge of punk band Blink 182.