Image Source: zmemusic.com

Aerosmith is planning to return to the studio this coming 2009. A very long hiatus from the music scene. As you can recall, the band has not released an all new original material since 2001 with Just Push Play. The most recent release was in 2004’s Honkin On Bobo, which was a compilation of cover songs. The band hopes to change that this coming year. They actually have recorded some of the materials already, its just that, they haven’t gone to the studio, to do the finishing touches. Aerosmith suffered recent bad health in which their guitarist and lead singer, Joe Perry and Steven Tyler underwent surgery for leg injuries. Also, Tyler entered a California rehab to recover there.

Keane sold over 5.5 million copies of their debut album in 2004 called “Hopes and Fears”. Its follow up album “Under the Iron Sea” didnt quite make it the way they expected it to be. Selling only 2.5 million copies. It was a huge letdown for the group. With this came personal problems, specifically, drug problems with the singer, Tom Chaplin, which almost derails the band. The band built up a huge fan base in the US and obviously, the first album did great. When we toured with the second album, the fans grew bigger but the album did not make that much sale as it was expected. That struck them low and took some time before they got their act together. Now the band is ready and in “Perfect Symmetry”. The British band’s latest album is set to conquer the world once again. They did not play safe. They gave all and this is quite the sound that they really are.

A rockstar is usually synonymous with fame, drugs, alcohol and sex. Meet the Jonas Brothers. The Jonas’ are well known for their wholesome, family-friendly image. It has stayed that way ever since they started. The brothers are all committed Evangelical Christians. In addition to the fact that their father is a former pastor. They were home-schooled by their mother. The most surprising of all is that, they all wear purity rings on their left-hand ring finger. The brothers have vowed not to have premarital sex. Which Russell Brand, the host at the MTV Video Music Awards made fun of. Although he later apologized for his comments. Joe says that the rings symbolize their promise to God that they’ll abstain from pre-marital sex until their marriage. It was one way of setting a difference from the typical rock icon image. They started wearing these rings when their parents asked them if they wanted to. They agreed. They also abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and drugs.

“Spider-Man (Music From and Inspired By)” is a collection of music written and performed by a generation of musicians influenced by the power and mystery of the Spider-Man character, his conflicts and his adventures. The album’s lead singles and videos are “What We’re All About (The Original Version)” from Sum 41 featuring a guitar solo from Slayer’s Kerry King; and “Hero,” a new track from Nickelback vocalist/guitarist Chad Kroeger featuring Josey Scott (the vocalist from Saliva), written for the film by Kroeger.

The Ramones were loud and fast - Everyone knows that, even the poor, blind saps who never loved the band. But the Ramones were many things, and gloriously so, from the moment of their inception in Forest Hills, New York, in 1974, until their final concert, #2,263, in Los Angeles on August 6, 1996.

They were prolific - releasing 21 studio and live albums between 1976 and 1996 - and professional, typically cutting all of the basic tracks for one of those studio LPs in a matter of days. They were stubborn, a marvel of bulldog determination and cast-iron pride in a business greased by negotiation and compromise. And they were fun, rock n’ roll’s most reliable Great Night Out for nearly a quarter of a century. Which seems like a weird thing to say about about a bunch of guys for whom a show, in 1974 or ‘75, could be six songs in a quarter of an hour.

The Ramones were also first: the first band of the mid-’70’s New York punk rock uprising to get a major-label contract and put an album out; the first to rock the nation on the road and teach the British how noise annoys; the first new American group of the decade to kick the smug, yellow-bellied shit out of a ’60s superstar aristrocracy running on cocaine-and-caviar autopilot.

Above all, the Ramones were pop: stone believers in the Top 40 7-inch-vinyl songwriting aesthetic; a nonstop hit-singles machine with everything going for it - hammer-and-sizzle guitars and hallelujah choruses played at runaway-Beatles-velocity - except actual hits. According to an August 1975 article in England’s Melody Maker about the crude, new music crashing through the doors of a former country-and-bluegrass bar in lower Manhattan named CBGB, the local press was already hailing the Ramones as - get this - “potentially the greatest singles band since the Velvet Underground.” A peculiar compliment since the Velvets’ own few 45s were all crushing radio bombs.

But there was one thing you could never, ever say about the Ramones: that they were dumb. In their time, in their brilliantly specialized way, the Ramones - the founding four of Johnny (guitar), Joey (voice), Tommy (drums), and Dee Dee (bass); along with Marky, who spent 15 years and 11 albums behind the drums beginning with “Road To Ruin” and who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the original four; - later followed by CJ, who stepped out of the Marine Corps and into Dee Dee’s king-sized sneakers in 1989; and Richie, who kept the beat while Marky was on hiatus between ‘83 and ‘87 - were the sharpest band on the planet. Fully evolved as musicians and songwriters. Confident in their power and the importance of what they had.

From Ramones.com

Traditionally, books on the history of rock music begin by defining rock music as the meeting of country music and rhythm’n'blues, which is roughly correct.

However, this definition is out of touch with today’s rock music. Today, rock music is a genre that employs sampling techniques, electronic instruments, digital/computer technology, cacophony, and ethnic sources (beyond African-American and Anglo-Irish).

It was Chuck Berry who invented rock and roll in 1955. Berry was a black man playing black music. But times had changed: white kids were listening to rhythm and blues throughout the Northeast, and white musicians were playing rhythm and blues side to side with country music. Rock and roll was inherited by white singers, such as Presley, who often performed songs composed by obscure black musicians. White rockers became gentler and gentler, thereby drowning rock and roll’s very reason to exist.

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Scaruffi