(4/3/02, 1 p.m. ET) - O-Town will return with a follow-up to its double-platinum, self-titled debut album in July, according to the group's J Records label. The first single from the as-yet-untitled album is called "I Showed Her." O-Town's debut set spawned the hit singles "Liquid Dreams," "All Or Nothing," and "We Fit Together."
O-Town singer Dan Miller told LAUNCH that the group, which came together on the reality-television show Making The Band, has learned a lot about the music business since the release of its 2001 debut album: "Every day we just want to turn a couple of heads. There are always going to be critics that are out there, because that's their job, but I definitely think we've won a couple of critics over. That's our biggest defense is our live show. That's really, like, our biggest defense to the critics. They'll continue to be out there, but we'll just continue to do our music and do what we love."
O-Town is expected to announce details about a summer concert tour shortly.
O-Town's current itinerary (subject to change):
May 3 - West Palm Beach, FL - SunFest
May 15 - Poughkeepsie, NY - Mid-Hudson Civic Center
May 19 - Lowell, MA - Tsongas Arena
May 21 - Portland, ME - Cumberland County Civic Center May 23 - Lincroft, NJ - Brookdale College Performing Arts Center
--Jason Gelman, New York
Posted by Jen on Wednesday, April 3, 2002 @ 03:57 p.m.
*NSYNC gave its Detroit-area fans an unexpected encore on Monday night (April 1)--and it was no April's Fool joke. Following its performance at the Palace Of Auburn Hills, the quintet followed the recommendation of opening act Tony Lucca, a Detroit-area native, and took its tour bus to catch a set by local funk band the Brothers Groove, at Fifth Avenue Billiards in the suburb of Royal Oak.
After hanging out and watching the group play for awhile, *NSYNC's J.C. Chasez delighted the packed club by finally accepting an invitation to hop onstage and did some impromptu verses on the Brothers Groove original "One, Two, Three."
"He just riffed, and that's all we wanted him to do," the group's frontman Chris Codish tells LAUNCH. "I'm sure he has to do everything rehearsed all the time. This was a chance to go back to music the way it used to be and just make up stuff and be in the moment. I knew he could sing his ass off. I actually told him, 'Look, man, we're just gonna play these two chords, all you gotta do is sing over these.'"
There was some booing from the Brothers Groove faithful, but Codish quieted the hecklers by telling them, "You're just booing 'cause you can't sing like that."
Chasez chatted with Codish and his bandmates for a while after the jam, before *NSYNC boarded its tour bus to head to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where it performed last night (April 2).
--Gary Graff, Detroit
Posted by Jen on Wednesday, April 3, 2002 @ 03:53 p.m.
LONDON (Reuters) - Fresh from axing 400 B-list artists from its roster, music empire EMI Group was negotiating a multi-million-dollar deal Monday to stop its star British act Robbie Williams from defecting to a rival label.
Williams, whose "Swing When You're Winning" album sold five million copies worldwide, has been courting rival labels as his contract comes up for renewal, but EMI has been working overtime to re-sign Britain's best-selling male solo artist.
Analysts estimate 28-year-old singer Williams will get between 20 million and 40 million pounds (-57 million) for a five-album deal. Industry sources said EMI was quietly confident it would clinch a new deal but is under pressure not to overpay after the costly failure of its mega-deal with Mariah Carey.
EMI, whose other artists include Kylie Minogue and Radiohead, declined to comment.
EMI dumped Carey earlier this year after her first album with EMI, "Glitter," flopped. EMI said last week it was also cutting back its roster by a quarter and chopping 1,800 jobs in a move to cut costs after a dismal year for the industry.
"(EMI's new head of recorded music) Alain Levy can't risk a similar failure with Williams," CSFB said in a note to clients.
However, former boy-band member Williams has been frustrated by not breaking the world's biggest market -- the United States -- and may want a label with bigger clout, such as industry number one Universal Music, analysts said.
U.S. FAILURE
EMI, the world's third-biggest music group, has blamed a large part of its recent woes on its failure in the United States, where it has failed to break new acts. However, it is a hotbed of British talent, boasting top local acts such as Cold Play, Blur, Gorillaz, The Verve and Atomic Kitten.
Desperate to reverse its recent decline, EMI brought industry guru Levy on board last year to turn around the group. After six months spent trawling through the business, Levy unveiled a radical restructuring of EMI last week.
Levy, who previously oversaw Polygram's rise to the top of the industry, said last week he was putting a stop to the music industry's lavish ways of huge artist advances and would bring some discipline back to the business.
The aim is to create more superstar acts. Levy said he wanted to have three superstar artists selling more than 10 million albums on EMI's roster within three years.
Australian pop diva Kylie Minogue has been an example of the success EMI is aiming for, he said.
Levy said executives had said her album "Fever" was not suitable for the U.S. market. However, Levy released it there, nevertheless, and it debuted at number three in the charts.
EMI shares closed 3.4 percent down at 357 pence after rallying last week on the cost savings from the job cuts.
Posted by Jen on Wednesday, April 3, 2002 @ 03:49 p.m.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The train keeps a-rollin' for Aerosmith (news - web sites), the bad boys of American rock 'n' roll, who are working on a slew of projects before returning to the concert circuit in the fall.
The veteran quintet, which wrapped up an eight-month tour of North America and Japan in early February, said last week that it will be the subject of MTV's second annual mtvICON tribute concert in Los Angeles next month.
Kid Rock, rapper Nelly and pop singer Pink were the first to commit to the show, which will be taped at a Hollywood movie studio on April 14 and air on April 17 on the music cable network.
Singer Steven Tyler and lead guitarist Joe Perry told Reuters in separate interviews the band also has recorded new songs for a greatest-hits album in the summer and the upcoming "Spider-Man" film. Other plans include a visit to Japan in June to play at a World Cup soccer match and revived plans to make a blues album.
"A band isn't a band unless they're playing together," said Perry, 51. "Otherwise it's just five guys that are living off their royalty checks."
The checks have poured in since Aerosmith regrouped in the late 1980s from the excesses of drugs and ego that cut short its initial run of success in the 1970s, a time when the band rocked the charts and arenas with such hits as "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion."
"I don't know whether we're making up for lost time, but we floundered along for so long, and then we lost everything from those insidious '80s when the rug was pulled out from under our feet from being the rebels that we so loved to be," said Tyler, who turns 54 on March 26.
"I thought I was going to grow up and be an ex-con. Here I am an icon!"
Rounded out by rhythm guitarist Brad Whitford, 50, bassist Tom Hamilton, 50, and drummer Joey Kramer, 51, Aerosmith has indeed reached a new generation of fans through ballads like "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" and such trademark saucy ditties as "Love In An Elevator."
LOVE IN A SPACE STATION?
Tyler and Perry, sometimes known as the Toxic Twins but now very much sober, also are working on projects aside from the band. Tyler is seriously thinking of raising million so he can fly to the International Space Station, write a song there and perform it for a global audience.
"Every bit of this ... life is a dream, and to make dreams come to true that's what I do," he said.
He also wants to follow in the footsteps of Perry and Whitford by recording a solo album. He feels that tunes he records at home, he said, lose some of their spark when he brings them to the band to perform.
"It just affords you to do things you can't do with the band. If I went out and wrote a song with Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), who's going to play the bass when I bring it to my band? I'd rather have Flea on it."
Besides Flea, Tyler's wish list of collaborators includes Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, veteran pianist Johnnie Johnson and bluegrass musician Alison Krauss, whom Tyler has spent a lot of time with recently.
Chili peppers also figure in Perry's plans, literally. The lifelong chile aficionado will launch a line of hot sauces, called "Joe Perry's Rock Your World Hot Sauce" in the next month. The logo will feature a flaming skull.
"There's a lot of closet hot sauce fans out there," Perry said. "I've been a fan forever. I can remember being 12 and being the only one that would go for the mustard and Tabasco."
Aerosmith always has possessed an entrepreneurial flair, and was an initial investor in the House of Blues chain. Perry and Tyler own a restaurant in their Boston hometown, while Whitford operates an indoor race track in the city.
SPIDER-MAN AND BLUES
On the music front, Aerosmith has recorded a new song called "Bad Enough" for the keenly awaited "Spider-Man" movie, which opens in North America on May 3. The band received a huge boost a few years ago when its ballad "I Don't Want to Miss A Thing" was included on the "Armageddon" soundtrack.
Perry, a comic book buff, wrote the theme music for a "Spider-Man" cartoon a few years ago and even has a Spider-Man guitar. The film soundtrack is still being put together, and the band does not know whether its song will make the cut.
That song, along with "Girls of Summer" and "Climbing the Walls," was recorded earlier this month during a band retreat in Hawaii. The tunes will probably see the light of day on the upcoming hits record, due out in June or July even though the band's former Geffen Records label released a 2-CD compilation, "Young Lust: The Aerosmith Anthology," just last November.
The blues record was first proposed about five years ago by Columbia Records, Aerosmith's current and original label, and the project took on new urgency after Tyler and Perry heard a tribute album "Sweet Emotion: Songs of Aerosmith," featuring artists performing blues renditions of the band's tracks.
"There's gonna be stuff that'll sound like classic blues, and we'll probably pay homage to some of that," said Perry. "But I also think there's gonna be a little experimenting in there that we haven't done in a long while."
Details about the soccer performance in Japan are sketchy, but Perry was looking forward to it because his knowledge of the game, he said, extends only as far as news reports about hooligans.
Posted by Jen on Wednesday, April 3, 2002 @ 03:45 p.m.
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