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Pop Rock Nation

Category: News

music-news-from-breakups-to-the-lastest-buzz

  • Scorpions Say Goodbye

    They started playing together in 1965, a year after The Beatles came to America.  Bitches Brew was still five years in Miles Davis’ future.  Johnny Cash had just released I Walk The Line and was still three years away from Folsom.  The Grammys were in their eighth year; Petula Clark and Roger Miller took home the male and female pop awards.

    1965 was a long time ago by any measure and an eternity in music.

    That’s when Rudolf Schenker kicked off The Scorpions in Hanover, Germany.

    You may remember them from the anthemic Wind of Change, written in the months during German reunification when The Berlin Wall was being torn down.  They later joined Roger Waters for his performance of The Wall in Berlin that year.   Rock Me Like A Hurricane may have been more your style.

    Now The Scorpions have announced that they will no longer record and kick off a farewell tour.  The band issued a statement on their website, saying in part,

    We are extremely grateful for the fact that we still have the same passion for music we’ve always had since the beginning. This is why, especially now, we agree we have reached the end of the road. We finish our career with an album we consider to be one of the best we have ever recorded and with a tour that will start in our home country Germany and take us to five different continents over the next few years.

    After seeing concert video in recent years, those shows promise to be special.  Forty-five years is a long time for anything, and it’s amazing for a rock band.  Take a look at concert video from an acoustic version of Wind of Change from Europe just a couple of years ago.

  • Village Voice Pazz & Jop 2009: For the Hipster in You

    Every year, a group of respected music critics gather ’round the proverbial campfire and submit their picks for the Best Music of 2009 to New York’s alternative weekly The Village Voice for what has become an institution-the Pazz & Jop critics’ poll.

    The poll has honored the year’s best album since 1971 (a prize that went to The Who for “Who’s Next”) and has honored the year’s best single since 1979, when the honor went to Ian Dury’s “Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick”. Over the years, top honors have gone to artists running the gamut from straight ahead rock to pop to R&B to hip-hop. Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” being voted 1988’s Best Album was a watershed moment when it came to the critical viewing of hip-hop as an art form. For comparison’s sake, it’s worth noting that, while Grammy voters are widely seen as being out of touch while the Village Voice crew are thought of as hipper than thou, the two have agreed on the Album of the Year choice several times-Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” in 1976, “Thriller” in 1983, Paul Simon’s “Graceland” in 1986, and most recently, OutKast’s “Speakerboxx/The Love Below” in 2003.

    This year’s winner for best album is Animal Collective’s “Merriweather Post Pavillion”. Animal Collective are fairly well known in the indie-rock world, and I must say that the overall flavor of this year’s Voice list is more Pitchfork-y than I’m comfortable with. Perhaps it’s a testament to how out of touch I am when it comes to current popular music, but I only own three albums in the Top Ten (Phoenix, Grizzly Bear and the Flaming Lips), and quite honestly, don’t really have an overwhelming urge to hear anything else on the list. So any argument about whether Animal Collective honestly have the best album of 2009 is one I’m gonna have to respectfully bow out of.

    The year’s winner for best single is Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”, which has been ubiquitous over the course of the past three or four months. Indie rock takes over the next several spots, until an explosion of Lady GaGa occurs in the lower single digits/early teens.

    Dear reading public, as someone who either scratches his head or shrugs his shoulders at the majority of this list, I leave it to you to school me. Check out the list and let me know: do you agree with these choices? What albums or singles got left out?

  • We Are The World 2010

    You had to think that this would happen eventually. But with the tragedy going on in Haiti, it probably couldn’t come at a better time.

    This news bit comes from The Hollywood Reporter.

    Reportedly, Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie are scheduled to do a sequel to We Are The World. It was originally scheduled to be a 25th anniversary project, but with the situation in Haiti, it’s now scheduled for the proceeds from the song (and video) to go to Haiti.

    So far, the artists who are scheduled to be included are Usher, Natalie Cole, and John Legend, but you can imagine that everyone and their mother is going to want to get on this, especially since it’s scheduled to be recorded after the Grammys.

    If only Michael Jackson was still alive to be a part of this. However, maybe somehow, his vocals from the original can still be used on the new song. Or maybe his brothers will be on the track.

    Here’s the original: