The News Review:
- Chasing the elusive groove
- A veteran punk band: New Pants
- The punk who became a princess
- Donkey Punk – Rocking The House For A Worthy Cause
- Branching ut: An Interview With Ted Leo
Chasing the elusive groove
UCLA Daily Bruin – The UCLA Daily Bruin – Apr 23, 2007
Eight members strong !!! is touring in support of its most recent album ?Myth Takes? released in March. Garnering widespread attention for its politically charged 2003 single ?Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard? !!! has taken its brand of free-wheeling dance-floor fanaticism back and forth across the Western Hemisphere. Following a free concert at Amoeba Music on April 26 !!! is scheduled to touch down in Indio for a set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday. In a recent interview with the Daily Bruin lead singer Nic ffer presented his opinion on the reemergence of disco-punk music chasing that one elusive groove and the eroticism of dance.
A veteran punk band: New Pants
央è§åé – Apr 23, 2007
You may think twice after listening the songs and seeing the videos. "The "New Pants" are vocalist and guitarist Peng Lei bass player Liu Bao and keyboard player Pang Kuan. Their taste in music and art brought them together while they were still at middle school and they started jamming together at home. Fans of American punk legends The Ramones they love to pour out their passion with big chords. Their first gig at a university one night in 1996 made them an overnight sensation. Music is not all that keeps the pants going. Frontman Peng Lei at the age of 31 is a cartoon and fantasy buff especially the Star War series.
The punk who became a princess
Belfast Telegraph – Apr 23, 2007
Although 22 she comes over five years younger (in fact a casting director recently told her she looked "well sort of 12"). And the only thing marking her out as a multi-millionairess with 24 million records sold and stadiums squeaking to capacity worldwide is a ring with a diamond the size of an eyeball on her wedding finger. This is from her husband of not-quite-a-year punk star Deryck Whibley from the band Sum 41. nly these days being punk royalty doesn’t mean slashing your arms sniffing glue till you’re sick and stabbing your girlfriend in The Chelsea Hotel. It means living in a Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills just up the road getting married in Vera Wang and making all the right financial decisions in a career that has gone from big to multi-media huge over the last four years. "I don’t care about things" says Lavigne meaning you know stuff. She reckons the most money she’s ever spent (apart from that Spanish-style house but that’s really a great investment anyway) was on a couch the price of which she feels uncomfortable discussing… She was signed to a major label at the age of 16 and her first album Let’s Go released in 2002. Within months she had become the youngest female artist to get to number one in the UK album charts and Let’s Go became the best-selling album of the year for a female artist on the back of international number ones like "Sk8ter Boi" and "Complicated". Working with seasoned songwriter Cliff Magness the music was more rock than country picking up on teen angst rebelliousness shouting hair-shaking door-slamming out-of-control crushes the whole teenage kit and caboodle expressed through sometimes gentle songs other times through very shouty guitary ones. Eight Grammy nominations followed giving credibility to an album that could so easily have been dismissed as so much teenage nonsense. She even found herself hanging out with Marilyn Manson for goodness sake. Five years later and Lavigne is at the hip Hyde Lounge up on Sunset Boulevard to launch her third album The Best Damn Thing the second one having done similar business to the first. The world’s press has been flown in at great expense and is being fed champagne in very tall expensive glasses and little fishy hors d’oeuvres by women in fishnet tights and high boots.
Donkey Punk – Rocking The House For A Worthy Cause
Scoop.co.nz – Scoop.co.nz (press release) – Apr 23, 2007
“CanTeen’ has been involved in all of our highschool lives growing up and it seemed fit to return thefavour” says Mr Polwart. Donkypunk’s music is“diverse rock punk” sound. The show will kick off withother rock bands including Catalyst Alison lake NovemberZulu at Freyberg Place in Central Auckland. But the bandmembers cannot quit there day jobs just yet as their firstalbum is only around 50% complete. “We are scheduled tohave it finished and released by the end of theChristmas” says Mr Polwart. Fans can expect the nextalbum to include a few New Zealand artists. “We have justfinished recording some of the synthesised parts for thealbum performed by our good friend Carlos Voight” says MrPolwart.
Branching ut: An Interview With Ted Leo
PopMatters – Apr 23, 2007
All kinds of music not the late 1970s “crusty anarcho-punk”you might expect of him but soul and rocksteady celtic folk and British invasion rock. So while it might give some people pause to sit down one day in a suburban New Jersey living room and try to write a reggae song it made perfect sense to Leo. “I had written ‘Unwanted Things’ more as just kind of a fun experiment one afternoon” he said in a recent phone interview. “I just said ‘I’ll write a reggae song. ’” Leo interjected that reggae had always been part of his natural language a fundamental element of the punk and hardcore scene that he grew up with in 1980s New Jersey and DC.