Papa Roach reveals new album title

PAPA ROACH has "Days of War, Nights of Love" as the title of his new album, tentatively due before the end of the year. Jay Baumgardner, a veteran producer and head of NRG Studios, have been exploited to produce and mix the CD, which will be recorded later this spring. PAPA ROACH returns to its roots with Baumgardner, and seeks to replicate the energy is met for the first group album, "Infest," which remains the group's best-selling album to date, with nearly 3.5 million copies sold.

PAPA ROACH recently split permanently for a long time with the drummer Dave Buckner, according to a message posted by, Jacoby Shaddix. The singer wrote, "We are witnessing many changes at this time ... Change is a good thing - it keeps things fresh. Y'all For whom do not know, we had to split with Dave, our drummer. He was one of the hardest things we have ever had to make. He's taking this time for his life together. We are still friends and still talk on a regular basis. The road is a difficult place to live, and if you are falling apart, you destroy. He will be missed. "

Buckner first left the group on tour last spring, entering rehabilitation to cope with the problems of addiction. He returned during the summer, but left again later in the year. Shaddix told The pulse of radio than go back on tour was not the best thing for the drummer. "Really, the road is not a place to heal, you know what I say?" Has he said. "It's like the road is, if you are not in good health, it will not make you better, you know what I am saying. And yes, for him, he just simply go a few steps away, Le you know, so ... The show must go on. "

UNWRITTEN LAW drummer Tony Palermo met for Buckner on tour, but it is not clear whether he will become a full member of PAPA ROACH.

Shaddix has also stated in his message that PAPA ROACH will head back to the Paramour Mansion in Los Angeles to begin writing his new album. The group wrote and recorded his last effort, 2006's "The Paramour Sessions" at the same location.

Radiohead Finds Sales, Even After Downloads

By JEFF LEEDS

LOS ANGELES — In a twist for the music industry’s digital revolution, “In Rainbows,” the new Radiohead album that attracted wide attention when it was made available three months ago as a digital download for whatever price fans chose to pay, ranked as the top-selling album in the country this week after the CD version hit record shops and other retailers.
The album, the first in four years from the closely watched British rock act, sold 122,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That represents a mixed result for the band. It’s a sharp drop compared with the debut of Radiohead’s previous album, 2003’s “Hail to the Thief,” but it’s far from a flop, considering the steep decline in music sales in the last four years and the typically weak sales in the post-Christmas period. “Thief” sold about 300,000 in its first week in 2003.

In any case the figures challenge the conventional wisdom that music fans no longer have an affinity for plastic. The sales of the album, which also snagged the top spot on the British weekly music chart, came despite the fact that “In Rainbows” — in the form of digital files — had been acquired by many fans after the band offered it in an unconventional pay-what-you-want offering through a Web site, inrainbows.com. The album was released on plastic CDs and vinyl LPs on Jan. 1, with the CD priced at $13.98, though it could be found for as little as $7.99 at outlets like Amazon.com.

Some retailers viewed the Radiohead figures as a sign of the continuing market for so-called physical products in the music business, where the popularity of iTunes, music blogs and other sites have made the digital file appear to be the coin of the realm. In particular they said even fans who received the digital files distributed by Radiohead may have decided to pay for the better audio quality versions on CD or LP.

“Having a physical, archival high-fidelity master recording that you can side-load into your MP3 player of choice for a similar price is significantly better than just purchasing zeros and ones,” said Eric Levin, owner of the independent record shop Criminal Records in Atlanta and founder of an 18-member alliance of independent retailers. “I feel like that’s what 75 percent of the people are saying.”

Mr. Levin said that at his store vinyl copies of “In Rainbows” outsold the CD by a wide margin. Demand for the album was such that some record shops put it on sale before the label’s planned “street date,” resulting in sales of about 9,000 copies the previous week.

But sales of the plastic and vinyl versions of the album also received a boost from digital services like iTunes, where the album sold about 28,000 copies. The iTunes service, which sells individual songs for 99 cents and albums typically for $9.99, had not carried any of the band’s previous albums, owing in part to Radiohead’s demand that its recordings be sold only as complete works.

But Bryce Edge, one of Radiohead’s managers, said the band decided to sell “In Rainbows” on iTunes because it expects that EMI, the British music giant that released the band’s first six albums, will soon post them for sale on the service, and it would be strange for the new album to be excluded. An EMI representative declined to comment.

The decision to release the music as a digital file so far in advance of the CD also allowed time for the music to circulate on free, unlicensed file-swapping networks. Big Champagne, a tracking service that studies file-sharing, estimates that the album was downloaded more than 100,000 times on free networks in the first 24 hours after Radiohead delivered it to fans who had preordered it from its Web site. But Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, said that by offering the music for as little as zero from their own site, Radiohead “stole market share” from pirate networks.

Mr. Edge said that sales of 100,000 copies of the album this week would be “almost certainly less than the number we would have achieved if we hadn’t” offered it as a digital download. But the band still came out ahead, he said, in part because it attracted so many fans to Radiohead’s Web site, where it collected e-mail addresses from fans looking to acquire the album.

The band has not said how many copies it distributed. Now that the CD is in shops, some fans who paid for the initial downloads may have been tempted to buy the album, in effect, for a second time. But Steve Gottlieb, chief of the independent label TVT Records, said he believed the sales mainly reflected fans who were acquiring the music for the first time.

“Radiohead is one of those really big groups that appeals to people outside the intensely pirating demographic of 16 to 29,” he said. “To the extent Radiohead still has a significant audience in its 30s and 40s, there’s a bigger audience of those people who will still pick up something at Best Buy or don’t want to bother with figuring out how to go to a Radiohead Web site and track it down.”

Still, Mr. Gottlieb said, the sales suggested that the band’s name-your-price offering, and fans’ subsequent free sharing of files, had taken a toll. “Clearly we can’t give it all away and expect to sell CDs,” he said.

But Radiohead will have yet more opportunities to gain fans. The band said yesterday that it planned to perform in more than 20 North American cities this year.

Avenged Sevenfold - A Little Piece Of Heaven Lyrics

Before the story begins, is it such a sin,
for me to take what's mine, until the end of time
We were more than friends, before the story ends,
And I will take what's mine, create what
God would never design

Our love had been so strong for far too long,
I was weak with fear that
something would go wrong,
before the possibilities came true,
I took all possibility from you
Almost laughed myself to tears,
conjuring her deepest fears

Must have stabbed her fifty fucking times,
I can't believe it,
Ripped her heart out right before her eyes,
Eyes over easy, eat it eat it eat it

She was never this good in bed
even when she was sleepin'
now she's just so perfect I've
never been quite so fucking deep in
it goes on and on and on,
I can keep you lookin' young and preserved forever,
with a fountain to spray on your youth whenever

’Cause I really always knew that my little crime
would be cold that's why I got a heater for your thighs
and I know, I know it's not your time
but bye, bye
and a word to the wise when the fire dies
you think it's over but it's just begun
but baby don't cry

You had my heart, at least for the most part
’cause everybody's gotta die sometime, we fell apart
let's make a new start
’cause everybody's gotta die sometime yeah
but baby don't cry

Now possibilities I'd never considered,
are occurring the likes of which I'd never heard,
Now an angry soul comes back from beyond the grave,
to repossess a body with which I'd misbehaved

Smiling right from ear to ear
Almost laughed herself to tears

Must have stabbed him fifty fucking times
I can't believe it
Ripped his heart out right before his eyes
Eyes over easy
Eat it eat it eat it

Now that it's done I realize the error of my ways
I must venture back to apologize from somewhere far beyond the grave

I gotta make up for what I've done
’Cause I was all up in a piece of heaven
while you burned in hell, no peace forever

’Cause I really always knew that my little crime
would be cold that's why I got a heater for your thighs
and I know, I know it's not your time
but bye, bye
and a word to the wise when the fire dies
you think it's over but it's just begun
but baby don't cry

You had my heart, at least for the most part
’Cause everybody's gotta die sometime, we fell apart
Let’s make a new start
’Cause everybody's gotta die sometime yeah
But baby don't cry

I will suffer for so long
(What will you do, not long enough)
To make it up to you
(I pray to God that you do)
I'll do whatever you want me to do
(Well then I’ll break you unchained)
And if it's not enough
(If it’s not enough, If it’s not enough)
If it's not enough
(Not enough)
Try again
(Try again)
And again
(And again)
Over and over again

We’re coming back, coming back
We’ll live forever, live forever
Let’s have wedding, have a wedding
Let’s start the killing, start the killing

’Cause I really always knew that my little crime
would be cold that's why I got a heater for your thighs
and I know, I know it's not your time
but bye, bye
And a word to the wise when the fire dies
you think it's over but it's just begun
but baby don't cry

You had my heart, at least for the most part
’Cause everybody's gotta die sometime, we fell apart
Let’s make a new start
’Cause everybody's gotta die sometime yeah
But baby don't cry

ONSTAGE | SHOWBOX SODO: Avenged Sevenfold Branches Out on New CD

By Alan Sculley

Over the years, Avenged Sevenfold has made almost as much of a name for itself for having a hard-partying lifestyle — particularly on tour — as with its music.

It's an image the band's bassist, Johnny Christ, doesn't deny. But he will try to put it in perspective.

"In the past there's been a lot of talk about that, and the bottom line is we're five best friends," Christ said in a late October phone interview. "We all grew up together and we all live within a block radius of each other pretty much. When you take five best friends in their 20s and take them across the world, we're going to have fun."

That noted, Christ said fans should know that Avenged Sevenfold has its priorities together.

"We know when to have fun and when not to have fun," he said. "We're very, very, very disciplined about our shows. We don't want to cheat the fans. If we were out there doing what a lot of those magazines said, we would have a lot of upset fans, put it that way."

The band's work ethic was more than evident during the making of its newly released eponymous CD. The project found the members of Avenged Sevenfold — Christ (John Stewart), singer M. Shadows (Matt Sanders), guitarist Synyster Gates (Brian Haner), guitarist Zacky Vengeance (Zach Baker) and drummer the Rev (short for Reverend Tholomew Plague, alter ego of Jimmy Sullivan) — buckling down first of all for an intensive stretch of songwriting.

"The writing process for us was about eight or nine months," Christ said. "It was 14-hour days, six days, sometime seven (days a week)."

Then when it came to the actual recording of "Avenged Sevenfold," the group chose to self-produce the CD, adding a major layer of work that wouldn't have existed had the group brought in an outside producer.

Christ said the band had several objectives for the CD, including a very direct sonic approach to the recording.

"We definitely had a clear vision of a very raw, but big sounding record," Christ said. "We wanted to very much to (reflect) how we play live."

The band also wanted to be free to branch out stylistically, and if it was appropriate for a particular song, explore musical styles that might not be associated with the band. This sort of thinking culminated, first of all, in a pair of songs, "Dear God" and "Gunslinger," that have a distinct country influence.

"We had things that sort of bordered on doing that on 'City Of Evil,' but we never took a full song and made it country," Christ said.

With the song "A Little Piece Of Heaven," Avenged Sevenfold went even further out on a stylistic limb. Teaming up to create string, horn and choir arrangements with Steve Bartek (formerly of Oingo Boingo) and Marc Mann, the band created a multi-faceted track with a theatrical flair that is in turn whimsical and slightly sinister.

"We were so proud and had so much fun writing that song, we just had to put it on the record," Christ said.

"A Little Piece Of Heaven," "Dear God" and "Gunslinger" almost certainly will surprise fans that have followed Avenged Sevenfold since it formed in 1999.

The first two Avenged Sevenfold CDs, "Sounding the Seventh Trumpet" (2001) and "Waking the Fallen" (2003) put the band at the forefront of the emerging metalcore/screamo scenes. But on their third CD, the 2005 release, "City Of Evil," the band ditched the screaming vocals and emphasized its heavy metal and melodic influences.

The move could have alienated Avenged Sevenfold's audience, but instead the CD connected with the rock audience. The album produced a top five rock radio hit, "Bat Country," and the CD itself topped 500,000 copies sold in the United States.

The "Avenged Sevenfold" CD figures to further distance the group from the screamo-metalcore scenes. Aside from the stylistic side trips of "A Little Piece Of Heaven," "Dear God" and "Gunslinger," most the new album continues to mine the melodic metal territory of "City Of Evil," only with a heavier accent.

"We feel this is our breakthrough record right now," Christ said. "It's essentially why we wanted to self-title this record. We felt this is very much the pure form of Avenged Sevenfold and this is who we are now."

Because the band had an eye toward trying to capture more of its live sound on the self-titled album, it's no surprise that Christ said the new material translates well in concert. And for its first run of tour dates in support of "Avenged Sevenfold," the group is putting the focus squarely on the music by scaling back on the visual production of its shows.

"We're just kind of kicking it off and playing these clubs and smaller theaters across the states," he said. "We really just wanted to kick off the start of this record with smaller shows and more intimate shows for the fans and stuff."

Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu Set For Taste Of Chaos

Mitchell Peters, L.A.

The 2008 Rockstar Taste of Chaos festival tour will feature performances by Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Bullet For My Valentine, Blessthefall and Idiot Pilot, along with sets by Japanese rock bands D'espairsRay, Mucc and the Underneath.

The fourth edition of the 43-city North American tour begins Feb. 29 at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, and runs through March 15 at the WaMu Center in Seattle. At deadline, only U.S. tour dates had been released, with Canadian dates to follow in January. No other acts were expected to join the bill.

Tickets go on pre-sale Jan. 5 via rockstartasteofchaos.com. The national on-sale begins Jan. 12, with an average ticket price of approximately $29.

Sponsors for the 2008 Rockstar Taste of Chaos include Hurley, Hard Rock Cafe, Hot Topic, Vans, Music Saves Lives, MySpace and Alternative Press, among others.

T

he 2007 edition of Rockstar Taste of Chaos featured a slew of rock acts including the Used, Senses Fail, 30 Seconds To Mars, Saosin, Chiodos, Aiden and Evaline. The festival jaunt, organized by Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman, played more than 130 dates worldwide, including 40-plus cities in North America.

Marr’s is serving up some classic prog-rock

THIS Sunday your dose of classic prog-rock will come courtesy of John Young.

Taking a break from fronting the Aylesbury-based John Young Band, he is performing solo at Worcester's Marr's Bar.

The prolific musician, who holds dear the belief that music should be an "aural experience" rather than an over-produced product, has potent musical background. He was a cathedral chorister and he went on to study music at A-level.

He said: "What I perform is all my own material. It's based around war and peace, love and friendship. It's quite deep and the lyrics are very important."

Young has supported Bonnie Tyler and Midge Ure and guested with George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, and ELO among others.

On top of the rock music, he writes classical pieces for the BBC, ITV, C4, the Discovery, History and National Geographic channels. He said: "My music tends to get everywhere. Tickets to the Marr's Bar gig, starting at 8pm, are £7 on the door.

Elvis is still in building

Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis."

Barry was being funny, as always - but was he right?

As America marks the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death this week, the singer is still very much with us. Perhaps you've seen the new commemorative DVDs of "Jailhouse Rock" and "Viva Las Vegas," or the custom-made Elvis bikes that Harley-Davidson is offering, or the Elvis banana-and-peanut-butter cups Reese's is selling. Perhaps you bought some of these things with your prepaid Elvis Visa.

Ensuring that The King stays alive is the job of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the multimillion-dollar company that handles the licensing of the singer's name, image, movies, merchandising and perhaps the most famous piece of Presleyana, the Graceland mansion in Memphis. In 2005, Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie, sold her majority ownership in the company for more than $100 million to Robert F.X. Sillerman, the billionaire media mogul. Sillerman, whose company CKX Inc., also owns the television show "American Idol," wants to turn Elvis into an even bigger brand by making massive improvements to the Graceland complex and also by exerting greater control over the Elvis image.

"His influence is increasing, not decreasing," Sillerman says of Presley. "From a simple business standpoint, it seemed to make sense."

Among Sillerman's plans for Graceland are an 80,000- square-foot visitors center, plus additional hotels and nightlife offerings that he hopes will keep tourists on the grounds longer than the usual day-trip. "We're not touching the mansion," Sillerman notes. "That is sacrosanct."

What isn't off-limits, however, are the various small businessmen who have, in their own way, been keeping Presley's legacy alive. Sillerman has already announced plans to close two independent shops near Graceland and a museum in Las Vegas to make room for official Elvis Presley Enterprises establishments. (Cirque du Soleil is reportedly working on an Elvis-themed show at the Las Vegas MGM Mirage.)

Even Elvis impersonators began to fear a crackdown from Sillerman after he appeared on MSNBC's "Countdown" last year and announced he wanted to license impersonators, which the company likes to call "Elvis tribute artists." Sillerman has since stated that he won't persecute "unofficial" Elvises. "It's not clear that they're not infringing on the likeness, but that's fine," Sillerman says. "It perpetuates the image."

King of dead celebrities

In the pantheon of dead celebrities, Elvis is undeniably a king. Born Jan. 8, 1935, in East Tupelo, Miss., Presley became the world's first true rock and roll star. Described by Sun Records owner Sam Phillips as "a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel," Presley established a race-based blueprint for rock music that would last for generations. Dreamily handsome but with the rough edges of a working-class boy, he injected a startling sexual energy and sense of rebellion into his music. Eventually he evolved (some would say disintegrated) into a flashy, fleshy, Las Vegas showman. But even in this incarnation Presley defined a certain aspect of American culture.

Thanks in part to his infamously shrewd manager, Colonel Tom Parker, Presley also became one of the first mass-marketed superstars, lending his name to nearly every kind of object from lipstick to luggage to automobiles. In addition to his music, Presley made more than 30 feature films, several television specials and concert films. When he died at Graceland on Aug. 16, 1977 (of heart failure, possibly caused by prescription drug abuse), he left an imprint on the world that's still difficult to measure.

But is that imprint fading? Even with Sillerman's strict oversight, Elvis faces some challenges in the years ahead. The rock memorabilia business has in recent years taken a hit thanks to eBay, which is making once-rare items seem common. Presley's music has historically sold well posthumously, but overall CD sales have dropped 25 percent since 2000, a trend that doesn't bode well for the future. And although Sillerman says 40 percent of Graceland visitors are younger than 35 (and unaccompanied by parents), there is no question that Presley's original fans are getting older.

"I do believe it's only going to get harder and harder going forward," says Jeffrey Lotman, CEO of Global Icons, a Los Angeles-based licensing firm that once specialized in dead celebrities but has been phasing them out in favor of more dependable corporate clients such as Chevron and Hershey's. Though he still handles a handful of past stars, including Marlene Dietrich and Bing Crosby, "About five years ago we decided to bury the dead," Lotman says.

Making Elvis relevant

It's difficult to make someone like Presley, who's been dead for 30 years, relevant to a generation that's in thrall to video games, cell phones and MP3s, Lotman said. You can put his music on kiddie-film soundtracks, as Disney did with the animated "Lilo and Stitch," but "can you really youthify him permanently?" Lotman asks skeptically. "Is that going to happen with ringtones? Or cute little animated cell phones?"

Even among those who collect old-fashioned memorabilia such as posters and autographs, the market seems to be somewhat down. Marc Zakarin, president of the Huntington-based memorabilia house It's Only Rock and Roll, says prices on many items were higher in the "pre-Bay" era, as he called it.

"A guy like me would travel around the country finding this stuff," Zakarin explains. "I'd buy a box of Elvis perfume and sell it for 500 bucks." The items were fairly common, Zakarin admits, but as eBay gained prominence, "all these people who thought these things were special began to communicate."

Still, he notes, Presley continues to fetch some of the highest prices in the business, just under the Beatles. Even the little gold necklaces that the singer handed out willy-nilly to fans ("TCB," or "Taking Care of Business," for the guys, and "TLC," or "Tender Loving Care," for the girls) still go for about $3,000 apiece, Zakarin says.

There's no doubt that Presley fans have an insatiable appetite for anything related to their idol. Several years ago, when Warner Home Video was about to reissue the 1970 concert film "Elvis: That's the Way It Is," the company discovered several minutes of outtake footage of Presley rehearsing the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water." George Feltenstein, a senior vice president at Warner Home Video, decided to include the footage, but he left out the actual performance of the song, which he thought redundant. Fans, however, thought otherwise.

"We heard from fans that they missed seeing that," he says. "No matter what you do, it's never enough." Warner this month released the film in a two-disc set featuring the "Special Edition" with the outtake footage and the original version with the performance.

Presley's music, too, continues to sell respectably. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the deceased singer sold 410,000 copies of the holiday album "White Christmas" in 2000 and about 900,000 of "Second to None" in 2003. Even his 2004 gospel album, "Ultimate Gospel," racked up 350,000. Most remarkably, the 2002 collection "30 #1 Hits" sold a whopping 4 million copies.

Clearly, the singer's allure "hasn't faded at all," says Ed Christman, retail reporter at Billboard magazine in New York. When it comes to greatest hits packages, he adds, "If you hit the 100,000 unit mark in terms of sales, you're doing your job."

Sillerman expresses no doubts that Presley will live on for many years. He cited two famous quotes: One was Leonard Bernstein's declaration that "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century," and the other was John Lennon's rather biblical proclamation, "Before Elvis there was nothing."

If Dave Barry was wrong about Presley, and the singer does indeed have to die, he's had a longer life than most.

BY RAFER GUZMÁN