Traction Verse First Week Numbers: Radio stations haven’t embraced Guns n’ Roses first single ‘Chinese Democracy’ but some people aren’t to concerned. “We all expected a situation with the numbers falling off,” says Bob Chiappardi, the New York City-based CEO of Concrete Marketing, has worked with Guns N’ Roses since the Live Like A Suicide EP. “First off, it’s not in every record store in the country, which doesn’t help. But I hope it’s going to follow the same kind of life of the Kid Rock record, where songs keep coming – then we’ll have really good numbers by summer.” Chiappardi claims that Chinese Democracy needs time and nurturing. “The record is like a unicorn – there’s a legend around it,” he says. “It’s hard to explain. I think once the smoke clears, it’ll rise to the top.”

Chinese Democracy has several great singles for the incredibly lame terristorial radio. Here is our song selection for radio:
Sorry, This I Love, Streets Of Dreams, and Better.

Speaking about Guns n’ Roses, the mainstream press is begging for a feud between Axl and former bandmates. In fact, bassist Duff McKagan (Velvet Revolver) in an KISW 99.9 FM. interview said this morning:

“I have, yeah (listened to Chinese Democracy). I think Axl sounds amazing. You know, I’m glad he put out the record he wanted to put out and I think it’s gonna be successful, him going out and touring. People have been talking how the record’s doing. I think it’s a longevity thing; it will do fine for him. And I wish him the best of luck.”

End of The Year Lists: Rolling Stone and their contributors have listed the Best Albums of 2008. Metallica and Guns n’ Roses makes sense, but the Jonas Brothers? See the list here.

Avril Lavigne has fired her manager and management company. Avril is said to be distraught that her latest album and tour proved less popular than her previous efforts, and blames Nettwerk mogul Terry McBride for her lack of success.” Generally speaking, artists blame everybody but themselves. A source said Avril is hoping that new management can help her new album be more successful than the last. Avril has reportedly now signed a new deal with Irving Azoff and his management company, who work with Christina Aguilera, The Eagles and Guns n’ Roses.

Van Halen’s 1982 Tour Rider: Today’s tour riders look like a high school halloween party, maybe you will get a couple of bottles of water, some beer, and some english muffins. The 80’s signified good times, especially if you were superstars called Van Halen. The Smoking Gun got their hands on the 1982 Van Halen World Tour rider, a typewritten and 53 pages long that consists of herring in sour cream,” four cases of “Schlitz Malt Liquor beer (16 ounce cans),” and a total of eight bottles of wine and liquor. The rider’s “Munchies” section was where the group made its candy-with-a-caveat request: “M & M’s (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES).” View the rider here.

Shock: Auto-Tune is a audio processor that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings. Here is a clip of Britney Spears without lip synching and pitch correction.

Side Project? Causing a much larger buzz with his solo project, Alexisonfire guitarist and vocalist Dallas Green is teaming up with Vagrant Records to try and make an impact stateside with his solo, folk rock side project, City and Colour. The lead single, and catchiest song from Green to date, “Sleeping Sickness” could make quite the splash at Triple A radio in January when he will also be embarking on a U.S. headlining tour. Check out the video here

Success via Trailer: M.I.A. saw a great deal of success in 2008 mostly due to a widely publicized trailer for summer blockbuster, “Pineapple Express” which features a good amount of the song, however it was not on the soundtrack. Swedish singer Lisa Miskovsky has started to generate some buzz with a piece of her song, “Still Alive” which is featured in a video game trailer for a popular game called “Mirror’s Edge”. The soundtrack features only this song and remixes of it. Could strong video game sales possibly help push the song to radio?

Back to Canada: A new band making its way onto radio with their blend of indie rock is Arkells recognizable, raspy and raw vocals help drive songs like lead single, “Oh, The Boss is Coming!” and the first track on their new album, “Deadlines”. Bluesy, with hard-hitting vocals, it sounds like they may have something going on here.

Changing gears to something more mainstream friendly is a band that you may instantly relate to power pop, emo rockers Motion City Soundtrack, and that is D.C. band You, Me, and Everyone We Know who sound like they belong on next year’s Warped Tour with catchier songs than the ones most concert-going tweens have been high on. They just released their 2nd free EP this year that can be downloaded here, which is even more pop friendly than their first it features some sweet, 3 minute tracks like “Colorful Language” & “Sometimes We Have Too Much Fun”.

Quick Picks:

Tupelo Honey – “Morphine”- Strong rock band that still needs to get signed.

The Parlor Mob – “Carnival of Crows” - Zeppelin-esque, Roadrunner Records band

Cajun Dance Party – “Amylase”- London indie rockers who have probably never tried Gumbo.

Sam Roberts – “Detroit ‘67” – Another popular Canadian, new album out in the U.S, on February 17, 2009.

Soundcheck is written by Dallas Osborn who currently attends San Francisco State University and works on the Live 105 (KITS) Action Team.

Corgan says Smashing Pumpkins is not a nostalgiac band…

We’re not a nostalgia band. “It’s not old band versus new band,” he says. “It’s new band or no band.”

“Calling it a 20th-anniversary tour, people expected greatest hits,” he says. “The casual fan who comes in and just wants to see the hits, they were not having it. But we’ve seen a real reactivation in the hard-core fan base.”

Corgan is bothered by the fact that people thought they were done….

No, what bothers me is the notion that we’re done. We didn’t come back for the cash; we came back to be great again. It made me mad that people thought we’re done, that we don’t have a future. Get out. We don’t want you. We’ve never been that band. That happy band. We picked up where we left off. We’re not the retirement band playing our old hits. … I don’t give a [expletive] that most of my heroes got lame when they turned 40. I spent most of the last decade thinking about that. Why do they go from this insanely high level of work to diminished echoes of the past? And I think it’s a coziness thing. You do something amazing, and you don’t want to lose the crowd that tells you that’s amazing. You’re out in the cold. Well, we like to be out in the cold. We’re done with the record business, so we’re free to do whatever I want.

Corgan on the album, the iPod and listening patterns..

We’re done with that. There is no point. People don’t even listen to it all. They put it on their iPod, they drag over the two singles and skip over the rest. The listening patterns have changed, so why are we killing ourselves to do albums, to create balance and do the arty track to set up the single? It’s done.

Corgan still has something to say…

Let me be blunt. When Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album, I pay attention. Same with Neil Young. Because they’re major artists who have something to say. I consider us in that category.

Full interview in the Chicago Tribune.

La Roux is a synth pop duo made up of Elly Jackson and synth player Ben Langmain. Will be supporting Lilly Allen on her next run. The next big thing? Or is the track ‘Quicksand’ a overly compressed pop track ala poor mans version of Princes ‘When Doves Cry’.

Coldplay has responded to the lawsuit by guitarist Joe Satriani, who claims the band stole his song ‘If I Could Fly’ for their ‘Viva La Vida’.

“With the greatest possible respect to Joe Satriani, we have now unfortunately found it necessary to respond publicly to his allegations. If there are any similarities between our two pieces of music, they are entirely coincidental, and just as surprising to us as to him.”

“Joe Satriani is a great musician, but he did not write the song ‘Viva la Vida’. We respectfully ask him to accept our assurances of this and wish him well with all future endeavors.”

Coincidence or Premeditated?