95X TheBUZZ with Michael Todd

Monday, July 31, 2006

GORILLAZ MAN GETS NEW BAND

Damon Albarn, the man behind animated giants Gorillaz and Brit pop legends Blur, is forming a new band. NME reports that the singer is working on a new album with The Clash?s bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and drummer Tony Allen. Gnarls Barkley man Danger Mouse will produce the new record, which is titled The Good, The Bad And The Queen. No band name has been announced just yet but they hope to have the record, a concept album about London, by January.

FLEA WANTS TO GET BETTER

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea has kept in touch with his fans via the band?s Web site fairly regularly these days. In his latest ?FleaMail,? he said that he feels that the band has been playing the best gigs of their lives, adding that a highlight was when Patti Smith recently joined them on stage in London. He went onto say that he wants to ?try and get better as a musician and look for new ways to play and write. I want to break through into something new. I really want to be a better musician.? So what does Flea miss while traveling? He says the ocean. The Red Hot Chili Peppers play Lollapalooza in Chicago on August 4th.

?AND GIVES A SHOUT OUT TO THOM

In a post on RedHotChiliPeppers.com, bassist Flea says he?s been listening to Thom Yorke?s new album, The Eraser, a lot. He described the debut from Yorke as, ?beautiful?full of exciting rhythms and melodies and sounds.? He also said he is a fan of Sonic Youth and is eager to see them play at the Fuji Rock Festival, which took place this past weekend.

HOW HAWTHORNE KEEP IT TOGETHER

Is Hawthorne Heights latest album If Only You Were Lonely a concept album? Frontman JT Woodruff says not quite, but it is all connected somehow. "When we wrote this album we tried to make each part distinctive. And basically impact the next part that came right after it. So we definitely made a conscious effort to build the songs sort of like a storyline. You know you have a climax at the beginning, ups and downs and such." If Only You Were Lonely is out now. Hawthorne Heights play Springfield, Missouri tonight before heading off to Australia for a short tour.

A.F.I. NOT INTERESTED IN CONCEPT ALBUM

Although A.F.I. uses a lot of recurring images and themes throughout the band's latest CD, Decemberunderground, singer Davey Havok told LAUNCH the disc is not what he would consider a concept album: "It's not a, you know, concept record in the way that Tommy is, or perhaps the Green Day record (American Idiot) is, but people get a sense of that conceptual, theme-related mood in our records just because I tend to write within a certain mood. There are recurring themes that run throughout the record, but there are no characters, you know, there's no plot."

NEW INCUBUS ALBUM TO ARRIVE IN THE FALL

Incubus plans to release its sixth studio album this fall, according to a posting at the band's official website by guitarist Mike Einziger. The group was hoping to write 16 or 17 songs before recording. The new Incubus CD, which does not yet have a title or specific release date, will follow up 2004's A Crow Left of the Murder.

BEASTIE BOYS AT WORK ON NEW MATERIAL

The Beastie Boys have begun working on their seventh studio album, according to Jam! Music. The threesome told the Canadian website that they've started "messing around" with a number of new songs. There's no estimated release date yet for the new disc, which would follow up 2004's To The 5 Boroughs.

SLIPKNOT DJ TO RELEASE ALBUM

Slipknot turntablist Sid Wilson has announced that he?ll release his first solo album, titled The New Leader, on August 29th. He goes under the alias DJ Starscream, and you can hear some of the tracks off The New Leader on his MySpace page right now.

EVERCLEAR FRONTMAN SAYS HIS LIFE WAS 'LAID FLAT'

Everclear returns to the radio this week with "Hater," the first single off the band's upcoming album Welcome To The Drama Club. Since the last Everclear effort, 2003's Slow Motion Daydream, frontman Art Alexakis has gone through a turbulent period of personal and financial difficulties. He told LAUNCH it all began with his third divorce: "That started basically a two-year heartbreak, going all the way down emotionally, really kinda reinventing myself, kinda going over a lot of things that I'd done to myself, and these cycle I had caught myself into. Same time I went through a bankruptcy. My whole life's just been kinda laid flat, man. This record reflects that."

Welcome To The Drama Club will surface on September 12th through Eleven Seven Music, the same independent label that recently issued Buckcherry's comeback effort, 15.
Alexakis has assembled a brand new, five-man line-up for the new record, with plans to tour later this summer and fall.
Everclear's six previous studio efforts sold a total of more than eight million copies and featured hits such as "Father Of Mine," "Everything To Everyone" and "Santa Monica."

THIS WEEKEND'S TOP TEN MOVIES - JULY 28-30
1. Miami Vice, $25.2 million
2. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, $20.5 million
3. John Tucker Must Die, $14 million
4. Monster House, $11.5 million
5. The Ant Bully, $8.2 million
6. Lady in the Water, $7 million
7. You, Me and Dupree, $7 million
8. Little Man, $5.1 million
9. The Devil Wears Prada, $4.8 million
10. Clerks II, $3.9 million

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for MONDAY, JULY 31
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Adam Sandler, Julie Chen, a Top Ten List presented by 2006 U.S. Open golf winner Geoff Oglivy (repeat)
JAY LENO (NBC) - William H. Macy, 3 Days Grace
LATE LATE SHOW - Andie MacDowell, Cirque du Soleil's KA
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Bette Midler, David Gregory (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Anna Paquin, Matchbook Romance (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Flavor Flav, Leslie Bibb, Ben Harper

Friday, July 28, 2006

FALL OUT BOY ENTER THE STUDIO
Fall Out Boy officially entered an L-A studio yesterday to record the follow-up to their double platinum selling From Under the Cork Tree album, according to a post on their official Web site. They announced that they will be recording 12 songs for the new record, some love songs, some songs about the world around them. You can expect to hear a new single from the band by the winter, and the album will be out in early ?07. Bassist Pete Wentz said that the band has been plagued by ?excessive procrastination and indecision and a love/hate relationship with words.?

STONE SOUR READY FOR TV GIG, TOUR
Stone Sour will perform its hit song "Through Glass" on Thursday, August 8th, when the band appears on NBC-TV's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The Tonight Show gig will come on the heels of Stone Sour's second album, Come What(ever) May, which arrives in stores next Tuesday (August 1st). Singer Corey Taylor said that "Through Glass" is based on his reaction to watching a music video channel in a European hotel room. Taylor explained, "I just remember seeing act after act of this inane, innocuous, plastic music. They were bubbly gossamer-thin groups, where it was really more about the clothes they wore and the length of their cheekbones than it was about the content of the song they were singing."

The video for "Through Glass" features a cameo from Poison guitarist C.C. Deville.
Come What(ever) May is the successor to Stone Sour's 2002 self-titled debut, which featured the hit "Bother." Taylor and guitarist Jim Root are also both members of Slipknot.
Stone Sour hits the road tomorrow (Saturday, July 29th) in Antioch, Tennessee as part of the Family Values tour with Korn, Deftones, 10 Years and others.

ZOMBIE WRITING NEW SONGS FOR FILM

Rob Zombie has told AOL Music that he's writing new songs for his upcoming animated film, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, and that the soundtrack will serve as his "in-between record" separating official Zombie albums. The singer-turned-filmmaker said, "(The movie) will be in theaters in 2007, and we're writing songs for that right now." Zombie added that if the animated El Superbeasto is a success, he'd like to turn it into a live-action feature as well, explaining, "In order to be live action it'd be a big budget, so I wanted to make it animated first."

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for FRIDAY, JULY 28
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Jamie Foxx, Tom Dreesen
JAY LENO (NBC) - Abigail Breslin, Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis, Ben Harper
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Kyra Sedgwick, Keith Olbermann
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Meredith Vieira, Jeff Probst, Jim Gaffigan (R 2/1/06)
LAST CALL - Chris Webber, Eddie Izzard, Taking Back Sunday
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Regis Philbin, Trevor Fehrman, Pharrell

FOR SATURDAY, JULY 22
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE - Host: Steve Carell with Musical Guest: Kanye West

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

95X SUMMER X-SCAPE SPONSORS

The 95X Summer X-Scape continues to give away 4-packs of tickets for Sea World, Six Flags and Schlitterbahn! It's also your chance to win a trip to see the Dave Matthews Band in Dallas! First you have to have 95X Game Tickets. We'll call out ticket numbers weekdays between 6am and 8pm. If we call out a number that matches one of your ticket numbers, call us within 9 minutes, 51 seconds at 520-9500 and you win! Here's where you can get tickets:

PARK CONVENIENCE STORE
42nd & Andrews Hwy next to McD?s, ODESSA
10th St. & West County Road, ODESSA

REBECCA?S FASHION AND GIFTS
3205 W Cuthbert, Suite B-4, MIDLAND
DQG DRILLING 4310 S. Rankin Hwy, MIDLAND

GOLD?S GYM
On Cuthbert next to Hastings, MIDLAND
# 3 Meta Drive Behind Walgreens, MIDLAND

UPROCK
Music City Mall, ODESSA
Midland Park Mall, MIDLAND
102 Andrews Hwy (Near Hospital) MIDLAND

PET CONNECTION
1512 N Grant, ODESSA

RHINO LININGS OF MIDLAND
Midkiff&Franklin,1Blk N of Wall, MIDLAND

JUSTIN LOW ATTORNEY
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FIRST STAFFING
4526 E. University, ODESSA
440 N. Big Spring, MIDLAND

95X STUDIOS
Corner Midkiff & Wadley, MIDLAND

SEETHER COMES OFF ROAD; SINGER ENTERS REHAB

Seether has canceled all plans for the immediate future as frontman Shaun Morgan has decided to enter rehab for unspecified substance abuse issues. In a statement, Morgan said, "I'm deeply sorry that this news comes right before a planned tour, especially one that I was so excited about, and I hope that everyone understands. I need help with addictions that I can't kick on my own. These things are making me sick, and could potentially harm me permanently, so I need to take care of them as soon as possible. I hope the tour goes well, and we hope to be on the road again soon. Thank you again for your understanding and support."

Seether was scheduled to begin a tour with Staind on August 5th in support of its just-released live acoustic CD/DVD set, One Cold Night.
The statement said that Seether had performed "in excess of four hundred shows" over the last two years, promoting 2005's Karma And Effect and then recording and promoting One Cold Night without any breaks. As a result, according to the statement, "Morgan has spread himself too thin and in turn made decisions he now regrets."
Morgan himself told LAUNCH last month he thought the band could be in danger of burning out from a relentless touring schedule, saying, "I've seen members of different bands get different habits and just spiral downward, man, and we want to try and prevent anything like that happening with anyone here."
On what could be a related note, the first single from the new Evanescence album, The Open Door, is titled "Call Me When You're Sober." Evanescence singer Amy Lee broke up with Morgan last fall after a two-year relationship.

CORNELL TO VOICE NEW BOND THEME
As we mentioned here three days ago, Audioslave vocalist Chris Cornell has been confirmed to co-write and sing "You Know My Name," the theme song for the next James Bond film, Casino Royale.

Meanwhile, with Audioslave's new album, Revelations, due out on September 5th, music industry website Hits Daily Double has reported that this may be the supergroup's final effort, with "insiders" claiming that Cornell is leaving the band to resume his solo career. The site added, "Word is the three remaining members nixed a seven-figure offer from promoters to reunite as Rage Against The Machine with ex-lead singer Zack de la Rocha amid rumors of bad blood."

Cornell told MTV.com that the break-up rumors were false, adding that the band hears them all the time. He recently told LAUNCH that the group has ignored debate over whether it was a "real band" ever since it got together: "Yeah, we never responded to any cynicism about if we were a real band. And also it's silly speculation. When you are four guys in a room writing songs for a record, you can't be any more of a band than that. Audioslave's actually more of a band because we write all of our material with all four of us in a room working on it. We're more of a band than a lot of other bands are."

MCR SINGER TO PEN COMIC BOOK
My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way has announced plans to write his own six-issue series of comic books, according to MTV.com. The series, called The Umbrella Academy, will revolve around a character called Sir Reginald Hargreeves, described in a press release as a "world-renowned scientist and inventor, intrepid adventurer, successful entrepreneur, champion cricketer and closet space alien" who leads his own "family" of seven superheroes.
There's no release date yet for The Umbrella Academy's first issue, although it probably won't arrive until mid-2007. Other rock artists have written comics and graphic novels, most notably Coheed And Cambria's Claudio Sanchez. My Chemical Romance is currently completing its next album, the follow-up to 2004's Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge. It's tentatively titled The Rise And Fall Of My Chemical Romance.

EX-ROCK STAR FINALIST DUMPS ON SUPERNOVA
Former Rock Star contestant Jenny Galt has questioned whether the members of Supernova, this season's band on the CBS-TV reality series, are really committed to the group. The Canadian-born Galt, who was eliminated from the show last week, told the Calgary Sun that many of the competing singers speculated on Supernova's future, saying, "Because (drummer) Tommy Lee's got Motley Crue and (ex-Metallica bassist) Jason Newsted's very passionate about (his band) Voivod, there are a lot of questions as to whether this band is going to really take off. That's up in the air...how much commitment do the actual members of Supernova have?"

Newsted told LAUNCH that he wouldn't be involved with the group if his heart wasn't in what he was doing: "I don't really need to do any stunts or stuff like that, you know. It's just not necessary at all. So this is just another feather in the cap, really. I'm not looking at it as 'reality TV.' I don't know, man, it's -- the first four letters of that word are right. First 13 weeks that are shown on the TV are just what people get to share with us. We've got a long way to go after that."
Supernova also features former Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke.
Once a singer is selected, Supernova will finish recording its debut album and tour in support of it.
Galt also said that she was disappointed in the song slated to be Supernova's debut single, describing it as "that same old, boys rock 'n' roll kind of glam thing they said they weren't going to be doing. It was a bit surprising."

OASIS TO RELEASE GREATEST HITS ALBUM

Oasis will release a greatest hits collection called Stop The Clocks on November 21st. The two-CD, 18-song set will be the first retrospective issued by the veteran British rock band, with the tracks selected by the members of the group themselves. In addition to hits like "Wonderwall" and "Supersonic," the package will include "Acquiesce," a B-side that is considered by fans to be one of the band's greatest songs ever. Also included is another rarity called "Half The World Away," which was used as the theme song for the British TV series The Royle Family.

Oasis was formed in the early Nineties by brothers Liam Gallagher on vocals and Noel Gallagher on guitar. The group released "Supersonic" as its debut single in 1994, followed by its first album, Definitely Maybe.
The group scored a major hit in the U.S. and worldwide with 1995's (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, which featured "Wonderwall," "Champagne Supernova" and "Don't Look Back In Anger."
The latest Oasis album, Don't Believe The Truth, came out last year. The band is currently on a break before starting work on a new record.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for THURSDAY, JULY 27
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Johnny Depp, the Spinners
JAY LENO (NBC) - Will Ferrell, Kristen Bell, Everclear
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Greg Kinnear, Sammy Hagar
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Steve Carell, Sanaa Lathan, Lewis Taylor (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Lance Armstrong
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Rerun TBA
JON STEWART (COMEDY CENTRAL) - Fouad Ajami

JIMMY GET BUTCH ON NEW ALBUM

It?s been two years since we?ve heard anything from rock act Jimmy Eat World because they have been working hard writing their new record. They will head into their studio in Tempe, Arizona on August 7th to begin recording the new album. Garbage man Butch Vig is set to produce the album, which already has 17 songs including ?Big Casino,? ??Be Sensible? and ?Firefight.? Jimmy play Del Mar, California on August 26th.

R.E.M. BEGININGS

The early years of R.E.M. have been chronicled on a two-disc/DVD combo titled And I Feel Fine, which will be released on September 12th. The package includes rarities, live tracks and previously unreleased music. The compilation spans the band?s first five years when they were on I.R.S. Records and includes the tracks ?Radio Free Europe,? ?Driver 8? and ?It?s the End of the World as We Know It.? The DVD will include music videos from the era as well as live TV performances. R.E.M. will be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on September 16th.

FOILED FILLED WITH SINGLES; BLUE FANS DISCOVER HISTORY
When it came time for Blue October to pick a follow-up to the hit single ?Hate Me,? off the band?s latest album, Foiled, frontman Justin Furstenfeld said there was really no problem ? the group would happily go along with any track its record company might pick. Here?s why. ?We?re basically the kind of band that makes an album and then we?re like, we?re happy with every song so label, whatever you think, go for it because we put just as much time as we did into ?Hate Me? as we did into ?Everlasting Friend? or ?Overweight? or ?Drilled a Wire? or things like that so we?re just happy for them to be able to go, ?We?re gonna run with this one next? cause we?re like, ?Okay, whatever you want. Pick any song on that album, we?ll run with it.? It?s not like we know it?s good, you know, it?s just we take just as much time on each one of the songs and care about each one of the songs as much so it?s just like, ?Whatever you guys want, as long as you back it and push it.?? Blue October?s Foiled album is now sitting at number 36, in its 15th week on the Billboard chart.

Blue October has landed a gold album and a whole new audience with Foiled. But do all these new fans even know about the band's four previous efforts? Justin Furstenfeld told LAUNCH that the group's back catalog is getting a second chance thanks to Foiled's success: "When we start playing songs that aren't on Foiled, and there's people singing all the songs, and the new people are looking at 'em like, 'What do you know that I don't know?' you know? And they go to the merch booth and there's four albums lined up before Foiled. We see a lot of people go, 'I want all of 'em,' which is really great for us because those albums are the ones that we trucked around in a van for, and begged people to 'just listen to 'em, just listen to 'em!'"

Blue October's previous hit, "Calling You," appears on their 2003 release History for Sale.
The band has set "Into The Ocean" as the second single from Foiled, following the hit "Hate Me."
The Texas-based group will compete with 30 Seconds To Mars, Angels And Airwaves and others in a "battle of the bands" sponsored by Cingular Wireless, with the winner playing atop the marquee at New York City's Radio City Music Hall during September 7th's Fashion Rocks concert.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for WEDNESDAY, JULY 26
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Scarlett Johannson, Paul Teutul Jr. and Sr.
JAY LENO (NBC) - John C. Reilly, Christina Milian, Pharrell
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Cuba Gooding, Jr., Carrie Ann Inaba, Jurassic 5
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Emma Thompson, Jason Priestly, Norah Vincent (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Ginnifer Goodwin, Hoobastank (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Jon Cryer, the Dudesons, Los Lonely Boys
JON STEWART (Comedy Central) - Sharon Weinberger

Blue October's current North American tour pulls into Columbus, Ohio tonight (Wednesday, July 26th). The band will appear at Lollapalooza on August 4th in Chicago, and head out in mid-August on its first European jaunt

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

NEW JET ON THE WAY

Aussie band Jet will release their second album, Shine On, on the same day as The Killers Sam's Town comes out, October 3rd. The follow-up to 2003?s Get Born was once again produced by Dave Sardy and the first single, ?Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is,? will come out on August 7th. Jet will head our on a U-S tour on September 18th with cities and dates to be announced shortly. You'll be hearing the first single on 95X's new music show, the 9 O'Clock News as soon as they make it available to us.

WHO KNOWS U2 BEST? U2 OF COURSE!

On September 22nd fans of U2 will get a new perspective on the band. U2byU2, a book that tells the story of the band, by the band, is set to be released that day. The 350-page book tells the band?s story from their early beginnings to present day. The book gives insight not only from each band member but from longtime manager Paul McGuinness as well. U2byU2 also features 15-hundred images of the band.

METALLIWUSS?

So they hired a therapist to help them figure out their differences. Does that make Metallica wusses? Well, according to Blender magazine, Metallica are one of the top ?25 Biggest Wusses Ever.? MTV News reports that the band made the list because ?the haircuts were lame and the anti-Naptster crusade lamer.? Who else is a rock and roll wuss? Robert Smith of The Cure, Coldplay?s Chris Martin, Nick Lachey and more. Check out the other wusses in the July issue of Blender.

TRAVIS BARKER ON THE BLINK BREAK-UP

On February 22nd 2005, Blink-182 announced that they?d be going on ?indefinite hiatus.? Since then, the threesome have split up, Tom Delonge forming Angels & Airwaves and Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker forming their new band Plus-44. So what?s the vibe between Plus-44 and Tom? In an interview with MTV News, Barker spoke of Delonge saying, ?I would have to say you?re definitely seeing what the real Tom is like and that?s the only comment I?ll make about him or his band. But everything happens for a reason. If the Blink breakup didn?t happen, we wouldn?t be here right now and we wouldn?t have been able to make the record we did?it?s the best thing in the world.? No word as to when the debut Plus-44 album will be out.

NICKELBACK ARE ?SAVIN? ME.?

Nickelback have been enjoying the huge success of their latest album, All The Right Reasons, since it?s release ten months ago. Guitarist Ryan Peake tells us about the single ?Savin? Me.? ??Savin? Me? is definitely one that, we actually had to work at that one. It didn?t come right away. Sometimes it?s nice when the song just comes out and it is what it is but ?Savin? Me? was like, it showed up as a great verse and then stuff in the middle, the chorus and what not, just didn?t really click, I don?t know, for me personally. And I was like, ?You know what, I want to hear this again, this part I don?t want to hear again.? And we kind of had to be critical of the song. The verse had really good potential and I didn?t want to give it up on it and was like, ?This could be a really good song.?? All The Right Reasons has sold over 3-million copies to date. "Rockstar" is the latest single from the album and will be on 95X's new music show, the 9 O'Clock News, this week.

GUNS N' ROSES ATTACKED BY AUDIENCE

Guns N' Roses singer W. Axl Rose has issued a statement regarding the band's show in Newcastle, England last Wednesday (July 19th), which was cut short when Rose was hit twice in the mouth with objects, possibly bottles. Rose ended the gig by walking off the stage after being hit a second time, curtailing the band's encores. Members of the crowd were reportedly hostile over the fact that the band had started the show an hour late, which is by now customary for Guns N' Roses.Rose said that the band has had a policy of not tolerating objects thrown at the stage since 1988. Guns N' Roses was joined at the Newcastle show, as well as several others on its recent tour, by original guitarist Izzy Stradlin'. There is still no release date for the new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for TUESDAY, JULY 25

DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Greg Kinnear, Tapes 'n Tapes
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Kevin Smith
JAY LENO (NBC) - Jaime Pressly, Keith Olbermann, Los Lonely Boy
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Bob Saget, James Carville, Yellowcard (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Kathy Griffin, Rock Kills Kid
DAILY SHOW (COM) - Ed Burns
JIMMY KIMMEL - Luke Wilson, Jeff Ross, the Elected

Monday, July 24, 2006

JANE?S ADDICTION RELEASE SET FOR SEPTEMBER
MTV News reports that a Jane?s Addiction compilation will hit shelves on September 19th. Up From the Catacombs will feature 16 tracks from the band?s back catalogue, including their hits ?Been Caught Stealing,? ?Summertime Rolls,? ?Classic Girl? and ?Three Days.?

AUDIOSLAVE GET THEIR ?GROOVE? ON...
September 5th sees the release of the third Audioslave album, and guitarist Tom Morello tells us that Revelations will certainly not be ?samey.? "The material is diverse and you know it?s, it?s very groove heavy and there?s some real heavy rockers as well as some more off the cuff stuff, you know that heads in different directions that we haven?t played before, you know. I think that?s one of the strengths of the band is being able to play a variety of music and have it all sound like Audioslave." ?Original Fire? is the first single from Revelations, which hits stores on September 5th.

...AND CORNELL GETS HIS BOND ON
A Finnish newspaper reported that Audioslave vocalist Chris Cornell has been tapped to write and sing the theme song for the next James Bond film, Casino Royale. According to Bond fan site M16, Cornell was quoted as saying, "I haven't seen the new Bond fully, because it is still being edited, but I have seen several clips of it. Absolutely amazing movie. Very different than earlier Bonds." A representative at Audioslave's record label had no information on Cornell's reported involvement. If Cornell did sing the Bond theme, it be the first 007 film to feature a male vocalist since A-Ha did the honors for 1987's The Living Daylights.

JACK IS STILL A WHITE STRIPE
The Raconteurs have taken up most of Jack White?s time recently, but that doesn?t mean that he?s given up on the White Stripes. He spoke about it to NME saying, ?I've heard assumptions that I'm bored with the White Stripes, or that it's not fulfilling me, which is very much not true. I find the White Stripes extremely fulfilling. It's extremely challenging. It's harder to be in the White Stripes than in this. I don't get to break for a second when the Stripes play live. But I do wish to dissuade people of the assumption that I've become bored with the White Stripes, and I would definitely admit if that was the case." White said that The Raconteurs give him freedom from ?negative hipsters who are demons who prowl the Earth and used-record stores.?

NEW PAPA ROACH ALBUM COMING SOON
Papa Roach has chosen "To Be Loved" as the first single from the band's fourth major label album, The Paramour Sessions. The track will be on 95X's nightly new music show, the 9 O'Clock News, around August 7th, while the album is set for release on September 12th. "To Be Loved" is also expected to show up online sometime in the next few weeks. The Paramour Sessions will follow up Papa Roach's 2004 effort, Getting Away With Murder, which has sold more than one million copies.

RISE AGAINST PLANS FALL TOUR WITH THURSDAY
Rise Against will team up with Thursday for a fall co-headlining tour, with pre-sale tickets going on sale shortly through each band's individual website. Both groups are also currently on this summer's Warped Tour. The traveling punk festival is consistently successful year in and year out, which Rise Against singer Tim McIlrath chalked up to the loyalty of punk rock fans: There always has been a place for punk music and there always will be a place for punk music in the world. Punk has been that sort of sanctuary for people who don't feel like they fit into the rest of the world, and having this microcosm of the whole punk scene that comes to your town once a year, you're certainly gonna bring a lot of kids out to that, you know, where they feel part of this community and see what's going on in punk in 2006." Pre-sale tickets for initial dates on the Rise Against / Thursday tour will go on sale shortly through each band's website. Billy Talent and a fourth, yet-to-be-announced group will round out the bill. A confirmed Texas date is October 26 at Houston's Verizon Wireless Theater.

RADIOHEAD'S OK COMPUTER RE-EXAMINED ON DVD
Radiohead's classic 1997 album OK Computer is the subject of a new DVD examining the making of the record and its impact, according to Gigwise.com. The DVD, titled Radiohead: OK Computer - A Classic Album Under Review is slated to come out on September 19th and will feature never-before-seen footage of the group performing the songs from the album in the studio and live. Radiohead has been touring this summer both in the U.S. and Europe, but is not expected to release a new album until 2007. Singer Thom Yorke's solo debut, The Eraser, came out on July 11th and debuted at Number Two last week on the Billboard Top 200 album chart.

THIS WEEKEND'S TOP TEN MOVIES - JULY 21-23
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, $35 million
2. Monster House, $23 million
3. Lady in the Water, $18.2 million
4. You, Me and Dupree, $12.8 million
5. Little Man, $11 million
6. Clerks II, $9.6 million
7. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, $8.7 million
8. Superman Returns, $7.46 million
9. The Devil Wears Prada, $7.43 million
10. Cars, $4.9 million

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for MONDAY, JULY 24
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Colin Farrell, India.Arie
JAY LENO (NBC) - Kyra Sedgwick, arctic explorers Lonnie Dupree and Eric Larsen, Taking Back Sunday
LATE LATE SHOW - Eddie Izzard, the Buzzcocks
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Ray Romano, Sue Johanson, Jose Gonzalez (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Patton Oswalt, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Rosario Dawson, Jesse Metcalfe, the Flaming Lips

Friday, July 21, 2006

BLUE OCTOBER FANS FIND A LOT TO LIKE ABOUT "HATE ME"
Blue October has a massive hit on its hands with "Hate Me," the first single off the band's fourth studio album, Foiled. While singer Justin Furstenfeld says he wrote the track as an apology to his loved ones, he told LAUNCH that he's heard different reactions to the song and its video from fans: "I had a mother come up to me with her son the other night at a show and say, 'My son overdosed in my arms, like you did in your video.' And I was like, 'What?' And she was like, 'My son almost died in my arms, and when he got out of rehab, we watched this video together, and it changed our lives.' And I was just sitting there going, what do you say to that?"

Blue October has set "Into The Ocean" as the second single from Foiled. The album has been certified gold for sales of more than 500,000 copies.
The Texas-based group will compete with 30 Seconds To Mars, Angels And Airwaves and others in a "battle of the bands" sponsored by Cingular Wireless, with the winner playing atop the marquee at New York City's Radio City Music Hall during September 7th's Fashion Rocks concert.
Blue October's current North American tour pulls into Clifton Park, New York tonight (Friday, July 21st). The band will appear at Lollapalooza on August 4th in Chicago, and head out in mid-August on its first European jaunt.

STAIND, KORN, SYSTEM SUPPORT MUSIC IN TROOPS VIDEOS
The members of Staind, Korn and System Of A Down have no problem with their music being used as the soundtrack to so-called "viral videos" being made by soldiers stationed in Iraq. According to MTV.com, troops stationed in the middle of the country's bloody civil war have been using digital video cameras and laptops to record their experiences and edit them into videos, using their favorite rock songs as background music. Staind singer Aaron Lewis said, ""It's just crazy to see the footage of them right there in the middle of it, doing it all."
Staind guitarist Mike Mushok, whose band has played for and met many U.S. soldiers, told LAUNCH that nothing compares to hearing first-hand about the troops' experiences: "You know, just meeting them and talking to them and realizing, and just hearing kind of a little bit first-hand about what they go through, and what they've had to go through...honestly, it's just really an amazing, amazing thing to experience."

Ex-Rage Against The Machine and current Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello said viral videos offer an uncensored look at the war that is not filtered by the Bush administration or corporate news outlets, explaining, "It is truly an indie media, from soldiers who are the ones who really know what's going on."
Even though the soldiers' use of the music is technically illegal, Korn singer Jonathan Davis doesn't mind, saying, "I don't know what the record company is going to say about that, but what's it hurting? It's reality."
System Of A Down vocalist Serj Tankian, whose band openly opposes the U.S. occupation of Iraq, said about the use of their music, "As long as it's not used to hurt others, I've got no problems personally with them using it."
Many of the soldiers' videos, some of which are extremely graphic, can be found at iFilm, YouTube and Ogrish.com.

DECADES ROCK LIVE AIRS THIS WEEKEND

The fourth installment of Decades Rock Live, featuring Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and Death Cab For Cutie, will premiere tonight (Friday, July 21st) on VH1 Classic at 9p.m.. This episode pays tribute to Elvis Costello and will include Armstrong and Costello dueting on an acoustic version of Costello's "Alison," while Death Cab For Cutie collaborates with Costello on "Accidents Will Happen." Death Cab, Armstrong and Fiona Apple also join the guest of honor on "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?"
The show will have multiple airings over the weekend.

Decades Rock Live is taped at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Costello segment was taped on May 19th.
Incubus and Garbage singer Shirley Manson will lead the list of artists performing on the next edition of the concert series, which will pay tribute to the music of the Pretenders. The new episode will be filmed on August 11th.
The show, which premiered last November, pays tribute to legendary rock artists with performances from the artists themselves as well as contemporary rock and pop acts who have been inspired or influenced by them.

DAVE MATTHEWS TAKES FENWAY LIVE
The Dave Matthews Band recently performed two nights at Boston?s Fenway Park and if you didn?t get the chance to see the shows, you?ll soon be able to hear them. The band will release a four CD set of the concerts, which includes the new tracks ?Can?t Stop? and ?The Idea of You.? Stay tuned to DaveMatthewsBand.com for details. Dave Matthews plays Hartford, Connecticut next Friday.

ALL-AMERICAN REJECT CANADIAN TOUR
The All-American Rejects have canceled the remaining dates of their Canadian tour, according to MTV News. Singer Tyson Ritter has been ordered by doctors to rest his voice, but hopes to be back out on the road in time to play a show in Costa Mesa, California next Wednesday. They hope to reschedule the missed shows for later this year.

CONTROL GETS UNDERWAY
Control, the new film about the life of the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, started filming this week. The movie is being directed by famed video director Anton Corbijn and is based on the novel Touching From a Distance, which was written by Curtis? widow. Corbijn feels that he is the best man for the job saying, ?I simply feel that as Joy Division and Ian Curtis played a big part in my life, I cannot think of a better combination of subject and director.? Yahoo Music reports that Sam Riley, Samantha Morton and Alexandra Maria Lara star. Control is set to be released next year.

WOLFMOTHER?S INNER JACKASS
?The Joker and the Thief,? a track off Wolfmother?s self-titled debut album, will turn up on the soundtrack for the new Jackass film. According to NME, the video for the track will also get the Jackass treatment with appearances by Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera and more. The Malloys will direct the clip. Also, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs has teamed up with Peaches and Johnny Knoxville to record a song called ?Backass.". Karen describes the song as a ?little tune that makes you want to smash heads.? Jackass: Number 2 is released on September 22nd.

NEW TO THEATERS JULY 21

LADY IN THE WATER
Cleveland Heep is a lonely apartment building superintendent who discovers a sea nymph from an underwater world in his complex's pool. The girl's name is Story and she tells Cleveland that a wolf-like creature called a scrunt is out to kill her unless she meets a writer who can complete the fairy tale she came from. Luckily, the apartment building is home to two scribes and with the help of them and their neighbors, they keep Story safe and create the means for her to get home. Lady In The Water is the second movie by director M. Night Shyamalan to star Bryce Dallas Howard, the daughter of actor and director Ron Howard.

CLERKS II
Slacker clerks Dante and Randal move their wisecracking butts to a fast food restaurant in Clerks II, the foul-mouthed sequel to director Kevin Smith's 1994 film. As in the original movie, the buddies spend their time barely serving customers and talking a mile a minute about a range of topics including Lord Of The Rings and outlandish sexual acts. Rosario Dawson is new to the gang as the restaurant's manager, while characters like Jay and Silent Bob return to the fray.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND
A mild-mannered architect named Matt starts going out with an art curator who mysteriously excuses herself during their initial dates. He later finds out that the woman, Jenny, is really G-Girl, a stylish super heroine fighting crime in the Big Apple. At first excited by the prospect of bedding G-Girl, the reality of her clingy personality leads Matt to break up with her. After that, G-Girl does everything in her power to pay Matt back for breaking her heart. Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson star.

MONSTER HOUSE
The folks behind the Polar Express are back at it in Monster House, the story of a group of kids who discover there's more to a rickety old home than meets the eye. The movie takes place on Halloween, when pals DJ, Chowder, and Jenny are left to their own devices while DJ's parents are gone for the evening. Bored with the babysitter, they decide to find out why the creepy house across the street eats kids' toys and discover that it has a heart and soul of its own.
Monster House is on the scary side for young children, and is probably best suited for kids older than 12.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for FRIDAY, JULY 21
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Donald Trump, Nick Griffin, Sam Roberts
JAY LENO (NBC) - Tina Fey, Cris Collinsworth, Jerome Bettis
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Tom Lennon, Jewel (repeat)
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Al Gore, Paul Giamatti, Beastie Boys
LAST CALL - Neil Goldman, Taran Killam, Paul Campbell, Harland Williams, Jasper Redd, Living Things
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Allison Janney, Morgan Spurlock, Jurassic 5

FOR SATURDAY, JULY 22
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE - Host: Jason Lee, Musical Guest: Foo Fighters

Thursday, July 20, 2006

SUBLIME GETS REISSUE AFTER A DECADE
Sublime?s 1996 self-titled album will get reissued next month, according to Billboard. The CD will be released as a deluxe edition on August 15th and will include eight previously unreleased tracks and five music videos. The tracks on the album will be in the intended but unused sequence late singer Brad Nowell wanted them in and the album itself will feature mixes that were edited out of the original version. Billboard also reports that a Sublime boxed set is due out in November.

THOM TAKES TWO
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke will enjoy a big week next week when his debut solo album, The Eraser, debuts at number two next week on the Billboard album chart. The Eraser sold 90-thousand copies in its first week of release, according to Nielsen Soundscan. And that?s not the only rock record with a big debut. British band Muse will come in at number nine with their new album, Black Holes and Revelations.

MUSE GO DANCING
If you?ve had the chance to listen to the latest Muse album, Black Holes and Revelations, you?ll know that it has some dancey, spacey influences. So what caused this galactic change? According to NME, it came as a result of the band DJing in New York City. The band says that New York provided them a new groove and a new sense of positivity. They said that they started clubbing and even dancing while they stayed in the city.

CORNELL SAYS NOT EVERY ALBUM A FAN FAVORITE
Audioslave's new album, Revelations, arrives on September 5th, roughly 15 months after the release of the band's second effort, 2005's Out Of Exile. That's quicker than usual by modern standards, but lead singer Chris Cornell told LAUNCH that fans don't necessarily have to love every album the band puts out: "There was a time when being a rock band meant that, or being a fan of a rock band, meant that they might make a record that isn't your favorite, but it's not the end of their career, or the end of you being a fan of that band, and the next record might be completely different or it might be something that you love, that you would never expect."

The first single from Revelations, called "Original Fire," is on 95X now and is also available for streaming at the band's official website.
Audioslave has yet to announce touring plans in support of the new CD.
Cornell recently told AOL Music that he's also writing songs for his second solo album and hopes to record it later this summer.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for THURSDAY, JULY 20
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Martin Short, PinkJAY LENO (NBC) - Colin Farrell, Brian Williams, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Toni Collette, Lawrence Block, Joe Theismann (repeat)
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Uma Thurman, Kevin Smith, the New York Dolls
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Stephen Dorff, Him
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Rerun TBA
JON STEWART (COMEDY CENTRAL) - Paul Giamatti

The first single from Revelations, called "Original Fire," is on 95X now and is also available for streaming at the band's official website.
Audioslave has yet to announce touring plans in support of the new CD.
Cornell recently told AOL Music that he's also writing songs for his second solo album and hopes to record it later this summer.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

PAM ANDERSON AND KID ROCK TO TIE THE KNOT

On again, off again couple Pam Anderson and Kid Rock are set to tie the knot in St. Tropez next week. According to US Weekly, the two, who got engaged back in 2002, will wed on a boat on July 29th.

FRANZ, SNOW PATROL SING FOR KIDS

Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand won?t be releasing a new album anytime soon since they?ve decided to take things slow with the follow-up to 2005?s You Could Have it so Much Better. Nevertheless, they will be appearing on a children?s album. According to NME, Franz, as well as Snow Patrol, Flaming Lips, The Kooks and more will all sing for The Colours are Brighter, an album of children?s songs put together by Scottish legends Belle & Sebastian. Proceeds from the CD will go to Save the Children. The album is expected to be released this fall.

CHILI PEPPER MOM RAISES MONEY FOR CANCER SOCIETY

Anthony Kiedis? mom, Peggy, is auctioning off a guitar signed by the band for the American Cancer Society. In a post on RedHotChiliPeppers.com, she announced that the signed instrument went up for auction on eBay yesterday. Peggy also announced that she would be involved in Relay for Life, an event on August 4th to raise money for the Cancer Society that would involve her walking on a track for 24 hours. Anthony?s mom said that she would not be able to walk the full 24 hours though, as she has to go see the Chili Peppers play Lollapalooza in Chicago that night.

BLUE OCTOBER LIKES?
Is it possible to have too many musical influences? Maybe ? here?s Blue October drummer Jeremy Furstenfeld on his group?s endless list of fave acts. ?Michael Jackson, country music, all kinds of stuff, everything, Dave Matthews Band, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead. It?s just kind of a big, giant melting pot I think of everything we ever listened to. You know, you can pull from everything, anybody that you listened to musically, you can always learn from them so we just kind of, it just kind of appears.? Blue October?s latest album ? Foiled? ? has reached its highest rank to date on this week?s Billboard chart ? number 29. The band will be playing Clifton Park, New York, this Friday night.

PANIC! ALREADY THINKING ABOUT NEXT ALBUM

Panic! At the Disco is busy touring to promote its gold-certified debut album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, but the Las Vegas quartet already has its eye on the future. Guitarist and chief songwriter Ryan Ross told LAUNCH that the band members are already coming up with ideas for their second album and scoping out time to start working on it in earnest: "I'm excited to start writing. We're gonna take some months off after, like, about a month of dates in November, and then we're gonna write over the winter and record and probably have a record out probably this time next year." The latest single from A Fever You Can't Sweat Out is "But It's Better When We Do."

VELVET REVOLVER, OTHERS ON NEW CHARITY ALBUM

Velvet Revolver and the Strokes are two of the acts contributing songs to Serve, an all-star charity album to benefit a non-profit organization called World Hunger Year (WHY). According to Blabbermouth.net, other artists appearing on the disc include Modest Mouse, Coheed and Cambria, Aerosmith, Good Charlotte, Lenny Kravitz, Bruce Springsteen and Dido. The tracks are a mix of live, studio, acoustic and electric performances, with many of them rare or previously unreleased.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for WEDNESDAY, JULY 19
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Uma Thurman, Morgan Spurlock
JAY LENO (NBC) - Wanda Sykes, Kevin Connolly, the Fray
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Jesse James, Paul Dinello, She Wants Revenge (repeat)
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Luke Wilson, Bryce Dallas Howard, Los Lonely Boys
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Tracy Morgan, Halifax
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Robin Williams, Anna Faris, Rhymefest
JON STEWART (Comedy Central) - James Maguire

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

TIM BURTON TO MAKE A KILLER VIDEO?
The Killers might have a huge Hollywood director lined up to make a video for a track off their highly anticipated new album, Sam?s Town. According to Yahoo Music, Tim Burton visited the band as they finished their record in London, and he is known to be a huge fan of the Las Vegas band. Reports say that he may be working on clips for the tracks ?Bones? or ?Read My Mind.? The Killers will release Sam?s Town on October 3rd.

THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS BIG QUESTION MARK
?Cheated Hearts? is the latest single off the Yeah Yeah Yeahs second album Show Your Bones and singer Karen O and drummer Brian Chase say that this record forced the band to dig a bit deeper. ?(Brian Chase) The last record was all songs that we had been playing live for a while so it was already a realized vision that we wanted to match in our heads whereas this one (Karen O) It was a big question mark (Brian Chase) Yeah, cause it?s starting from scratch and it?s actually in, the whole writing process was in the studio as opposed to in an apartment with a four track and writing for twenty minutes.? The new video for ?Cheated Hearts? is available at YeahYeahYeahs.com right now. They play San Diego on August 5th.

SLIPKNOT CHOOSE SPOOKY RELEASE!
Slipknot have chosen Halloween as the perfect release date for their upcoming DVD, according to MTV News. The release is as-yet-untitled, and the content of the DVD remains to been seen. Stay tuned for details!

ROCK KILLS DANCE ROCK
Rock Kills Kid frontman Jeff Tucker is a punky-pop-rocky kind of guy, so he?s not real happy when his band?s debut album ? Are You Nervous? ? gets them compared to such dance-y outfits as The Killers and Franz Ferdinand. For that matter, neither is guitarist Sean Stopnik. ?(Jeff Tucker) I think it?s just a rock record with a couple dance songs on it. There?s seven rock songs and two dance songs and one of them happens to be the one they?re playing on the radio. People are going to automatically think every song sounds like that, but it doesn?t. (Sean Stopnik) Yeah and everyone?s like, ?Oh, it kinda sounds like the eighties.? There are a couple songs with an eighties vibe but we all were kids in the eighties so of course it?s gonna sound like that. And then there?s a lot of it that doesn?t. A couple songs, there is barely any keyboards, there?s no groove to it, it?s just a rock song. I suggest everyone just goes out and buys it and makes their own judgement.?

MONKEY SUCCESS
England?s Arctic Monkeys set U-K sales records with their debut album when it was released earlier this year ? but frontman Alex Turner and drummer Matt Helders say ? in fact they swear ? that that sort of thing was never on their minds when they started out. ? (Alex Turner) I think to be honest, and this is not being sort of controversial, but I don?t think we cared like when we got into it. We were getting a chance to do this thing and travel and stuff and play this music. (Matt Helders ) I think if we could just stay at this level even if we could just come to America and just play at this level or just come to America and play and just do that would be enough.? Arctic Monkeys? debut album, of course, is called Whatever People Say I Am, That?s What I?m Not.

SUPPORT FROM MARS
Making a transition from Hollywood actor to rock-band leader may sound like a down-sizing thing, but Jared Leto says the guys in his group have made the transition extremely fulfilling. ?We have a unique experience together because we all share a musical vision and we?re all painting on the same canvas. So these guys have given me a great opportunity to utilize their talent and their creative energy to help elevate what I do by ten-fold. They help make me so much better at what I am able to do and I think vice-versa. We all add to the process for each other and we have a really productive working experience? Jared Leto and the rest of 30 Seconds To Mars have moved up eight places to number 66 on this week?s Billboard chart with their second album, Beautiful Lie.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for TUESDAY, JULY 18
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Regis Philbin, Bryce Dallas Howard
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Tyrese Gibson, Paul Morrissey, Def Leppard (repeat)
JAY LENO (NBC) - Cuba Gooding Jr., Chris Matthews, Ray Davies
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Rosario Dawson, Kevin Pollak, Matthew Sweet & Susanna HoffsCARSON DALY (NBC) - Nick Cannon, Alien Ant Farm
DAILY SHOW (COM) - M. Night Shyamalan
JIMMY KIMMEL - Fred Willard, Korn

Monday, July 17, 2006

AVRIL LAVIGNE, SUM 41 FRONTMAN TIE THE KNOT
Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley tied the knot this past Saturday (July 15th) during an outdoor ceremony at a private estate in Montecito, California. According the People.com, Lavigne wore a Vera Wang gown and carried white roses as her father walked her down the aisle. The couple exchanged vows in front of 110 guests, including family and friends from their native Ontario.

Their first dance was to the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris."
Twenty-one-year-old Lavigne and 26-year-old Whibley have been dating for two years and became engaged in Venice, Italy in June 2005.
Lavigne has been writing songs for her third album, the follow-up to 2004's Under My Skin. She told People.com that fans should expect a lot of love songs on the next set, saying, "That's what I feel, so that's what I'm going to end up writing."
Earlier this year, Sum 41 started writing songs for its next album, the follow-up to 2004's Chuck.

EVANESCENCE LOSES BASSIST
Evanescence will release their new album, The Open Door, on October 3rd. That?s the same day that The Killers will come out with their new one, Sam?s Town, but unlike The Killers, Evanescence won?t have their original line-up. According to MTV News, bassist William Boyd has left the band. Boyd left the band because he did not want to head out on tour again and wanted to spend more time with his family. Frontwoman Amy Lee said that she is supportive of his decision, saying that they ?love Will very much? and wish him ?nothing but happiness in everything he does. We?ve been playing music together since I was in junior high. I miss him already.? Evanescence will be looking for a replacement in the near future.

HAWTHORNE HEIGHTS GROW UP
?Pens and Needles? is the latest single off of Hawthorne Heights new album If Only You were Lonely, an album that frontman JT Woodruff says brings out the grown-up side of the band. (Actuality #1) ?I think it?s just maturity. You know, as you grow as a musician, you don?t want to just put it all out on the table at once and as we wrote this album we tried to make each part distinctive and basically impact the next part that came right after it. So, we definitely made a conscious effort to build the songs, sort of like a story line and not just you have a climax right at the beginning but ups and downs and stuff.? Hawthorne Heights are currently on tour in Canada, but will be back in the U-S for a show in Bonner Springs, Kansas on July 29th.

30 SECONDS? MORE LIKE 3 YEARS
A Beautiful Lie, the second album by Jared Leto?s band, 30 Seconds to Mars, seems to be getting its second wind on the Billboard chart ? this week, it?s jumping back up from number 74 to 66. Bassist Matt Wachter says the group?s pretty happy, because the record took an unusually long time to make. ?It took nine months to record the record, about two and a half to three years to actually write the record so, over those two and a half, three years, we went through a lot of changes, both individually and as a band. So I think that really reflected in the songs.? 30 Seconds to Mars will be playing Orangevale, California, tomorrow night.

CLERKS II
Clerks II is the sequel to Kevin Smith?s indie debut, which was released back in 1994. The film chronicling two convenience store clerks over the course of one day?s trials and tribulations quickly became a cult classic. This new film marks the return of Brian O?Halloran as ?Dante? and Jeff Anderson as ?Randall,? who are now in their 30?s and haven?t grown much in the past ten years. Smith knows he is setting himself up for abuse from the Internet savvy fans who have a lot of time on their hands. ?The thing about the Internet for me is that it is the boon and the bane of my existence and if you are going to believe the positive stuff you have to also believe the negative stuff. So, you know if I read I am a genius, I take that with a massive pound of salt and if I read that I am a hack and the worst director ever, I take that with a pound of salt as well. The truth lies somewhere in between.? Smith also pays a great deal of attention to critics and fan reactions to his films. ?I am really dialed into reaction of all the films. I am not one of those filmmakers that lies and says, ?I don?t read the reviews and I don?t go on the Internet.? I read every review and spend and inordinate amount of time on the Internet? way too much. So, I know you are always going to run up against people that are like, ?It?s balls compared to the first Clerks?.? Clerks II also marks the return of Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith as ?Jay? and ?Silent Bob,? respectively and it also stars Rosario Dawson. Keep a look out for cameos by Jason Lee and Ben Affleck when it hits theaters on Friday.

NEW CRANK YANKERS CALL IN TO MTV2
MTV2 announced a deal last week that will bring band new episodes of Crank Yankers to the network. The show, which features prank calls made by comedians and celebrities that are re-enacted by a cast of puppets, originally premiered on Comedy Central. Now, eight new episodes will run on MTV2. Showdates and times have yet to be announced.

TAKING BACK SUNDAY SINGER RATES ANGELS & AIRWAVES
Taking Back Sunday and Angels And Airwaves have been co-headlining across the U.S. since June 22nd. Angels frontman Tom DeLonge recently told LAUNCH that he didn't think the two bands were necessarily a good musical fit, so we asked Taking Back Sunday vocalist Adam Lazzara for his assessment: ["Their music reminds me of that scene in The Breakfast Club, it's like the last scene in the movie, it's when Judd Nelson just throws the one hand up in the air and it freezes there and the credits roll -- that's what Angels And Airwaves is to me. They just have more of like a U2, kinda like ballady feel to 'em. And then we come on and we just play our rock tunes."

DeLonge told LAUNCH about Angels And Airwaves, "This band is very much not in that punk rock scene. I just think that it's definitely not meant just for, like, this punk rock kind of underground thing."
Taking Back Sunday's third album and major label debut, Louder Now, was recently certified gold for sales of more than 500,000 copies. The album's first single is "MakeDamnSure."
Taking Back Sunday will perform on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno next Monday (July 24th) and Last Call with Carson Daly on July 28th.
The two bands, along with the Subways and Head Automatica, play tomorrow (Tuesday, July 18th) in Mesa, Arizona.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD SINGER INTERVIEWS METALLICA

Avenged Sevenfold singer M. Shadows interviewed Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich and frontman James Hetfield for the September issue of Revolver magazine, which is on newsstands now. The interview was conducted last month when the two bands were playing European festivals together. Shadows asked his heroes why they decided to work with producer Rick Rubin on their next album, to which Ulrich replied, "Everything that's great about rock, from Slipknot to System Of A Down to the Chili Peppers to Mars Volta...it's all Rick Rubin...we want to work with the guy who's got the total finger on the pulse."
Hetfield told Shadows that younger bands like Avenged Sevenfold kept Metallica excited about playing music, explaining, "Bands like yourself are getting us to step up again and getting us to remember the roots where we came from."

Metallica is currently writing its ninth studio album, which the band hopes to begin recording this fall.
Avenged Sevenfold is touring on the main stage of Ozzfest as it continues to support its 2005 major label debut, City Of Evil.

SNOW PATROL SINGER CLEARED FOR DUTY

Snow Patrol singer Gary Lightbody has been given the green light to tour again. The Scottish band was forced to cancel its entire U.S. tour last month after Lightbody was diagnosed with polyps on his vocal chords, but the frontman posted at the band's official website last week, "I saw the doctor in Glasgow this week and he gave me a clean bill of health. The gigs for the rest of the year are on and we're itching to get on the road...I'm feeling better than I have in ages and we are bursting to get back at it."

The British act has rescheduled its U.S. dates, beginning with some radio festivals in mid-August before heading out on a month-long trek starting on September 6th in Atlanta.
Tickets for the canceled tour will be honored at the rescheduled fall dates. Some of the venues have changed.
Snow Patrol will be back on the road supporting its new album, Eyes Open, which features the single "Hands Open." The new track from the disc is "Chasing Cars."

SLIPKNOT DJ BECOMES 'THE NEW LEADER'

Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson, also known as DJ Starscream, will issue his debut solo album on August 29th, titled The New Leader. The project, which has been in the works for four years, features Wilson's "mixture of aggressive DJ and production style with an in-depth knowledge of hip hop and metal," according to Blabbermouth.net. The disc features an appearance from Slipknot and Stone Sour guitarist Jim Root on a track called "L.A. Headspace."
The New Leader will come out a month earlier in Japan, on July 25th.

Wilson is the latest Slipknot member to come out with a solo project. Root and vocalist Corey Taylor will issue the second Stone Sour album, Come What(ever) May, on August 1st, while percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan is working on a new disc with his side band, To My Surprise.
Slipknot plans to release its next album sometime in 2008.

THIS WEEKEND'S TOP TEN MOVIES - JULY 14-16
1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, $62.2 million
2. Little Man, $21.7 million
3. You, Me and Dupree, $21.3 million
4. Superman Returns, $11.6 million
5. The Devil Wears Prada, $10.45 million
6. Cars, $7.5 million
7. Click, $7 million
8. The Lake House, $1.6 million
9. Nacho Libre, $1.5 million
10. A Scanner Darkly, $1.2 million

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for MONDAY, JULY 17
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Regis Philbin, Bryce Dallas Howard
JAY LENO (NBC) - Cuba Gooding Jr., Chris Matthews, Ray Davies
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Rosario Dawson, Kevin Pollak, Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Nick Cannon, Alien Ant Farm
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Fred Willard

Friday, July 14, 2006

THE KILLERS HEAD TO SAM?S TOWN
The Killers have decided on Sam?s Town as the official title of their highly anticipated second album. The album will drop on October 3rd, but you can hear a clip of their first single, ?When You Were Young,? over on MTVNews.com right now. Sam?s Town -- which is also the name of a hotel casino in The Killers' hometown of Las Vegas -- is the follow-up to the band?s debut album, Hot Fuss, which sold five-million copies worldwide.

KORN MAN THANKS GOD
It seems that Jonathan Davis has gone a little bit spiritual after being diagnosed with a blood disorder last month. The singer, while speaking to MTV, said, ?Thank God that someone?s looking out for me from up there and I?m still here. Now I want to get on the road bad, just to go be with my fans. I mean, that?s what gives me strength to begin with.? Sounds like he?s excited about the upcoming Family Values tour, which kicks off on July 27th in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Davis also spoke to MTV about the video for their new single, ?Politics,? saying that it will focus on real people and their opinions rather than the ?government that supposedly is representing what we?re feeling.? See You on the Other Side is the latest album from Korn.

THREE DAYS GRACE ARE GLOOMY
When the Canadian band Three Days Grace needs some lyrics, they always turn to frontman Adam Gontier ? and they always hope he?s in a gloomy mood. Adam Gontier says, "I?ve always never been able to write, write lyrics anyways, when I?m happy. I don?t know, I mean, If I had the choice of having turmoil or being happy I?d probably pick the happy side of things but there?s always something no matter what, no matter how great your life is or how good people think it is, there?s always something that, something coming up in your life.? The new Three Days Grace album, One-X, will be moving up from number 36 to 33 on next week?s Billboard chart.

PICK A SINGLE, ANY SINGLE SAY LOSTPROPHETS
The Welsh band Lostprophets wound up picking ?Rooftops? to be the first single off their new album, Liberation Transmission, but frontman Ian Watkins says that by that point in the process, they could just as easily have settled on any other track on the record. ?We?d be happy with any song being a single on there because we kind of focused on every song like they were the only songs we had individually. And ultimately we couldn?t decide, we couldn?t be objective because we?d be like, ?Yeah, this one will be cool as a single, but then that one will be really cool as well. Oh, and this one is cool and that one is cool.? And it?s like, you know what, just somebody else offer their opinion because I can?t decide.? Liberation Transmission debuted at number 33 on this week?s Billboard chart ? it?ll be dropping to 62 on Monday.

CORNELL PLANS SECOND SOLO ALBUM
Audioslave singer Chris Cornell told AOL Music that he's writing songs for his second solo album, revealing, "I'm going to hopefully finish it and record before the summer's over." Cornell declined to say when his new solo effort would be released, noting that Audioslave's third effort, Revelations, "comes out in September, and I don't really want the two to be fighting." Cornell released his first album, Euphoria Morning, in 1999, two years after the demise of his previous band, Soundgarden. Audioslave began coming together two years after that.

SERIOUS DASHBOARD
Dashboard Confessional?s music may just sound like fun to fans ? but hey, main-man Chris Carrabba says he goes through all kinds of torment to produce it. ?There is a fun element to what we do but it?s not dance floor music so you?ve got to tap into something really deep inside of you and pull it out and it takes a lot of energy to do that and sometimes that road is tumultuous, it?s a bumpy ride, but it makes it so much sweeter when it?s completed. I guess I?m at that point now where I?m starting to forget the sort of hell it takes to go through a record and looking back on it it?s always a serene process. Maybe it wasn?t so serene.? Dashboard Confessional?s new album, Dusk And Summer, drops from number two to nine on this next Billboard chart.

KEVIN SMITH EXPLAINS THE GENESIS OF CLERKS II
Kevin Smith made waves with his indie debut Clerks back in 1994 and he has gone on to solidify a cult fan base of movie geeks and fellow New Jersey residents with other films like Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Jersey Girl. We caught up with Smith this week and he explained how the idea for the sequel came about. ?It never occurred to me to do a sequel for Clerks back when we made the first one. Someone asked me at one point, ?Can you ever see yourself doing a sequel?? And I said, ?I think I have said everything I can possibly say about convenience stores that I can at this point.? So, it wasn?t until fairly recently where I was like, ?Man, I want to write a story about what I think it is like to be in my 30?s.? But unlike Jersey Girl it won?t be so mock-ish, you know it will be a little more grounded in reality and it will have a donkey show in it.? Clerks II marks the return of Jeff Anderson, Brian O?Holloran, Jason Mewes and also stars Rosario Dawson. Keep a look out for cameos by Jason Lee and Ben Affleck ? and the donkey -- when it hits theaters next Friday.

TV GETTING RESCUED WITH MORE MENCIA
The FX network announced yesterday that it has ordered a fourth season of its Emmy-nominated drama series Rescue Me. Reuters reports 13 episodes of the Denis Leary firefighter series have been ordered, and will begin production early next year. Meanwhile, Comedy Central has ordered a third season of comedian Carlos Mencia?s show Mind of Mencia. The network has ordered 16 episodes of the irreverent comedy series, which is its highest-rated show this year behind South Park.

NEW TO THEATRES JULY 14

YOU, ME AND DUPREE
You, Me And Dupree stars Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson as a newlywed couple with a horrible houseguest named Dupree. Owen Wilson's Dupree is well-intentioned but his naked sleeping habits, extended stays in the bathroom, and party attitude wear thin on his hosts. Tensions rise in the household as Dillon's character struggles at work with his new father-in-law, leaving his wife feeling neglected and then comforted by Dupree's spiritual side.

LITTLE MAN
The guys behind White Chicks are back with another transformation comedy in Little Man. The movie stars Marlon Wayans as Calvin, a "little person" who's disguised as a baby to retrieve a stolen diamond from the purse of a female ad executive. Calvin is taken in by the woman and her husband and he starts to enjoy the perks of an infant's life -- pooping, breast feeding, and being in the same room as a couple having sex. To make the 6-foot-2 Wayans into a 2-foot-6 man, his head was superimposed on a body double. Shawn Wayans and Kerry Washington also star.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for FRIDAY, JULY 14
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Anderson Cooper, John Witherspoon
JAY LENO (NBC) - David Hasselhoff, Natalie Morales, Morningwood
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Nick Cannon, Family Force 5, Kyle Dunnigan
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Owen Wilson, Kerry Washington
LAST CALL - Tom Green, Ben Harper (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Brittany Murphy, Danica Patrick, Eagles of Death Metal

FOR SATURDAY, JULY 15
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE - Host: Matt Dillon, Musical Guest: Arctic Monkeys

Thursday, July 13, 2006

BLUE OCTOBER LEADS BATTLE OF THE BANDS
Blue October will lead a "battle of the bands" sponsored by Cingular Wireless and the Conde Nast Media Group, with the winner playing atop the marquee at New York City's Radio City Music Hall on September 7th as part of the Fashion Rocks concert there, according to Billboard.com. 30 Seconds To Mars, Angels And Airwaves, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, IMA Robot and the Pink Spiders will also compete, with Cingular subscribers able to vote for their favorite act until August 15th by texting a unique code. More details can be found at the Cingular website.

Meanwhile, Blue October has set "Into The Ocean" as the second single from its Foiled album and follow-up to the hit "Hate Me." Violinist/pianist Ryan Delahoussaye told LAUNCH that the band couldn't be happier with the response to its latest effort. "We have had so much love out there, it's crazy. I mean, it's more than we can ever dream of and imagine, you know. We, like, in Tampa, in a town that we've never been to, you know, have three thousand kids out there screaming our name and singing all the songs. So it is, it has been above and beyond our expectations."

The Fashion Rocks concert will be aired on September 8th on CBS-TV and also feature performances from Beyonce, Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera, Kanye West, Nelly Furtado, Jamie Foxx, and the Black Eyed Peas.
Blue October's current North American tour pulls into Quebec City, Canada tomorrow night (Friday, July 14th), before heading back down to the lower 48 with a July 16th show in Millvale, Pennsylvania.

WEEZER FRONTMAN HINTS BAND IS OVER

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo has hinted to MTV.com that the band may be over. Cuomo, who both graduated from Harvard and married his longtime girlfriend last month, is currently staying in Japan with his in-laws and said, ""Really, for the moment, we are done. And I'm not certain we'll ever make a record again, unless it becomes really obvious to me that we need to do one."
Cuomo told LAUNCH that he wasn't necessarily excited about the idea of making the band's last album, 2005's Make Believe. "I never thought it was time for a Weezer album, actually. It was the other three guys in the band and the management were pushing hard to actually make an album. At the time the hammer came down, I was not really feeling any strong calling to decide on songs and record them in a definitive fashion and to release an album."

Cuomo admitted that he has not spoken much to the other members of Weezer, adding that when they have spoken, "we've never mentioned getting together."
Despite Weezer's uncertain future, Cuomo said he has continued writing songs, explaining, "All this year, I've been feeling pretty creative and excited, so I've been writing a lot...I certainly don't see them becoming Weezer songs, and I don't really see the point of a solo career. So we'll just have to see."
Cuomo said he doesn't feel "comfortable" with the idea of a Weezer greatest hits collection just yet.

FALL OUT BOY, PANIC! AT THE DISCO ON 'SNAKES' SOUNDTRACK

Songs from Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, Coheed And Cambria and others are on tap for the soundtrack of the upcoming film Snakes On A Plane, according to MTV.com. The movie, which stars Samuel L. Jackson and a whole lot of muthaf***in' snakes, opens on August 18th, with the soundtrack hitting stores three days earlier on the 15th. The album will come out through Decaydance Records, the label owned by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, and will include a number of groups from its roster, along with tracks from Jack's Mannequin, the All-American Rejects and Gnarls Barkley vocalist Cee-Lo.

Many of the tracks will be given special remixes by a number of DJs and producers, as well as Fall Out Boy singer Patrick Stump and glam band Louis XIV.
The first single, "Snakes on a Plane (Bring It)," features members of Midtown, The Academy Is..., Gym Class Heroes and the Sounds performing as Cobra Starship.
Only a few of the songs will be heard in the film, but Wentz told MTV.com why he wanted to release the soundtrack anyway: "Basically I think the whole concept behind the film is hilarious, and it's something that just kept growing and growing, so I had to be a part of it...To be honest, part of the reason I did this was to meet Samuel L. Jackson."

RISE AGAINST CRACKS BILLBOARD TOP 10

The fourth album from Chicago punk band Rise Against, The Sufferer and the Witness, debuted at Number 10 on the Billboard Top 200 yesterday (Wednesday, July 12th), selling more than 48,000 copies in its first week of release. The chart debut is the proverbial icing on the cake for singer Tim McIlrath, who told LAUNCH that the new CD is the band's most focused ye. "The record that we made was sort of a product of Rise Against being really comfortable in our own shoes finally. We came to a place where all the distractions of music, which can be all the business sides of it or label transitions or member changes and all that stuff, all the distractions were in our past, and we could finally focus very clearly on what was important, which was the music."

The record's relatively high chart placement was helped by a slow sales week in which the Number One album, Johnny Cash's American V: A Hundred Highways, sold 88,000 copies.
The Sufferer and the Witness features the single "Ready To Fall."
Rise Against is currently one of the headlining bands on the Warped Tour, which pulls into Sacramento, California today (Thursday, July 13th).

DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL WILL PERFORM CONCERT ON 'TODAY'

Dashboard Confessional will play a live concert in the center of New York City on Thursday, July 27th, for that morning's broadcast of the Today show on NBC-TV. According to the band's website, fans are encouraged to attend the performance, which will take place outside the Today studios at Rockefeller Plaza and 49th Street in midtown Manhattan. Attendees should arrive no later than 8:30 a.m.

Dashboard Confessional is promoting its new album, Dusk And Summer, which debuted at Number Two on the Billboard album chart last week.
The band began a U.S. tour a few days ago that stops in Los Angeles tonight (Thursday, July 13th) and extends into mid-August.

DEFTONES TENTATIVELY SET ALBUM TITLE

Deftones have reportedly settled on Saturday Night Wrist as the title of the band's fifth studio album, according to Blabbermouth.net. That name had been mentioned early on as a possible contender for the long-delayed disc, which will follow up the group's self-titled 2003 effort. However, guitarist Stephen Carpenter told LAUNCH that if it were up to him, the band wouldn't even bother with album titles. "I'll be the guy that's constantly saying, 'What do we need a f***ing title for?' I just don't, I'm over, you know, naming records and all this and that. You know what I've wanted to do with our records? I think it would be cool. I want to put a CD out, it would look and appear to you as a blank CD. Take all the imagery away from the front so you're purely selling the music."

Saturday Night Wrist is tentatively due out on October 10th.
Drummer Abe Cunningham recently told Billboard.com that internal strife nearly broke Deftones apart during the making of the record, saying, "If there was a VH1 Behind The Music special on us, it would be the perfect episode."
The group originally began working on the project with legendary Alice Cooper and Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin, but replaced him with its regular producer, Terry Date.
The recording process was also halted while singer Chino Moreno toured with his side band, Team Sleep.
Deftones will join Korn, Stone Sour, 10 Years, Flyleaf and other acts on the Family Values tour, beginning on July 27th in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for THURSDAY, JULY 13
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Luke Wilson, Band of Horses
JAY LENO (NBC) - Rosario Dawson, Cedric the Entertainer, Dashboard Confessional
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Joe Mantegna, Brooks & Dunn
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Paul Reubens, Rainn Wilson, David Lee Roth
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Sarah Chalke, Ben Harper (R 5/4/06)JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Rerun TBA
JON STEWART (COMEDY CENTRAL) - Owen Wilson

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

SUMMER OF '06 BELONGS TO A.F.I.
A.F.I.'s new album, Decemberunderground, is turning out to be an even bigger hit than the band's 2003 commercial breakthrough, Sing The Sorrow. Although the band might have been tempted to repeat the successful songwriting formula of that release, guitarist Jade Puget told LAUNCH that A.F.I. didn't want to revisit old ground. "No, I mean, you can't really do that, because then you start putting, you know, boundaries on your songwriting and then...I didn't set out to write Sing The Sorrow part 2 and, you know, we never set out to write, you know, a copy of our last record, because what's the point? You know, we've already done that. There's always people that are gonna be like, 'Why don't you write something like your last record?' But that's just not what we're about."

Decemberunderground debuted on the Billboard Top 200 at Number One last month, selling more than 400,000 copies since its release.
A.F.I. was also awarded the first-ever MySpace Music Award for reaching 500,000 single-day music plays on the group's MySpace page.
The band is currently alternating between headlining shows and dates on the Warped Tour.

STONE SOUR/LACUNA COIL COUPLE ON COMPETING TOURS

When Stone Sour hits the road on July 27th on the Family Values tour, guitarist Jim Root will be competing for fans' ticket money with his girlfriend, Lacuna Coil singer Cristina Scabbia, whose band is on Ozzfest through mid-August. Ironically, it was on Ozzfest that the couple first met, as Root recalled for LAUNCH, "I know we met on Ozzfest, I'm not sure exactly when or where it was. I think it was Ohio or something. We just basically, you know, we both had our iPods out and we were checking each other's iPods, and it was pretty funny, you know, I mean, she was laughing at some of the stuff I had on there, 'cause she couldn't believe that a guy in a band like I was in would listen to, you know, some of the music that I had."

Root was on Ozzfest with his other band, Slipknot, at the time.
Stone Sour will release its second album, Come What(ever) May, on August 1st. The album's first single is "Through Glass."
Family Values, also featuring co-headliners Korn and Deftones, will kick off in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Some new and previously unreleased Stone Sour songs are set to show up in a number of upcoming video games, including Eye Of Judgment, Full Auto 2: Battle Lines and the gaming version of The Sopranos.

AUDIOSLAVE SINGLE ON THE WEB, 95X

Audioslave's new single, "Original Fire," has been made available for streaming at SonyMusic.com in all major streaming formats. The track comes off the group's upcoming third album, Revelations, which is due out on September 5th. The band shot a video for the track in Los Angeles on June 29th. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello described the quartet's new effort as "Led Zeppelin meets Earth, Wind & Fire."

Revelations follows the band's second album, Out Of Exile, which came out in May of 2005 and has sold 1.1 million copies. The disc debuted at Number One on the Billboard Top 200.
The title track from Revelations will also appear on the soundtrack of Madden NFL 2007, the latest in the red hot video game series which arrives in stores on August 22nd.
Audioslave has not yet announced tour plans in support of the new CD.
"Original Fire" debuted on 95X's new music show, the 9 O'Clock News last night. We'll play it again tonight.

SUPERNOVA SUED BY SUPERNOVA

California punk band Supernova has filed a lawsuit against the CBS reality series Rock Star for using its name, according to MTV.com. The show's new season, which began last Wednesday (July 5th), is following former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as they search for a singer for their new group, also called Supernova. The suit was filed nine days before the show's premiere, naming Lee, Clarke and Newsted, the show's producers, and CBS itself as defendants.

The suit seeks a trial by jury, punitive and compensatory damages, reimbursement of attorney fees, statements from the producers clarifying that the punk Supernova has nothing to do with Rock Star, and the destruction of "all labels, signs, prints, packages, wrappers, containers, advertisements, electronic media and other materials bearing the Supernova mark."
The lawsuit also asks that Rock Star's producers be banned from trademarking the Supernova name. It claims that the show's use of the name will result in market confusion and loss of income for the original Supernova.
The band alleges in the suit that the show's producers "willfully" ignored the fact that the name was unavailable. It has even provided evidence in the form of a message from Butch Walker, who's producing the Rock Star band's album, in which he writes to the original group, "I can't believe those dudes chose your name. For the record, I tried to talk them out of it...They didn't listen. Good on ya for making a stink about it."
The original Supernova claims that it's owned the name for nearly 20 years and has released three albums, with a fourth one on the way. The band also has four shows booked over the summer.
Neither CBS nor Rock Star's producers have commented on the matter.

JACK JOHNSON WRITES SONGS WHILE SURFING

Jack Johnson comes up with a lot of his songs while taking part in his favorite hobby: surfing. The Hawaiian native told LAUNCH that luckily, he has a knack for remembering the lyrics, "I never have written things down, even with the songs, I just always remember it. I kind of fill up the songs with a lot of syllables and I have to practice it over and over. And so they have to have just the right amount of syllables. Sometimes I'll have to put in certain syllables that shouldn't be there. And if I read the lyrics back, it looks like really improper English. And somehow it allows it where I don't have to write it down. I just need every syllable that's there, so I remember it that way. When I'm in the water, I can come up with a few lines and have them when I come in still usually."

Johnson's current single, "Upside Down," appears on the Curious George soundtrack.
Johnson is taking a break from touring this year to relax and spend time with his family.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for JULY 12, 2006
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Denis Leary, New York Mets' David Wright, the Wreckers
JAY LENO (NBC) - Matt Dillon, Parker Posey, Smokey Robinson
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Danny Bonaduce, Cote De Pablo, astronaut Bill McArthurCONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Stephen Colbert, Carlos Mencia, Lil' Ed & The Blues Imperials
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Mekhi Phifer, Ben Harper (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Lance Armstrong, Matt Dallas, Smoosh
JON STEWART (Comedy Central) - Shawn Wayans

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

SYD BARRET, EX-PINK FLOYD-ER, DEAD AT 60
BARRETT?S CAUSE OF DEATH NOT CONFIRMED.
The Associated Press is reporting that Syd Barrett, a founding guitarist and songwriter for Pink Floyd, has died at age 60. A cause of death has yet to be confirmed ? as does a specific date -- but Barrett was long known to have suffered from diabetes. Pink Floyd?s publicist told the A-P that he died ?several days ago.? Barrett, who was almost universally described as a ?troubled genius,? had departed Floyd in 1968 after having what has been called a mental breakdown brought on by LSD use. According to AllMusic.com, Barrett was responsible for most of Pink Floyd?s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was released in 1970. Barrett was notoriously reclusive but neighbors have said he did keep a relatively public existence in his hometown of Cambridge, England. Pink Floyd?s publicist said that Barrett?s funeral would be small and private; she did not give the date or the location for the funeral.

TOOL EXPANDS TOUR TO INCLUDE TEXAS
Tool has announced more dates for its upcoming North American tour, which begins on August 4th with an appearance at San Diego's Street Scene festival. The quartet has now revealed shows through the end of September, with more expected to be confirmed soon. The opening act on the trek will be underground rock act Isis. Yes, this time, we have Texas dates!

September 11 - The Woodlands, TX - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion
September 12 - San Antonio, TX - AT&T Center
September 14 - Dallas, TX - American Airlines Center

SEETHER ISSUES ACOUSTIC DISC; PLANS COVERS ALBUM
Today (Tuesday, July 11th) sees the release of Seether's live acoustic CD/DVD package, One Cold Night. The two-disc set, recorded and filmed in Philadelphia on February 22nd, features unplugged versions of tracks from both the band's studio albums, an in-depth interview with the group and other bonuses. Seether frontman Shaun Morgan told LAUNCH that the band may also have another release in the pipeline for 2006. "We have plans to do a cover album later this year as well. I always loved it when bands did covers, even if I knew the songs or not. It was, like, a different thing to hear. We've done a bunch of covers when we play live, just 'cause we always want to pay homage to somebody when we do a show. We'll be looking at doing about 12 to 15 songs and seeing if they turn out well enough." Morgan added that Seether may release the covers collection on iTunes or directly through the band's website.

MUSE OFFERS "BLACK HOLES AND REVELATIONS"
Muse releases its fourth studio album today (Tuesday, July 11th), titled Black Holes and Revelations. The British trio is known for its powerful live shows and even tailored its previous CDs toward playing the songs live. This time around, however, drummer Dominic Howard told LAUNCH the group took the opposite tack while recording. "This album, I think, was particularly free in the way we approached it. In previous albums, we'd always thought about how we're gonna play the songs live or thought about doing shows as we were recording, or trying to, like, capture that similar kind of energy. But I think this time, it was more about completely forgetting about that side of the band, and so we did feel extremely free musically to experiment in the studio, like, way more."

THOM YORKE RELEASES SOLO ALBUM
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke releases his debut solo album, called The Eraser, today (Tuesday, July 11th). Yorke recorded the disc with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, laying down his voice over mostly electronic backing tracks and loops. Yorke recently told Rolling Stone that the CD consists of "stuff that I do when I'm bored. I wanted to work on my own. I just wanted to see what it would be like." Several of the songs were apparently considered for past Radiohead albums, and several members of the band also make cameos on the project.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for TUESDAY, JULY 11
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Paul Reubens, Yunjin Kim, Nelly Furtado
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Julie Chen, Denise Mina, Echo & the BunnymenJ
AY LENO (NBC) - Owen Wilson, Lance Armstrong, Chris Isaak
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Brian Posehn, Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Sarah Wayne Callies, Ben Harper (Repeat)
DAILY SHOW (COM) - John Dean
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Tracy Morgan, Shaun Alexander, Sonic Youth

Friday, July 07, 2006

NO MORE PIXIES RECORDS?
Have the Pixies called it a day? Well, not entirely. According to Uncut, the band will never record another album, but they plan on continuing to tour. Frontman Frank Black spoke to the British publication saying, ?I wish it could go a bit further again and we could make a record. Not all of the band members are willing to do that. Rather than make a big deal out if it, we?ve agreed to just continue to play live.? He went on to say that his relationship with bassist Kim Deal has improved greatly since their spilt in 1991.

MAJOR DEATH CAB
Death Cab for Cutie has been around for almost a decade now, but it wasn?t till 2004 that the Seattle band made a jump to a major label. Frontman Ben Gibbard says that things have been great with Atlantic Records. ?I certainly think that this is exactly what we were hoping would happen in going to a major, I mean everything?s been, we seem to have good relationships with everyone there. They seem to kinda get what we do and we get what they do. So far it?s happy.? Although Death Cab are still out promoting their latest album Plans, Ben is also currently working on a new album for his other band the Postal Service.

PANIC! GET INVOLVED IN KILLER DISPUTE
The Killers and Fall Ouy Boy had it out last week, when Killer frontman Brandon Flowers declared his hate for emo bands and called Fall Out Boy ?dangerous,? and now Panic! At the Disco are getting involved. Panic frontman Brendan Urie told NME what he thought of the claims saying, ?Do I think of myself as dangerous? Not at all! We?re really harmless and innocent in a way. It?s a shame that he feels that way.? Panic! are currently out on tour, and they play Milwaukee tomorrow night.

PAPA ROACH READIES NEW ALBUM
Papa Roach will release its new album, called The Paramour Sessions, on September 12th, with the band embarking as headliners on the 2006 Zippo Hot Tour in November. The arrival of the album will mark the California-based band's return to action since finishing its year-long tour in late 2005 in support of its third major label album, 2004's Getting Away With Murder. Lead singer Jacoby Shaddix told LAUNCH that his band is always itching to prove itself all over again. "We've always had that hungry, you know, fighter spirit, that hustler spirit, you know, and that's just something that's been ingrained in our band since the beginning. You know, we've been doing this 13 years now, and it's like, we're still excited about this rock and roll band that we're in, and we're still...it doesn't feel like a job to us. When we get in that room and the four of us start jamming, it's like there's something magical that happens there and, you know, we just can't deny that."

MONK SEASON PREMIERE TONIGHT
The fifth season of Monk kicks off tonight (July 7th) with new episodes and a new time slot. It'll now air at 8 instead of 9, and fans will be happy to know that there aren't any major shake-ups this year -- unlike last season, when the Sharona character was ousted in favor of Monk's hipper assistant Natalie. Monk airs Fridays at 8 on the USA Network.

NEW TO THEATERS JULY 7

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
There's a lot going on in Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the sequel to the 2003 swashbuckler starring Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Bloom's character Will and his bride-to-be Elizabeth are headed to the gallows unless Will retrieves a compass from Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow for the crooked head of the East India Trading Company. Will tracks Captain Jack down and saves him from a fiery death, but Sparrow turns around and promises Will's soul to Davy Jones, an octopus-bearded spirit to whom he owes a debt. Meanwhile, Davy Jones has the sea's deadliest weapon -- a ship-swallowing creature called the Cracken -- at his disposal, and is on the hunt for the same "Dead Man's Chest" that the East India Trading Company sent Will unknowingly after.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for FRIDAY, JULY 7
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Bruce Willis, Goldfrapp (repeat)
JAY LENO (NBC) - Adam Sandler, Rosie Perez, John Forgerty (repeat)
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Donal Logue, Ne-Yo
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Amanda Peet, Bradley Cooper, Greg Fitzsimmons (repeat)
LAST CALL - Famke Janssen, Jared Leto, Jo Koy, 30 Seconds to Mars (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Rosie Perez, Jared Hess, Busta Rhymes (repeat)

Thursday, July 06, 2006

FLYLEAF SET TO READY FOR WARPED TOUR
The Texas-based band Flyleaf has found success with their debut, self-titled album, and their latest single, ?Fully Alive,? is getting lots of radio play. The band has already toured with P.O.D., Seether and Shinedown, but will be taking things up a level this summer, when they are on the bill for the Family Values Tour. Vocalist Lacey Mosley is thrilled to be part of the line-up. ?Family Values Tour, it?s been awesome every time so we are just honored beyond anything that we can express that we get to be on this tour. So, it?s gonna be Korn and it?s gonna be the Deftones.? The Family Values Tour, with Flyleaf on board, gets underway on July 27th in Virginia Beach.

EVERCLEAR WELCOME ALL TO THE DRAMA CLUB
Art Alexakis, lead singer for Everclear, has been pretty busy over the past three years since his band last released an album. The frontman did a solo acoustic tour, re-designed Everclear?s line-up, signed with an indie label and has been working on the follow-up to 2003?s Slow Motion Daydream. The new album, Welcome to the Drama Club, drops on September 12th. Alexakis described the new record as an homage to his influences, ?like late ?60s-early ?70s Stones, Otis Redding, Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, Humble Pie, Dylan, Tom Petty, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen?Guys who can sing their asses off, and lyrically, I?m telling stories again, even though a lot of them are about me.? The first single off the album, ?Hater,? which Alexakis describes as ?the ultimate break-up song,? is airing now on 95X's new music show, the 9 O'Clock News.

DASHBOARD?S CARRABBA IS A SNOB NO MORE
Dashboard Confessional leader Chris Carrabba says he used to be an indie-rock snob until he realized that not all major-label bands necessarily suck. ?I was one of those kids that if a band got signed to a major label, I?d get really frustrated and think that they turned on me somehow, as if it had anything to do with me. The Counting Crows were the band that pulled me out of that elitist sort of nonsense. Because they came out, they were just undeniably brilliant in my opinion. And it didn?t matter that they were signed to a major label.? Dashboard Confessional has a new album out, called Dusk & Summer, and it?ll be debuting at number two on next week?s Billboard chart.

MORE KEANE FOR YOU BUCK
Albums by British acts have always been fiddled with for U-S release, a practice going back at least to the days of The Beatles. So the American version of the new Keane album, Under the Iron Sea, was scheduled to be one track shorter than the U-K original, until the band weighed in on the issue, and decided to hide that doomed track, called ?The Iron Sea,? on the back end of the one that preceded it, which is called ?Put It Behind You.? Drummer Richard Hughes elaborates. ?Basically we cheated, we were supposed to leave a track off in America because you have to have one more in Europe or something. I don't know why, it?s very boring. But we said we didn?t want to shortchange the American album buyers so we sort of hid this extra track on and it?s a very atmospheric instrumental track.? Keane?s new Under the Iron Sea album debuted at number four on this week?s Billboard chart.

SYSTEM OF A DOWN MALFUNCTIONING?
Despite repeated assurances that their forthcoming "hiatus" is not a break-up, System Of A Down reportedly acted like a band on the brink at the opening day of this summer's Ozzfest last Thursday (June 29th) in Auburn, Washington, about 30 miles from Seattle. According to MTV.com, the members of System arrived at the venue in separate tour buses. Guitarist Daron Malakian "seemed to be struggling to keep up with the rest of the band" and improvised lyrics during the first few songs of their performance. During the song "Lonely Day," while looking at vocalist Serj Tankian, Malakian crooned, "Such a lonely day, hanging out with the band/ This mother******, I can't stand."

A source at System's record label told LAUNCH not to read all that much into last Thursday's events, adding that the members have traveled on separate buses for a while now. Malakian himself recently said that the group's plans to take an indefinite amount of time off after Ozzfest don't spell the end for System Of A Down. "I think when a band says, 'Hey, you know, we're not gonna shoot out records consistently for a little while,' people are gonna assume that we're breaking up. But people can call it whatever they want. We know what it is, and we're comfortable with that. If we were breaking up, we wouldn't be able to get onstage together on this tour."

Malakian is currently assembling a new group called Scars On Broadway and plans to record its debut album this fall. System bassist Shavo Odadjian may participate and is also planning a collaboration with the Wu-Tang Clan.
Singer Serj Tankian will most likely continue to sign and develop artists on his own label, Serjical Strike, while drummer John Dolmayan is planning to launch an online comic book company.

PANIC! AT THE DISCO NOT PANICKED OVER LIVE SHOW

Panic! At The Disco drummer Spencer Smith told Billboard.com yesterday (Wednesday, July 5th) that the barely twentysomething band is growing up a lot as musicians on its first headlining tour, especially with two additional musicians onstage with them. Smith said, "Before we had to originally learn how to play our songs to backing tracks because we couldn't obviously perform all of the electronic stuff and all of the cellos and trumpets. But now that we have two extra musicians out with us...we had to go back and re-learn how to play all of our new songs with these new guys and then on top of that add whatever we wanted to add."

Even with extra musicians, Smith told LAUNCH that the band's debut album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, was always destined to be a challenge to play live: "We actually sat down before the tour and figured out how many instruments we had on the record and it was some ridiculous number. With all the random percussion and stuff included, it was like 22 instruments or something."
Panic! At The Disco has a cello player, a keyboardist and several circus performance artists along on the tour, which ends in early August. The trek pulls into Columbus, Ohio tonight (Thursday, July 6th).
The Las Vegas-based quartet plans one more run through the U.S. in November before heading into the studio to begin recording its second album for a spring 2007 release.

NEXT SLIPKNOT ALBUM AT LEAST TWO YEARS AWAY

Stone Sour and Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor told England's Kerrang! Radio last week that it will be at least two years until the latter band releases a new album. Taylor said that he is concentrating exclusively on Stone Sour for now, although some of the other members of Slipknot "were already getting together and messing around on stuff." Taylor added that when Slipknot does come back, "I want to go full-on again -- I wanna do some melodic stuff, but I wanna go in your face again and show people what it's all about."

Stone Sour's second album, Come What(ever) May, arrives on August 1st. The band, which includes Slipknot guitarist Jim Root, will hit the road on July 27th with Korn, Deftones, 10 Years and others on the Family Values tour. It heads to Dallas August 5; Houston August 7.
The first single from Come What(ever) May, called "Through Glass," is already a Top 10 hit at 95x.
Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison has been on the road with Ministry, while percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan is working with his other band, To My Surprise.
Slipknot plans to issue a new DVD sometime later this year. The band's last studio album, Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), was released in 2004.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for THURSDAY, JULY 6
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Lindsay Lohan, Indianapolis 500 winner Sam Hornish (repeat)JAY LENO (NBC) - Dana Carvey, 8-year-old dental expert Nicholas Hearon, T.I. (repeat)LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Tom Lennon, Jewel
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Martha Stewart, Big Show, Death Cab For Cutie (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Kristin Chenoweth, Rihanna (repeat)
JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Katherine Heigl, James Pickens Jr., Chandra Wilson, Ben Lee (repeat)
JON STEWART (COMEDY CENTRAL) - Adam Sandler (repeat)

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

'KORN KARAOKE' OKAY WITH JONATHAN DAVIS
When Korn singer Jonathan Davis was hospitalized in London last month with a rare blood disorder, the rest of his band still played at England's Download Festival, performing a 30-minute set with guest frontmen from 10 Years, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold and others. Davis told LAUNCH that he couldn't have been more grateful to everyone involved. "I was very thankful that they did that and it was overwhelming to get, you know, that respect, to have those guys go up and do that, and then that the crowd responded to it well. You know, all we wanted to do was try and play some kind of show for those fans that paid to come see us. I know I wasn't there, but we tried to do what we could do, and I think it worked out great. Everybody did their best to pull off what I do, so I was stoked."

METALLICA APPEAR ON 'SIMPSONS' SEASON PREMIERE
Metallica will appear on the season premiere of The Simpsons, according to a posting at the band's official website. The show will air on the Fox network on September 10th, 2006. The four members of the band recorded their voices for the program last September, joining Blink-182, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mick Jagger, Aerosmith, Billy Corgan and many other artists who have guested on the long-running animated series.
Metallica members James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett have also lent their voices to the cartoon show Death Clock Metalocalypse, about a Norwegian heavy metal band called Deathklok. The program debuts next month on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block of adult-oriented animation.

G N' R MANAGER: AXL ROSE WAS 'HELD FOR RANSOM'
Guns N' Roses manager Merck Mercuriadis issued a statement late last week in which he claimed that singer W. Axl Rose was virtually "held for ransom" after being arrested for causing a disturbance and attacking a security guard at a Stockholm, Sweden hotel last Tuesday (June 27th). According to the BBC, Mercuriadis stated that Swedish authorities, who held Rose in jail for hours after his arrest, were aware that the band was in the middle of a European tour, but "continually threatened us over a 12-hour period with between five days and three weeks incarceration without bail if Axl did not 'cooperate.' They were fully aware that there were millions of dollars at stake, not to mention the hopes of tens of thousands of fans who had paid for tickets to see Guns N' Roses."

RADIOHEAD MULLS RELEASING NEXT ALBUM ITSELF
Radiohead singer Thom Yorke said in an interview last week with the Los Angeles Times that the band may release its next album by itself. The group completed its last contract with the release of 2003's Hail To The Thief and has not signed with a new record label. Yorke told the Times that putting an album out independently is one of several options the group has, explaining, "Once we finish whatever we think is good enough to put out, then we'll start thinking about it. We haven't discussed it a great deal. I would love for us to drop a chemical weapon within the music industry. But I don't see it as our responsibility, either."

Yorke will release his first solo album, titled The Eraser, on July 11th.

DASHBOARD?S CINEMATIC SONGS
Dashboard Confessional lobbed a song onto the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack two years ago, and band main-man Chris Carrabba says there may be more film work in his future, because his songs kinda lend themselves to the big screen. ?Well they?re vignettes, you know, that?s what they are and sometimes they?re acts in a grander story and sometimes the story arc isn?t within a record, sometimes it?s within a few records. I do think of them as cinematic, myself. Almost every song I have, they?re written in couplets, it takes two songs to tell the bulk, the main part of a story for me, but you don?t need to hear both and no one ever knows which both are, but I do. It takes me that process, and sometimes it?s even three.? Dashboard Confessional is now touring Canada, but will be back to play Seattle on July 10th.

WHAT LIES BENEATH A BEAUTIFUL LIE
Jared Leto?s band, 30 Seconds to Mars, takes a big step up on the Billboard chart this week, from number 118 to 83, with its current album, A Beautiful Lie. And since no one else has cared enough to ask about the record?s title, we raised the subject with Leto himself. ?I felt that it represented the collective whole of the record creatively and sonically. I like it a lot because it leaves a lot to the imagination. There?s some smaller interesting things about it like it?s one letter away from a beautiful life. It?s a complete oxymoron but I find it incredibly optimistic somehow. It?s an odd phrase.? Leto and his band are on tour right now, and they?ll be playing Grand Rapids, Michigan, this Friday.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE JUNE 30-JULY 4
1. SUPERMAN RETURNS
2. THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
3. CLICK
4. CARS
5. NACHO LIBRE
6. THE LAKE HOUSE
7. THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT
8. WAIST DEEP
9. THE BREAK-UP
10. THE DA VINCI CODE

ROCK STAR: SUPERNOVA PREMIERES TONIGHT
The followup to last summer's Rock Star: INXS kicks off tonight. The show will follow former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as they search for a singer for their new group, Supernova. Rock Star: Supernova airs tonight at 7 on CBS.

LATE NIGHT TALK SHOWS for WEDNESDAY, JULY 5
DAVID LETTERMAN (CBS) - Halle Berry, Jesse James, Top Ten with Harold Perrineau (repeat)
JAY LENO (NBC) - Jack Black, the "Car-Parazzi kids", Hard-Fi (repeat)
LATE LATE SHOW (CBS) - Laurence Fishburne, Illeana Douglas, Jack's Mannequin
CONAN O'BRIEN (NBC) - Reese Witherspoon, Jon Favreau, Kevin Brennan (repeat)
CARSON DALY (NBC) - Drew Rosenhaus, the Cloud Room (repeat)JIMMY KIMMEL (ABC) - Jamie Pressly, Xzibit, the Streets (repeat)
JON STEWART (Comedy Central) - Juliet Eilperin (repeat)