Drummer Max Roach died in his sleep last night at his home in Manhattan. He was 83 years old. A major player in the Bebop and Hard-bop eras of the '40s and '50s, Roach was also a proponent of the civil rights movement, conceiving in the '60s with Oscar Brown Jr. the protest record of protest records We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite . As one critic put it, he "initially mystified and thoroughly challenged other drummers," driving and...

Venue promotion company The Bowery Presents signed a 25-year lease on a 40,000 sq ft. space called Terminal 5 , the largest concert hall to open in Midtown, NYC in 10 years. With a capacity of 3,000 people, it will be on par with Hammerstein and Roseland Ballrooms . “The acts will be comparable to Madison Square Garden , but the space will be on par with those two places,” said Alex Picken, the broker for the $1.4 million/year deal. It is located at 610...

The birth of a new mega hip-hop group may have already taken place with the Thom Yorke sampling “Us Placers,” a track by Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell Williams , and Kanye West under the guise Child Rebel Soldiers (CRS) . We’ll only know for sure if further work materializes into a full-length album, but talks are underway, revealed Lupe Fiasco to Billboard.com at Lollapolooza . "Now [our labels are] working it out. Whoever is going to pay is going to...

We’d like to give Amy Winehouse the benefit of the doubt in everything she pursues, but her latest rush to the emergency room at the London University College Hospital in London has left us shaking our heads in disbelief. There was speculation last week as to the cause; at first it was believed that her visit was simply due to exhaustion, while insiders claimed that it was due to drug usage. Amy confirmed in her recent confession that she had in fact overdosed on a cocktail of...

A long standing pillar within the music community and British icon Tony Wilson died of kidney cancer last night at the Christie Hospital in his hometown of Manchester, UK . His most notable contributions to music include signing and breaking New Order, The Happy Mondays and Joy Division , forming the seminal Factory records , broadcasting and hosting various TV programs, and establishing the...

From the opening Close Encounters of the Third Kind theme to the final notes of the "Together"/"Human After All"/"One More Time" encore, Daft Punk robot-rocked Keyspan Park last night with a dazzling light show. **In order for the slideshow to display properly, please wait for all of the thumbnails to load before clicking on them. DAFT PUNK All...

Sweet victory at last for the rapper of 14 years, as his 7th album Finding Forever lands at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart this week, thankfully ahead of Korn’s Untitled and the popularity contest that is the NOW 25 hits compilation. Interestingly enough, Common 's previous album Be sold more copies in its first week than his latest LP. However, circumstances of the market in 2005 placed it just shy of the number one...

You'll want to check the new videos for Björk's "Innocence," The Chemical Brothers' "Salmon Dance," and M.I.A.'s "Jimmy." Not only are all three of these songs sonically blazing, but the visuals have been tailored bespoke for each one, exposing the tracks' - and by extension - each artist's personality. Björk - Innocence

Singer/song-taker Cat Power is back in the recording studio for the follow-up to 2006’s The Greatest . The new album will be a continuation from 2000’s The Covers Record and is imaginatively titled, Covers Record 2 (out January 2008). Her latest blog entry reveals that she has 24 covers to choose from, teasing “with so many covers tryin to decide if i should release COVERS RECORD 2 VOL.2 ???”

Drawing a crowd of nearly 75,000 punters over last Saturday and Sunday (Aug 4-5), the Virgin Festival in Baltimore played host to reunited headliners Smashing Pumpkins and The Police , as well as the full Wu-Tang Clan (minus O.D.B. R.I.P.), Beastie Boys, LCD Soundsystem, M.I.A., Felix Da Housecat, Girl Talk, Regina Spektor, Ben Harper and The Innocent Criminals, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Miguel Migs, Amy Winehouse, Paolo Nutini and many others of the...