andPOP - Pop Culture With Substance

Remember Evanescence? You know, the one with that goth female lead singer with the haunting voice? Well, they’re back, and with a bang.

Wednesday night the band performed a secret show at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom in New York, reports rollingstone.com. A little after 9 p.m., the crowd started growing impatient, chanting, “EVAN-ES-SCENTS, EVAN-ES-SCENTS.” And even though the band hasn’t been heard from in years, you wouldn’t know it from their performance.

And as their front woman Amy Lee explained, last night’s intimate show was quite necessary, considering Evanescence will be performing for 40,000 people at the Maquinaria Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Nov. 8. So, Lee said, they needed a little warming up before heading south.

“Thanks for being our guinea pigs,” Lee joked to the predominantly female crowd.

Evanescence hasn’t put out a record since 2006’s The Open Door, but they’re currently hard at work on a follow-up album. Still, it’ll be another year before the band is back performing in New York, making last night’s concert a special treat for their dedicated fans, who sold out the show in just five minutes.

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John Mayer is back with a new album and a 2010 tour, according to the musician’s website, johnmayer.com.

Mayer’s new album, Battle Studies, is due out on Nov. 17. Mayer will then go on a tour to support the album in the Winter of 2010. Mayer has already released one single from the new album, called “Who Says.” Physical and digital presale orders for the album are being accepted until Nov. 10.

Mayer will also be playing a select few upcoming CD release concerts, including one on Nov. 24 at Toronto’s Sound Academy. This small tour also includes stops in Australia and New York.

You can see Mayer on tour in 2010 here:

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In a highly digital age such as the one we are currently in, it’s hard to believe that not all music is legally sold online. However, with the Beatles, that’s just the case.

While you can play their songs on Rock Band and listen to their music on remastered CDs, you still cannot buy the Beatles’ music on iTunes and other digital stores. That is, not yet.

According to rollingstone.com, Apple Corps. and EMI Music will release a limited-edition USB drive featuring the entire Beatles in Stereo remastered discography on Dec. 7 in the UK and Dec. 8 in North America. While Apple Corps. had up until recently kept the view of not selling John, Paul, George and Ringo’s music digitally, 320 Kbps MP3s will house all 14 Beatles albums and 13 “mini-documentaries,” and will be available for public purchase. The 16GB USB drive will be shaped like the famous Apple logo, with “The Beatles” written on it. Only 30,000 of these Beatles USBs will be produced.

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Weezer singer Rivers Cuomo and bassist Scott Shriner are promoting a warm surprise available for purchase with a copy of their new album.

Fans can own a customized “Weezer Snuggie” with their new Raditude album, available in stores today.

The group has even made a hilarious infomercial that includes footage from the original Snuggie infomercial.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the Snuggie is a warm, robe-like blanket that is reminiscent of some sort of cult uniform.

Raditude is Weezer’s seventh studio album, and includes the hit single “I Want You To.”

The Rolling Stones are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their album Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! today with the release of a “Super Deluxe LP Box Edition.”

Considered by many as one of the greatest live rock albums of all time, it was recorded during a late November show at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Available on Amazon.com for less than $50, the box-set includes: three vinyl LP’s with album art (a remastered version of Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!, a set of unreleased Stone’s tracks, and 12 never-before-released tracks by Ike and Turner and B.B. King), three CD’s with identical content to the vinyl’s, a collector’s book, replica’69 tour poster and a DVD containing footage from the two-night concert with additional backstage and other live footage.

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Reports of the death of Chuck Biscuits, former drummer for such bands as D.O.A. and Danzig, were a hoax, reports CBC.

News outlets were reporting the drummer, 44, who hails from British Columbia, had died Thursday of throat cancer. But Biscuits, whose real name is Charles Montgomery, is healthy and living in Seattle.

The story began with American blogger James Greene Jr., who wrote about e-mails he’d been receiving over the past few months detailing Biscuits’s failing health.

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The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hiatus will end next year, as drummer Chad Smith says the band will release a new album.

According to chartattack.com, Smith told Clash Magazine the band hope to have the follow-up to 2006’s Stadium Arcadium in stores by next October.

“We’re gonna write for a while, it usually takes us a while,” Smith told the magazine, saying he hoped the album would be out “maybe this time [next year].”

Thom Yorke recently gave bassist Flea a tape of electronic beats after the bassist played with Yorke’s live band earlier this year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Red Hot Chili Peppers are recording an electronic album.”You never know,” Smith told the magazine. “We’ve got songs with piano on them right now, so who knows.”

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Canadian punk rockers Stereos are scheduled to play at the Grey Cup’s pre-game show this year in their hometown of Calgary, reports CHARTattack.com.

The band will perform songs from their self-titled debut album just before kickoff at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium. The event will take place on Nov. 29 at 6:30 p.m. ET, but it is not yet known which two Canadian Football League teams will be playing in this year’s Grey Cup final.

The band Blue Rodeo will play this year’s halftime show.

Stereos, who claimed fame with the help of MuchMusic’s show DisBAND, are currently on tour in support of their first album. You can see them here:

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His party anthems were once radio mainstays, but where is he now? Andrew W.K. is alive and active, having recently released 55 Cadillac – an album of solo improvised piano – as well as Gundam Rock, which consists of covered music from the Gundam Series. Additionally, Andrew hosts a show called “Destroy Build Destroy,” where he helps kids destroy things, build things, and destroy things again Yeah, that sounds about right. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to speak with the explosive Andrew W.K. and find out what the hell he is up to.

Don’t forget to watch my interview with Gonzales to hear more about the piano duel.

With the touch of a button, Nicolas Dresti delivers a shot of adrenaline to the sea of 30 thousand fans. Their screams are met with his quick rhythmic jumping and head bobbing to the beat on-stage. He’s not the main event, heck he’s not even a co-headliner, but he’s still the man orchestrating one of the hottest concerts on the planet – all from a laptop. This may be Lady Gaga’s party, but DJ Space Cowboy is the event’s power source – the battery that keeps the beat alive.

He’s now on top of the world.

On that night Dresti was the European energizer bunny, but now he’s recharging his own batteries at his hotel. It’s hard to believe that he is the key to Lady Gaga’s live performance successes. The man in the neatly-cut dark-suit and sparkling rhinestone skinny-tie seems sophisticated and quiet – the complete opposite of what a Gaga concert is notorious for.

But it’s true. Look at Dresti and his alter ego DJ Space Cowboy like you would Clark Kent and Superman – they’re both the same person, yet totally different at the same time. Put Clark Kent into a phone booth and he’ll become Superman. Well, put Dresti in front of an audio mixer and laptop, and he’ll suddenly transform into the backbone – or backbeat, if you will – as DJ Space Cowboy, Gaga’s DJ and head maestro responsible for explosive energy in any crowd.

His new album Digital Rockstar dropped earlier this week, and it’s one of the rare chances to really hear Superman-like energy harnessed into one CD.

“Raising the energy bar is one my main jobs as a DJ,” Dresti tells andPOP in the martini bar of Toronto’s Pantages Hotel.

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