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Billie Joe Armstrong is Bay Area to the death. The Green Day frontman has long flown the flag of his hometown of Oakland, CA, and nothing has fired him up more than the heartbreaking loss over the past few years of the proud city’s professional sports franchises, the Oakland A’s and NFL’s Raiders.
Now he’s doing something about it.
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The Hollywood Reporter revealed on Wednesday (March 5) that Armstrong has joined fellow Oaktown legend rapper Too $hort as part of the ownership group of the Oakland Ballers, the new independent Pioneer League team that as of this year will be the Bay’s only professional baseball team; the A’s are playing in Sacramento for the next two years ahead of a planned move to Las Vegas in 2028 and the Raiders left in 2020 for Las Vegas.
“This is all about bringing families to a ball game,” Armstrong told THR. “After the A’s left, the town was heartbroken. The Ballers are going to bring good vibes back to Oakland and the broader East Bay.” The privately owned team played their first season in 2024 in the new 4,000-capacity Raimondi Park, which drew baseball lovers for its first season with a unique offer that allowed more than 2,200 fans to buy a share in the team and take seats on its board; the minimum buy-in is $510, a nod to the Bay Area’s area code.
$hort Dogg told THR that he thinks the Ballers are a shining example of what his city’s value proposition. “Oakland is the connection, it’s the diverse city of all walks of life and cultures. We respect each other’s originality, you can be you and with your people,” he said. “It’s ‘I f–k with you regardless.”
And, not for nothing, the “Blow the Whistle” MC — who said he worked as a vendor at the old Oakland Coliseum in high school — loves the name, too. “If I can’t brag on a big-league franchise I can brag on being a Baller,” he said of the team whose name is a pointed rejoinder to former MLB team the A’s. The two musicians bought in as part of the second round of community investment that opened this week, aimed at raising $2 million.
While the amount of Armstrong and Too $hort’s investment has not been revealed, one of the Ballers’ co-founders, Bryan Carmel, said their stake is not just another example of a celebrity swooping in to try and goose a team’s prospects, a la Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ purchase of revival of Welsh soccer team Wrexham, chronicled on the FX series Welcome to Wrexham.
Carmel said Armstrong’s relationship with the Ballers began when the rocker and his wife showed up at a game last year. “I looked over and there they were, sitting in front of my parents,” Carmel said. “And then I looked again and they were at the merch stand and Billie Joe was buying a T-shirt. It was crazy because we were playing Green Day songs earlier — not because he was there but just because we’re an Oakland club so we play Green Day songs.”
Armstrong spray-painted the Oakland B’s name over the Oakland A’s logo at the Rogers Center in Toronto last year.
“Sports in the Bay Area have been transforming over the last couple of years. We’ve had some emotional goodbyes to teams we grew up with, but recently there has been a major shift,” Armstrong told The Athletic. “The Oakland Ballers and the Oakland Roots and Soul represent everything I love and grew up on in the Bay Area. The welcoming atmosphere, DIY attitude and the people behind it make me proud to be an investor and support the next generation of teams kids in the Bay will be proud of.”
The Ballers hosted an open try-out last year that led to the signing of history-making right-handed pitcher Kelsie Whitmore, their first female player and, in 2022, the first woman to sign a professional contract with a Major League Baseball Partner League team. The team will kick off their second season on Mary 20.
Courtney Love delivered a surprise cover of Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” during an event in London earlier this week, adding to her growing repertoire of unexpected live covers.
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The Hole frontwoman performed the iconic 1965 track at the Royal Geographical Society on Tuesday (March 4) while appearing in conversation with actor-writer Todd Almond. The event celebrated Almond’s new oral history collection Slow Train Coming: Bob Dylan’s ‘Girl From the North Country’ and Broadway’s Rebirth.
Following their discussion, Love stepped onto the stage alongside an acoustic guitarist, delivering a raw and impassioned rendition of the classic song, with Almond providing backing vocals.
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The performance took place nearly 60 years after Dylan famously played “Like a Rolling Stone” at the Royal Albert Hall, just next door to the event venue.
During the evening, Love also addressed longstanding speculation about a Hole reunion—shutting down rumors once again. Despite previously hinting in early 2024 that the band might reunite, she reiterated that there are no current plans to bring the group back together.
Love’s choice of cover continues a recent trend of unexpected performances. In February, she appeared onstage alongside Green Day frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, who was performing at the U.K. venue The Garage with his side-project covers band, The Coverups.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Courtney Love,” Armstrong said halfway through the show according to fan video of the moment the singer unexpectedly took the stage. “Thank you, Billie Joe. My name is Courtney Love – you may not remember me. I’ve been living in a cave in Birmingham for about nine years. We’ll give this a f–king try, right?”
Love then crashed through revved-up takes on Cheap Trick’s 1977 power pop classic “He’s a Whore” and the 1979 Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers tune “Even the Losers” and, according to NME, came back for an encore of Cheap Trick’s iconic “Surrender.”
In 2021, she also surprised fans with a rendition of Britney Spears’ “Lucky,” and in 2017, she took on Selena Gomez’s “Hands to Myself.”
Love’s surprise cover comes as Dylan remains a focal point of discussion in music and film circles. The legendary singer-songwriter was recently reported to have declined an invitation to perform and present at the 2025 Oscars. His biopic A Complete Unknown received eight nominations but did not secure any wins.
Australian musician Nick Cave has always been full of surprises, from his incendiary live performances as the singer of The Birthday Party in the early ‘80s, to collaborating with Kylie Minogue as leader of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. However, few may have seen Staffordshire-style ceramic sculptures as the post-punk icon’s latest passion.
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While it’s not the first topic to come to mind when Cave’s name is mentioned, the 67-year-old has been hard at work as a ceramic sculptor for a number of years now, having first adopted the craft during the global pandemic. Later in 2022, he held his first exhibition, with a series of 17 figures depicting the life story of the devil going on display at Finland’s Sara Hildén Art Museum.
In a recent interview with The Art Newspaper, Cave discussed his fondness for the figures, and his ‘The Devil — A Life’ series, which is currently on display at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, Netherlands.
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“I’ve collected Staffordshire-style sculptures for years. I just love these things,” he explained. “They’re not expensive works of art; you find them in second-hand shops. I just had them in front of me as I was just sitting at my desk. We sort of grew idle through Covid [and] were allowed to do things that we normally wouldn’t have done. I sat there looking at one of these Staffordshires just thinking, ‘I can do this.’”
According to Cave, his mother had loved the clay figurines he made as a teenager, and her passing at 92 during Covid left him with a “sentimental tug” that soon evolved into his newfound passion. “Mostly it was just that I thought, ‘F–k, you know, it can’t be that hard to make one of these things,’” he explained.
Admitting there is “no irony” to his love of the art form, Cave added that his 17-piece ‘The Devil — A Life’ series also served as a way for him to come to terms with some of the internal feelings that still resonated following the accidental death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015.
“The whole thing started to have a more mysterious, mystical pull,” he explained. “Then they started to be in order, one after the other. They were trying to make sense of my predicament in a way that I couldn’t make sense of it in my songs, for some reason.
“Ultimately, this ended up being something about culpability and forgiveness around the death of my son,” he added. “That was something that I could never quite get to in my songwriting. To me, these became acutely personal.”
Cave’s most recent body of work, Wild God, arrived in August as his 18th studio album with the Bad Seeds. The record reached No. 2 on the charts in his native Australia, while peaking at No. 66 on the Billboard 200. The album received two Grammy nominations and was also nominated for the Australian Music Prize, ultimately losing out to Kankawa Nagarra’s Wirlmarni.
In an age where cult indie band Pavement could become one of the biggest hits of TikTok, it only makes sense that their life and history receive the big screen treatment. Now, we can see the trailer for this ambitious undertaking.
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Pavement played what is ostensibly their final performance back in October, as part of the New York premiere of Alex Ross Perry‘s experimental biopic/documentary, Pavements. The film has been in the works for some time now, with its roots tracing back to Perry’s 2022 production, Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical.
However, those hoping for a biopic in the style of the recent A Complete Unknown will be disappointed, with the film taking on an approach as avant-garde as Pavement’s music often was. Perry referred to the film in 2022 as a “semiotic experiment,” and reviews of its 2024 premiere have since seen it referred to as equal parts, documentary, mockumentary, biopic, musical, and a behind-the-scenes making-of featurette.
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In keeping with the unique focus of the wider film, a trailer has now been shared for the film-within-a-film biopic, Range Life: A Pavement Story. Presented by the fictitious Paragon Vantage, and soundtracked by Pavements’ own songs “Here” and “Shady Lane,” the trailer stars Stranger Things’ Joe Keery as frontman Stephen Malkmus as it focuses on the band as they grapple with success, record label intrusion, and their infamous 1995 mud-laden appearance at Lollapalooza.
“Progress is predictable and predictability involves science. I want nothing to do with science,” notes Keery as he lifts directly from Malkmus’ own words. “This is music — if it’s fun, it’s fun, if it’s work, it’s work, and that’s not fun.”
The trailer also features Nat Wolff as Scott ‘Spiral Stairs’ Kannberg, Fred Hechinger as Bob Nastanovich, Logan Miller as Mark Ibold, Griffin Newman as Steve West, and Jason Schwartzman as Matador Records’ Chris Lombardi.
Pavements is scheduled for release later in 2025, though a specific date has not yet been announced.
In real life, the California band were initially active from 1989 until 1999, releasing a total of five albums, including 1992’s Slanted and Enchanted, 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, and 1997’s Brighten the Corners, which gave the group their highest-charting U.S. release when it hit No. 70 on the Billboard 200.
The group initially split in November 1999, with the previous month’s Major Leagues EP serving as their final piece of original material. Since then, the band’s members have been intensely active on other projects, including a run of reissues that complemented their original albums with a myriad unreleased and rare tracks.
In December, Kannberg revealed in an interview with the Kreative Kontrol podcast that the Pavements soundtrack will also feature the first new song from the band in more than 25 years.
“There will be a new Pavement song on the soundtrack, that’s all I’m going to give you,” he explained. “I just heard a mix of it today, and it’s pretty good. It’s not a big deal, it’s just cool because it’s something different and it’s a song that we all kind of loved playing.”
With a little help from his friends, and fans, Joe Cocker may finally get into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.
He’d be pleased, according to his widow.
“Joe was never anxious for it,” says Pam Cocker, who married the British singer in 1987 and was with him until his death from lung cancer in 2014 at the age of 70. “The awards and accomplishments and all of that kind of stuff were not his thing — not to say that he wouldn’t be very pleased, as I am, just thrilled. But you just didn’t think about it.”
Cocker has been eligible since 1989 but was nominated for the first time this year; he’s currently sitting in the top seven selections of the online fan vote that’s being conducted by the Rock Hall. The campaign, such as it is, got a significant boost this week when Paul McCartney issued a public letter endorsing Cocker as “a great man and a fine singer whose unique style made for some fantastic performances.”
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Praising Cocker’s legendary 1968 rendition of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” McCartney continued that “whilst he may not have ever lobbied to be in the Hall of Fame, I know he would be extremely happy and grateful to find himself where he deserves to be amongst such illustrious company.”
“What a sweet, sweet letter,” says Pam Cocker, who met McCartney once, briefly. “I know he’s always been a big supporter. I was very proud.”
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McCartney, a two-time inductee, has a winning record for supporting Rock Hall nominees. He successfully lobbied for Beatle-mate Ringo Starr’s 2015 award for musical excellence and was part of last year’s campaign for the induction of another longtime snub, Foreigner. Over the years Cocker has also been publicly championed by Billy Joel.
Pam Cocker, who met Joe when he moved to Santa Barbara, Calif., during the late ‘70s (they married Oct. 11, 1987), says she was “really surprised” by Cocker’s inclusion among this year’s nominees. “It’s just one of those things that every year it comes up and every year you just go, ‘Oh, well, not again….’ Joe always applauded the people who were getting in; he’d be the first to say, ‘I can’t believe they’re not in there already’ or hadn’t been nominated before. So it was very much a part of our life, knowing about it. But it’s never something that he campaigned for or asked his management, ‘Why aren’t I in it?’ or ‘Can’t you do more?’ There was never anything like that, ever. But he’s been eligible for a long, long time, so it’s about time.”
The elevator pitch for Cocker’s inclusion is certainly long. Born in Sheffield, England and influenced by R&B (Ray Charles in particular), Cocker first sang with his older brother Victor’s skiffle group when he was 12 years old, then played in bands while working as a gasfitter in England. He began recording in 1964 but his career accelerated after he formed the Grease Band in 1966 and then signed with producer Denny Cordell, who helmed “With a Little Help From My Friends” in 1968 — and famously became the theme song for TV’s The Wonder Years 20 years later.
Cocker’s soulful delivery and spasmodic performing style made him a live favorite as well, and his appearance at the first Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in 1969 and in the subsequent movie elevated him to star status. His Leon Russell-led Mad Dogs & Englishmen band was legendary in 1970, and Cocker maintained a steady career that included 22 studio albums and hit renditions of the Box Tops’ “The Letter,” Julie London’s “Cry Me a River” and Billy Preston’s “You Are So Beautiful.” Cocker won a Grammy Award in 1983 for “Up Where We Belong,” his Billboard Hot 100-topping duet with Jennifer Warnes for the film An Officer and a Gentleman, and received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2007.
“Music was paramount to him,” says Pam Cocker, who says she’s been voting for him every day and adds that Victor Cocker, who still resides in England, is equally excited about the nomination. “He had a lot of interests…but he was really just about making music and thinking about the next song, listening to songs all the time. It was just everything to him. He deserves this; he certainly was a legend. We just have to see what happens and hope it’s his time.”
Fan voting is being conducted via vote.rockhall.com until April 21. Voters can vote once per day and choose up to seven of the 14 nominated acts.
California’s largest rock festival has released its lineup, featuring some of the biggest names in metal, hardcore and punk. 2025’s Aftershock Festival at Discover Park in Sacramento will include 115 bands, headlined by four of the biggest artists in the genre — pop-punk legends Blink 182, hard rock pioneering band Deftones, nu-metal veterans Korn and British hardcore legends Bring Me The Horizon.
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“Aftershock is the biggest rock, punk, and metal festival on the West Coast, and this year, it lined up perfectly for California fans. We’ve got legendary reunions, rare performances, and more California bands on this lineup than any Aftershock before,” said Aftershock promoter Danny Wimmer, who has staged the festival for 13 years, in a statement. “Year after year, we’ve broken attendance records, and this one is set to be the biggest yet. Trust me, you don’t want to miss it. I hope to see you there.”
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Other big names appearing at this year’s festival include pop-punkers Good Charlotte and All Time Low performing on the opening Thursday for Aftershock, Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan’s band A Perfect Circle and east coast hardcore outfit Turnstile performing Friday. Saturday will feature performances from Bad Omens and Gojira, while Sunday boasts sets by hard rock legends Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson.
This year’s festival features more than a dozen reunion shows, including the first West Coast performance for recently reunited East Coast hardcore band The Dillinger Escape Plan, as well as a 40th anniversary celebration for gross-out rock legends GWAR.
Tickets are on sale now at Aftershock’s website for both general admission and VIP. This year, Aftershock is continuing to offer layaway ticket purchases with just $1 down, as well as discounted four-day and single day passes to first responders, active duty military and medical professionals and nurses. A full lineup for this year’s festival can be found below:
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Boys Noize will open for Nine Inch Nails for the entirety of the band’s upcoming Peel It Back Tour. Nine Inch Nails’ first live run since 2022 is scheduled to start at 3Arena in Dublin, Ireland, on June 15, and move around Europe through mid-July before jumping to the U.S. beginning Aug. 3 for a […]
Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump upended the global alliance in support of Ukraine’s war against invader Russia, Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong had a few thoughts on the shocking spectacle. At the kick-off the veteran punk provocateurs’ Australian tour on Saturday (March 1) at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium, Armstrong once again switched up the lyrics to one of the band’s songs to send a unequivocal, harsh message to the current American administration.
As the band continues its year-long anniversary celebration of the 20th anniversary of their career-peak punk rock opera American Idiot, Armstrong slipped some not-at-all-subtle commentary into the lyrics of “Jesus of Suburbia.” The move came a day after Trump and Vice President JD Vance attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office during a meeting meant to announce a deal on minerals aimed at ending the three-year war launched by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
“Am I retarded or am I just JD Vance,” Armstrong sang in a tweak to the original, politically incorrect-on-purpose line, “Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?” Offered without any additional commentary, the diss of the Hillbilly Elegy author who repeatedly lashed out at the war-time Ukrainian leader for not being solicitous and thankful enough for U.S. aid during the shocking Oval Office ambush was in keeping with Armstrong’s unabashed disdain for the MAGA universe.
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Earlier in the song, Armstrong doubled-down on the band’s support for Ukraine, tweaking another line in the song from “We are the kids of war and peace/ From Anaheim to the Middle East” to “We are the kids of war and peace/ From Ukraine to the Middle East.”
In January, Armstrong took a swipe at another member of the MAGA-verse, unelected DOGE boss Elon Musk, whose slash-and-burn march through the federal government has sparked widespread criticism and fear among longtime civil servants whose jobs have been eliminated by the tens of thousands over the past month. Performing in the Tesla boss’ home country of South Africa, during a show in Cape Town Armstrong switched a favorite “American Idiot” lyric from “I’m not part of the redneck agenda” to “I’m not part of the Elon agenda.”
The singer pulled a similar move during their New Year’s Eve show in 2024, changing the line to “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda.” It was just one of several times the stridently anti-fascist, anti-hate speech band has taken on Trump. In 2019, at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, they debuted the anti-MAGA “American Idiot” line and at the 2016 American Music Awards, Green Day took aim at the then president-elect while performing “Bang Bang,” with Armstrong chanting “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA,” in a nod to Trump’s endorsement by white supremacist group the KKK and the rise in racist attacks following his election.
Watch Green Day’s Vance reproach below.
Bring Me the Horizon has reacted to the unexpected support from Liam Gallagher after covering Oasis’ iconic “Wonderwall” for Spotify Singles earlier this year.
The band, who reworked the Britpop anthem into a heavier, more atmospheric version, admitted they were taken aback by Gallagher’s positive response.
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“It’s a good song, it’s actually one of my favorites. Top five,” frontman Oli Sykes said of the track while speaking to NME on the red carpet at the BRIT Awards 2025. “We always usually cover stuff that no one has ever heard of, so we were like, ‘Now let’s try to reimagine something that everyone knows. Make it easy for ourselves.’ It came out alright I think! It was crazy that Liam didn’t slag it off to the high heavens…”
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Drummer Mat Nicholls echoed the sentiment, acknowledging Oasis’ influence on their generation of British musicians.
“[We grew up] listening to them, definitely. It’s hard to ignore them, especially being our age, because Oasis are a British staple. We were expecting [Liam] to absolutely rinse us, but he said some actually nice things! It was cool and I think it went down as good as we wished it could.”
Gallagher had previously responded to the cover on social media, writing, “I f—ing LOVE it.” When a fan speculated that his brother Noel might be displeased, Liam doubled down: “I’m not, it’s absolutely incredible, made my day. I’m off out on my skateboard, f— y’all.”
The BRIT Awards marked another milestone for the band, who previously won Best Alternative/Rock Act in 2024. This year, they were nominated for Group of the Year but lost out to Ezra Collective.
The band is set to headline Reading & Leeds Festival 2025 alongside Travis Scott, Chappell Roan, and Hozier. It marks their second time topping the bill at the twin-site festival, following their 2022 co-headlining slot with Arctic Monkeys.
Suzanne Vega is set to make a long-awaited return in May, announcing the release of her first album of new material in over a decade.
Titled Flying With Angels, the record is Vega’s tenth and arrives on May 2nd. “Flying With Angels is my first studio album of new songs in eleven years,” she said of the new LP. “Each song on the album takes place in an atmosphere of struggle. Struggle to survive, to speak, to dominate, to win, to escape, to help someone else, or just live.”
The record’s announcement has been accompanied by the release of its opening track, “Speakers’ Corner,” which itself features an animated music video by Michael Arthur. “A Speakers’ Corner is an area where free speech, open air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed,” Vega wrote on social media. “I guess we better use it now before we find it gone!”
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“That’s something you don’t want in democracy: the shutting down of the Speakers’ Corner where people get a say,” she continued in a press release. “This is a moment in time when people are saying a lot, but sometimes they’re not making sense or not telling the truth. People should be accountable for what they say. They can’t just lie. One would think that that would be self-evident.”
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Flying With Angels is Vega’s first new studio release since 2016’s Lover, Beloved: Songs from an Evening with Carson McCullers, which was based on Vega’s 2011 play Carson McCullers Talks About Love, written about the titular American poet. Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles, her most recent album of entirely new material, arrived in 2014.
Vega’s new album also arrived almost 40 years to the day since the release of self-titled debut record. It reached No. 91 on the Billboard 200, though Vega made a marked improvement on that feat with 1987’s Solitude Standing, which peaked at No. 11. The album’s success was largely thanks to second single “Luka,” which gave her a career-best when it hit No. 3 on the Hot 100. Three years later, she returned to the top of the charts, landing at No. 5 with the DNA remix of her a cappella track “Tom’s Diner.”
Vega has also announced an extensive run of tour dates in support of the new album. She’ll launch her Flying With Angels tour in East Greenwich, RI on Thursday (March 6), with a total of 40 dates currently planned for North America, Europe, and the U.K. throughout 2025.