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It’s been more than 27 years since Sublime performed its final show with Bradley Nowell, but recent moves by the late frontman’s family have paved the way for the band’s possible return with Nowell’s son Jakob Nowell as the famed Long Beach punk-ska-reggae trio’s next generation singer.
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Jakob Nowell — who was 11 months old when his father died in 1996 — has been performing and touring for more than a decade, and this year signed a record deal with Epitaph Records for his group Jakob’s Castle and made a surprise appearance with Stick Figure at Coachella. On Dec. 11, he will perform at a benefit concert for Bad Brains frontman H.R. at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles alongside Sublime’s original members, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, for the first time ever. The trio are not calling themselves Sublime for the benefit show, but Jakob’s manager Kevin Zinger with Regime Music Group and musician-turned-executive Joe Escalante have already been selected by the original band members, along with Bradley Nowell’s wife (and Jakob’s mom) Troy Dendekker Nowell, to manage the rights and intellectual property for Sublime.
Kevin Zinger
Fabrice Henssens
Zinger and Escalante have been hired to manage the “legacy assets, the licensing and all the business in Sublime going forward for Jake, Troy, Bud and Eric,” Escalante tells Billboard. “The guys plan to jam together in support of H.R. at the Teragram Ballroom on Dec. 11. Beyond that we’re not prepared to make any announcements.”
Zinger is a veteran music executive and documentary filmmaker whose clients include House of Pain, Tower of Power, Everlast and Steele Pulse. Escalante is bassist for the famed Orange County punk band The Vandals, as well as a music executive and Hollywood showrunner.
News of a relaunched Sublime has generated significant interest from festival talent buyers who have already begun submitting offers for festival bookings, Zinger tells Billboard. But for now, he says, the three men remain focused on rehearsing for the Dec. 11 show.
Joe Escalante
Aki Yamazaki
“We’re patiently waiting and doing the right thing,” says Zinger. “If the vibe’s there, the vibe’s there.”
Wilson is also a member of Sublime with Rome, a popular touring outfit led by singer Rome Ramirez that plays songs from Sublime’s catalog as well as Ramirez’s originals. The name Sublime with Rome was created as legal a compromise between Ramirez, Wilson and Troy Dendekker Nowell in 2010 after Nowell sued to stop the men from touring under the name Sublime.
Further complicating matters for Sublime relaunch with Jakob Nowell is that Sublime With Rome have a New Zealand tour and a number of big festivals booked in 2024;, as does Jakob’s Castle, who’s opening for G Love & Special Sauce on a tour running through the end of March.
Tickets are still available for Positive Mental Attitude: A Benefit For HR of Bad Brains at the Teragram Ballroom on Dec. 11, priced at $30 apiece. There is also a GoFundMe set up to benefit H.R. here.
It’s been more than half a century, but The Beatles are back at No. 1 on a Billboard airplay chart. “Now and Then” rises 2-1 on the Adult Alternative Airplay tally dated Dec. 9.
It’s The Beatles’ first No. 1 on the survey, which began in 1996. The band previously peaked at No. 11 with “Free as a Bird” that year.
The last time the group notched a No. 1 on a Billboard radio chart was 1970, when “Let It Be” (the Fab Four’s sole other airplay leader) ruled Adult Contemporary for four weeks beginning that April.
Of course, The Beatles boast their share of chart-toppers elsewhere, including a record 20 No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100. Their final ruler to date also came in 1970 with two-week leader “The Long and Winding Road”/“For You Blue” that June. They have also earned a record 19 No. 1s on the Billboard 200 albums chart and rank at No. 1 on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Artists chart.
The Beatles break the record for the most time between a first appearance on Adult Alternative Airplay and a first No. 1, as “Free as a Bird” ranked on the inaugural chart, dated Jan. 20, 1996.
Concurrently, “Now and Then” jumps 29-25 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 1.4 million audience impressions, up 5%, according to Luminate.
On the most recently published Hot Rock & Alternative Songs list (dated Dec. 2), “Now and Then” placed at No. 14, after reaching No. 2. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 2.4 million official streams and sold 18,000 downloads and physical singles combined in the U.S. Nov. 17-23.
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“Now and Then” is billed as The Beatles’ final song. It was recorded as a demo in 1977 by John Lennon and finished at last by surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, among others, after multiple attempts via new technology to extract Lennon’s vocals from the original demo, along with guitar parts from George Harrison. It’s included on the reissues of the group’s 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 compilations, initially released in 1973 and re-released Nov. 10.
As previously reported, “Now and Then” debuted at No. 7 on the Nov. 18-dated multimetric Hot 100, becoming The Beatles’ 35th top 10 – extending their record for the most among groups. It also expanded their span of Hot 100 top 10s to 59 years, nine months and three weeks – the longest excluding holiday fare, dating to their first week in the top 10 with their iconic U.S. breakthrough single “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in 1964.
All Billboard charts dated Dec. 9 will update on Billboard.com on Tuesday, Dec. 5.
When you’re the greatest live rock band to ever do it, you clearly give the people what they want. So it’s no surprise that the Rolling Stones are releasing a live deluxe edition of their new Hackney Diamonds album. The refreshed version will feature seven songs recorded live at the band’s surprise show at New […]
The third annual Holiday Auction for the ASCAP Foundation is now open and this year’s items up for bid include a boatload of one-of-a-kind keepsakes from a variety of pop, rock, hip-hop and country stars. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Topping the list of collectibles whose sales […]
The Album
Yard, out now on ANTI- Records.
The Origin
Guitarist-producer Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Matthews met as youngsters in a McDonald’s ball pit in their native Madison, Wis., and they’ve been playing music together almost as long. They formed a band with buddy and future Slow Pulp bassist Alex Leeds as preteens and kept making music as teens and, later, students at University of Wisconsin, Madison. That’s where they met singer-guitarist Emily Massey, who was in another band, but began writing with Stoehr for fun.
The creative relationship blossomed and Stoehr invited Massey to join the nascent Slow Pulp. Initially, Massey explains, she “was just kind of an auxiliary member,” helping with rhythm guitar and backing vocals. But while recording 2017’s EP2, Stoehr and Leeds asked Massey to sing lead on a couple of their songs. “They were like, ‘How about you sing this song as well?’ And then we started sprinkling in the songs that we had been writing together,” Massey, now 28, recalls. “It just kind of slowly transitioned into me kind of taking the frontperson role.”
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The Sound
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“Lucinda Williams’ album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, that’s my gold [standard], like, this is how I like music to sound, production-wise” says Stoehr, 29, who produced Slow Pulp’s debut full-length, 2020’s Moveys, and its follow-up, September’s Yard. Massey shares the affinity: She wrote some of Yard‘s songs at a cabin where Williams’ Grammy-nominated 2001 album Essence was one of the few CDs on hand. “She’s just an incredible songwriter,” says Massey, noting the “production cues that [Slow Pulp] took from that Americana world for some of the songs” on Yard.
Stoehr and Massey also gush about the soundtrack to seminal ’00s teen TV drama The O.C., explaining the impact the set of canonical alt-rock and indie-pop songs had on them as younger Millennials. “Overall, on [Yard], there’s a little more earnestness and exposed emotion. And I feel like that [O.C.] era of music was all about that.”
And when it comes to the tried-and-true “Artist A x Artist B = Artist C” equation, one could do worse than encapsulating Slow Pulp’s emotional and vibrant indie-rock than “Lucinda Williams x The O.C. soundtrack.” On Yard, the band’s upped the rootsy quotient – like on late-album standout “Broadview,” a gem laden with steel guitar, harmonica, and banjo that sounds like Slow Pulp exhumed and rerecorded a lost demo from Neil Young’s Harvest.
The Record
Like many young bands, Slow Pulp’s rise is forever linked to the pandemic. The quartet finished its debut, Moveys, in the early months of COVID; around that time, Massey says her own health issues and a serious car accident involving her parents were among the factors that forced the band to “take a breather for a second.”
Writing for Yard began in earnest in early 2022, and by February 2023 the band had submitted the record – and signed with eminent indie label ANTI-, currently home to an eclectic roster that includes Fleet Foxes, Mavis Staples, MJ Lenderman and Japandroids. “They were very down for just letting us take a lot of creative control, which is something that was really important to us,” Massey says.
As she did for Moveys, Massey tracked many of Yard‘s vocals in her musician father’s home studio – “It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; we definitely are good at arguing,” she says with a laugh – and Stoehr ornamented tracks the band recorded with “sound candy type of stuff” to make them pop. The technical prowess helps Slow Pulp’s sharper-than-ever songwriting, chock-full of huge hooks and vivid lyrics, shine.
“Songs like ‘Broadview’ and ‘Yard’ have a different flavor than some of the music that we’ve done before,” Massey says. “And ANTI-, those were some of their favorite songs, like from the jump. That felt cool to have a label be excited about new things and new sounds that are kind of taking a risk.”
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The Breakthrough
When Slow Pulp released EP2, influential YouTuber thelazylazyme gave its closing track, “Preoccupied,” a boost by sharing it. “That was the turning point of, like, ‘Maybe we should look into taking this a little bit more seriously,’” says Massey, explaining how the recognition prompted Slow Pulp to relocate to Chicago.
In 2019, the band opened for Alex G on tour – and noticed a pronounced change in the audiences compared to other support slots it had played before. “That was the first tour we went on where the person we were opening for’s fans were pretty receptive,” Stoehr says. “People were liking it.”
And when touring opened back up following the pandemic, Slow Pulp shored up its indie-rock bona fides with coveted slots supporting Alvvays, Pixies and Death Cab For Cutie.
The Future
In early November, Slow Pulp took the stage – to Phantom Planet’s O.C. theme “California,” naturally – for a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, the third of three sold-out Manhattan club shows. The raucous Big Apple crowd has been the norm since Slow Pulp hit the road days after Yard’s release.
“One of our favorite shows that we played on this tour was in Minneapolis,” says Massey, recalling the band’s second stop this fall. “The album hadn’t even been out for a week, and the crowd sang every song. It was just like, ‘What?! How is this happening?’”
The band’s wrapping the year with a European tour – and is already booked for Spain’s Primavera Sound and the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret in June 2024. Says Massey: “It feels like this big dream is coming true.”
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The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without
Stoehr: “The AKG C414 [microphone]. The gold and black one.”Massey: “My MacBook.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Massey: “Ratboys. They could be huge. The record they put out this year is really so, so cool.”Stoehr: “They’re an amazing band. There’s this other small band from Madison called She’s Green that I think are really sick.”
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Massey: “Have fun. That’s something that we like have to remind ourselves of sometimes. I’ve had a really hard time letting myself just fail and make things that are horrible. That’s OK! Make stuff that’s really bad. Make bad songs and it gets you to the good ones. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The Most Surprising Thing About the Music Industry So Far
Massey: [long pause] “People listen to our music.” [laughs]Stoehr: “Yeah, probably that.”Massey: “That’s pretty surprising, always.”
The Thing They Hope Fans Take Away From Their Album
Massey: “Letting yourself have a certain compassion for yourself. That’s the big takeaway. We all have moments of a lot of self-doubt; there are a lot of things that we’re so hard on ourselves for. And to be able to work towards finding the places where you feel you’re able to care for yourself, outside of all the things that are happening. A lot of this record is about gratitude and reflecting on relationships and things that get you to the place you are now.”
Phish are the next major act booked to play Las Vegas’ eye-popping Sphere venue. The band announced on Thursday (Nov. 30) that they will do a four-show run at the building from April 18-21, 2024, with each night set to feature a unique setlist and visuals. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See […]
Shane MacGowan, the legendarily shambolic, magnetic frontman of Celtic rock band The Pogues, died on Thursday (Nov. 30) at age 65 following a recent hospitalization. The band confirmed the passing of their notoriously hard-living vocalist, whose yearning, howling vocals super-charged the Pogues’ meld of traditional Irish music and punk rock spirit on such beloved songs as “Dirty Old Town” and “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”
The group issued a statement in honor of their beloved bandmate on behalf of MacGowan’s wife, Victoria Mary Clark, sister Siobhan and father, Maurice. “It is with the deepest sorrow and heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of SHANE MACGOWAN. Shane died peacefully at 3am this morning (30 November, 2023) with his wife Victoria and family by his side. Prayers and the last rites were read which gave comfort to his family,” it read, alongside a picture of MacGowan in his prime, a cigarette and glass of wine in hand, flashing his signature infectious, crooked smile.
In an Instagram post, Clark wrote, “I don’t know how to say this so I am just going to say it. Shane who will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love ❤️ of my life and the most beautiful soul and beautiful angel and the sun and the moon and the start and end of everything that I hold dear has gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese.”
The singer, who the BBC reported had been unwell for quite a while, struggled openly for many years with drugs and drink and was booted from the band in 1991 after his alcohol abuse made him unreliable; he returned to the fold in 2001 for a final thirteen-year stint before the band split for good in 2014. MacGowan was hospitalized in Dec. 2022 with viral encephalitis and spent several months in intensive care earlier this year as a result.
MacGowan was as mythical a figure on the British music scene as the grizzled characters he inhabited in the Pogues’ songs, which were inspired by figures from literature, the Bible, mythology and the hard-scrabble lives of working class heroes. His vocals, filled with a mix of anger, pugnaciousness and sad-eyed resignation, could swing from a howl and a growl to a grizzled tenderness in the span of a single track.
His death just weeks before Christmas added an extra layer of poignancy to the loss, as this is the season when the Pogues’ 1987 holiday standard, “Fairytale of New York,” is often in heavy rotation. The swaying, sentimental ballad featuring MacGowan trading vocals with the late singer/songwriter Kirsty MacColl has been in the UK’s top 20 19 times since its release, perennially charting around Christmastime and peaking at No. 2 on the UK charts during the year of its release.
After an opening scene in which MacGowan’s characer laments sleeping off a drinks binge in a New York drunk tank, the tune has the two trading (not-PC) insults as they lament dreams deferred by addiction, brought home by the crooned chorus, “The boys of the NYPD choir/ Still singing Galway Bay/ And the bells are ringing out/ For Christmas day.”
Born Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan on Dec. 25 1957, in Kent, England to Irish parents, MacGowan showed creative promise from a young age, earning a scholarship to the prestigious Westminster school for his literary skills, only to be expelled in his second year for drug possession. He burst onto the English music scene in an incident that was fittingly chaotic and tinged with punk-fueled violence when he was photographed covered in blood while attending a 1976 gig by The Clash at which his ear was ripped open, spawning the NME headline “Cannibalism at Clash Gig.”
After briefly joining a punk band called The Nipple Erectors (aka “the Nips”), MacGowan formed The Pogues in London in 1982 with tin whistle player Peter “Spider” Stacy, banjo player Jem Finer and former Nips accordion player James Fearnley; they were originally known as “Pogue Mahone,” a winking twist on a Gaelic phrase that roughly translates to “kiss my arse.”
With the addition of bassist Cait O’Riordan and drummer Andrew Ranken the band began playing London pub gigs and signed to punk label Stiff Records, which released their 1984 debut, Red Roses For Me. The album set the table for the Pogues’ signature sound from the very first song, “Transmetropolitan,” a rousing pub rocker featuring MacGowan’s excitable vocals, which fronted a collection of originals mixed with a number of traditional Irish songs.
Quickly establishing a reputation for high-energy, chaotic live shows, the group’s profile was kicked up several notches when Elvis Costello signed on to produce their breakthrough 1985 album, Run Sodomy & the Lash, which featured such classics as the lament “A Pair of Brown Eyes,” “Sally MacLennane,” “The Old Main Drag” and the frenetic pirate tune “Billy’s Bones,” all written by MacGowan.
Their next album, 1987’s If I Should Fall From Grace With God, (which featured “Fairytale”) was their best-seller and their most eclectic, swapping some of the traditional Irish sounds with more world music touches, including a epic take on the the Australian anti-war lament “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”
That was followed by 1989’s Peace and Love and 1990’s Hell’s Ditch, whose U.S tour was scotched due to MacGowan’s unreliability, which led to his sacking in 1991. The singer quickly formed the solo band Shane MacGowan and the Popes, with whom he released two studio albums and a live album. In 2000, Sinead O’Connor reported MacGowan to the police for heroin possession, which angered the singer at first, though he later thanked her for helping him kick the drug; when O’Connor’s son Shane, 17, died in 2022, MacGowan paid tribute to the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer, writing, “You have always tried to heal and help.”
MacGowan returned to the Pogues in 2001 and the group toured for much of the next decade while stories of MacGowan’s life and times were chronicled in the autobiography A Drink With Shane MacGowan and the 2020 film Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.
Hailed by late Clash singer Joe Strummer — who briefly joined the band in 1991 — as one of England’s greatest songwriters, MacGowan won the prestigious Ivor Novello songwriting award in 2018. His passing was honored by Irish president Michael Higgins, who said, “His words have connected Irish people all over the globe to their culture and history … The genius of Shane’s contribution includes the fact that his songs capture within them, as Shane would put it, the measure of our dreams – of so many worlds, and particularly those of love, of the emigrant experience and of facing the challenges of that experience with authenticity and courage, and of living and seeing the sides of life that so many turn away from.”
See the family’s statement and listen to some MacGowan’s most beloved songs below.
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Jimmy Barnes has fallen ill just days after opening the Mushroom 50 Live concert in Melbourne.
The Australian rock legend was hospitalized and received treatment after contracting bacterial pneumonia, forcing the cancelation of a planned performance on the seas.
“I’m sorry to let you know that I’ve been receiving intravenous antibiotics over the last 36 hours to treat bacterial pneumonia,” he writes on a social post.
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“Unfortunately,” he continues, “this has stopped me travelling to Noumea to join Rock The Boat 2023 as planned. My band will still perform on board, together with my daughter Mahalia and other special guests.”Barnes went on to apologize “for the inconvenience and disappointment this has caused,” and points out his doctors have ordered two days’ bed rest. “The timing couldn’t be worse.”
He’s expected to make a full recovery in time to perform live at By The C in Torquay, on Saturday, Dec. 2.
When it comes to dominating the national charts, no one can touch Barnesy, as he’s affectionately known in these parts.
The Scotland-born singer has 15 leaders on the ARIA Chart, an all-time record, most recently topping the tally last December with Blue Christmas (via Liberation/Universal). Including his five leaders with Cold Chisel, Barnes boasts an unprecedented 20 No. 1s, comfortably eclipsing the Beatles (with 14), Madonna (12), Eminem and U2 (11).
Barnes has overcome several health issues in recent years. In 2022, he wiped clear his touring schedule when surgeons gave him the news that he required back and hip surgery.
He also underwent back surgery in 2014, which kept him in hospital on Fathers Days (Sept. 7)
The 67-year-old singer is twice inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, first with Cold Chisel (in 1993), and again as a solo artist (2005), and is the first Australian solo act to have a No. 1 album in every decade since the 1980s.
The rocker was in full voice at the top of the Mushroom 50 Live concert at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena, where he delivered a two-song performance of “No Second Prize” and his signature song, “Working Class Man.”
A week after making their first appearances on Billboard charts, Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce are No. 1 for the first time. The brothers’ “Fairytale of Philadelphia” rises from No. 2, where it debuted, to No. 1 on the Rock Digital Song Sales tally dated Dec. 2. It also lands at No. 1 on the […]
The lineup for the 2024 edition of the French hard rock festival Hellfest will featuring a quartet of heavy hitters headlining from June 27-30, including Foo Fighters, Metallica, Machine Head and Avenged Sevenfold.
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The first night — topped by A7X — will feature support from Megadeth, Dropkick Murphys, Bad Omens, Baby Metal, Enter Shakari and more. Machine Head top the Friday night lineup, with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello on the bill along with The Prodigy, Fear Factory, Steel Panther, Ice-T’s Body Count, Shaka Ponk, Biohazard, 311, Fu Manchu, Corrosion of Conformity and others.
Metallica will headline on night three, along with Mass Hysteria, Extreme, Mammoth WVH, Black Stone Cherry, The Dead Daisies, Saxon, Bruce Dickinson, Accept, Yngwie Malmsteen, Suicidal Tendencies, The Interruptors, Mr. Bungle and more. Foo Fighters do the honors on the final night, with support from Queen of the Stone Age, Royal Blood, Heart, Nova Twins, High on Fire, The Offspring, Corey Taylor, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes, Simple Plan, Neck Deep, Madball, Rival Sons, Therapy?, Dimmu Borgir and many more.
The 17th edition of Hellfest will take place outside the western French city of Clisson with more than 160 bands setting up on six stages. Weekend tickets are already sold out and single-day tickets slated to go on sale early next year.
Last year’s event featured sets from Kiss, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Def Leppard, Tenacious D, Sum 41, Pantera, Rancid, Black Flag and more.
Check out the full lineup and the Hellfest 2024 poster below.