ENTERTAINMENT
By Mary Carole McCauley, The Baltimore Sun | August 27, 2012
"And now you hear the music, but the words don't sound too clear …" "Inner City Blues" by Sixto Rodriguez Former Baltimorean Craig Strydom has spent more than two decades searching for Sugar Man. And even though the music journalist tracked his elusive subject to a Detroit tenement in 1997, in many ways, he's still looking. Sugar Man is the nickname for Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter who was living in dire poverty in the U.S. without ever knowing that his music was being used to fight apartheid halfway around the world.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Wesley Case, The Baltimore Sun | June 5, 2012
When young, aspiring artists ask Mark Foster, the 27-year-old leader of Los Angeles trio Foster the People, for tips on making it big in the music industry, he offers practical advice. "Kids hit me up on Twitter and I tell them to learn how to bartend," Foster said. "There are career waiters in Los Angeles and they're making over $100,000 a year. " Foster knows first-hand how difficult breakthroughs can be. After moving to Los Angeles from Cleveland at 18, Foster threw himself into the city's party scene, hoping to make any connections he could.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Erik Maza, The Baltimore Sun | January 13, 2011
The B-52s were performing another one of their New Year's Eve shows when, right after "Roam," they were asked to stop for the countdown, champagne toasts and balloons. It might have been 2011, but the band finished the night in typical garb — singer Fred Schneider in a gold jacket, the gals in sparkly minidresses — and with a couple of classics, "Rock Lobster" and "Love Shack," just like they might have 30 years ago. That they're still playing them is further proof that the Athens, Ga., veterans have yet to overstay their welcome.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Rashod D. Ollison and Rashod D. Ollison,rashod.ollison@baltsun.com | September 25, 2008
The multiracial five-piece band Black Kids, which has an affinity for '80s British rock, is something of a sensation in Europe. There, the band has ascended the charts, packed venues and secured prime TV spots. And in the United States, the critical praise is deafening. Of course, the musicians didn't expect all the buzz. Music bloggers and hipster circles gush over the group's tongue-in-cheek multicultural image and the irreverent neon pop-rock of its debut CD, Partie Traumatic. The album has been out for about a month, and the scruffy band from Jacksonville, Fla., is already tired of hearing about itself.
NEWS
By Melissa Harris and Melissa Harris,Sun reporter | July 27, 2008
The thousands of fans who filed into Morgan State University's auditorium for Khia Edgerton's funeral yesterday could recite her accomplishments: recording artist, radio personality, leader of an underground music movement. But during the two-hour music-filled ceremony, those fans learned how Edgerton rose from spinning records in her family's Randallstown basement to become "K-Swift," leader of Baltimore's club music scene. The story is a by-the-book lesson on the value of hard work. "She's didn't talk about building an entertainment empire - she just did it," said Marc Clarke, of radio station 92Q, where Edgerton was the first female DJ. "She didn't talk about losing 170 pounds.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Alex Plimack and Alex Plimack,Sun Reporter | June 19, 2008
As he cruised down Los Angeles' Mulholland Drive, Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden battled spotty cell-phone reception to talk about band life, family life (he and girlfriend Nicole Richie are parents of a baby girl, Harlow) and the state of the music industry. His group, Good Charlotte, which got its start in Waldorf in 1996, is headlining the AST Dew Tour's Panasonic Open tomorrow night at Camden Yards before it embarks on a summer tour with Boys Like Girls. The band's latest album, Good Morning Revival, was released last year.