Alexisonfire’s Mystery Announcement Revealed

After giving fans the biggest surprise on Friday with a brand new Instagram account and a photo that was updated on every single social media account associated with them, Alexisonfire have finally revealed their “BIG NEWS”: they’ll be reuniting.

Now, before we get too ahead of ourselves and give everyone high hopes of a massive tour, the band posted an image on Twitter (and probably every other social media account of theirs) with a list of festival names which they will be performing at.

One of the stops includes Riot Fest Toronto. Coincidentally, or not, festival organizers had announced the Riot Fest dates the day prior to Alexisonfire’s big tease.

The other festivals on the list include: Heavy Montreal (Aug. 7-9), Reading and Leeds (Aug. 28-30), SONiC BOOM and X-Fest (Sept. 5-6) and of course Riot Fest (Sept. 19-20).

While most of the festival dates are for Canadian and British festivals fans of the band in the United States shouldn’t worry that much. On the image that they posted today, it had “USA- TBA.” This TBA must come as a relief to American AOF fans because their farewell tor completely neglected the US, but did go to places like Australia and Brazil.

Now the big question becomes, what United States festivals are going to be graced by the newly reunited Canadian band? Some are saying Riot Fest Denver and Chicago are likely candidates and we could see that happening. After all, AOF frontman Dallas Green did perform at all three of Riot Fests last year with City and Colour.

Give us your guess.

Riot Fest Announce 2015 Dates for All Three Locations

It feels like just yesterday, we were reading (and writing) about all the money the city of Chicago was going to need to spend to clean up all the damage that Riot Fest Chicago caused at Humboldt Park because of Mother Nature and her bad timing.

Whether or not the festival owed Chicago almost $200,000 in damages is now in the past because festival organizers have revealed the official dates for each of the three festivals, though as of now, there has been no official venue reveal for any of the three cities.

Riot Fest Denver will be the first to happen during the weekend of Aug. 28-30. After that, the original Riot Fest location, Chicago, will have its turn during the weekend of Sept. 11-13. Riot Fest Denver rounds out the almost month-long celebration of all things good music during the weekend of Sept. 19-20.

Tickets for all three festivals are currently available on Riot Fest’s website. Back in November, they allowed fans the change to get “Holiday pre-sales” with prices starting at $89.95.

As of now, like we mentioned before, no official venues have been given and as for the artists, we’re sure they aren’t going to start announcing those for several months. In defense of the festival organizers, last year’s line-ups were INSANE.

Ready for Unlimited Concerts for $25? Jukely Is.

What would it be like to only pay $25 a month and get to go to an unlimited amount of concerts for that price?

For people like us who find joy in going as many concerts as we can, it sounds like a dream come true especially when concerts can easily cost you anywhere from the twenties to hundreds price range depending on the act and the demand for them in your location.

A start-up named Jukely is attempting to do just that; give music fans the chance to pay $25 a month and have them go to an unlimited number of concerts. If it catches on, there might be a chance that ticketing sites like StubHub might get a run for their overpriced tickets.

“We asked how much people would pay. $100? No. $50? Still too high. Then we asked if they’d pay $25 and that seemed to spark their interest,” Jukely co-founder Bora Celik explained about the idea behind this unlimited concert subscription.

But, if you’re a little worried about trusting Celik and his vision, he has quite a resume that could help convince doubters that he’s genuine about his project. Celik was described by TechCrunch as “a mix of an engineer and a promoter.” He previously put concerts together for big named DJs, Kaskade and Tiesto while his co-founder, Andrew Cornett, who designed the app, helped build Kickstarter.

Not too shabby for a couple of guys trying to get the best price for a concert.

As of now, the venture is currently being Beta tested in New York where 17 venues, including Webster Hall have agreed to partner up with Celik and Cornett on the project.

Then, comes the next round of doubters who ask how Celik, Cornett and the project in general will make any money offering unlimited concerts for just $25 a month. Celik reportedly said that he sees it as a win-win situation for Jukely and the concert promoters.

The project gets their money while concert promoters will make money off of tickets that probably would have not been sold had they stuck to trying to push the tickets.

As good as the project sounds, Celik does tell potential customers that they should not expect big names to be on the list of artists, at least not yet. The point is to fill venues and expose people to new artists that are just starting to blow up, but we can imagine that will change once the venture starts to gain traction.

Since it’s still in its Beta testing phase, there’s a wait list for those interested in joining who happen to live in New York City. But, New York City is just the tip of the iceberg for Celik. His goal, as of right now, is to launch Jukely in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

It was announced that the first artists to be getting the Jukely treatment will be You Blew!, Hop Along and Dads.

Anberlin Asked About Cell Phones at Shows

We can all agree unanimously that cell phones have their place and time, but when you go to concert, doesn’t it get annoying, fast, when you have people (mostly “younger” audience members) watching the show completely through the screen on their telephones? Or worse, when they spend the vast majority of the time taking “selfies” with the stage and band in the background.

Now, we know some are saying “well then, don’t look!” but it’s kind of like going to watch a movie and seeing this bright light coming from someone around you in a dark theater who thinks they’re clever enough to put the display brightness down to zero.

As someone who is guilty of taking pictures at shows on their phone, we have to take some of the blame. Once upon a time, it was just cameras, but now things have gone beyond ridiculous with audience members bringing tablets and iPads to shows to film.

Considering that recently artists have been speaking out about this, just a few weeks ago at our stop on the Vans Warped Tour Yellowcard frontman, Ryan Key called out audience members who were in the pit with their cell phones out the entire time, unamused and yawning at the band’s fantastic performance. Key told them to either put the phones down and enjoy the show or to get out of the pit and let someone who wants to be there take their spot.

In a recent interview with Real Feels, fellow Warped Tour alum, Stephen Christian from Anberlin was asked about cell phones at shows and Christian made some valid points about his position on the matter.

Check out his interview below.

Taking Back Sunday Frontman to Return

After having to leave the current tour right in the middle because of the abrupt birth of his second child, Taking Back Sunday frontman, Adam Lazzara has confirmed that he will in fact  be returning to the stage at tonight’s show. At the time, the band confirmed that Lazzara would be taking “as much necessary time” to be with his family, but that the band would move forward with the already planned and scheduled shows they had lined up.

While Lazzara was off with his wife and newborn baby, the band has gone ahead and asked former Underoath frontman, Spencer Chamberlain, a friend of the band, to fill in the meantime.

An official statement from Taking Back Sunday regarding Lazzara’s return can be read here:

“We are happy to announce that Adam will rejoin the Fall Tour tomorrow, November 3 at The Fillmore Charlotte. Everyone is in good health and we can’t begin to thank Spencer Chamberlain enough for helping us out. We also want to thank you for being so kind through all of this.

Don’t forget tomorrow’s show includes our friends Anberlin The Maine and Transit! You can get the info for the rest of the tour here: http://www.takingbacksunday.com/tour/“

Videos of Chamberlain performing some of Taking Back Sunday’s shows have surfaced as well and can be seen below.

“Set Phasers to Stun”

“You Know How I Do”

“Existentialism on Prom Night” (not a Taking Back Sunday song, we know, but they did perform it with John Nolan taking the lead, of course)

Watch the Arcade Fire’s Lyric Video

The Arcade Fire’s newest album might be one of the most anticipated albums of the year while also being one of the most secretive albums of the year, but things might be starting to come to light.

The band who have been cryptic at best about the direction of the album and maybe new sound released another new song yesterday on Zane Lowe’s show titled, “Afterlife.” The song first made its appearance on Saturday Night Live a few weeks back when they were the musical guest on the long running show.

Today, the band released the official lyric video for it which can be seen below.

Reflektor is due out next Tuesday, October 29 and have had a great way of promoting it. Last week, they played a “secret” show in Brooklyn and this week they, performing under the alias of The Reflektors, will perform two shows in Miami.

Mumford and Sons to Take a Long Awaited Break

Sad news for the indie world concerning one of their favorite bands calling it a day.

This weekend, Mumford & Sons revealed that they will be taking “a considerable amount of time off” once they wrapped up their current Babel tour this past Friday, September 20..

The news came out when keyboardist, Ben Lovett, told Rolling Stone that “there won’t be any Mumford & Sons activities for the foreseeable future following Friday’s show.”

But not being able to leave well enough alone, the magazine grilled the keyboard player about what he exactly meant by that statement and how long exactly the band will be taking off in the meantime.

He went on to explain, “we have no idea. We just know we’re going to take a considerable amount of time off and just go back to hanging out and having no commitments or pressure or anything like that. It feels like the last week of school right now, before school holiday when you’re in high school. The atmosphere on the road is one of… I think everyone’s excited about being free of schedules.”

The band released their debut album, Sigh No More back in 2009 and went on to released the hit Babel last year which launched them into mainstream success, sold out tours and several awards. The band though, have been touring non-stop since 2009 in support on both album.

Showing how much they love their fans, it pained them to have to cancel tour dates back in June when bassist, Ted Dwane, had to undergo emergency brain surgery to get rid of a blood clot on his brain.  Right after Dwane was given the okay from the doctors, they were back on stage for Glastonbury.

“We’re just going to rest up. I don’t think we’ve had actually much time in the process to be with other people and living a life outside of the band. I think that’s what’s in place at the moment, to do very little – especially when it comes to Mumford & Sons,” Lovett said about what is in the future for the band as they rest up.

Artists Protesting Florida? Not So Fast

After the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin ruling two weeks back, many artist have come out of the woodwork to protest the state of Florida over a reason that no one truly knows. Whether it’s the ruling (just for those that are not familiar, Zimmerman was found not guilty) or the actual “Stand Your Ground” law, artist were rumored to be protesting the state (you read right, the state, not just that particular city).

Word got around yesterday through the Huffington Post that artists such as Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, The Rolling Stones and many more would be staying clear from Florida due to the verdict outcome. The Monday after the verdict, Stevie Wonder had come out saying that he would not be entering the state of Florida for anything as a protest. Today, it turns out, many of the representatives are coming to the defense of their performers saying that their clients had never heard of or been contacted about the list.

American Urban Radio Network’s White House correspondent April Ryan first reported the list, claiming that she had gotten the information from credible  “sources close to the Stevie Wonder camp.” The Huffington Post had said that they were at the time trying to contact the artists’ representatives even though they had posted the list. At the time, the only representative that had gotten back to them was Rihanna’s who revealed that she was not involved. MotherJones got word that The Rolling Stones had not even heard about the campaign.

When doubt started to reach an all time high, Ryan released a statement on her website where she explains that she got a ext in the middle of the night from someone who were “in support of Stevie.” Her statement could be seen below:

I obtained from multiple sources early Monday a list of artists and entertainers who my sources told me had committed to a boycott of Florida following the George Zimmerman acquittal. Since publishing that list I have heard from several representatives of the artists named who say, on behalf of their clients, they are uncomfortable being identified on that list and are seeking additional information.

Additional representatives have come out to debunk that their clients, who were on the list, were even aware that their names had been put on the list of protesters, which begs the question, if Ryan didn’t put this list together then who did?

Supposedly protests not only those mentioned above, but also

• Mary Mary
• Eddie Levert
• Rod Stewart
• Madonna
• Usher
• Pattie Labelle
• Kanye West
• Mary J
• Trey Songz
• R. Kelly
• Alicia Keys
• Joe
• Will I AM
• Keyshia Cole
• Young Jeezy
• Erykah Badu
• Wale
• Frankie Beverly
• Parliament