Music Artists, Videos and News

By Matt Elias

Once a band hits its final note, the show is rarely over. Every group has its own post-show ritual, and we here at MTV News are setting out to capture them in a segment we call “Encore.” Because let’s face it: Some of the best moments happen offstage.

In the last installment of “Encore,” the Sounds brought us along for a raucous after-show meet and greet. (You can still catch the action yourself, as the band is back on the road this fall.)

This week we bring you Los Campesinos!, an energetic seven-piece band from Cardiff, Wales — and yes, the exclamation point is there for a reason. We caught up with the band on the tail end of their U.S. tour, at the beautiful El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles.

Campesinos shows are a study in controlled chaos. The keys, strings and vocals build continuously, and just when they are about to veer off into complete disorder, they fall back into magical harmony. Their shows are singalongs, and based on we saw in L.A., they’re definitely dance-alongs as well.

One thing we had never seen was the way Los Campesinos! closed out their set. Frontman Gareth (all the band members have taken on the surname Campesinos, just like the Ramones) bolted into the crowd on the final notes of “Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks” and made headed immediately to the merch booth to meet fans and sell some T-shirts. That’s where the band begins its post show ritual, and that’s where we join the party.

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Today was a day that was no doubt circled on the calendars of a lot of music fans, as a bunch of high-profile new albums hit the streets, including big-time records from Mariah Carey, Paramore, AFI, Alice in Chains, Barbara Streisand, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Selena Gomez, Ghostface Killah and Miranda Lambert. But a glance at the top downloaded albums on at the iTunes store reveals an unlikely conqueror at the top of the pile. The top downloaded album of today’s new releases isn’t Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel or Brand New Eyes but Dear Agony the fourth full-length from Pennsylvania aggro-rockers Breaking Benjamin.

The band has made a career out of underdog moves like this. They’ve built a following the old-fashioned way: Crafting high-quality, hard-edged records, stringing together a few hits (like “So Cold” and “Breath”), promoting locally and barely ever leaving the touring van. Even the story about their record deal is delightfully old-school, as rather than build Facebook friends or turn themselves into a Twitter meme, they simply pressedł,000 copies of their own EP and didn’t tire until they sold the entire lot themselves. The group’s plan to promote the release of Dear Agony melds old-school and new media quite well, as not only do they have three of the tunes from the album available for download on “Rock Band” today, but they’ll also play a secret show in their hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, tonight. It’s not easy to climb over the likes of Paramore, Mariah Carey and Miranda Lambert, but Breaking Benjamin have proven that it’s possible. In their honor, here’s the video for the subversively catchy “The Diary of Jane,” from 2006’s Phobia.

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By Nuzhat Naoreen

Bruce Springsteen fans are in for a real treat, especially if they’ve got tickets to his concert with the E Street band at Giants Stadium in New Jersey this October. Instead of playing just a compilation of songs, Springsteen announced yesterday that he plans to perform a classic album in its entirety each night of the five-night run. The full-lengths that will be represented include hits like Born to Run (September 30, October 8), Darkness on the Edge of Town (October 2) and — perhaps most tantalizingly — Born in the U.S.A. (October 3, October 9).

Fans in Chicago are to thank for the change in format, at least according to Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau. Springsteen started off his Chicago concert in late September like any other set, but then halfway through he broke off to perform all eight songs from Born to Run.

“Chicago convinced us that this was really worth doing,” said manager Landau. “The audience was so supportive of the concept that it convinced us to go ahead with this at Giants Stadium.”

But just about all the songs on Born to Run are in regular rotation in the Boss’ setlists. Born in the U.S.A., however, contains a handful of tunes that are a little rarer, like “Downbound Train” and “I’m Goin’ Down.”

The concert also has some sentimental value: It’s the last that will ever be hosted at Giants Stadium, which is being torn down at the end of the current football season to make way for a brand new home for the Giants and Jets.

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“It’s strange because even though the figures show that the books were successful and sold millions of copies, you couldn’t even buy them in London. I tried a couple of bookshops and they weren’t available. Hardly anyone I knew had read them apart from one girl, a friend of my sister. I had no idea at all. I’d seen Kristen Stewart in ‘Into the Wild’ and some of the director’s other films, and that’s all I thought it was, something really small. I don’t think even the production company had any idea the extent of the success they had on their hands until the weekend of its release.”

-“New Moon” star and undead heartthrob Robert Pattinson, talking to the U.K.’s AnOther Man magazine about his initial entry into the “Twilight” franchise. In the interview, Pattinson discussed how he first came to the project and how his current success conflicts with what his actual goals were. “I don’t want to be an actor for the sake of it,” he told the magazine. “I don’t find any particular pleasure in being an attention-seeker.” And even though his starring role in the “Twilight” films will let him write his ticket to any sort of roles he likes once the series is done, he still believes that acting will be an uphill battle for him. “Annoyingly, there are so few parts I feel I can add anything to, or that I want to do,” he said. “[Acting is] the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

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By Elliott Wilson, Founder and CEO of RapRadar.com

While Raekwon was probably elated to be included on MTV’s Hottest MCs list, I’m sure that 50 Cent is none too pleased with his placement in the nine spot. For him, the standards are way higher than that. As the former Editor-In-Chief of XXL magazine, I bore witness as the man born Curtis Jackson redefined hot in 2002 and 2003, revolutionizing the mixtape market along the way. His chokehold on the rap game culminated in the classic debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. That is the standard by which Fif lives in 2009.

So although his constantly delayed album Before I Self Destruct has had more false starts than an old DeSoto, Ȓ has kept himself omnipresent in the hip-hop scene. It’s hard to argue with his enduring relevance. He returned to the mixtape game with equal parts fury (War Angel) and finesse (Forever King). He crafted an endlessly entertaining and oft-comedic battle with rap heavyweight Rick Ross. And, most importantly, despite my occasional issues with his peanut gallery of bloggers, ThisIs50.com has set the blueprint for artists planting their flag in the new media world. Hate him or love him, Curtis ain’t goin’ nowhere. Only God can judge him.

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