Driven Far Off

The latest on the indie, alternative, and rock music scene including news, music, contest, interviews, and more. Best described as your favorite place to find new bands.

Shirts For A Cure Add New Shirts

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The Shirts for a Cure Project is proud to announce the addition of brand new shirts from Hellogoodbye, Silverstein, New Found Glory, Moneen, Rise Against, Taking Back Sunday, The Bouncing Souls, Motion City Soundtrack, The All-American Rejects, Saves The Day, Say Anything, Senses Fail, Alexisonfire, Hidden In Plain View and the all-mighty Swiz. These bands along with more then 50 others have teamed up to join in the fight against breast cancer. Shirts for a Cure have also launched a new webstore where you can pick up all these great shirts.

The Shirts for a Cure Project features limited edition t-shirts from various bands to aide The Syrentha Savio Endowment (SSE) in its efforts to provide funding for chemotherapy and other medication for underprivileged women who cannot afford the growing expense of fighting breast cancer. Since its inception, SSE has awarded gifts to organizations in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles that help women in struggling neighborhoods find the means necessary to fight this killer.

Sparta Interview – November 14th, 2006

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Sparta
Here is a quick little interview with Sparta where we ask them about their new album and more.

Can we get your name what it is you do in Sparta?

Jim Ward, sing and guitar/ keys

You took some time to record your new album, can you tell us a little bit about your writing / recording process and how it helped or didn’t help not having a label for a while?

We had deadlines without a label in the beginning, it was important that we had time to work out our troubles and put them into the music, we spent a lot of time hanging out and playing variations of songs, it was great.

“Threes” is the title of your new album, what do you feel is different between this album and your last, and what’s the story behind the albums title?

Three is my intersection, when I have to choose left or right, life just happens in threes for me, this album has much more depth than previous work

You guys have been doing a series of video Podcasts that followed your recording and life on the road, is this something you guys had planned from the beginning of starting this album?

We sort of fell into doing that, matt handles it, I think it has been a great avenue to create

Along the lines of technology, how do you find computers helpful in the writing and recording area?

Totally, we use them all the time for everything

How do you see things like Podcasts and MySpace now, and how do you think they will change the way bands promote / connect to fans in the future?

Obviously it has changed everything, I think it will evolve forever, it is a brave new world

Do you guys enjoy being out on the road touring, or do you like the down time of recording?

Both, you get burned out on one and it is time to do the other, it works out

What would you recommend our readers to check out as far as a book, music, and a movie? Something you have been into lately.

My Morning Jacket live dvd
If you could have 5 extra minuets in a day to do anything you wanted to do, what would you use that time for?

Sleep

Thanks for your time, is there anything else you would like our readers to know?

We appreciate the support!

Weekly Poll Roundup November 14th, 2006

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Here is our first weekly poll roundup. Its going to cover the polls that were on the site this week and we can all elaborate on our votes a bit more.

Will you be casting your vote for midterm elections today?
The majority of the votes went to No on this one. All I have to say is “you shouldn’t complain about our government if you didn’t put in your vote.”

Do you use RSS to read this website or any others?
I was surprised with the turnout on this poll as most of you voted for “What’s RSS?” RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it’s an easy way to get content delivered to you without having to scour the all of your favorite sites to get all the news. RSS brings it all right to you and then you can go click on what you want to read. There are applications as well as web based applications that can be used to read all of your RSS feeds. You can find a few examples below. Your web browser may also have a built in RSS reader if you are using the latest versions.

Web: (Bloglines, Google Reader)
Applications: (Mac: NetNewsWire, Win: SharpReader)
Browsers: (Firefox 2.0, IE 7, Mac: Safari RSS)

Whoâ┚¬Ã¢”ž¢s your favorite ex-Blink 182 band?
More then half of you voted for Plus 44 over Angels & Airwaves, now its your chance to tell us why. Is it because Plus 44 sounds more like Blink 182, or because Tom over-hyped Angels & Airwaves before their album was even out? Or is it because you prefer Marks voice over Tom’s? We would like to know so post your thoughts below.

Taste Of Chaos 2007

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The third annual Taste of Chaos tour will include The Used, 30 Seconds To Mars, Senses Fail, Saosin, Chiodos, Aiden, Evaline, and more. The tour will kick off February 15 In Seattle.

Internet pre-sale for the 2007 edition of the Rockstar Taste Of Chaos will begin December 1 at www.chaosmobile.com in conjunction with Music Today. Information, updates and free stuff will also be available at www.chaosmobile.com, a new venture started by the Rockstar Taste of Chaos partners. Chaos Mobile will be involved in the pre-sale as well as the Ernie Ball Battle of The Bands Opening Act contests. By registering at www.chaosmobile.com attendees will have the ability to win free musical gear, new music, clothing, video game systems as well as a CUT THE LINE code to get in the venue first and a FRONT OF THE LINE code for getting to the front of the line for autograph signings. Chaos Mobile will also have custom voicetones, video clips, candid photos, free phone wallpapers, exclusive content and lots of exciting features for all of the attendees.

Albums In Stores Tomorrow

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+44 – When Your Heart Stops Beating
River City High – Not Enough Saturday Nights
Rocket Summer – The Early Years
InMemory – Safety In Rumors
Panic! At The Disco – Collectors Box CD/DVD
Tahiti 80 – Fosbury
Bad Astronaut – Twelve Small Steps, One Giant Disappointment
Tenacious D – Pick Of Destiny
And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – So Divided
Sublime – Everything Under The Sun – Rarities CD/DVD

Staff Recommendations November 12th 2006

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Trevor Bivens

So a month or two ago, Bryce tells me about this band called Kenotia . Well, due to my obscenely slow internet connection, I had yet to check them out. While lurking at The Masquerade in Atlanta last night, I happened to catch the last four songs by this Marietta, Georgia five piece(it was their new drummer’s second show, I believe.) I was blown away by how good they were. The first thing that automatically caught my ears was their singer Carly’s stellar voice. She sounds better live than a certain Fueled By Ramen band’s front-lady and everyone should know this is extremely rare and high praise coming from me. A double dose of Ryans brought on intricate guitar parts and their rhythm section rounded things out nicely. They have various demos up on their myspace and purevolume pages, so I’m now anxiously awaiting a proper release.

Myspace – Purevolume

Julie Watanabe

November marks the dawning before the dead season of December drought. What this means is that the notable releases will be few and far between throughout the month until December rears its head and NOTHING will be worth spending your Christmas money on. There will be attempts to cling to the paltry threads of November releases for recommendations, I suspect +44 (11/14), Brand New (11/21), and Incubus (11/28) for the die-hards, but don’t expect to hear so from me unless The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me tears a black hole in time and space. Since I don’t see that happening soon let me introduce California’s Ultraviolet. Fronted by the one-woman riot Sarah Hudson, Ultravoilet is Sarah and three of the hottest eletronic-centric musicians to hit the avant garde dance scene in 2006. The band’s latest EP Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is four songs of heavy-hitting synth jams and grungy electro that remind me of the four-track days. Sarah’s voice is naturally high, which normally would annoy me, but in this case fits quite flawlessly with the dark, twisting milisecond pulses and artifical sound of the music. The lyrics are timely in a “in-your-face-punk” kind of manner and will surely hit a sweet spot with people who like songs written about the enamour of music. If you enjoy the plastic dancebeats of bands like Shiny Toy Guns and A Kiss Could Be Deadly catch yourself some Ultraviolet.

MySpace

Bryce Jacobson

The band I’m going to recommend is one that you probably already know you’re going to listen to or you just might pass. If you were a fan of Blink 182 then you’re going to want to at least take a listen to Mark & Travis’s new band Plus 44. I have to say that I didn’t anticipate this album as much as Angels & Airwaves but for the most part When Your Heart Stops Beating delivers in more ways then one. The album has a closer sound to Blink 182 then Angels & Airwaves but I wouldn’t be happy with this album if it was a new Blink 182 album. Mark’s vocals are the best they have ever been and the guitar and bass ring of Blink on every other note, so whats not to like right? Well let us know who your favorite of the two bands are in our new poll, and if you don’t like either of them, let us know that as well.

MySpace

Reema Desai

Chances are that if you read this site then you allready listen to and love Brand New, but my recommendation for this week is to pull out Deja Entendu again and revisit them for a while. I got to see them play twice yesterday, once acoustically and once full band and I was truly blown away. Aside from loving their sets I was reminded that there is a force behind this band that draws people in like almost no other musician today. I couldn’t tell you why they reach people the way they do; I couldn’t even tell you why they are my favorite band but it is certain that whatever that untouchable force is, they still have it.

Tyler Hayes

Everybody seems to have written a novel for the recommendations this week, well I will keep it short and sweet. If you like even the slightest hip hop feel on songs then please check out Mat Kearney. He has a hip hop, almost rap feel to some songs while others are mellow rock.Ԛ  I don’t typically enjoy any rap, mostly because the content makes you a little bit dumber, but Mat Kearney is different in that way because it’s full of content. Listen to one song and you’ll be hooked. (this is longer than I thought it would be.)