Combat Rock Promotion is proud to announce that we will be promoting the Summer/Fall tour for the Rentals! What a story here!  Last year Matt Sharp and Rachel Haden put together the Rentals after a six year hiatus and had a wildly successful tour that brought them all over the globe.  This year, they are doing it again…this time with NEW MUSIC.  That’s right… an EP of new music will be released on August 14^th on Canadian indie Boompa Records thru Caroline/EMI here in the States. This will be supported by a 47 city tour (!!!), of which Combat Rock Promotion will handle the commercial radio promotion.  This is going to be a lot of fun… Music coming soon, tourdates below. Come check out the band as they pass through your town!

 

 

26-Jun  The Dome, Bakersfield, CA

27-Jun  Downtown Brew, San Luis Obispo, CA

28-Jun  The Belmont, Fresno, CA

29-Jun  Club Underground, Reno, NV

30-Jun  Art Bar, Las Vegas

7-Jul     Spaceland, Los Angeles

14-Jul   Spaceland, Los Angeles

21-Jul   Spaceland, Los Angeles

28-Jul   Spaceland, Los Angeles

1-Aug  Great American Music Hall,  San Fran, CA

3-Aug  Hawthorne Theatre, Portland, OR

4-Aug  Neumos, Seattle, WA

5-Aug  The Big Easy, Spokane, WA

7-Aug  The Big Easy, Boise, ID

8-Aug  Club Sound, SLC, UT

9-Aug  Gothic Theatre, Englewood (Boulder), CO

10-Aug            Slowdown, Omaha, NE

11-Aug            First Avenue, MN

12-Aug            Pabst Theater, Milwaukee, WI

14-Aug            Metro, Chicago, IL

15-Aug            Pop's, Sauget, IL (St Louis)

16-Aug            House of Blues, Cleveland, OH

17-Aug            Madison Theatre, Covington, KY (Cincinatti)

18-Aug            The Majestic Theatre, Detroit, MI

19-Aug            Newport Music Hall, Columbus OH

21-Aug            Mr Smalls Theatre, Millvale, PA

22-Aug            Sonar, Baltimore, MD

23-Aug            Nokia Theater, NYC

24-Aug            Middle East, Cambrige, MA

25-Aug            TOA, Philly, PA

26-Aug            9:30 Club Washington, DC

28-Aug            Ziggy's, Winston Salem, NC

29-Aug            The Orange Peel, Ashville, NC

30-Aug            Amos Southend, Charlotte, NC

31-Aug            City Hall, Nashville, TN

1-Sep   Masquerade, Atlanta, GA

2-Sep   Free Bird Live Jacksonville, FL

4-Sep   House Of Blues, Lake Buenevista, FL

5-Sep   Revolution, Fort Lauderdale, FL

6-Sep   Jannus Landing, Saint Peterburg, FL

7-Sep   Beta Bar, Talahassee, FL

8-Sep   House of Blues, New Orleans

9-Sep   Warehouse Live, Houston, TX

10-Sep House of Blues, Dallas, TX

12-Sep Emo's, Austin TX

14-Sep The White Rabbit, San Antonio, TX

15-Sep Club 101, EL Paso TX

16-Sep Albuquerquee, or Tuscon

18-Sep House of Blues, Anaheim, CA

20-Sep House of Blues, San Diego, CA

21-Sep Henry Fonda, LA, CA

CRP has come across some amazing new talent recently and we’d like to be the first to tip you off: Kill the Complex from Los Angeles is like watching the best parts of AFI, My Chemical Romance, and Tool (complete with Cello player accompanying the rock…yes!).  Australia’s Late Nite Access is kind of like a combination of Midnight Oil, the Hoodoo Gurus and the Wonderstuff.  The Early Strike, from San Antonio, is picking up where Cheshire Cat-era Blink 182 left off, and with Blink on permanent hiatus there seems to be a void for this sound right now that TES are happy to fill. CRP clients The Lift have completed an amazing new album called “It is What it Is.” Touring to follow. The punk rock/hip hop hybrid of Hollywood's Lexicon continues to tear it up live, as was evidenced by their recent set at the Roxy. The band now features my old buddy DJ C-Minus on turntables and making the beats for them in the studio as well.  Their cover of The Ramones classic "I Wanna Be Sedated" is truly inspired.  You can find it on the very hard to find soundtrack for the movie Rising Son: The Legend Of Christian Hosoi. Well, actually it's not that hard to find.  You can get it right here. More great new music I'm digging is from San Diego’s The Stranger’s Six  who have just released a great punk rock record on the studly Orange Peal Records label and will also tour throughout the summer. Finally, Kevin Elliot is a fresh new artist recently transplanted to Los Angeles from Kentucky.  He and his band, the Broken, deliver a strong set of songs and show real promise. It will be fun to see him grow in his career.  Remember, with all these bands… you heard about them here first!

So much has been happening here at CRP HQ lately.  Here is the brief rundown:  April saw two back-to-back music events: Coachella and Musexpo. What more can be said about Coachella that hasn’t already been written? To anyone who still doesn’t know, this 3-day festival takes place in Indio, CA (just outside of Palm Springs) and the experience of seeing bands in a festival setting is melded with a weekend in the desert. In layman’s terms, that means you lay out by the pool in the day and then go check out the bands in the afternoon. There are many festivals all over the world (Fuji Rock in Japan, the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, the Reading Festival in England to name but a few)  but none of them can boast that kind of experience. Awe yeah…. Only in California!  The bands were a treat as well, and I caught stellar performances by the likes of: Interpol, a reunited Jesus and Mary Chain, the Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, Peter Bjorn & John (with the Concretes' Victoria Bergsman singing backup on their hit single), the also reunited Rage Against The Machine, Willie Nelson, the Roots, Crowded House, Explosions in the Sky, Lily Allen, and Against Me! The greatest set had to have been by the Happy Mondays, who were introduced by the still-kicking Tony Wilson of Factory Records fame. Somewhat shocking were the two twenty-somethings who came up to me asking who this band was (?!?!) It was great seeing many old friends at Coachella like Warner Bros' Xavier Ramos and Sonya "Skincare to the Stars" Dakar's Yigal Dakar. WB CEO Tom Whalley threw a post-Coachella get together at his hotel suite and saw a lot of friendly faces there like manager extraordinaire Mark Kates who's band the Cribs just signed to Warner Bros. All around, another fun Coachella... Then, with no rest for the wicked we hit the road back to Los Angeles and went straight to Musexpo which was held at the fabulous Bel Age Hotel on the Sunset Strip. Now three years strong, this music convention continues to be, in my humble opinion, one of THE best out there. I like to describe it as "the flip side to South By Southwest" in that South By gives you QUANTITY and Musexpo gives you QUALITY.  It is a smaller event (about one tenth the size of South By) and offers an intimate setting for networking and live music showcases.  This year the bands we saw at Musexpo were amazing, and as always were the cream of the crop from all over the world: Denmark’s Dune, Australia’s Pete Murray, Sweeden’s The Teddybears, Finland’s Rubik, France’s SoShy, and Germany’s Super 700 all put on great sets. With many of the bands gearing up for summer releases, it is already looking like a lot of great music will be released this summer. Can’t wait!