Atomic Tom - 12:00pm
Signing Time in Radio 92.9 Merch Booth: 1:00pm
Lead vocalist Luke White began writing demos in 2006 with Philip Galitzine on bass, adding guitarist Eric Espiritu in 2007. By early 2009, drummer Tobias Smith completed the circle. "We knew we had the green light," says Luke.
After countless New York area shows, ATOMIC TOM started to hear their lyrics shouted back at them at shows, "We knew the time was right for a full-length record."
From the exhilarating electronica-meets-arena-rock shuffle of “Let Let Go”, the epic romanticism of "We Were Never Meant To Be", and the hauntingly delicate "Play That Dirty Girl", ATOMIC TOM’S debut LP demonstrates remarkable musical ability and diversity, married with an innate sense of how to connect with an audience on a grand scale. "It’s possible to reach each and every individual in an eighty thousand seat stadium," claims Philip. "You can make an enormous, towering sound and still say something deeply meaningful and musical.” They plan to do just that.
The band's first single, “Take Me Out”, neatly summarizes the theme of the record: “It’s a vulnerable song. It’s about letting people into your life, letting people rescue you,” explains Luke. “Admitting that you need that, and then asking for it…that’s a very difficult task, though it’s something everyone goes through at some point.
Sponge - 1:15pm
Signing Time in Radio 92.9 Merch Booth: 2:15pm
It's a classic music industry tale: musicians who have been struggling for years at success in the business are suddenly "discovered" and considered an "overnight sensation." "This doesn't feel like an overnight sensation to me," Vinnie Dombroski told Rolling Stone. Dombroski is the front man for the band Sponge, who exploded onto the music scene in 1994 with their debut album Rotting Pinata. The five members of Sponge have worked hard to find their place in the spotlight and know that in this fickle world they could just be a flash in the pan. However, they plan to be much more than that.
Sponge hails from Detroit, Michigan, a city that for a while bred many star musicians. But as Dombroski explained in Circus, "There's a real lack of opportunity [in Detroit]. Because of that people turn to music as a form of sustenance." That's exactly what all of the members of Sponge did starting in the mid 1980s. Growing up in the same working-class area, they've known each other most of their lives, although they played in different bands on the local scene.
Ok Go - 2:30pm
Signing Time in Radio 92.9 Merch Booth: 3:15pm
In the year since EMI issued OK Go’s acclaimed third album, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, the Los Angeles quartet has gone from being a rare young light on a major label to arguably the world’s most bleeding edge independent outfit. You probably know the bit about the treadmills by now (if not, you can read Ira Glass’s account below), but one can authoritatively say that those trusty treadmills shot the band into both better health and a technicolor zone beyond the hoary indie-versus-major debate.
Billboard called them “trailblazing,” the head of Apple’s marketing said they were “the first post-internet band, the first band to use the internet as a medium of art, not just commerce.” BusinessWeek praised their new model of “proactive creative types… looking beyond traditional parameters to get support for their work.” OK Go’s project is one of the modern age, of unlimited possibility, where infectious songs, inventive videos, surprising live shows, and an articulate, forward-thinking back-end combine into a total work by a defiantly do-it-yourself band without a shoestring budget. The band says they just like “making stuff.”
LIVE's Ed Kowalczyk - 3:45pm
Signing Time in Radio 92.9 Merch Booth: 2:45pm
As the lead singer of Live, Ed Kowalczyk fronted one of the most successful American post-grunge bands of the ‘90s, coming to prominence with their 1994 sophomore album, Throwing Copper. With his bald head and intense eyes, Kowalczyk cut a distinctive figure, but what separated him from other ‘90s alt-rockers was his utter earnestness: he adopted U2’s open-hearted stance as his own, preferring sincerity to irony.
Live released seven albums between 1991 and 2006 before splitting, with Kowalczyk launching a solo career in 2010 with Alive. Alive was Ed Kowalczyk’s first major activity outside of Live in his professional career.