CN ReallifeCN Tuesday, OcTOber 26, 2010

BY CHRIS RICHARDSThe Washington Post

Kings of Leon front-man Caleb Follow-ill faces an impossible 21st-century task: How can he be a rock star when rock stars no lon-ger play rock-and-roll?

“Come Around Sun-down,” the band’s fifth album, is thick with growly, momentous rock songs that ar-rive in an era domi-nated by magnificent pop stars (Lady Gaga), magniloquent rap stars (Lil Wayne) and mash-ups of the two (Kanye West).

Growly, momentous rock songs? That’s the stuff of car commer-cials.

Which isn’t to say that Followill and his

kindred bandmates - brother Jared on bass, brother Nathan on drums and cousin Mat-thew Followill on guitar - haven’t enjoyed a wild-ly successful ride. The band formed in Frank-lin, Tenn., in 1999 after the brothers spent their youths zigzagging the southern United States with their father, a Pen-tecostal preacher. With a handy creation myth firmly in place, they openly pantomimed the taut garage rock of the Strokes, deep-frying it in the Dixie-hued har-monies that they grew up with.

Earlier this year, the band’s career reached a high point when its 2008 single, “Use Some-body,” won a Grammy for record of the year,

beating out a fearsome pop foursome of Taylor Swift, the Black Eyed Peas, Beyoncé and the mighty Gaga. Meanwhile, “Only by the Night,” the album that spawned it, had gone platinum.

But on “Come Around Sundown” the boys appear to have grown wary of the uber-stardom that they’ve al-ways courted. By turns dignified and desperate, the album finds them swinging a double-edged sword, with lyrics that second-guess fame and melodies that prac-tically beg for it.

Nothing here eclips-es the smoky pomp of “Use Somebody,” or the band’s brash, sorta-ri-diculous 2008 single

BY FRAZIER MOOREAP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) —The always clever and often subversive opening sequence for “The Simpsons” took a darker-than-usu-al turn with Sunday’s episode, depicting the animation process for the Fox cartoon series as sweatshop drudgery performed by an ex-ploited Asian under-class.

Created by the street artist and activist Banksy, the sequence began with the sight of hometown Springfield covered with graf-fiti — and tagged by Banksy himself.

Then, when the Simpson family gath-ers on their living room couch, that im-age becomes a refer-ence shot for legions of workers in the grim industrial complex

FIFTH KINGS OF LEON ALBUM BEMOANS ROCK FAME

Kings of Leon’s newest album “Come Around Sundown” represent the bygone era of rock. Earlier this year, the band’s career reached a high point when its 2008 single, “Use Somebody,” won a Grammy.

BY EMILY FREDRIXAP Marketing Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Gap is back to blue.

The casualwear chain will keep its decades-old white-on-navy blue logo after all. The move comes just one week after the company swapped it online for a new logo without saying a word. The new logo irritated fans, spurring them to complain about it online.

Gap North America president Marka Hansen said in a statement late Monday that the San Francisco-based company realized how much people liked the old logo after they put up the new one, a white background with black letters and a little blue box. She also says Gap didn’t handle the change correctly and missed a chance to have shoppers offer input until it was too late.

“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way,” Han-sen said, adding that the project was not the right one to offer up to “crowd sourcing.”

Crowd sourcing the new logo, or allowing fans to help design a new one, was the company’s original solu-tion to the issue of quelling consumer confusion. Marketers are increasing-ly letting fans help or fully make deci-sions, including PepsiCo Inc.’s Doritos

Singing the bluesGap changes new logo after customers’ outrage

BUSINESS

See GAP | PAGE 4C

Customers are outraged over the new logo design.

‘Simpsons’ intro marked by modern graffiti artist

See ART | PAGE 4C

BY SUE MANNINGAssociated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — So your dog fol-lows your every move around the house. Now, when you leave home, you can follow your dog.

Puppy Tweets is an electronic dog tag with a sensor that you at-tach to your dog’s col-

Puppy Tweets lets you follow your pooch on Twitter

See PUPPY | PAGE 4C

See ROCK | PAGE 4B

SHOWBIZ