No Doubt Rock Steady

The winner of the contest has been chosen via random.org and contacted. Please, check your e-mail to see who had luck this time and won a pair of tickets to Jones Beach, NY.

EDIT: The winner is Nicole. Congratulations!

Lucette informed me about a new, fun community she is a part of:

SuperGlued is where people go after a show to share and discuss their experiences with the other people who were there. Concerts, for many of us, are the lifeline of music. We’d created a place where those collective moments can be celebrated and preserved together.

We make it easy to post stories, photo and videos and setlists from every show. Here are some great No Doubt shows on our site. 

• No Doubt @ Nissan Pavilion
• No Doubt @ Susquehanna Bank Center

If you were at a No Doubt concert and would like to share your experiences with other fans, join SuperGlued.

Montreal, Canada, June 17th.

I have also updated Toronto photos with several HQs.

Raleigh, North Carolina, June 8th.

Thanks to lovely Christina from NxDScrapbook we can now read full Elle article:

It seems impossible now, sitting with Gwen Stefani amid the dazzling bougainvillea and azalea on the sun-dappled patio of the Beverly Hills Hotel’s Polo lounge, but there was once a time, not long ago, when the delicate flower perched beside me on a leather banquette with her strong, thin arms wrapped around her midsection, blinking away a tear and looking like she could maybe use a hug, seemed to me the most terrifying woman in pop. Remember those No Doubt videos? There was Gwen the Malfunctioning Aerobic Fem-Bot wires crossed, head jerking maniacally from side to side in ‘Just a Girl,” and Gwen the Post-apocalyptic Jet Ski Hellion in “Hella Good.” Gwen the Noir Femme Fatale, throwing a courtroom conniption after bumping off a series of beaus in “It s My Life,” and Gwen the Tae Bo Powerhouse with the wife-beater tee and lipstick snarl, ready to take out the camera with a single well-placed kick in No Doubt’s “Excuse Me Mr.” And let’s not even mention Gwen the Foxy Nun in her solo hit “Wind It Up.” (Excuse me, sister!)

What made Stefani seem all the more dangerous – it wasn’t just me, was it? – is the way she tempered that madwoman mystique with an exaggerated, Kabuki-like femininity… no less alluring for seeming like it might be a big put-on. “She’s like a diamond-encrusted heart,” says her longtime stylist and friend Andrea Lieberman, “like this bottle of champagne with this girly effervescence, but balanced with the tomboy thing.” The whole package can make for a dizzying flurry of sexual semaphores’ Think of those caterpillar eyelashes, batting coquettishly one moment peeling back into a horrfied scream-queen grimace the next. And those Borvflex lips (her killer app), morphing from sweet pout to feral sneer in an instant. It’s this combination that makes Stefani – who spent years as a rock singer, Xeroxing band posters at Kinko’s, touring the country in a van, before her detour into pop-princess territory – so much more formidable than her semimanufactured cohorts. And now, with two platinum-plus solo albums under her belt, she’s preparing to go on the road with No Doubt the poppy ska-punk foursome that since the late ’80s has been her musical family.

Rocking a brand-new pair of superluxe Dior shades (”there’s a girl that hooks me up sometimes,” she says), a Vivienne Westwood wrap-blouse, baggy Dsquared jeans cinched with a studded belt and a pair of five-inch heels from her L.A.M.B line featuring enough straps to immobilize a grizzly bear, she cats an impressive figure as she breezes into the joint with baby Zuma on her hip, turning heads (including that of fellow celebu-mom Jennifer Garner) as she goes. And boy, are those lips red. But then she opens them to speak. Stefani is so emphatically nice in person, so unassuming and normal and chronically insecure – in the course of several conversations. she informs me that she doesn’t know how to write songs or even really sing, is a hopeless dancer, and knows next to nothing about fashion – it’s easy to forget she’s a superstar. She seems to have forgotten it herself.

Make sure to visit NxDScrapbook to read the rest!

Gwen Stefani has admitted that mixing her comeback tour with motherhood has left her exhausted.

The 39-year-old star is part of the way through a series of live shows in the US and Canada with band No Doubt, having taken baby son Zuma and his three-year-old brother Kingston on the road with her.

“I am exhausted, I’m not going to lie, with the babies and the records, the tour, designing,” says Gwen. “There’s so many things going on but I’m good. I’m happy and so grateful that we’re still able to be doing this so that makes it all worth it.”

Gwen recently admitted that there was some tension when she reunited with her No Doubt bandmates.

“Everybody’s making it like there’s all this tension, you know, like I stepped away from the band and now they’re jealous of me, and look, maybe there is a little bit of that,” she said.

“But some fights aren’t really what they seem,” Gwen says, adding that the band attempted to write a new record before going on tour, but were unable to come up with new material. “I think it was a little about the song, and a little about our coming back together. There was this little air bubble that needed to pop, you know?”

When lead singer Gwen Stefani was enjoying that prosperous and successful solo career of hers from 2004 to 2008, did guitarist Tom Dumont remain convinced that the old band would come back together?

No doubt.

Dumont says during a phone interview at a tour stop in Philadelphia last week that he was convinced that Stefani would make good on her word and come back to No Doubt.

“We took the break. It ended up being longer than we expected,” Dumont says. “But for 21 years I’ve been in the band now and we know each other so well. It was understood among the four of us that ‘Gwen’s doing her thing.’ It was not a break-up.”

Sure enough, Stefani called her old friends at the end of her 2007.

“She said, ‘let’s do this,’¤” Dumont recalls.

They started hanging out in early 2008. “It was getting reacquainted,” he says, “and knowing each other and making up for lost time.”

The No Doubt’s-back tour hits the Turning Stone Resort and Casino Event Center on Monday. That’s where Stefani turned in a fine December 2005 performance that won over the crowd with her solo hit “Hollaback Girl” and much, much more.

Any jealousy about her success without him at her side?

“Not about a specific song,” Dumont says. “But all the emotions got involved. That’s a natural condition of the situation. But envy is not something I subscribe to.”

Indeed, Dumont says, the hiatus made No Doubt a better band in the end.

“The great thing that happened, and I think it was a healthy thing, is that we matured,” Dumont says. “When we started, Gwen was a teenager. So was Tony (Kanal, bassist). To finally have that break and have each of us stand alone as artists was a healthy thing.”

Dumont had his own project, Invincible Overlord. He also produced the CD “Songs We Sing” by Matt Costa.

More importantly, he says, “I started a family. I stood as a man myself.”

He says the live show has come together splendidly.

“The second concert, the Bamboozle Fest in New Jersey, we nailed it in front of 40,000 people,” Dumont says. “There’s that instant gratification you get from the audience.”

Sometime after the tour, they’ll make another studio album.

Don’t expect it to be exactly like “Tragic Kingdom,” “Return of Saturn” or “Rock Steady.”

“That’s true. It’s one of the reasons why it’s always been a challenge to make albums for us. We’re constantly growing. What’s exciting is we have a blank canvas to paint on.”

One more photo from Elle photoshoot.

If someone could scan and donate whole Elle photoshoot, it would be very much appreciated, since I probably won’t be able to buy it till late July.

State Farm gives you a chance to see No Doubt…VIP style! We’re talking limo service, spending money, awesome seats, and a meet and greet with the Band!

If you haven’t entered yet, make sure to enter No Doubt Sweepstakes now!