some old mtv news (I did not type this)

Gnarls Barkley, Gorillaz, 30 Seconds to Mars, Plain White T's also nab awards.

By James Montgomery, with additional reporting by Jim Cantiello

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As far as totally sweet college parties go, the 2006 mvtU Woodie Awards were pretty rad. Like, completely on par with that Kappa Alpha beach-blast throwdown from a few months back (and they filled their basement with sand!).

The list of presenters, performers and nominees on hand for the third annual Woodies, held Wednesday at New York's Roseland Ballroom, read like a who's-who of innovative, genre-bending rock and hip-hop: Beck, Lady Sovereign, TV on the Radio, Angels & Airwaves, 30 Seconds to Mars and Gym Class Heroes, to name just a few. And the crowd — some 2,000 strong — were raucous, vocal and ready to party.

And they let their loyalties be known early and often. Though Angels & Airwaves took home the Woodie of the Year award (given to the artist "who made the biggest splash on mtvU and the college-music scene this past year"), the crowd screeched louder for some of A&A's competition in the category, most notably Panic! at the Disco and the Academy Is ... (see "Panic May Add Woodie To Award Collection; Arctic Monkeys, Imogen Heap Lead mtvU Nominations"). Their squeals during Gym Class Heroes' performance of "The Queen and I" — complete with a big-wigged Marie Antoinette look-alike onstage — nearly drowned out the group's percolating punk-funk.

Then again, this was the fans' show. They voted on all 10 winners via mtvU.com, which may explain some of the, uh, more questionable decisions — O.A.R. taking home the Streaming Woodie, given to the artist whose song was most downloaded on the site — and greeted TV on the Radio's droning, trancey set with stoic silence. They cheered loudly when AFI were announced as the winners of the Alumni Woodie, and voiced equal lust for other winners, especially Gnarls Barkley (who took home the Left Field Woodie, for the best "genre-busting" group) and 30 Seconds to Mars, whose video for "The Kill" scored the Best Video Woodie - Live Action.

And while last year's Woodies seemingly had more star power — winners and performers included My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Death Cab for Cutie; see "My Chemical Romance Win Woodie Of The Year At mtvU Awards" — the 2006 ceremony more than made up for that in sheer moxie and energy. Lady Sov — decked out in a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "Midget" (classy!) — introduced the Gym Class Heroes with her typical swagger, yelling that she was drunk and promising she wasn't "going to go by the script." The Plain White T's, winners of the Breaking Woodie (given to the best emerging artist), sat in the crowd and sang along to each performance like a bunch of super-fans. And Beck delivered a rollicking and puppet-enhanced set of hits both new ("Nausea") and old ("E-Pro").

All in all, it was a solidly off-the-cuff affair, and as the crowds filtered out of Roseland — heading to keggers, ragers and various other theme parties, one assumes — there was a palpable sense of satisfaction in the air. It was, after all, the fans' show. And they managed to throw a pretty great party.

A 30-minute version of the 2006 mtvU Woodie Awards will air November 4 at 10 p.m. on MTV, with an encore presentation airing the following night on MTV2 at 11 p.m.

The complete list of winners at the 2006 mtvU Woodie Awards:

* Woodie of the Year (Artist of the Year): Angels & Airwaves
* The Breaking Woodie (Best Emerging Artist): Plain White T's
* Left Field Woodie (Most Original Artist): Gnarls Barkley
* Best Video Woodie - Live Action (Best Live Action Video): 30 Seconds to Mars - "The Kill"
* Best Video Woodie - Animated (Best Animated Video): Gorillaz - "El Mañana"
* The Good Woodie (Greatest Social Impact): Serj Tankian (System of a Down) - Armenian genocide
* Road Woodie (Best Tour): Taking Back Sunday
* International Woodie (Favorite International Artist Award): The Subways
* Alumni Woodie (a.k.a. The You're Still OK in Our Book Award): AFI
* Streaming Woodie (Most Downloaded): O.A.R. - "Lay Down"









On Tom DeLonge's agenda for 2006: a) complete the debut album from his new band, Angels & Airwaves; b) finish the feature film that accompanies that album; c) completely change the face of rock and roll; and d) create an entirely new generation of music fans out of the lumpy, unmotivated masses.

He also plans on directing a few videos, doing some charity work, launching an Angels & Airwaves world tour and taking up interpretive dance.

(Just kidding about that last thing.)

Regardless, it's shaping up to be quite a year for DeLonge, who's made no bones about making Angels the biggest band in the world by the end of '06 (see "Blink's Tom DeLonge Promises 'The Greatest Rock And Roll Revolution' "). So it's no surprise that he's getting an early start on things, launching an Angels & Airwaves podcast on Tuesday that will serve as the band's formal introduction to the planet.

"It's going to be a really big day for us, and for music," DeLonge said. "We're going to be introducing the band, playing some snippets from the movie and just kicking the whole thing off in general. I've been working on this project for 12 months now, so yeah, I'm pretty excited by the whole thing."

The podcast will debut at MacbethFootwear.com — the Web site of DeLonge's shoe company — and on AngelsAndAirwaves.com, and it's just the first step in a very long and elaborate rollout for the band's new album, which DeLonge said will hit stores in April. And though he's still playing coy with some details, his hardline no-info stance does appear to be dissipating just a bit, and he let MTV News in on a few nuggets about the record.

"It's 10 songs long, and the total running time will be a little bit over an hour. Some of the song titles are 'Start the Machine,' 'It Hurts' and 'The Adventure,' " DeLonge said. "Everyone who's heard it says it's the best thing I've ever done, and I'm inclined to believe them. We haven't picked the first single yet because all 10 songs are absolute singles. That's been the hardest thing of all, trying to determine the first single."

Though it most certainly won't be the first single, DeLonge said that one track fans will be hearing sooner rather than later is "Valkyrie Missile," which he originally planned to release on December 13 but has since decided to hold until the new year.

"It's a great calling card for the band. It's the first song on the album and it's this massive soundscape," DeLonge explained. "It's named after the Valkyrie missile, which was built to carry nuclear warheads across the Atlantic. It's based on the idea of a missile headed your way, getting ready to annihilate life as we know it — but something great and special will come out of the aftermath. I kind of liken that to the last year of my life. When I was getting ready to leave the Blink world and thinking of starting the Angels & Airwaves world, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I didn't know how amazing it would be."

While DeLonge is anxious to get the song out there, he's even more excited about just how fans will react to it. And in typical fashion, he's not exactly shy about expressing that excitement.

"In January the single and video will drop and you'll see a whole new generation of Mods appearing everywhere, based on the kids in the '60s on their Vespas that were interested in modern living and modern fashion," he laughed. "I'm going to usher in this entire new culture of the youth, obsessed with the future. Because we're not going to be one of those rock bands that take photos sitting on dirty curbs, pretending to be like every other rock band of the past 10 years. Angels & Airwaves will be all about the future."






Tom DeLonge isn't crazy. He's just super-psyched about his new band, Angels & Airwaves.

And he doesn't care who knows it, which is why — on the day A&A's debut album, We Don't Need to Whisper, hits stores — he's turned into a human quote-machine, delivering head-scratching gems like this one:

"When we were making this record, I remember one night, it was about 2 a.m. and I went into the studio — which was in my house — and it was pitch black and I put the record on and listened to it, and I had this overwhelming rush of emotions," he said. "I was like, 'Oh my God, this is going to be huge,' and I started having these panic attacks thinking about every country in the world wanting us there multiple times. Conquering the globe is a pretty large endeavor."

You can't blame the dude for being excited. After all, Whisper has been an endeavor almost a year in the making (see "Tom DeLonge Breaking Silence On Blink With Autobiographical LP, Movie"), and in the time since he first announced he was starting the record, he's been peppering the media with statements of its sheer awesomeness (see "Tom DeLonge Spills More About Angels & Airwaves' Plans For World Domination"). And now his fans will be able to have a listen.

"People ask me, 'Is this the next Box Car Racer album?,' and I say, 'Kind of.' And people ask me if this is the next Blink record, and I say, 'Kind of.' But it's also the beginning of something completely new," DeLonge laughed. "This band contains an inner energy and a spiritual awakening that's kind of magical. And it's so full of positive energy that I think that whoever comes to the shows or listens to the album and wants to become a part of it, it will happen to them. I think it's going to be a sort of magical, organic thing that happens with anybody that is willing to have that kind of feeling in their life."

A&A made their worldwide debut in April at the Glass House in Pomona, California (see "Tom DeLonge Addresses Blink With A Song At First A&A Show"), and next month they'll launch an assault on the arenas of America alongside Taking Back Sunday (see "Taking Back Sunday, Angels & Airwaves Announce Tour Dates").

So what can fans expect when they come to an Angels show? Well, given that we're asking Tom DeLonge, you probably can guess the answer.

"These shows have been incredible. ... They're so much different than Blink shows," he said. "They're anthemic and heroic. There's a huge group of people coming to feel the exact same thing at the exact same minute. And it really feels like an ascension to heaven. People are lifting off the ground. There are people crying, and there are these battle flags flying in the wind. It's incredible."






Over the past two years, Tom DeLonge has been the go-to guy for head-scratching, "Wait, what?!?" statements about the importance of his band (well, either him or Brandon Flowers).

To wit: In September 2005, he declared his new band, Angels & Airwaves, to be "the greatest rock and roll revolution for this generation." Then, in October of that year, he proclaimed A&As' debut album, We Don't Need to Whisper, would "compete with the greatest rock records of all time." That December, he predicted that the album would usher in an "entire new culture of the youth." And finally, in May '06, he foresaw its success leading him to "conquering the globe."

Of course, whether any of those things actually happened is up for debate. Whisper sold well (more than 509,000 copies), and the band did embark on a fairly lengthy tour. But we're still waiting for much of the promised revolution to happen. And now, with the second A&A album, I-Empire, due to hit stores November 6, you'd think DeLonge would perhaps want to temper all that bold-faced bluster.

But you'd be wrong. Seems the reason we haven't noticed the revolution is because we're currently living in it. And there's more to come.

"Before We Don't Need to Whisper, I came out and said that it was going to change the face of rock and roll," DeLonge said. "What I meant was over a 30-year period. It's been one year — wait 29 more and you'll see how different your life is. Because it's still happening. What happens over the next six months to a year with I-Empire is going to continue that thought of what I really wanted the last record to do. It's a lot harder and a lot more ambitious than what I ever believed it to be, but what we're going to continue to try to do is to change a lot of things about music.

"We were trying to [deal with] an industry that was in crisis," he continued. "Records aren't selling anymore; people are burning music. So what we wanted to do was try to communicate our records across different formats. We were willing to put ourselves out there and try to make movies ... to make short films and do live events. It was very difficult. It took a lot of money, it took a lot of ambition, and it took a lot of risk. And it's very easy to tear a band down for trying."

Fair enough. But for a guy who's constantly touting the powers of his band's music, you'd think DeLonge would be willing to can the chitchat and let that music speak for itself. Apparently, that's not the way things are done in the A&A camp. After all, there was much talk of a CGI-heavy World War II film that was supposedly going to accompany the release of Whisper, and the plan seems to be the same for Empire.

"When we created We Don't Need to Whisper, the priority [was] to be the tip of the spear of what was changing in music, not only technologically, but what was going to happen with the industry as a whole," he said. "The film we made, we wanted to lump it into the documentary side of things, because there's so much of a story to tell with us as human beings, and how we made the record and what we wanted to do with people. That documentary has been in production for two years. We have filmed most of it. It has live performance, it has documentary, and it has these epic visuals of war. And that's almost finished. But when we started I-Empire, our grand vision of being able to communicate music with cinema started to materialize. And that has started to be filmed. We've released a trailer for the movie, and it's in production through the beginning of next year, so we expect it to hit theaters — to what degree, we don't know — in the fall."

Despite all the talk of ongoing revolution and theatrical releases, there's very little we actually know about Empire. DeLonge described it as "the second part of a two-album story." What does that mean?

It should come as no surprise that DeLonge is more than willing to tell you: "The first record was about an idea that if you can see yourself differently in the world, you might actually change the world around you, if not the world itself. The new record is about that idea taking place, and the personification of that philosophical statement, that you can actually change the world by seeing it differently.

"There are lots of things happening in the world right now," he continued. "When you watch the news, it's really negative. When you listen to music, it consistently seems [like] bands are angry, or they're covering themselves in makeup and crying and being weird about it. But with us, we like the idea of being optimistic, and to be optimistic and to believe in something greater than yourself seems to be the most uncool thing in the world, which makes it the coolest thing, since we're the only ones doing it."







Band still deciding on video concept for new single.

By Corey Moss

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UNIVERSAL CITY, California — Just a hunch, but Tom DeLonge might be a bit disappointed by the response to Blink-182's latest single.

"It's going to change people's lives and might actually change the world forever," the guitarist daringly predicted at Sunday's Teen Choice Awards (see "Usher And Lindsay Win Big, Ashlee Burps, Britney A No-Show At Teen Choice Awards"). "It's a spectacular song."

"Always," which follows "Down" as the fourth single from the band's untitled album (see "Blink-182 Get 'Down' With Former Gang Members"), does not reveal the cure for cancer or plan for world peace, like Tom suggests, but does delve into a very universal subject.

"The song is about wanting to hold a chick all night long and kiss her and touch her and taste her and feel her and all these great adjectives," DeLonge explained, stopping to correct himself. "Verbs actually, there's some adjectives in there, but mostly verbs and nouns. Some pronouns too, but not too many of those."

Blink were actually discussing a concept for the video as they strolled into the awards show, but plans are still up in the air.

In the meantime, the Mark, Tom and Travis show is heading to Japan and Australia through mid-September and will hit the U.K. in December.

When the tour wraps, DeLonge will take a long vacation. "I'm going to lift some weights and run really fast, maybe sweat a little bit," he joked. He has no plans to make another Box Car Racer record.

Tom and bassist Mark Hoppus also plan to use their time off to further develop their Resting Bird Entertainment production company, which launched last year with the documentary "Riding in Vans with Boys" (see "Butt Branding, Drunken Weddings Captured On Hoppus And DeLonge's 'Boys' ").

"We have some new ideas in the works, a couple of which are quite large, so it might take a while for it to come out," DeLonge said. "I want to do a major motion picture, crazy weird stuff. I have ideas."

Perhaps his future film projects will have a political bent, as DeLonge said his new hobby is reading about politics. He's also been an outspoken supporter of John Kerry and John Edwards.

"The two Johns are great," he said. "I'm a big supporter of change. If people aren't into change, it's a question of whether they can read. That's what I think."