One Week in Hollywood

Breaking the Band

By the looks of the Beatles-on-Ed Sullivan response Yellowcard are getting at the release party for their new album Ocean Avenue, you'd think they were superstars. But the moshing girls and boys at L.A.'s Roxy belie the long road ahead for the pop-punks, signed to Capitol in April after building a rabid yet tiny fan base with constant touring. ''We've been working as hard as we could for years, and that won't change,'' says frontman Ryan Key (above). ''It's just more people turning switches and making things happen.'' Across town, Capitol president Andy Slater is pushing Yellowcard and upstart rapper Chingy but says the marketing philosophy is the same for both. With music, he says, ''it's never really about the first-week sales.... These are artists and this is their lives. Let's try to give them a long-term career rather than see if it can happen right away.''