As predicted by Glide Magazine in last month’s Shortlist Prize preview story, TV On The Radio won this year’s award honoring the year’s top non commercial release.

As reported on billboard.com –
TV On The Radio won the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize last night (Nov. 15) in Los Angeles. The New York-based act was honored for its Touch & Go album “Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes” at the fourth annual concert/ceremony at the Avalon Theater, which featured performances by three of the 10 finalists.

“We are not the next Damien Rice,” TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone told Billboard.com, referring to the singer/songwriter who won the award in 2003. “Seriously, this was a great honor. We didn’t even expect to be nominated, let alone win. None of us expected this to happen, and we’re really happy to be here.”

A soulful mix of rock, blues and dance, “Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes” peaked in March at No. 15 on Billboard’s Top Heatseakers chart.

In a 30-minute set to close the concert, TV On The Radio played a number of cuts from the album, including “Dreams” and “Staring at the Sun.” The latter best exemplified the act’s tuneful experimentation, with gospel-worthy call and response vocals and a wall of guitars that reached rave-like hysterics.

TV On The Radio received a $10,000 cash prize presented by XM Satellite Radio. The show was broadcast live on XM and will be televised Nov. 20 on MTV2. Other performing Shortlist finalists included Josh Homme’s Eagles Of Death Metal, hip-hopper Dizzee Rascal and lighthearted pianist Nelly McKay.

Styled as a U.S. equivalent to Britain’s Mercury Music Prize, the Shortlist honors cutting-edge performers whose latest albums, released between July 1, 2003, and June 30, 2004, had sold fewer than 500,000 copies at the time of their nomination. The nominees and winner are selected by a panel of “listmakers,” which this year included Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Chris Carrabba, the Dixie Chicks, Jim Jarmusch, John Mayer, Norah Jones and System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian.

This year’s affair featured half as many performers as the 2003 event, which producers said was directly related to the fact that last year’s show ran almost five hours. In contrast, the 2004 edition was professional and sterile, with even the tension-filled songs of U.K. rapper Dizzee Rascal failing to energize the rather sparse crowd.

There were a number of notable no-shows, including finalists Wilco, Franz Ferdinand, Loretta Lynn and Air. Other than a star performer, this year’s show lacked the spontaneity of past Shortlist events. In 2002, Iggy Pop and the Hives treated concertgoers to a performance, while last year was marked by a rant against Clear Channel by Bright Eyes frontman Conor Oberst.

In addition to Rice, past winners of the Shortlist prize are N.E.R.D. (2002) and Sigur Ros (2001).

Chaos erupts at awards show taping, one man stabbed Fighting broke out at last night’s taping of the second annual Vibe Awards when an unidentified man approached Dr. Dre’s table and punched him.
The bodyguards of the rap impresario — who was being summoned to the stage by Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones to receive a lifetime achievement award — pursued the attacker. Dozens of attendees near the stage then began brawling, taking swings and throwing chairs, and one twenty-six-year-old man was stabbed (he is currently in the hospital in stable condition).

T he taping, which took place at a Santa Monica, California, airport hangar, was interrupted for five minutes, but was allowed to continue. No arrests were made.

Vibe nominees for best artist include Alicia Keys, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Twista and Usher. Keys and Usher are also tapped for best R&B artist, along with Brandy, Jill Scott and R. Kelly. And for best newcomer, it’s a battle between Ciara, Young Buck, Anthony Hamilton, Nina Sky and Christina Milian.

The show, hosted by LL Cool J and Tyra Banks, will air tonight on the UPN network, featuring performances by Nelly, Ashanti, Alicia Keys and Snoop Dogg with Pharrell.

Source rollingstone.com.

Rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who lived a life as wild as his lyrics, collapsed and died inside a recording studio today (Nov. 13). He was 35. The artist, whose real name was Russell Jones, had complained of chest pains before collapsing at the Manhattan studio, according to a statement from his label, Roc-A-Fella Records.

Jones, who was also known variously as Dirt McGirt or Big Baby Jesus, was a founding member of iconic hip-hop collective Wu-Tang Clan in the early 1990s. With his offbeat, unorthodox delivery, he segued into a successful solo career and released several hit singles, including 1999’s “Got Your Money.”

But he was frequently in trouble with the law, mostly for drug possession. In February 1998, he crashed the stage at the Grammy Awards and hijacked a microphone from singer Shawn Colvin as she accepted an award, apparently upset over losing the best rap album Grammy to Puff Daddy. Later that year, he was wounded in a shooting during a robbery in his apartment.

In 2001 he was sentenced to two to four years in prison for drug possession plus two concurrent years for escaping from a rehab clinic. He was released in 2003 and immediately signed with Roc-A-Fella, for which he’d been at work on a new album.

ODB would have turned 36 on Monday. “To the public he was known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard but to me he was known as Rusty,” his mother, Cherry Jones, said in a statement. “The kindest most generous soul on earth. I appreciate all of the support and prayers that I have received. Russell was more then a rapper he was a loving father, brother, uncle and most of all son.”

“All of us in the Roc-A-Fella family are shocked and saddened by the sudden and tragic death of our brother and friend, Russell Jones, Ol’ Dirty Bastard,” said Roc-A-Fella CEO Damon Dash. “Russell inspired all of us with his spirit, wit and tremendous heart. He will be missed dearly, and our thoughts, prayers and deepest condolences go out to his wonderful family. The world has lost a great talent, but we mourn the loss of our friend.”

The Wu-Tang Clan reactivated this summer for its first show with all of its principal members in 10 years. Several of them, including ODB, appear on the soundtrack to “Blade: Trinity,” due Nov. 23 via New Line Records. The group is also the subject of the book “The Wu-Tang Manual,” which is in production via Riverhead.

Source billboard.com.

New artists confirmed for the Warren Haynes Annual Christmas Jam include Galactic, Gov’t Mule, Little Feat, Living Colour, Neville Brothers, Audley Freed, Kevn Kinney and Edwin McCain.

For 16 years, Haynes has coordinated the Warren Haynes Annual Christmas Jam. Like a family reunion, the annual, one-of-a-kind, semi-structured marathon of music brings together old friends on stage and in the audience at the Civic Center Arena in Asheville, N.C.

This year the event will be held again at the Asheville Civic Center Arena, Saturday, December 18 at 7:00PM. WNCW’s Pre-Jam Jam Broadcast Live from the Orange Peel is on Friday, December, 17.

Haynes, who will open the evening with a brief solo performance, will perform with his band Gov’t Mule, and, of course, join many of the artists for spontaneous collaborations. But the impact goes far beyond the entertainment.

Pre-Sale tickets go on sale 11/17 @ Noon Eastern. Public On-Sale is 11/26. Tickets are $39.50.

The first vending machines to sell music downloads are to be introduced in London next month as Britons continue to turn their backs on traditional methods of buying singles.

Customers will be able to download a single for about one pound onto a mobile phone or personal music player and the company launching the project said on Monday they hoped to initially offer two million songs.

The move follows continuing poor sales for traditional, over-the-counter singles.

In October the chart compilers said they recorded the worst ever sales for a song reaching number one — just over 23,000 — compared to sales of hundreds of thousands in the 1980s and 90s.

Inspired Broadcast Networks will open two music kiosks in Waterloo and King’s Cross stations next month and plan to have up to 20,000 others in high-street shops, service stations and pubs by the end of 2005.

Between 200-250,000 singles are bought via music download services every week, rapidly approaching physical sales that regularly drop below 400,000, the Official UK Charts Company said.

In response, the Charts Company started to produce its own download chart to reflect the growth in the market and is now planning to merge the two.

The piracy-hit music industry is also desperate to promote legal digital music services to convert file-sharers into customers.

Source yahoo.com.

Look for U2 to start its world tour on March 1 in Florida in support of its new Interscope album, “How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb,” the band’s manager Paul McGuinness tells Billboard.

“We’ll play approximately 35 shows in the arenas in the spring in the U.S., McGuinness says. U2 will then play 30 stadium shows across Europe, return to North America for another 35-date arena swing and the proceed to Japan and Australia.

Rumors have circulated that potential openers include Snow Patrol and the Scissor Sisters. McGuinness said no decision has been made, but added “We love Snow Patrol. Their producer, Jacknife Lee, also worked on U2’s album and they’re Irish. There’s a close connection.”

The upcoming trek will be promoted by Clear Channel Entertainment’s TNA International, which is spearheaded by president Arthur Fogel. U2’s 2001 tour, also promoted by Fogel, grossed $104 million from 106 shows worldwide, according to Billboard Boxscore.

Continuing the move toward a more rock-driven approach emphasized on 2000’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” the new set is front-loaded with a host of satisfyingly straightforward tracks that should thrill U2 fans. Highlights include the chiming, strident “City of Blinding Lights,” the powerful Edge showcase “All Because of You” and the emotive, atmospheric “Miracle Drug,” where Bono scales the heights of his vocal register.

First single “Vertigo” is in third week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart.

Source billboard.com.

Coldplay have announced their first gig of 2005. The group will headline

As the Pixies’ reunion tour plows ahead, singer/guitarist Frank Black plans to release two albums’ worth of material recorded earlier this year in Nashville, with a solo trek to follow. As tipped here this summer, the first release will be titled “Honeycomb” but the second has yet to be named.

“In the spring maybe, but the labels take f*cking forever,” Black tells Billboard.com of a potential release date for the first set. “It’s not like the old days when everyone use to release a record every five months. Now, everything is so calculated and so precious and so careful.”

The Nashville sessions, which were literally finished days before Black joined his former Pixie bandmates on the road, feature an array of legendary players, including the Band’s Levon Helm, Bob Babbitt, Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn, Duane Jarvis and Steve Cropper.

While Black says “Honeycomb,” which is finished and contains such songs as “Lone Child” and “My Life Is in Storage,” is “magic,” the remaining album “has so many people playing on it, we have to kind of wade through it to find the magic.” As for the creative direction of the sessions, one word describes the entire project.

“Mellow,” says Black. “It’s just the way it came out. Maybe I wrote a little bit in anticipation with playing with those kinds of guys. But they are definitely pre-punk, these guys. So it’s not like they don’t get it, it’s just that they come from a different world, where it’s a little more groove-oriented. They don’t necessarily play loud.”

“It’s not necessarily not tough or not aggressive but it’s just… I think of Leonard Cohen as being mellow but I don’t think of him as being wimpy,” he continues.

As for the Pixies, the band is currently being followed around by a camera crew for an eventual DVD release. Black hints a possible summer 2005 street date for the set, documenting the reunion tour, as well as backstage interaction between band members.

Black remains elusive when asked if a new Pixies studio album could be in the offing. “I don’t even know,” he says. ” I think the next time we go out, if we go out next summer, there won’t even be the record out yet. Like I said, these record companies take forever.”

Source billboard.com.

The Flaming Lips are the subject of the new documentary My Life With the Fearless Freaks, due out on DVD from Shout Films on March 23rd.
Taking its name from a Sunday youth football team on which Lips frontman Wayne Coyne played with his brothers, The Fearless Freaks explores the evolution of the Oklahoma band. In particular it focuses on the families and life experiences that shaped members Coyne, drummer Steven Drodz and bassist Michael Ivins.

“I started in Wayne’s neighborhood and really tried to tell the story of how he grew up because he has so many older brothers that were a huge influence on his life,” says director Bradley Beesley, whose previous credits include Lips’ videos, as well as documentaries about Oklahoma catfishing and blues label Fat Possum Records. “They shaped the music that he listened to and his early career drawing, and playing guitar, and going to concerts, and doing drugs.”

Beesley is a longtime associate of the Lips, and they were comfortable enough to let him film very personal moments. “I’ve got some pretty intimate footage of Steven using drugs and talking about how drugs destroyed his life, as they’re destroying his life,” Beesley says. “It’s not like a VH1 thing where the guy talks about shooting up like ten years ago. I was capturing it literally as he was shooting up.”

In addition to such gritty scenes, Freaks includes cameos from Beck, Jack White, Mercury Rev’s Jonathan Donahue, Juliette Lewis and Liz Phair, as well as outtakes from the long-awaited Lips movie Christmas on Mars (due out December 2005). The film also features four new Flaming Lips songs made specifically for the film.

“It’s a cool film,” says Coyne. “When you get to appear inside someone’s life I don’t think it would even matter who they are. I think if you followed anybody around for eleven years and talked to their relatives and were there when poignant things in their life happened, it wouldn’t matter who you are, it’d be interesting.”

Beesley and Coyne hope to have Freaks make its cinematic premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January, or at the South by Southwest Music/Film Festival in Austin, Texas, in March.

Source rollingstone.com.

On December 7th, the White Stripes will release Under Blackpool Lights, a live DVD filmed during the band’s January performance at the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool, England. Select U.S. theaters will screen the film — along with bonus scenes not available on the DVD — on December 9th. The film was directed by Dick Carruthers, who has chronicled the live performances of the Rolling Stones, Oasis and Led Zeppelin.

“They’re quite unique, I can safely say,” Carruthers reports of frontman Jack White and drummer Meg White. “The way that they play, the sounds that they make and the relationship between them, which is both strong and ambiguous at the same time — it’s quite a powerful combination.”

The seventy-five-minute film includes staples like “Seven Nation Army” and “Hotel Yorba,” as well as the band’s cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” Much of the footage was shot on Super 8, which deliberately gives the movie a dated, grainy look. “The texture and color of the film itself becomes an expression of the White Stripes’ sound, which is raw, retro and iconoclastic,” says Carruthers, who adds that many of the comedic moments and extras on the DVD were Jack White’s ideas.

This past spring, the White Stripes pulled the plug on another concert film, George Roca’s Nobody Knows How to Talk to Children. The group had the documentary, culled from of a string of 2002 gigs at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, banned from circulation after its premiere at the Seattle Film Festival, citing disappointment with the look and sound of the movie. “They rigorously adhere to their aesthetic,” says Carruthers.

As for Blackpool’s single night on the big screen, Carruthers is excited, announcing, “It’s a beast in the cinema.”

The White Stripes’ Under Blackpool Lights December 9th screenings

New York, Empire 25
Burbank, CA, Burbank 14
Chicago, River East 21
Springfield, PA, Marple 10
San Francisco, Van Ness 14
Boston, Fenway 13
Washington, DC, Mazza Gallerie 7
Atlanta, Phillips Plaza Mall
Livonia, MI, Laurel Park 10
Seattle, Pacific Place
Edina, MN, Southdale Center
Westminster, Co, Westminister Promedade 24
San Diego, Mission Valley 20

Source rollingstone.com.