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Fans eager to hear a fresh episode of the Howard Stern Show following the cast

After reuniting last year for the first time in decades, seminal underground rock act the New York Dolls has signed a new deal with Roadrunner. The group is at work on its first new studio album since 1974’s “Too Much Too Soon,” expected to be released next spring.

Surviving original members David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain will be backed on the set by guitarist Steve Conte, bassist Sami Yaffa, drummer Brian Delaney and keyboardist Brian Koonin. That same lineup is on the road this summer for a handful of dates, beginning Saturday (July 16) at the Cisco Systems Bluesfest in Ottawa, Ontario.

“Since word has spread of the band getting back into the studio to record new material, I’ve been inundated with calls from various high-profile producers and artists wanting to get involved,” Roadrunner A&R executive David Bason tells Billboard.com. “I can’t reveal any names yet but it’s nice to have such a vote of confidence from the artistic community out of the gate.”

“The sound of this record will be true to form New York Dolls — down and dirty rock’n’roll,” he continues. “I’ve heard sketches of the material and if it’s any indication, the record will blow you away.”

The Dolls regrouped in 2004 at the urging of Morrissey, who was the president of the group’s fan club during its heyday. An early comeback show yielded the CD/DVD “The Return of the New York Dolls: Live From Royal Festival Hall 2004,” which Morrissey released on his Attack imprint via Sanctuary. Original bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane died suddenly of leukemia shortly thereafter.

As previously reported, Kane is the subject of the new film “New York Doll,” which chronicles the ups-and-downs of his post-Dolls life. The movie is scheduled to hit theaters in October.

Here are the New York Dolls’ tour dates:

July 16: Ottawa, Ontario (Cisco Systems Bluesfest)
July 17: Montreal (Les Franco Folies De Montreal)
July 23: Amagansett, N.Y. (Stephen Talkhouse)
Aug. 6: Notodden, Norway (City of Notodden)
Aug. 12: Sayreville, N.J. (Starland Ballroom)
Aug. 13: Atlantic City, N.J. (House of Blues)
Aug. 31: Anaheim, Calif. (House of Blues)

Source billboard.com.

On the heels of its early May reunion run at London’s Royal Albert Hall, legendary power trio Cream may be crossing the Atlantic for another round of shows this fall. Sources say dates are being “unofficially” held for three concerts at Madison Square Garden in October.

Guitarist/vocalist Eric Clapton, drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce regrouped for the first time since their 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a May 2-6 stand at London’s Royal Albert Hall. The shows grossed more than $3.6 million, according to Billboard Boxscore.

“Live, Cream was a great, hardworking band — Eric was supreme and Ginger the most musical drummer alive — and those original live albums were very good, probably the best records of their kind up to that point,” Bruce told Billboard in 1997, prior to the release of the boxed set “Those Were the Days.”

Neither Madison Square Garden nor Clapton’s agent would confirm that the dates were being held.

As previously reported, Clapton’s next studio album, “Back Home,” is due Aug. 30 via Reprise/Duck. The set features guest appearances from John Mayer, Steve Winwood, Robert Randolph and Simon Climie.

Source .

Common, Devo, Trey Anastasio, Ani DiFranco, the New York Dolls, Dashboard Confessional and Talib Kweli are among the top acts confirmed for Seattle’s 35th annual Bumbershoot arts festival. The four-day event will unfold over the U.S. Labor Day weekend (Sept. 2-5) and feature more than 2,500 artists performing poetry, theater, standup comedy, live music and appearing in film and visual arts exhibitions.

Other notable acts gracing the extensive music lineup include Garbage, the Donnas, the Bill Frisell Trio, Citizen Cope, the Decemberists, the Posies, M. Ward, Digable Planets, Flogging Molly and Brazilian Girls.

As previously reported, John Wesley Harding will utilize the Bumbershoot stage for a musically accompanied reading of his recent novel, “Misunderstood.”

Single- and multiple-day passes ranging from $18 and $55 are available through Aug. 25, with prices set to increase afterward.

The complete artist roster and performance schedule will be available tomorrow (July 15) on Bumbershoot’s official Web site.

Source billboard.com.

Although Roger Waters dabbled with operatic themes in Pink Floyd’s The Wall, he’s never written a traditional opera – until now.

Waters will debut “Ca Ira (There Is Hope),” his opera about the French Revolution, September 27 with a double-CD and DVD project from Sony Music.

Though the production includes baritone Bryn Terfel and other classical music veterans, Waters believes “Ca Ira” might spark some skepticism from
the classical music world.

“I’m in some state of trepidation because I feel that I’m putting my head on the chopping block,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.

To read more visit pollstar.com.

Rock act Blind Melon will be the subject of a “Best of” CD and a live DVD this fall via Capitol/EMI Music Catalog Marketing, and will also issue a previously unreleased concert recording to digital download services. The projects will be available Sept. 27, less than a month shy of the 10-year-anniversary of Blind Melon vocalist Shannon Hoon’s death from a drug overdose.

The 19-track “Tones of Home: The Best of Blind Melon” will also be available in a limited-edition with a DVD featuring six music videos and a live performance of the group’s biggest hit, “No Rain.” According to guitarist Roger Stevens, its release was inspired by higher-than-expected sales for the 2002 compilation “Classic Masters.”

“That exceeded [the label’s] expectations of what they thought it was going to do,” he tells Billboard.com. “They sold through [the pressing] — it’s not that widely available anymore, so they’re going to re-do it and make it better.”

After the 1996 documentary “Letters From a Porcupine” earned a Grammy for best long form music video, Blind Melon’s surviving members were anxious to release a follow-up. But the group found it difficult to secure live performances that met their quality standards.

“There’s so much out there, in terms of what’s being passed around by fans,” explains bassist Brad Smith. “If we’re going to put our name on it and get behind a release, it has to sound really good — the playing has to be really good. It’s live, [so] it’s unpredictable. We fished through a lot of stuff that was just like everybody playing different songs basically [laughs].”

Ultimately, the group settled on a Sept. 27, 1995, show at the Metro in Chicago, from which a smattering of tracks can be previewed on “Porcupine.” The DVD will be bolstered with three acoustic songs from a performance on MuchMusic.

A Los Angeles show recorded at the Hollywood Palace three weeks after the Metro gig, and just two weeks before Hoon died, will be the digital-only release. The material was mixed by Smith and Blind Melon guitarist Christopher Thorn at their Los Angeles studio, Wishbone. “This is the only one that’s been broken up onto 24-track tape,” Smith says, “[so it’s of] really good quality.”

Of late, Smith and Thorn have immersed themselves in producing and songwriting. “Anna Nalick — we found her and produced demos, and once she got signed, she came back and we did the record [‘Wreck of the Day’ on Columbia] in our studio,” Smith says. The pair also recorded demos with the group American Minor, helping it get signed to Jive, and produced its self-titled debut for the label, due Aug. 16.

Meanwhile, Stevens is playing in the group the Tender Trio, which features former Spacehog member Royston Langdon. The act is in the midst of a North American tour that hits Los Angeles tomorrow (July 15). “We’ll hopefully make a record this year,” he says.

Source billboard.com.

It was 10 years ago today that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits in Germany decided to use “.mp3” as the file name extension for their new audio coding technology. The innovative compression technology applied scientific advances of various fields: mathematics, psychology, acoustics, human anatomy, etc. and yielded significant size reduction for storing and digitally distributing audio.

Source: BillBoard

The String Cheese Incident’s annual music festival at Horning’s Hideout in North Plains, Ore., will take place as usual August 4-7, but it will most likely be relocated next year since neighbors of the rural park have complained about traffic, noise and trespassers.

The SCI show is expected to include performances by Arturo Sandoval, Transglobal Underground, Railroad Earth, New Monsoon and others.

Horning’s Hideout is 158 acres of rolling hills west of Portland and has been the site of the festival for the past five years, drawing approximately 4,500 campers. However, a 34-page ruling from land-use hearing officer Larry Epstein recently denied owners Bob Horning and his mother, Jane Horning, a formal application to stage outdoor concerts on their property, according to The Oregonian.

Epstein said the five-space campground that was usually rented by families and companies for picnics has essentially been turned into a concert venue without formal approval by the county. The concerts could not comply with the county’s land-use zoning laws because the park is not located close enough to freeway off-ramps and is in an “exclusive forest conservation” area.

The situation will not affect this year’s concert, SCI spokeswoman Carrie Lombardi told Pollstar. For the moment, it’s up in the air as to whether the festival will be able to return the Hornings’ property next year.

“Right now, the venue has four or five shows a year. They’re trying to reduce that number to two or none,” Lombardi said. “Whether that happens, I don’t know, but the String Cheese Incident has applied for a mass gathering permit, which we expect to go through and allow this event to continue.”

Other concerts the Hornings reportedly have scheduled include the Northwest Reggae Festival July 22-24 and the Shakedown Campout & Music Festival August 26-27.

A fuel gauge that mistakenly read empty instead of full forced NASA to call off Wednesday’s launch of Discovery on the first shuttle flight since the Columbia disaster 2 1/2 years ago. The space agency’s chief said the mission is off until at least Monday.

The decision to scrub the launch came with less than 2 1/2 hours to go, while the seven astronauts were boarding the spacecraft for their journey to the international space station. Up until then, rain and thunder over the launch site appeared to be the only potential obstacle to an on-time liftoff.

The problem involved one of the external fuel tank’s four engine cutoff sensors, which are responsible for making sure the spacecraft’s main engines shut down at the right moment during the ascent. A launch could end in tragedy if faulty sensors caused the engines to cut out too early or too late.

Source: boston.com

More than two-dozen previously unreleased tracks will be found on “No Direction Home: The Soundtrack,” the seventh volume in Columbia/Legacy’s Bob Dylan “Bootleg Series.” As previously reported, the double-disc set is the companion to Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary of the same name. The album is due Aug. 30; the film premieres Sept. 26 on PBS.

Sequenced in chronological order, “No Direction Home” boasts 26 rarities, beginning with what is believed to be a recording of the first original song Dylan ever recorded (“When I Got Troubles,” taped by a high school friend in Minnesota in 1959).

Also featured are two tracks recorded in Minneapolis in December 1961, a live version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” from a 1961 show at New York’s Carnegie Hall that was previously not known to exist and alternate takes of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “She Belongs to Me” from the 1964-65 “Bringing It All Back Home” sessions.

The album’s second disc sports five alternate takes from the 1965 sessions for “Highway 61 Revisited” and three from the following year’s “Blonde on Blonde,” plus live versions of “Ballad of a Thin Man” and “Like a Rolling Stone” from Dylan’s 1966 U.K. tour.

Liner notes for “No Direction Home” were penned by producer Andrew Loog Oldham and Dylan collaborator Al Kooper, while journalist Eddie Gorodetsky offers track-by-track analysis.

Dylan himself narrates the film version of “No Direction Home,” which boasts new interviews with such seminal figures as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Al Kooper, Pete Seeger and Dave Von Ronk.

On the same day “No Direction Home” hits stores, another Dylan album will begin an 18-month window of exclusivity at Starbucks locations. “Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962” features restored recordings culled from the artist’s early performances at the New York cafe.

Here is the track list for “No Direction Home”:

Disc one:
“When I Got Troubles” (1959)
“Rambler, Gambler” (1960)
“This Land Is Your Land” (live at New York’s Carnegie Chapter Hall, 1961)
“Song to Woody” (1961)
“Dink’s Song” (1961)
“I Was Young When I Left Home” (1961)
“Sally Gal” (“The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” outtake, 1962)
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (demo, 1963)
“Man of Constant Sorrow” (1963)
“Blowin’ in the Wind” (live at New York’s Town Hall, 1963)
“Masters of War” (live at New York’s Town Hall, 1963)
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (live at New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1963)
“When the Ship Comes In” (live at New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1963)
“Mr. Tambourine Man” (“Bringing It All Back Home” alternate take, 1964)
“Chimes of Freedom” (live at Newport, R.I. Folk Festival, 1964)
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (“Bringing It All Back Home” alternate take, 1965)

Disc two:
“She Belongs To Me” (