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Bob Dylan has joined the late Jerry Garcia as a wine entrepreneur. While the J. Garcia-label stems from California’s Sonoma Valley, Dylan’s signature appears on the back label of Planet Waves, a red produced by Italy’s Fattoria Le Terrazze winery and named after a 1974 Dylan album.

The 2002 vintage is a blend of 75% Montepulciano and 25% Merlot grapes grown on the winery’s vineyards in Italy’s Marche region. It follows Visions of J, a Fattoria Le Terrazze wine that its owner, Antonia Terni, named after the Dylan song “Visions of Johanna,” prior to any association with the artist.

“I’ve been a Bob Dylan fan since the first time I heard him, and I didn’t even understand English then,” Terni told Wine Spectator magazine. “I never imagined we’d make a wine together.”

Of the 415 cases produced, 125 will be exported to the United States, with suggested price of $65 per bottle.

Source billboard.com.

Scabeba Entertainment has acquired the film and television rights to Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart’s biographical journal “Ghost Rider.” Specifics of the project have not been announced. Scabeba is overseen by Cathy Rich, the daughter of legendary jazz drummer Buddy Rich. She and Peart became friends after the drummer appeared at a 1992 concert in her father’s memory and on a subsequent series of tribute albums.

Published in 2002 by ECW Press, “Ghost Rider” originated from the journals Peart kept as he grieved for the deaths of 19-year-old daughter Selena and his wife Jackie. To deal with the loss, he embarked on a 55,000-mile motorcycle journey throughout North America that ultimately took him from Quebec to Belize and back. A track of the same name later appeared on Rush’s 2002 album “Vapor Trails”

As previously reported, Rush is in the midst of its 30th anniversary tour, which descends on Irvine, Calif., tomorrow (July 14). The group just issued an EP of classic rock covers, “Feedback,” which debuted at No. 19 on The Billboard 200.

As for Peart, he recently issued a new book, “Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and Times,” initially inspired by a trip to Texas’ Big Bend National Park in his BMW Z-8 sports car.

Source billboard.com.

Musician David Bowie underwent an emergency angioplasty to open a blocked heart artery in Germany and is recuperating, his spokesman said Friday.

Doctors discovered the blockage after the 57-year-old Bowie sought treatment after performing in the German town of Scheesel on June 25, according to the spokesman, Julian Stockton.

A pinched nerve was initially cited as the cause of shoulder pain that forced Bowie to shorten a June 23 performance in Prague and eventually to cancel the remainder of a European tour.

Stockton did not specify the date of the procedure but said it was after the June 25 show. Bowie left the clinic in Hamburg, Germany early this week and is now with his family in New York.

Stockton quoted Bowie as saying, “Can’t wait to be fully recovered and get back to work again. I tell you what, though, I won’t be writing a song about this one.”

Source yahoo.com.

Stewart Copeland is big in Italy. He’s also big as a TV and film composer, and he was in a really big rock band called the Police. In May, Copeland took part in the Taranta Ensemble concert in Rome and wailed on his drums in front of 500,000 people. The free concert, showcasing the regional southern Italian music called puglia — a mixture of ethnic Mediterranean sounds and percussion — was broadcast live throughout Italy.

Copeland began a tour with the 20-piece Taranta band this week that will take them throughout Italy and Greece. He also recently released his “Orchestralli” album and DVD in Europe, which was recorded live during the course of four concerts in Italy and features music from his extensive soundtracks, ballets and operas. A North American distribution deal is in the works.

Of his orchestral compositions, Copeland notes: “I went through a period, as a drummer, trying to prove that I am actually a musician by writing a lot of orchestral music. I wrote three operas, three ballets for the Seattle symphony, and I wrote some orchestra work. I actually have quite a lot of orchestral music.”

On the TV side, Copeland has been working diligently on scoring the second season of Showtime’s hit series “Dead Like Me,” which stars Mandy Patinkin, Ellen Muth and Rebecca Gayheart. The new season premieres July 25.

Copeland says he came to “Dead Like Me” because series creator Bryan Fuller was a fan of his work. “[Bryan] laid a lot of very stringent parameters around me: no electric guitar or keyboard,” Copeland says. “So I couldn’t use any guitar or any rock ‘n’ roll instruments for a youth-oriented show, which actually forced me to think of something else. I ended up with this kind of diabolical quartet, with strings and baroque trumpet. I had to find other ways of telling the story that don’t involve the [rock] cliche.”

Copeland says that after almost a decade of writing with the Police, he loved making the transition to film and TV music during the 1980s because the parameters of writing for a particular mood and scene are both challenging and liberating. His scoring work includes “Rumble Fish,” “Wall Street,” “Highlander II,” “She’s All That” and “Gridlock’d.”

Copeland also says he is hoping to regroup with his Oysterhead bandmates Les Claypool (Primus) and Trey Anastasio (Phish) to work on new material later this year.

Source billboard.com.

Apple Computer will make its iPod mini digital-music player available internationally starting July 24. A spokesperson for the computer giant says prices will vary for each territory. The mini portable player will be available for

While taking some time off from the road this summer, the Strokes have begun pre-production on a handful of new songs with longtime producer Gordon Raphael. And while manager Ryan Gentles tells Billboard.com a new album isn’t likely to be ready until spring 2005 at the earliest, the sessions are set to unfold in an entirely new way.

“The recording of this record will be much different from the last two,” he says. “They’re not working on any deadline whatsoever and have built a recording studio into their rehearsal space so that they can just record everything that they do over the next 8 to 10 months, and shape the new songs for the next record out of that.”

The quintet will return to the live stage Saturday (July 10) at Ireland’s Oxegen Festival, to be followed the next day by the U.K.’s T in the Park Festival. Also on tap is an Aug. 14 performance at Little Steven’s International Underground Garage event on New York’s Randall’s Island an Aug. 21-22 appearances at the U.K.’s V2004 Festival.

Afterward, studio time will dominate the schedule. “They might bow out once or twice to do a show here and there just around New York for the band to try out new material,” Gentles says, “and we’re entertaining the idea of doing a brief stint in South America before the end of the year since we’ve never toured there yet.”

Source billboard.com.

In an article published in Tuesday’s Burlington Free Press, ticketless Phish fans may have to dig deep to catch the band’s final two shows in Coventry, VT.

JEFFERSONVILLE — Adriane Whitfield and Ryan McDonald are going to Vermont jam-band Phish’s last show in Coventry next month.

But because the Lamoille County couple is unwilling to spend $450 a ticket — the going price on eBay for the tickets originally sold for $150 each — the question remains whether they are going to get into the two-day concert.

“I didn’t think it was going to sell out at first,” said McDonald, who works restoring homes and painting. “It seemed like there were tickets everywhere. Then it became the last show, but even then I figured, how could they turn you away?”

Like all but the 70,000 people who have tickets to the show, he just might find out.

Phish fans seeking concert tickets are encountering mind-blowing prices now that the band has announced it will split up after the August show. The 200 percent increase on eBay might even be a bargain. Brokers are selling tickets to the show for as high as $915 apiece. That’s 510 percent higher than the $150 face value.

Sky-high prices

Veronica Lusk, sales representative for the Internet broker eSeats.com, has only about 40 tickets left. That’s not many for a show this size that’s over a month away, she said.

Because eSeats.com resells tickets for clients who name their own prices, eSeats lists tickets from $515 to $915. Lusk said the demand for even the $915 tickets is there.

“At this price, they are going really fast,” she said. “We can sell them for this much. People are buying them. I’ve never really seen general admission tickets for this much.”

Whitfield and McDonald were planning to buy their tickets on the Internet at face value. They waited until after they moved into a new home to sign up for online service. Credit card in hand, McDonald logged on to buy tickets.

“I stared at the screen,” he said. “Sold out.”

Whitfield, 30, has been following the band for 14 years. McDonald, 25, has been to 120 shows since he began following them at age 15. The couple met at a Phish show.

Their love for the band is on display throughout their hilltop house — a bootleg DVD alongside their movies, old Phish newsletters on their bookshelf, Phish photos on their walls, the shirt on McDonald’s back, posters in his room, signed memorabilia tucked away in hiding spots, the Phish pint glass McDonald sips his beer from.

Whitfield and McDonald have looked for tickets on eBay. They’ve called ticket brokers they’ve used in the past. They called friends. They’ve yet to find anything affordable.

But they refuse to miss the last show.

“I’m very nervous about going,” said Whitfield, a seamstress and designer. “Yes, I’m going with or without tickets, but I’ll never be a gate-crasher. I want to respect the band and the town. I’m praying.”

She and thousands of others.

Ticketless in Chicago

Brad Feldman, a 23-year-old Chicago business analyst, hopes to score a ticket. He’s been a Phish fan for 10 years, and is pretty sure he’s showing up with or without the right enter the Newport airport, where the concert is being held.

“I’d rather have a ticket and not have to worry, but if it comes down to going without a ticket, I’m going to go to the show,” he said.

He refuses to pay much more than the cost listed on the stub. He said he’s sold extra Phish tickets before, and he’s always sold them at face value.

“Phish is different,” he said. “When people need a ticket and you have some, you sell it at face. Hopefully good karma comes back.”

Internet message boards are full of Phish-hungry fans willing to spice up offers with money, tickets to other shows and even more personal enticements.

As a member of the Jambands.com message board found out, it’s a seller’s market.

“i offered making clothes, sex and cookies/brownies for a coventry (ticket) plus the cost of the ticket……,” wrote a user with the moniker Gabby23. “im still searching.”
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/bfpnews/news/2000h.htm

A week after guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Chris Chaney announced Jane’s Addiction’s split through a post on Navarro’s Web site, singer Perry Farrell explains the break-up from his perspective.

“The band went astray, falling into shallow holes,” Farrell tells Rolling Stone. “There was no consideration for the legacy she had built up over the years. Jane was getting stripped of her majesty.”

“My separation came about because this legendary band was taken over by new owners,” Farrell continues. “Music that was once relevant and graceful had become clumsy as a circus seal tooting his horns . . . Jane doesn’t strip for anyone but me. I brought Jane’s Addiction to life, it is only fitting that I am the one to bury her.”

The latest fracture follows a three-year Jane’s Addiction reunion that included a Lollapalooza headlining tour and last year’s Strays, the band’s first album of original material since 1990’s Ritual de lo Habitual. Jane’s had regrouped in 1997 for a tour and released Kettle Whistle, a mixed batch of live tracks, demos and newly recorded songs.

Before splitting in 1991, Jane’s Addiction (Farrell, Navarro, Perkins and bassist Eric Avery) helped shove alternative music into the mainstream, paving the way for bands like Nirvana and the Smashing Pumpkins.

“I wish for Jane’s Addiction to be remembered as one of the seminal bands of her era,” says Farrell. “She laid a foundation for unbridled underground music to rise up on. The newly coined ‘alternative music’ came on to replace a stale music scene. We encouraged people to make scary choices.”

While his ex-mates have formed a new band with Skycycle singer Steve Isaacs, Farrell, who released the solo album Song Yet to Be Sung in 2001, plans to forge ahead on his own. “I am staying the course,” he says. “At my pace, I have twenty more years in which to perform. I ponder that my greatest achievements still lay ahead.”

Source rollingstone.com.

Bootsy Collins and Blur’s Damon Albarn are among the guests appearing on the next Fatboy Slim album, “Palookaville.” Due Oct. 5 via Astralwerks, the set is the fourth studio release from the artist also known as Norman Cook.

The onetime Housemartins bassist-turned-DJ leans on Collins to provide vocals on a remake of the Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker,” which will be the album’s first single. The original track reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1974.

Collins contributed to the Fatboy Slim track “Weapon of Choice,” on 2000’s “Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars.” Slim was in turn among the guests on Collins’ latest album, “Play With Bootsy.”

Albarn appears on the cut “Put It Back Together,” while Blackalicious member Lateef is heard on two tracks, “Wonderful Night” and “The Journey.” Manchester, England, DJ/remixer/producer Justin Robertson and Brighton, England-based band Johnny Quality also guest on the set.

Source billboard.com.

Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams and Shelby Lynne are among the “girls” that swamp rock legend Tony Joe White has enlisted for his new album, appropriately tagged The Heroines.
The genesis of the album, due in September, was White’s long-running desire to record a set of songs “both with people I admire and people who have recorded my songs through the years,” he says. The set also includes White’s duets with his daughter Michelle and Jessi Colter.

White recorded the songs with just his voice, guitar, bass and drums at an old sixteen-track studio built into his home. His son integrated ProTools into the system, allowing White to send the tunes to the singers to add their voices. “It’s a good system we got working,” he says. “We’ve blended simplicity and something from the Enterprise.”

Harris came by White’s Tennessee studio to add her vocal to “Wild Wolf Calling Me.” “First time Emmy sang her vocal, I knew that was it,” he says. “She said, ‘I can do better and sang it four or five more times. I played her the original and she was surprised. She said, ‘That’s the one.’ You know magic when you hear it.”

Even in the vocal presence of the women, White says the songs retain the muddy sound that has been his trademark for more than three decades, most notably on the 1969 Top Ten hit “Polk Salad Annie.” “That sound is always there, I can’t get away from it,” he says. “We get the swampy tracks doing their thing behind these nice sweet voices . . . well, actually, Lucinda gets down there singing as raw and funky as I do on ‘Closing In on the Fire.’ She’s from Louisiana too.”

After a European tour, White is planning to start making calls for The Heroines’ companion piece: The Heroes. “This new record is just the first part,” he says. He’s already put together a list of potential heroes including Hank Williams Jr., Joe Cocker, French rock star Johnny Hallyday, country singer John Anderson and Michael McDonald. “I got several people in mind,” he says. “And they all seem ready to do it.”

Source rollingstone.com.