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Wynton Marsalis, Natalie Cole, Lyle Lovett and David Byrne are among the artists confirmed to take part in the Janus Jazz Aspen Snowmass festivals this summer. The first of the events will take place June 24-27 in downtown Aspen, Col., while the U.S. Labor Day holiday weekend (Sept. 3-6) festival will be staged at the foot of the nearby Elk Mountains.

The 14th annual June festival will feature Marsalis and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on June 24; Cole on June 25; Al Green, Lizz Wright and Yerba Buena on June 26; and Buddy Guy, Medeski, Martin & Wood and Yerba Buena on June 27. Additional free concerts will be held in Aspen’s Wagner Park, while small venue shows under the JAS After Dark banner will be held throughout the weekend.

At deadline, Lovett and Byrne were the only confirmed artists for the September Jazz Aspen Snowmass event.

In addition, weekly free concerts will be staged at the base of the Snowmass Ski Area, with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, C.J. Chenier, Marcia Ball, Kermit Ruffins, Otis Taylor and Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys confirmed to take part.

Daily and weekend festival tickets are already on sale to JAS Club members, and will go on sale Monday (March 29) to the general public via the event’s Web site.

Source billboard.com.

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Copyright 2004 Billboard

The surviving three MC5 members — guitarist Wayne Kramer, bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis “Machine Gun” Thompson — are planning to tour as DKT/MC5 with guest vocalists including Evan Dando, Marshall Crenshaw, Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, Radio Birdman’s Deniz Tek and the Hellacopters’ Nicke Royale.

The tour comes amid a ripe period of discovery of the politically minded, legendary pre-punk band. The Motor City rockers — singer Rob Tyner died in 1991 and guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith passed in 1994 — are at the heart of a pair of upcoming DVDs. First up is Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5, filmed at a London concert last year when the remaining MC5 members were joined on stage by Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, Ian Astbury, Royale, the Damned’s Dave Vanian and others. Also included on the DVD, due July 6th, is a thirty-minute documentary that includes interviews with Jack White and members of Primal Scream and Death in Vegas, along with footage taken by the U.S. Department of Defense, which kept tabs on the band during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

A second DVD, the documentary MC5: A True Testimonial, was scheduled for release in May, but it was recently put on indefinite hold because of publishing clearance issues. Testimonial includes film and television footage of the band, as well as interviews and testimonials from the likes of Cheap Trick, Blue Oyster Cult, Primal Scream and Kilmister.

The tour will kick off in June and make several North American stops (including a hometown gig in Detroit) before visiting Europe, Australia and Japan.

Source rollingstone.com.

Rolling Stone Magazine has named their list of The Immortals

The top musicians, promoters, managers and media companies in the live music community have all pledged their support to HeadCount, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that aims to register 100,000 new voters.

With the presidential election nearing, voter participation has become a unifying cause among musicians and their followers. Artists such as Bob Weir, a HeadCount board member and guitarist for The Dead, are calling on fans to exercise their fundamental rights as Americans to go to the polls.

“If every Dead Head in the state of Florida had voted in the last presidential election, it would be a very different world today,

Theta State Productions has organized Mediate: Collaborative Multi-media Art for a Cause to be held April 2nd at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Inman Square, Cambridge, MA., to benefit the Community Art Center, Inc. of Cambridge.

Based on a concept initially developed by Boston producer/musician/multimedia artist, Brian Knoth, this night integrates the work of many talented and creative friends. Scheduled performances include Slam Poetry, featuring Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo and The Cantab Revue, Theta State (w/members of Nikulydin) – Multimedia Performance Art and Boston’s Amun Ra will play a special acoustic set.

All of the performers are proud to be presenting the night at the Zeitgeist Gallery, a space that uniquely provides an alternative venue for collective projects and benefits such as this.

The Community Art Center is a 72-year old agency whose mission is to nurture children and young adults with limited access to financial resources so they achieve personal and cultural growth and have a positive impact on their world through joyful experiences in the arts. They provide comprehensive, year-round after school programs for over 125 youth annually who live primarily in public housing.

Details: Mediate: Collaborative Multi-media Art for a Cause

Hollywood Records has announced a July 13 release date for Together We’re Heavy, the highly anticipated second album from The Polyphonic Spree. In stark contrast to The Spree’s debut, The Beginning Stages Of…, which was recorded in two days and only intended as a demo to help the young group book gigs, Together We’re Heavy is the result of over a year’s work in the studio by the band and producers Eric Drew Feldman (Frank Black, Sparklehorse, Tripping Daisy) and The Speekers. The substantial advances in songwriting and production on songs that have emerged as live favorites in the last year, including the anthemic “Two Thousand Places” and “Hold Me Now,” “Diamonds/Mild Devotion To Majesty” and the epic “When The Fool Becomes A King” mark the realization of this incredible ensemble. See below for a full track list.

Audiences will get a sneak preview of the new record during their upcoming tour with rock legend David Bowie. The much-talked-about road show begins March 29 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. Dates have recently been added to the tour in New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Anaheim, California; see below for the full itinerary.

The group will also perform on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno on April 21 and will perform “Light & Day” during their appearance on the April 20 episode of the hit NBC-TV sitcom “Scrubs.” “We’re all huge music fans on ‘Scrubs’ and are always looking for interesting, organic ways to incorporate music into the show,” says “Scrubs” supervising producer Neil Goldman. “When a bunch of us got a chance to experience The Polyphonic Spree live, we immediately sparked to the idea of not only featuring their music, but the band itself. We’re a show that loves to push the envelope creatively, and obviously so does the group, so it seemed like a perfect match for us.”

Tour Dates Opening for David Bowie:

March 29 – Philadelphia, PA – Wachovia Center
March 30 – Boston, MA – FleetCenter
March 31 – New York, NY – Angel Orensanz Center *
April 1 – Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre
April 2 – Ottawa, QC – Corel Center
April 4 – Quebec City, QC – Pepsi Coliseum
April 7 – Winnipeg, MB – Winnipeg Arena
April 9 – Edmonton, AB – Rexall Centre
April 11 – Kelowna, BC – Skyreach Place
April 13 – Portland, OR – Rose Garden
April 14 – Seattle, WA – Key Arena
April 16 – Berkeley, CA – Community Theatre
April 17 – Berkeley, CA – Community Theatre **
April 19 – Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl **
April 22 – Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre **
April 23 – Anaheim, CA – The Pond **
April 25 – Denver, CO – Budweiser Events Center
April 27 – Austin, TX – The Backyard
April 29 – Houston. TX – Woodlands
April 30 – New Orleans, LA – SaengerTheater

* headline date
** new Bowie date

See thepolyphonicspree.com for more info.

Page McConnell’s side project, Vida Blue, featuring the Spam Allstars, will be playing three select dates on the West Coast in the beginning of June before their appearance at Bonnaroo. The dates are as follows:

Thurs, June 3 4th and B, San Diego, CA
Fri, June 4 House of Blues, Los Angeles, CA
Sat, June 5 The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA

The Jazz Mandolin Project featuring Jon Fishman will open all three dates.

Source phish.com.

Elvis Costello will write a pair of books to be published by Simon & Schuster. The first will be “a series of intimate narrative chapters taking their cue from the styles, themes and characters found in a number of Costello’s lyrics,” according to the publisher. The as-yet-untitled volume is due in fall 2005.

The second book, a release for which is not yet targeted, will be “a work of comic philosophy.” That tome is already titled: “How to Play the Guitar, Sing Loudly and Impress Girls…or Boys.”

“There are few musicians with the range of Elvis Costello,” Simon & Schuster executive VP/publisher David Rosenthal says. “We’re excited about his unique and eclectic approach to present his life and artistry to the public.”

Source billboard.com.

Ireland’s most prominent West Coast-obsessed pop-rockers, The Thrills, are visiting the object of their desires once again. They’re raising eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic with their catchy vocal harmonies and laid-back, country-rock feel, drawing less comparisons to countrymen U2 and Thin L

The band’s travels begin March 27 at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston. They’ll sprint through most every region of the U.S. over the next two months, with several detours to Canada and a May 2 stop at the Coachella Festival in Indio, Calif.

They’ll appear with Phantom Planet on several April dates, and with Spymob in late April and early May. Just two days after finishing up their U.S. jaunt May 29 in Providence, R.I., they’ll head to the Netherlands for the Pinkpop Festival.

The Thrills’ debut album, So Much For The City, was recorded in San Diego and finds the band paying homage to many of their favorite West Coast locales on songs like “Big Sur,” “Santa Cruz (You’re Not That Far)” and “Your Love Is Like Las Vegas.”

Source pollstar.com.

Sony Electronics says it will be shipping drives in about two months that accept blank DVDs with two data layers. Philips Electronics will start selling a similar drive in Europe in April, but is not saying when it will be available in the United States.

The write-once discs can store up to 8.5 gigabytes of data, or about 4 hours of DVD-quality movies, twice the capacity of regular blank DVDs. This means capacities for computer-burned DVDs are catching up with prerecorded movie DVDs, many of which are already dual-layer.

The new technology is sure to appeal to those who back up or copy movie DVDs, since they often have to reduce image quality or remove special features to fit a copied movie onto a single-layer disc. With a dual-layer drive, an exact copy on a single disc should be possible.

The two layers of the new discs are accessed from the same side — there is no need to flip the disc over to record to the second layer. Instead, a laser beam shines through the first layer to record on the second.

Sony will sell an internal drive for $230 and an external one for $330. They will be marketed only for Windows PCs, but the external one should work on Macintosh computers with the proper third-party software.

Philips will sell two internal drives with somewhat different features, both for PCs. U.S. prices have not been set.

The drives will be able to burn regular write-once and rewritable DVDs and CDs as well.

The Sony and Philips drives will use somewhat different discs. Sony calls its variant DVD-R DL. The Philips equivalent is DVD+R DL. Both disc types should be readable in standard DVD drives and players.

Sony estimates the blank discs will cost $5 to $6. Philips does not have an estimate yet.

The dual-layer discs will be slower to burn than single-layer discs — the drives will be rated as burning at 2.4 times faster than playback speed, versus eight times for single-layer discs.

A full 8.5 gigabytes will take about 45 minutes to burn.

Source cnn.com.