News

Kaiser Chiefs, James Blunt and Coldplay are amongst the main nominations for next month’s Brit Awards.

This year’s awards take place at London Earl’s Court on February 15, and will see live appearances from Coldplay, Kaiser Chiefs, James Blunt, Kanye West, Kelly Clarkson and KT Tunstall.

Hosted by Chris Evans, the awards have recognised Kaiser Chiefs who are nominated in five categories – the most of any band and only equalled this year by James Blunt. Kaiser Chiefs are nominated in the British Group, MasterCard Album, Breakthrough Act, Live Act and Rock Act categories.

Last year Franz Ferdinand were nominated for five awards, but this year have been nominated in three – Best Band, Best Live Act and Best Rock Act.

Source: nme

The Black Eyed Peas are topping the bill on this year’s Honda Civic Tour, with the kickoff date set for March 23 in Fresno, Calif.
No further dates have been confirmed, but the tour – now six years running – typically spans most of North America with about 35 cities on the itinerary.
A special 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid – customized to the Peas’ own specifications – will travel with the tour and be showcased at each venue, and one lucky fan will win the car.
BEP’s Will.i.am said the group is excited to team with the car manufacturer.
“It shows you that if you really try hard and don’t give up, the dreams that you have can even surpass the little dream that you once had,” he said.
“Here we are, we went from wanting a Civic to doing something with Honda Civic, launching a new hybrid. I mean, that’s dope.”
Past Honda Civic Tour headliners have included Maroon 5, Dashboard Confessional, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, and Incubus.

Source pollstar.com.

Sonic Youth has begun recording its next Geffen studio album at Sear Sound Studio in New York, where the group put such prior albums as “Sister” and “Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” to tape.

According to the band’s official Web site, among the tunes recorded so far are “Pink Steam,” “Do You Believe in Rapture?,” “Or” and “Sleepin Around.” The as-yet-untitled album is due for release sometime this year.

As previously reported, Sonic Youth is recording without the aid of multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke, who had been part of the band on stage and in the studio since 2002’s “Murray Street.”

“Some of it seems to be an extension of the last couple of records, but some hearkens forward into territory and also back to earlier, more dissonant and atonal stuff we’ve done,” guitarist Lee Ranaldo told Billboard.com in October of the new material. “There’s definitely some rocking songs and also some sound piece-y kind of things that are pretty interesting as well.”

Also in the Sonic Youth pipeline for the first part of the year are reissues of the band’s 1982 self-titled EP, the peculiar 1988

Atlanta’s 12-year-old outdoor festival Music Midtown won’t be held this year, concert promoter Peter Conlon said January 5.

Conlon said it was too expensive to hold the three-day event at its current location – a tract near the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center, where the festival was moved from Piedmont Park.

Other sites in and outside Atlanta are under consideration, Conlon said, adding the new site will need to have adequate green space, size and public transportation accessibility.

The first festival was held in 1994 and attracted as many as 300,000 people over a spring weekend with national acts like Bob Dylan and Ashlee Simpson.

“We’re crying guitar-sized tears,” said Greg Pridgeon, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin’s chief of staff. “It’s become an institution in Atlanta. There’s a hole left by its absence. But we respect and understand the business decision that led to the cancellation. We’re not opposed to working with the festival in the future.”

Source pollstar.com.

To celebrate the launch of the video download service, Phish is offering a New Year’s gift in the form of a free video download of their New Year’s countdown complete with their Gamehendge Time Phactory, the traditional “Auld Lang Syne” and a jaw-dropping rendition of the band’s classic “Weekapaug Groove.” The free download will be available until January 15. Live Phish Videos are offered song by song for $1.99 each and are compatible with Apple’s popular iPod video player as well as all PC and Mac video players. The New Year’s Eve 1995 video is from a single-camera archival source, but the band intends to release a wide variety of video from myriad sources and eras. “This is a chance to share incredible material directly with fans that might otherwise never see the light of day in a more traditional distribution scheme,” says band archivist, Kevin Shapiro.

The following video tracks are available now. Please note that Chalk Dust Torture and Punch You In The Eye will be available on 1/20. They hope to make the cover songs available soon.

Phish
12/31/95 Madison Square Garden, New York, NY

The Sloth (3:45)
Reba (14:25)
The Squirming Coil (10:27)
Maze (10:18)
Sparkle (3:46)
The Lizards (10:37)
Axilla (Part II) (4:13)
Runaway Jim (16:05)
Strange Design (3:36)
Mike’s Song (20:31)
Gamehendge Time Phactory (5:03)
Auld Lang Syne (1:44)
Weekapaug Groove (17:42)
You Enjoy Myself (25:37)
Sanity (6:08)

Elvis Costello and longtime keyboardist Steve Nieve are set to team up with various symphonies across the U.S., beginning with the San Francisco Symphony on March 27th, for a string of dates.

The tour will feature two sets: the first dedicated solely to the music of Il Sogno, an interpretation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream originally commissioned by the Italian ballet company Aterballetto in 2004, and the second to Costello’s pop and rock classics. Costello and Nieve will collaborate with the Houston Symphony, the Boston Pops and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, among others, and the tour’s opening night will benefit the San Francisco Symphony musicians’ pension fund.

In addition, Elvis Costello is set to release My Flame Burns Blue, a live CD featuring the fifty-two-piece Dutch jazz orchestra Metropole Orkest in concert at the Hague, the Netherlands, on February 28th. The set features new compositions; re-imagined Costello favorites, such as “Clubland” and “Watching the Detectives”; and “Hora Decubitus,” a Charles Mingus song the late jazz great’s widow invited Costello to add lyrics to. And for fans who would like a preview of the work before he takes it on the road, the set will also include a forty-five-minute suite from Il Sogno.

“This record may explain what I’ve been doing during the last twelve years when I haven’t had a guitar in my hands,” Costello says of My Flame Burns Blue.

Following his tour with local symphony orchestras, Costello will debut the opera The Secret Arias in Copenhagen, Denmark. The work is based on songs the renowned Danish fairy-tale writer Hans Christian Andersen wrote for Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, who did not return his love.

Elvis Costello tour dates:

3/27: San Francisco, Davies Symphony Hall
4/13: Houston, Jones Hall for Performing Arts
4/20: North Bethesda, MD, Strathmore Hall
4/21: Baltimore, Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
4/22: Baltimore, Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
5/10: Boston, Symphony Hall
5/12: Brooklyn, Academy of Music
5/13: Atlanta, Fox Theatre

Source rollingstone.com.

America’s favorite mind-bending, hallucination-inducing jazz trio from Tulsa, OK, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, gets back to business in February 2006 with a string of tour dates on the Left Coast, a run of high profile appearances on the East Coast and a jump over the Atlantic for a stretch of shows in Europe. The European leg of the treck will be JFJO’s first official tour of the continent, including performances at Bimhuis in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Turku International Jazz Festival in Turku, Finland. All of this in support of their latest release, The Sameness of Difference, on HYENA Records.

JFJO’s west coast tour dates in the U.S. will include special guests, The Dead Kenny Gs, who are comprised of JFJO’s own Brian Haas on keys, the irrepressible modern tenor giant Skerik on saxophones and the multi-dimensional big beat master Mike Dillon on percussion. The Dead Kenny Gs tour sparingly, so every show is a rare opportunity to witness their very own rendering of musical madness. JFJO drummer Jason Smart will also pair with freestyle poet Al Howard for a collaboration dubbed, Echoes Consciousness.

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey’s Winter 2006 tour dates are:

February 14 / Winstons / San Diego, CA
February 15 / The Palmer Room / West Los Angeles, CA
February 16 / Moe’s Alley / Santa Cruz, CA
February 17 / Cafe Du Nord / San Francisco, CA
February 18 / Cafe Du Nord / San Francisco, CA
February 19 / Six Rivers Brewery / McKinleyville, CA
February 21 / Mobius / Ashland, OR
February 22 / Luna Jazz / Eugene, OR
February 23 / The Goodfoot Lounge / Portland, OR
February 24 / Tractor Tavern / Seattle, WA
February 25 / The Nightlight Lounge / Bellingham, WA
March 8 / Casadesus Hall / Binghamton, NY
March 9 / Regatta Bar / Boston, MA
March 10 / Blue Note / New York, NY
March 11 / Blue Note / New York, NY
March 17 / Lantaren / Rotterdam, The Netherlands
March 18 / Sugar Factory / Amsterdam, The Netherlands
March 21 / Stadtgarten / Cologne, Germany
March 22 / Bimhuis / Amsterdam, The Netherlands
March 24 – 27 / Dates TBA / Italy
March 29 / Rytmihairioklubi @ Juttutupa / Helsinki, Finland
March 30 / Turku International Jazz Festival / Turku, Finland
April 7 / The Parking Garage / Norman, OK
April 8 / Cain’s Ballroom / Tulsa, OK

Today Langerado announces a Friday night “Sound Check” onsite at Markham Park. Starting at 3:30 PM until 9 PM, the pre-party event will feature six bands -Perpetual Groove,the Benevento Russo Duo, Buckethead, Hot Buttered Rum String Band, Theresa Andersson and Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes. Tickets are only $15 advance / $20 day of show andFREEfor those who purchase Langerado weekend VIP or Camping Passes. For more information visit:
www.langerado.com/soundcheck.html

Langerado has also announced their late night club schedule in Ft. Lauderdale. Shows are as follows:

3/10 -The Disco Biscuits @ Revolution / 18+ / doors 8pm
3/10 -The Drive-By Truckers with Rose Hill Drive @ The Culture Room / all ages / doors 8pm
3/11 -Umphrey’s McGee @ Revolution / 18+ / doors 9pm 3/11 -MOFRO with the New Mastersounds @ The Culture Room / all ages / doors 9pm
3/12 -Conspirator with Brothers Past @ The Culture Room / all ages / doors 9pm

All late night shows are $18 advance / $20 day of show. A presale will begin on Saturday January 14th at noon EST for those who have purchased tickets to the festival. (Music Today will be emailing access codes to those who bought tickets to Langerado so they will have the first chance to get tickets to the late night shows) General on-sale is Friday, January 27th. More information at:
www.langerado.com/late.html.

The reviews are in: Diamond Dave, it appears, is not forever. David Lee Roth

Leeds 3-piece Black Wire are excited to announce their first visit to America this February in support of their debut self-titled album, which will be released in the US on Chicago-based indie Giant Pecker Records. The band will be making stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York over 3-weeks for performances and special club appearances.

Since the UK release of their album in June, the band has been all over British radio and television. Touring relentlessly, they have quickly gained a big following in England

Hasidic reggae superstar Matisyahu has announced his 2006 tour dates. The tour starts off February 4th in Phoenix and concludes March 12 in Phoenix. Stay tuned for Matisyahu’s first studio release in 2006.

Sat/Feb. 4 – Phoenix, AZ @ Celebrity Theatre
Sun/Feb. 5 – Aspen, CO @ Belly Up
Mon/Feb. 6 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox
Sat/Feb. 11 – Waterville, ME @ Colby College
Sun/Feb. 12 – Cambridge, MA @ Avalon Ballroom
Mon/Feb. 13 – Sayreville, NJ @ Starland Ballroom
Wed/Feb. 15 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle
Thu/Feb. 16 – Atlanta, GA @ The Tabernacle
Wed/Feb. 22 – Reno, NV @ Reno Hilton Theatre
Sun/Feb. 26 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
Tue/Feb. 28 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre
Wed/Mar. 1 – Kansas City, MO @ The Beaumont Club
Thu/Mar. 2 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Sat/Mar. 4 – Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
Sun/Mar. 5 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue
Sun/Mar. 12 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live

Ben Harper has married his long-time girlfriend, actress Laura Dern on December 23rd. Us Weekly magazine reports that the nuptials took place at an altar decorated with Christmas trees and candles near a white tent at the mansion formerly owned by late actor Gregory Peck. The ‘Jurassic Park’ star and Harper began dating in 2000 and got engaged in September 2004. They already have two children, Ellery, 4, and Jaya, 1.

Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen will release his third solo album, Morph the Cat, in March. Whereas his 1982 debut The Nightfly viewed the future from an adolescent’s eyes, and 1993’s Kamakiriad viewed it from middle age, Morph, says Fagen, “is looking toward the endings of things.”

“It’s the album that’s closest to my vision of how [death] would sound,” says Fagen. “I don’t know if I could do much better.”

Fagen will support the record with his very own theater tour — his first solo show since high school. “I’ve never done it before,” he says. “I might do a few Steely Dan things that I particularly like, but it’ll mainly be my stuff.”

Source: rollingstone

The constant rotating cast of Mike Rivard’s Club d’Elf will perform tonight with a first time ensemble. Adam Sturtevant will be joining the core on drums, and Gavin Castleton will take over on keys. Gavin plays with the band Gruvis Malt, as well as his own solo projects, and Adam played drums for years with the trio Color and Talea.

Show details:
Tues Jan 3, 2006
club d’elf feat. randy roos ( guitar ), gavin castleton ( rhodes, synth, effects), mike rivard ( bass & sintir ) & adam sturtevant ( drums ).

matt murphy’s pub, 14 harvard st, brookline village, ma. 617-232-0188. 21+. 11 pm – 1:30 am. free.
mattmurphyspub.com.

Belle & Sebastian and the New Pornographers are planning to hit the road together. According to the Matador Records Web site, the multitudinous ranks of the labelmates acts will tour North America early in the New Year, although no dates are yet confirmed.

B&S have a U.K. tour slated to open Jan. 15 in Glasgow and run through a Feb. 10 gig in London. As previously reported, the group is also due to perform in March as part of the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas.

The group is touring around the release of “The Life Pursuit”, due Feb. 6 in Europe via Rough Trade and a day later in the United States through Matador.

The New Pornographers have just two shows on their schedule at deadline, including a New Year’s Eve gig Saturday (Dec. 31) at Chicago’s Metro. The other, a Feb. 22 show with Matt Pond PA and dios (malos) at the Barrymore Theatre in Madison, Wis., is a makeup date for an Oct. 21 show at the venue that was postponed when bassist John Collins suffered an appendicitis attack and required emergency surgery.

In May, the band will take part in the United States of ATP (All Tomorrow’s Parties) festival in East Sussex, England, on a bill curated by the Shins.

Source billboard.com.

Snger/songwriter/one-man-band Andrew Bird is planning a two-week February tour, following a busy year on the road supporting his latest full-length album, The Mysterious Production Of Eggs.

Two weeks of shows are planned, starting in Milwaukee February 2 and moving through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri and Iowa. He’ll wrap back in Wisconsin February 17 at Madison’s High Noon Saloon.

Bird has evolved from his days fronting his Bowl of Fire band into a creative solo performer, working with pedals and other looping equipment to build his songs live.

This time around, he’ll be accompanied onstage by another artist known for his one-man-band antics – drummer/electronic musician Martin Dosh. The two performed together at several fall shows.

Source pollstar.com.

Ben Harper will release a two-CD set, Both Sides of the Gun, on March 21st. While Harper released a collaboration with the Blind Boys of Alabama in 2004, this eighteen-track collection, divided into nine songs per disc, is the follow-up to his last solo effort, 2003’s world music-inspired Diamonds on the Inside.

At an hour long, the new material would easily fit on one CD. But Harper wanted to give each disc a distinct sound, one harder and one softer, as he just “wasn’t able to find that magic balance.”

Among the tracks on Both Sides’ harder-edged half is the title track, which melds funk with a Seventies soul vibe, and the blues and funk-driven “Black Rain,” a song in response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In contrast, Both Sides’ second half features the power ballad “Picture in a Frame,” and the romantic closer “Happily Ever After in Your Eyes,” a track Harper hopes will become “the ultimate wedding song.” (Harper and longtime girlfriend actress Laura Dern actually chose holiday tracks for their recent wedding ceremony this December 23rd in Los Angeles.)

While the California singer-songwriter turned to his usual backing band and a number of L.A. “jazz-heads” for recording, he self-produced the album and, on several tracks, played all the instruments. Harper says of his very hands-on effort, “I feel confident there’s not an ounce of filler.”

With tour plans in support of Both Sides in the works for either February or March — and a co-headlining slot for the Langerado Music Festival in Sunrise, Florida, on March 11th — Harper finds himself itching to get out on the road. “I’m jumping out of my skin. I can hardly sit still. I just can’t wait to get it out and play it.”

Source rollingstone.com.

The ever-popular earbuds used with many iPods and other MP3 players may be more stylish than the bigger and bulkier earmuff-type headphones, but they may also be more damaging to one’s hearing, according to a Northwestern professor.

“No one really knows for sure” the levels at which iPod users listen to music, but “what we do know is that young people like their music loud and seldom worry about any decline in hearing ability,” Dean Garstecki, chairman of Northwestern’s communication sciences and disorders department, told Reuters Health.

The earbuds commonly used by iPod listeners are placed directly into the ear and can boost the audio signal by as many as nine decibels — comparable to the difference in sound intensity between an alarm clock and a lawn mower, Garstecki said. Yet, the earbuds do not always fit snugly in the ear, but often allow background noise to seep in, which causes listeners to crank up the volume.

In turning up the volume to drown out background noise, however, people “don’t realize they may be causing some damage” to their hearing, Garstecki said.

This danger is not confined to MP3 users, such as iPod owners. Earbuds are also used with compact disc players and Walkmans. Audiologists have cautioned about the potential risk of hearing loss associated with such devices since the 1980s. The longer battery life and the greater music storage capacity of MP3 players, in comparison to Walkmans and compact discs, however, encourage longer periods of uninterrupted music listening.

To read more visit Source yahoo.com.

Powerhouse tours by the Rolling Stones, U2 and Paul McCartney helped drive concert ticket revenues in North America to a record $3.1 billion in 2005, even as the number of tickets sold declined for the third year in row.

Fans purchased 36.1 million tickets to the top 100 concert tours, compared with 37.6 million in 2004 and 38.7 million in 2003, according to Pollstar, the industry trade magazine.

Despite a slow first-half of the year and the decline in tickets sold, concert tours in 2005 amounted to a 10.7 percent increase in gross receipts over last year’s total of $2.8 billion.

The record revenue was due largely to the rare confluence of superstar artists touring.

Other veteran acts who ended the year among the top 20 in sales receipts included the Eagles, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Motley Crue and Jimmy Buffett.

Green Day, Rascal Flatts, Dave Matthews Band, Toby Keith, Kenny Chesney, Coldplay, Gwen Stefani and the Anger Management Tour were among the contemporary acts to break into the top 20 biggest earners.

Source: cnn

Drummer Mike Clark is hitting the road with another stunning group of musicians. While he has toured recently with young lions like Robert Walter, Skerik and Charlie Hunter (he will introduce some relatively unknown musicians to the jazz world later this year), he is kicking off 2006 with a tantalizing and fresh Headhunters lineup. With hundreds of years of combined performing experience, this ensemble fixes to be so funky that you just might be able to smell it.

Bill Summers returns on percussion and vocals, and things should get interesting with first time Headhunters George Porter Jr. (The Meters) on bass, Donald Harrison (Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers) on sax, and Jerry Z (Melvin Sparks) on the organ. These diverse musicians are bonded by a combination of decades of experience playing jazz, yet an ageless zestful approach to performing. They are each very talented at listening and reacting, yet none are shy about “stepping up” when appropriate.

Tour Dates
Thursday, January 19 | Regattabar at the Charles Hotel | Cambridge, MA
Friday, January 20 | Metronome | Burlington, VT
Saturday, January 21 | The Stone Church | Newmarket, NH
Sunday, January 22 | The Hi-Hat | Providence, RI
Tuesday, January 24 | The Knitting Factory | New York, NY
Wednesday, January 25 | Theatre of the Living Arts | Philadelphia, PA
Thursday, January 26 | Mr. Small’s Theatre | Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, January 27 | Eight by Ten Club | Baltimore, MD
Saturday, January 28 | State Theatre | Falls Church, VA