News

Quite possibly the best three Phish shows since their return to the stage are now officially available on CD. Although already available as downloads on www.LivePhish.com, these new releases are packaged in a jewel case. There is no standard ShowCase sleeve accompanying the release. All customers who purchase all three new Live Phish 2003 releases are automatically entered into the Live Phish Preorder Contest.
LIVE PHISH 02.28.03 Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, New York
LIVE PHISH 07.15.03 USANA Ampitheatre, West Valley City, Utah LIVE PHISH 07.29.03 Post Gazette Pavilion, Burgettstown, Pennsylvania
Source Phish.com.

When they released their first album of holiday material in September, the Blind Boys Of Alabama said they’d be taking the tunes to the stage. And they’re doing just that for nine shows in December.
Treating fans in major cities from West to East Coast, the Blind Boys will play songs from their Go Tell It On The Mountain CD starting December 9 in Colorado. Mavis Staples and John Medeski are on all dates, while Aaron Neville joins in a handful.
A big show will take place in New York City at the Beacon Theatre. There, the gang will be joined by many of the same guests on their album, including Chrissie Hynde, Michael Franti, Robert Randolph, Charlie Musselwhite and Duke Robillard. Like the holiday shows, the album is chock-full o’ guest appearances, including spots by Tom Waits, Hynde, Neville, Solomon Burke, Mavis Staples, George Clinton, Shelby Lynne, Randolph and many others.
Source Pollstar.com.

David Crosby and Graham Nash will enter the studio in January to record their first album together as a duo in almost 30 years. “We are excited as hell because we have a terrific bunch of songs for it,” Crosby tells Billboard.com. The last Crosby & Nash studio album, “Whistling Down the Wire,” their third as a duo, was issued in June 1976.
The pair is in discussions with several labels, including Sanctuary, says Crosby, adding that the set will be helmed by drummer/producer Russ Kunkel (Jimmy Buffett, Carly Simon).
Backing Crosby and Nash will be bassist Lee Sklar and guitarist Dean Parks, as well as Crosby’s son, keyboardist James Raymond, and guitarist Jeff Pevar of Crosby’s side project CPR. Conkel’s son, Nathaniel, will engineer.
After 11 years between albums, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young returned in 1999 with “Looking Forward.” Since then, the act has embarked on two major tours and a slew of one-off performances, such as Neil Young’s recent Bridge School benefit outside San Francisco.
Source billboard.com.

The late George Harrison, Prince, Traffic and ZZ Top are among the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Jackson Browne, the Dells and Bob Seger round out the group.
Harrison was previously inducted in the Rock Hall’s 1988 class as a member of the Beatles; former bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney have already been inducted as solo artists.
The 19th annual induction ceremony will be held March 15 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. A Lifetime Achievement Award /Non-Performer honoree will be announced soon.
Artists become eligible 25 years after the release of their first recording. A Foundation committee nominates eligible artists, who are then voted on by an international body of about 700 music experts.
Source cnn.com.

John Lennon’s handwritten lyrics to the song “Nowhere Man” were sold for $455,000 — more than four times the expected price — at an entertainment memorabilia sale at Christie’s Tuesday. The lyrics to the Beatles song were expected to fetch between $80,000 and $100,000 at the New York auction, according to Christie’s spokeswoman Margaret Barrett.
Source cnn.com.

Rolling Stone has compiled their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band claiming the #1 spot. The Beatles, clearly the best band ever on vinyl, take 4 of the top 10. Revolver is 3rd, Rubber Soul 5th and The Beatles (“The White Album”) is 10th. Abbey Road doesn’t come in till 14 and Let It Be barely makes the top 100.
See the complete list here: Rollingstone.com.

The paperback edition of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s “Journals” has been bolstered with 14 pages of new material, including an extended narrative about a semi-fictional serial killer. Riverhead released the volume Nov. 10, with a front cover reproduction of Cobain’s red Mead notebook bearing his hand-written caveat, “if you read, you’ll judge.”
“Frankly, we had this the first time around, but we chose not to include it, because it’s disturbing and bizarre,” Riverhead co-editorial director Julie Grau tells Billboard.com of the serial killer-themed pages. “We checked, and there was a serial killer that shared some of the traits and biographic facts that he writes about. But it’s hard to know if Kurt was inventing all of this but had pieces of facts he recalled.”
Source Billboard.com.

Guster, about to wrap up months worth of touring in support of their latest release “Keep It Together,” have announced a special upcoming show. The three piece will play homage to one of their three piece influnces – The Violent Femmes. Guster will perfom the Violent Femmes’ debut album in its entirety on November 25th at New York’s Arlene Grocery. The self titled debut album was release in 1982, and features the world recognizable – “Blister in the Sun.”
Source Rollingstone.com.

Rock duo the Black Keys has postponed an extensive European tour after guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach fractured two toes while unloading a van full of equipment. The Akron, Ohio-based group was scheduled to be in Europe through a Nov. 30 show in Berlin. Fans are encouraged to keep their tickets for the affected gigs, as they will be valid when the shows are rescheduled next year.
“Not only were we exhausted and way too stressed after this insane year of non-stop touring, but little s*** like missing planes and fracturing toes added to our decision to take a break,” Auerbach writes on the band’s official Web site.
The Black Keys were touring in support of their sophomore album, “thickfreakness,” released this year by Fat Possum. The pair will return to the stage on Dec. 6 in Oberlin, Ohio, and will play a previously announced New Year’s Eve show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. The only other show on the group’s schedule is Jan. 2 in Detroit.
During the downtime, Auerbach says he and drummer Patrick Carney “are busy in the basement trying to remember what it’s like to practice. All of our recording equipment and musical junk has a nice thick layer of dust on it, so we’re gonna wipe the dust away and get to work on writing some new songs.”
Source Billboard.com.

Wilco is in a New York studio recording the follow-up to its acclaimed 2002 album “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” As with that set, which was released by Nonesuch after Wilco parted ways with Warner Bros., the band is working on the sessions with producer/multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke. Chris Shaw, best known for his work on Bob Dylan’s “Love and Theft,” is engineering.
The album, tentatively titled “W*lco Happens,” will most likely not be released until late spring. Tracks include “We are Finished Waiting for You Now” and “Hell Is Chrome.”
Source Billboard.com.

Garaj Mahal has planned to ring in 2004 with a 3 night run in British Columbia. New Years Eve, Dec 31st & New Years Day, Jan 1st will be at THE BOOT 7124 Nancy Green Way, Whistler, B.C. The Jan 2nd show will be held at MESA LUNA 1926 W Broadway St. Vancouver.
To celebrate New Years, the band is also holding a Dream Set Contest. The person who

Following opening for the Yonder Mountain String Band for New Years Eve in Denver, Americana rocker Jay Farrar will headline a series of US club dates in support of Terroir Blues, released last June. From January 15 through the end of the month, Farrar and his backing band, Canyon, will play a selection of theatres and clubs from Texas out West to Washington.
Currently, Farrar is bringing his brand of rock to Europe. In the U.K. and Ireland, he is backed by Mick Clews and Peter Noone (both in Peter Bruntnell’s band) and Mark Spencer (Blood Oranges), with Peter Bruntnell supporting. Then, in Europe, it’s just Farrar and Spencer.
For complete tour dates visit pollstar.com.

Between the release of Preston School of Industry’s 2001 debut and the recording of their upcoming album, Monsoon, frontman Scott Kannberg relocated from the Bay Area to Seattle. But despite the title, Monsoon, slated for a January 20th release, doesn’t sound like it was written underneath Seattle drizzle — the album is chock-full of sunny California melodies. “I moved to a whole new environment up here,” says the former Pavement guitarist. “I’m not used to the rain. Moving away was kind of hard in the beginning. Seattle’s a challenge.”
Wilco joined in for “Get Your Crayons Out.” Plied with BBQ chicken and salmon, beer and diet Coke, they ransacked Kannberg’s basement studio for instrumentation and gave the track the kitchen sink treatment.
“Jeff [Tweedy] did some really amazing guitar parts,” Kannberg says. “It sounds like a jug band or an early Velvet Underground bootleg or something. Glen [Kotche] found some pots and pans in the basement and started playing those. I gave Leroy [Bach] some old Pavement ashtrays that we have, and he used those as percussion instruments. He was really excited about that.”
Upon his return from a six-week tour of Australia, Kannberg plans to dig through the vaults for bonus material slated for a planned expanded, re-mastered version of Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain targeted for release next year. “I gotta go through all my own archives, all the songs we never put out,” he says. “There’s probably five or six songs that were totally unreleased from around that period, and probably a few demos that we actually did with our old drummer Gary [Young]. I think we can salvage a few of those.”
Source Rollingstone.com.

Scotland’s Beta Band recorded their upcoming album four times before finally getting it right this summer, when they tracked a fifth and final version.
“Our first album [The Beta Band] was written in the studio,” singer Stephen Mason says. “But we were ridiculously prepared for this one.” The as-yet-untitled album, the follow-up to 2001’s Hot Shots II, is due in late March.
“I initially wrote a load of songs, and gave the demos to the band,” Mason says. “They went away and each did a version, so we ended up with four versions of each song. Then we had to condense those four versions down to make another version, and we took that and used it as the starting point for the studio.”
The process was laborious to say the least, but it resulted in twelve songs that are among the most cohesive the band have ever recorded, and a louder, more aggressive sound than previous efforts. “This album is, in some ways, a lot less unusual than the other stuff we’ve done,” Mason says. “Unlike in the past, where we’d record a one-minute song with a fifteen-minute outro, there are no monoliths on this one. Some are much more like pop songs, for us anyway.”
The self-produced album — recorded in Wales during an eight-week stretch this summer — is currently being mixed by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead) and the band. Among the tracks are “Assessment,” which features a brass section. Mason describes it as “guitar-led with quite a large rock tribal rhythm behind it.” Mason likens “Space Beatle” to “a really sad guy alone in a mine, mining for feelings. The only thing he’s got with him is a tiny little hammer and an out of tune electric organ.” But “Simple” is a “classic acoustic guitar song” that is among the most commercial tunes the group has ever recorded.
A pair of DVDs are slated to accompany the album, one a making-of film shot by Scottish comedian Pete Rankin and the other a collection of twelve videos. Mason, drummer Robin Jones, sampler John Maclean and bassist Richard Greentree will each shoot three of the low-budget videos, which will either be set to demo version of songs from the album or culled from the six tracks that didn’t make the final cut.
Source Rollingstone.com.

Hawaiian singer/songwriter Jack Johnson will headline a benefit concert on Jan. 3 in Oahu, Hawaii. The event will also feature performances by Michael Franti & Spearhead, DJ Logic, Makana and Amy Hanaiali’I & Willie K.
The goal of the concert is to raise funds for the Kokua Hawaii Foundation, which works to preserve Hawaii’s natural environment. Some funds have been earmarked to start school recycling and gardening programs on Oahu, in the hope that similar programs will eventually be implemented throughout the state.
As previously reported, Johnson has two releases on the horizon for Nov. 25 via his Brushfire label. The first is a DVD of the surfing film “Thicker Than Water,” which will be accompanied with a 14-track soundtrack featuring two newly recorded songs.
Johnson is in the midst of a tour of Australia and New Zealand, which hits Christchurch on Friday (Nov. 14).
Source Billboard.com.

Fans of veteran modern rock act the Cure will get a late Christmas present on Jan. 27, when Fiction/Elektra/Rhino releases the four-disc boxed set “Join the Dots: B-Sides and Rarities, 1978-2001 (The Fiction Years).” Frontman Robert Smith personally supervised the project, which will feature a 76-page booklet with track-by-track commentary from Smith and bassist Simon Gallup.
The 22-track first disc spans 1978-1987 and includes “Another Journey by Train” (the B-side to “A Forest”) as well as a version of “Lament” which was only available in 1982 on a single inserted in copies of the magazine Flexipop. Disc two is highlighted by “Sugar Girl” (the B-side to “Just Like Heaven”), alternate mixes of “Icing Sugar” and “How Beautiful You Are” and three different versions of the Doors’ “Hello I Love You.”
The third disc, collecting 15 tracks from 1992-1996, sports tunes contributed to soundtracks for “The Crow” (“Burn”) and “Judge Dredd” (“Dredd Song”), “Halo” (the B-side to “Friday I’m in Love”) and covers of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” and David Bowie’s “Young Americans.”
Disc four rounds up 15 cuts from 1996-2001, such as an acoustic version of “Just Say Yes,” the import-only “Coming Up,” a cover of Depeche Mode’s “World in Your Eyes” and alternate mixes of “Wrong Number,” “This Is a Lie” and “Strange Attraction.”
Source Billboard.com.

Following in the footsteps of its history-making opening day last season, Killington opens Nov. 10, at noon for skiing and riding with top to bottom terrain from Killington Peak to the base of the K1 Express Gondola. Since Nov. 7, Killington snowmakers have been stationed at the helm of the most extensive snowmaking system in North America, making snow for opening day. An average of two-to-three foot base depths (deeper in some spots) can be credited to the resort’s access to 600 million gallons of water for snowmaking.
Killington plans to open with eight trails and two lifts across three distinct runs. Skiers and riders may access terrain via the K1 Express Gondola and the Glades Triple Chairlift. Trails include Great Northern, Rime and East Glade.
Killington traditionally sets the pace for early season skiing and riding in eastern North America. Because of its snowmaking capacity, by Thanksgiving, Killington typically has nearly 80 trails open for all ability levels, often two to three times more than the nearest competitor.
In other mountain openings, Copper Mountain in Colorado opened to the general public on November 1st. Mt.Rose-Ski Tahoe was recently blessed with 16 inches of snow and has opened as well. Snowbird in Utah, plans to pen on Saturday, November 14th.
Source skinet.com.

The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution have joined with the Federal City Council to create a National Music Center & Museum in Washington, D.C., Billboard Bulletin reports. According to Mayor Anthony Williams, the center will be a state-of-the-art facility to showcase America’s musical heritage.
The museum will be the core of a mixed-use development project to be built on the former site of the Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington D.C. It will have 55,000 square feet of exhibit space, including two performance halls.
The museum is scheduled for completion in 2008. There are no financing details at present. There are tentative plans for the Sinatra family to donate Frank Sinatra

The way it is: BMG Heritage has set a Jan. 13 release for two sets celebrating the career of pianist Bruce Hornsby. The CD “Greatest Radio Hits” is Hornsby’s first greatest-hits package. His first DVD release, the 1990 concert film “A Night on the Town,” will also hit stores that day.
Greatest Radio Hits” sports Hornsby’s best-known tracks, including “Mandolin Rain,” “Look Out Any Window,” “The Valley Road” and his breakthrough hit, “The Way It Is.” The set also features live versions of “The End of the Innocence” and “Jacob’s Ladder,” the former a collaboration with Don Henley that Henley made famous, and the latter a Hornsby compilation that proved a hit for Huey Lewis.
Additionally, the album boasts “Go Back to Your Woods,” a new and previously unreleased collaboration with Robbie Robertson.
As for “A Night on the Town,” it was filmed in 1990 in Los Angeles and features a host of guest artists, including Shawn Colvin, Bela Fleck and Jerry Garcia. Hornsby and his band the Range whip through a bevy of hits and rarities, including a cover of Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine.”
Source Billboard.com.

Rock music played lead in giving Hungarian baby boomers the resolve to bring down their communist state, says one of those reformers who today is a government official.
Andras Simonyi, Hungary’s ambassador to the United States, spent an hour Saturday night discussing the impact of Western songs on Eastern European politics before an invitation-only audience of 250 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Simonyi, 51, was a devoted fan of the Beatles, Cream, Traffic and Jimi Hendrix (news) when their releases weren’t officially permitted in Hungary. Records and tapes sometimes were smuggled in or recorded from foreign radio broadcasts.
Hungary became a democracy in 1990