2003

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

U.S. Tour dates for Ryan Adams have been released on the heels of his two latest releases Rock N Rolland Love is Hell pt.1, released last Tuesday, November 4th. Love is Hell pt.2 is due out on December 9th. The seven date tour includes many small club venues that will bring the always unpredictable, yet musically reniventable musician up close and personal with his fans.
Tour Dates –
12/06/03 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory 12/07/03 Washington, DC 9:30 Club 12/09/03 Ithaca, NY Cornell University 12/10/03 Tontonto, ONT Opera House 12/11/03 Ann Arbor, MI Michigan Theatre 12/13/03 Chicago, IL Riviera 12/14/03 Minneapolis, MN 1st Ave
Source losthighwayrecords.com.

Moby has reactivated his Voodoo Child alter ego for the album “Baby Monkey,” due Jan. 27 via V2. The 12-track set is the seven-years-in-the-making follow-up to Voodoo Child’s lone full-length, 1996’s “The End of Everything.”
Moby says he was inspired to unearth Voodoo Child after attending an underground dance party in Glasgow last winter. “The DJ’s were playing hard, sexy, straightforward dance music, and it was perfect,” he says. “I was reminded of just how much I love hard, sexy, straightforward dance music, and when I arrived home the next day I decided to make a simple, straightforward dance record. Not an experimental record, not an avant-garde record, but a straightforward, underground, electronic dance record.”
A 12-inch vinyl single for “Light in Your Eyes” b/w “Electronic” will be available Tuesday (Nov. 11), with a single for “Take It Home” b/w “Strings” to follow in December.
Also on the horizon is “18 B-Sides & DVD,” due Nov. 18 from V2. The release combines an audio disc of B-sides from last year’s “18” album along with four new songs, while the DVD features the videos from that set.
Source Billboard.com.

Bobby Hatfield, who with partner Bill Medley pioneered “blue-eyed soul” as the Righteous Brothers with hits like “Unchained Melody” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” died Wednesday night of undetermined causes at a hotel, his manager said. He was 63.
Hatfield’s body was discovered in his bed at 7 p.m. EST, a half-hour before the duo was to perform at Miller Auditorium on the Western Michigan University campus, manager David Cohen said.
“It’s a shock, a real shock,” Cohen said during a telephone interview. Medley, who teamed with Hatfield 42 years ago, was “broken up. He’s not even coherent,” Cohen said.
Hatfield’s body was taken from the hotel about 10 p.m. directly to Lansing, where an autopsy was to be performed, Joe Hakim, an executive with the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Kalamazoo, told the Kalamazoo Gazette.
Miller Auditorium executive director Bill Biddle told the audience at 7:05 p.m. that the 7:30 p.m. show had been canceled because of “a personal emergency of an unspecified nature.”
Hatfield had been sleeping most of the day in his room, Hakim said. When he didn’t answer a wakeup call about 6 p.m., hotel staff and authorities entered the room and found the singer’s body.
The Righteous Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year.
Source cnn.com.