2003

The album blues great John Lee Hooker was working on at the time of his death will be released next month. “Face to Face,” which Hooker was completing with his daughter Zakiya, is due Oct. 28 via a previously reported licensing deal between the Hooker estate and Eagle Rock Entertainment. The album features feature guest appearances by Van Morrison, George Thorogood, Elvin Bishop, Warren Haynes, Dickey Betts, Johnny Winter and Jack Casady, among others.
The album is a collection of leftover songs that are in many cases embellished with overdubbed performances from the various guests. The raw tracks, all of which feature Hooker on vocal and guitar, were recorded during the sessions for the Pointblank/Virgin albums he released over the last decade of his life.
Source Billboard.com.

Three years after the death of founding member Allen Woody, Andy Hess has been named permanent bass player for Gov’t Mule. The new lineup will begin a fall tour Oct. 3 at the Backyard in Austin, Texas.
Hess, who has recorded and toured with John Scofield, the Black Crowes, Joan Osborne and Freedy Johnston, among others, is one of many musicians who has performed with the band since Woody’s passing, touring briefly with the group in 2002.
Gov’t Mule’s “Deep End” projects — which found the band collaborating with a host of legendary bassists — were special, Hess adds, “but I think those guys are also really psyched to have a unit again, to be a group just coming together and playing music, maybe doing some recording — becoming a band again.”
As previously reported, ATO will on Oct. 7 release “The Deepest End” CD and DVD, chronicling a six-hour, all-star Gov’t Mule concert held May 3 at New Orleans’ Saenger Theatre. The group will appear the following evening on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”
Source Billboard.com.

Perhaps the most widely recognized voice in country music, Cash recorded more than 1,500 songs, which appeared on nearly 500 albums. His careerspanned more than four decades with trademark hits like “A Boy NamedSue,” “Folsom Prison Blues, “Ring of Fire” and “I Walk the Line.”
While Cash has long had one of the premiere voices in country music, his success crossed well over onto the pop scene. He had 48 singles onBillboard’s pop charts, rivaling both The Rolling Stones and The BeachBoys.
Source CNN.com.

A decade after a bitter breakup, seminal alternative rock act the Pixies may reunite next year. At deadline, rumors of a tour and a potential new studio album remain unconfirmed. The manger of frontman Frank Black (aka Black Francis) tells Billboard.com, “I have received an offer for the Pixies to perform in April. That said, over the past 10 years, I have received dozens of offers for the Pixies.” A spokesperson for the group’s former label, 4AD, had no comment on potential reunion plans.
The group’s last major tour came while supporting U2 on a number of U.S. dates on the 1992 Zoo TV trek. Goldenvoice Promotions head Paul Tollett tells Billboard.com he has tried to book the Pixies “every year” for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. “I still haven’t made any movement,” he reports. “[I’m] not sure if they are speaking to each other.”
Source Billboard.com.

Who knew: big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, let alone sing, astronomers revealed yesterday (Sept. 9).
“The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech,” said Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge. But the pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard piano keyboard. This is far, far deeper than humans can hear, the researchers said, and they believe it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe.
The sound is emanating from the Perseus Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies some 250 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.
Source Billboard.com.

Rhino Records/Warner Archives has set a Nov. 11 release date for “Once in a Lifetime,” a box set condensing the career of punk/pop iconoclasts Talking Heads. The three-CD, one-DVD set was compiled with the help of all four band members, who have not been on good terms since splitting in 1991.
The CD portion of “Once in a Lifetime” will comprise most of the band’s hits as well as rarities and favorite album cuts. Well-known tracks such as “Psycho Killer,” “Take Me to the River,” “Life During Wartime,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” “And She Was” and “Wild Wild Life” will sit alongside cuts such as “Pulled Up,” “Heaven,” “Slippery People,” “Houses in Motion” and “Sugar on My Tongue.”
Five previously unreleased tracks also find their way onto the audio discs — “In Asking Land” is an outtake from sessions for the group’s 1988 album “Naked” and it joins alternate versions of “Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town,” “New Feeling,” “Cities” and “Drugs.” Also featured is “A Clean Break (live),” a cut taken from the 1982 double-live LP “The Name of This Band is Talking Heads,” which has never been released on CD.
The box’s DVD is an upgrade of the 1988 VHS release “Storytelling Giant,” which features all of the band’s music videos. The disc will also include three videos that weren’t featured on that item’s initial release — “Blind,” “(Nothing But) Flowers” and “Sax and Violins,” a track that originally appeared on the 1991 soundtrack to the Wim Wenders film “Until the End of the World.”
Source Billboard.com.

The day after Dave Matthews’ releases his RCA solo debut, “Some Devil,” the Dave Matthews Band will play a benefit show in New York’s Central Park that is expected to draw upwards of 100,000 people. F
America Online is sponsoring the show and is using it to hype the newest version of its software, AOL 9.0. The concert, which RCA will tape for an immediate DVD and CD release, will be held on the park’s Great Lawn and will raise funds for the AOL Concert for the Schools! program, which will benefit The Fund for Public Schools of New York City and the Music Resource Center in DMB’s homebase of Charlottesville, Va.
Tickets are free and can be obtained through AOL and DMB’s official fan association, the Warehouse. Donations of at least $25 are requested and all seats are general admission. The band is also offering Warehouse/fan club members “preferred viewing section passes,” which includes access to a backstage barbecue picnic and an exclusive viewing area on the Great Lawn
“Some Devil,” which features guest appearances from regular Matthews collaborator Tim Reynolds and Phish’s Trey Anastasio, will kickstart a busy season for Matthews-related releases. According to a source, a CD/DVD of the Central Park show will be released in November, followed early next year by a three-DVD/six-CD collection taped at the band’s three-night September 2002 stand at the Gorge in George, Wash.
Source Billboard.com.

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel unveiled plans for their first major concert tour since 1983, due to kick off Oct. 18 at the Palace of Auburn Hills outside Detroit. The trek, dubbed Old Friends, will run through mid-December and will visit around 30 markets. Tickets for some shows will go on sale Monday (Sept. 15).
Shows will find the legendary folk/rock duo performing both acoustically and with a full backing band, which will include drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Mark Stewart, who played on Simon’s 2000 Warner Bros. album “You’re the One.”
“We’d like to stay as true to the spirit of the Simon & Garfunkel period and our work in the ’60s and early ’70s as we can,” Simon said. “If not note-for-note, then certainly we don’t intend to reimagine that work. We’re going to try to capture it as it was and not alter it.”
Although the bulk of the set lists will be drawn from “the body of the five albums we produced,” according to Simon, a handful of songs from the artists’ respective solo careers will be featured. Simon said he had always imagined his 1977 hit “Slip Slidin’ Away” as a Simon & Garfunkel song, while Garfunkel has frequently included Simon’s “American Tune” in his solo performances.
The pair embarked on a short tour in 1994, but remained apart for the rest of the decade amid reports that relations between the two artists were strained. But after being presented earlier this year with a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys — which they opened with a rendition of “The Sounds of Silence” — the seeds were planted for a full-scale reunion.
For a full list of cities vistit Billboard.com.

A film chronicling last fall’s star-studded George Harrison tribute at London’s Royal Albert Hall will open Oct. 3 in select U.S. cities. Filmed in high definition and recorded in 5.1 surround sound, “A Concert for George” will be released worldwide on DVD in November, distributed internationally via ArenaPlex LLC.
Legendary guitarist Eric Clapton served as the music director for the event, which featured appearances by Harrison’s surviving Beatles bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as friends Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Brown, Anoushka Shankar and Billy Preston. Among the Harrison songs they performed were “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “I Want To Tell You,” “Inner Light,” “Give Me Love,” “Taxman,” “I Need You” and “For You Blue.”
The event also saw members of Monty Python re-enacting some of Harrison’s favorite skits. Harrison financed and served as an executive producer of the comedy troupe’s second feature film, 1979’s “Life of Brian.”
The theatrical engagement will open in New York, Los Angeles and other select U.S. cities to be determined.
Source Billboard.com.