2003

Former Beatle George Harrison, Prince, John Mellencamp and Jackson Browne are among the nominees on the 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ballot.
Harrison, who died of cancer in November 2001, is already in the rock hall as a member of the Beatles. Former bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney preceded him for their solo work.
Previous nominees back for another try include the Sex Pistols, Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Gram Parsons and Patti Smith. Other nominees include the Dells, the “5” Royales, Bob Seger, the Stooges, Traffic and ZZ Top.
Ballots were mailed this week to voting members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.
Artists are eligible to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after at least 25 years have passed since their first record was released. The inductees likely will be announced in December.
Soure 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.

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.

A new DVD of Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Legend Live, features the last two recorded concerts before the reggae legend

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.

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.

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.