Archive: 2003

Despite ongoing complaints that the world

The list of artists confirmed to play Bonnaroo NE during August 8-10 in Riverton, NY has been announced. The Dead will be playing both nights along with a list of other acts that include: Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds, Bob Dylan,Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers,The String Cheese Incident, Ween, Gov’t Mule Medeski Martin & Wood, moe., Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade, Yo La Tengo, Talib Kweli, Rusted Root, Soulive, North Mississippi Allstars, Yonder Mountain String Band, Disco Biscuits, Cut Chemist, Grandaddy, X-ecutioners, Kings of Leon, and Los Amigos Invisibles. More bands are too be announced shortly. Tickets go on sale May 7th.
For a full list of info visit Bonnaroo.com

More than seventy acts performed across five stages this weekend at the fourth Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Drawing more than 30,000 to the Empire Polo Fields in Indio, Calif., the festival closed last night with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, while a politically charged set by the Beastie Boys finished off Saturday’s bill.
The Chili Peppers’ performance was dominated by their recent string of modern rock radio hits, including opener “By the Way,” “Around the World,” “Californication,” “Otherside,” and “Scar Tissue.” The set closed with the group’s “Give It Away.”
Other Sunday highlights included Iggy Pop’s first performance in more than 25 years with the surviving members of the Stooges. The group, augmented by punk rock icon Mike Watt on bass, sounded sharp as it powered through such staples as “TV Eye” and “Fun House.”
Sets by Sonic Youth, Interpol, and the White Stripes didn’t disappoint. Earlier in the day, the 20-member strong Polyphonic Spree added a healthy dose of the bizarre with its blend of Queen-style pomp rock and salvation-seeking, white-robed choir.
In the Sahara Tent, some of the biggest names in dance and electronic music held court, including Richie Hawtin, Deep Dish, and Felix da Housecat. Last night, Underworld had thousands of dancers on the verge of frenzy with a set that featured dance favorites like “Two Months Off,” “King of Snake,” and “Born Slippy Nuxx.”
On Saturday, the Beastie Boys played just their second U.S. show since fall 2001. The group debuted a new song with the repeated line “That’s it / that’s all / that’s all there is,” as well as its recent anti-war track “In a World Gone Mad,” which the Beasties offered via download from its Web site. Nonetheless, the best responses came for such classics as “So What You Want,” “Root Down,” “Intergalactic,” and even a snippet of the ancient “Brass Monkey.”
Taking a cue from a question-and-answer session held earlier in the day by Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, the Beasties expressed their dissatisfaction with what they called the Bush administration’s “bullying” foreign policy and urged concertgoers to vote for “anyone but this fool” in the 2004 election.
Earlier in the day, hometown rock outfit Queens Of The Stone Age unleashed an uncommonly powerful set highlighted by the singles “No One Knows” and “Go With the Flow,” as well as older cuts such as “Regular John” and “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret.” Other mainstage performers included Ben Harper, the Donnas, N*E*R*D, Blur, and in what is expected to be their only U.S. show of the year, Swedish rock upstarts the Hives.
Source Billboard.com.

Pearl Jam is working with the organization Conservation International to make the environment a little safer by offsetting the greenhouse gas emissions caused by their current tour. According to Pearl Jam

Norah Jones and the Roots will perform a free concert May 9 at New York’s Battery Park as part of the Tribeca Film Festival. The concert, titled 100% NYC: A Concert Celebrating the Tribeca Film Festival will showcase a slew of music and movies, including those starring Jay-Z, the Ramones, and Eric Clapton. The 2003 Tribeca Film Festival will take place May 3 -May 11 throughout the lower Manhattan neighborhood of Tribeca and additional performers will be announced at a later date.
Source Billboard.com.

Radiohead and Sigur Ros will create new music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company’s piece “Split Sides,” which will debut Oct. 14 at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). It

As the summer festival season gets jammed packed, there

High-quality design and simplicity of use are expected to be the hallmarks of the new digital music service from Apple Computer, to be unveiled Monday (April 28).
Label sources mention that the service is an a la carte download store — not unlike that of rival Liquid Audio — that is built into Apple’s iTunes player. No subscription is required for the service, and tracks are expected to retail for an average of 99 cents. Once purchased, tracks are transferred to the consumer’s iTunes music library and are automatically synched to the user’s iPod portable player.
Content can also be burned to CD. Credit-card information is stored on file in the store’s shopping-cart system so the consumer does not have to re-enter the information for each purchase. The offering is expected to be made available initially only to users of Apple computers.
As part of its announcement, Apple is expected to unveil content-licensing deals with all five major labels. The Apple service is also expected to feature music from high-profile acts whose repertoire has not previously been available for digital distribution.
Source Billboard.com.

The estates of late Doors vocalist Jim Morrison and his wife, Pam Courson, have filed an 11-count trademark-infringement lawsuit against original band members Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger, among other. .
The suit, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges that a new touring incarnation of the Doors — which includes keyboardist Manzarek, guitarist Krieger, and vocalist Ian Astbury (formerly of the Cult) — has “wrongfully misappropriated” the band’s name and logo, including reciting Morrison’s poetry during performances. The suit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, claims that the defendants are in “a deliberate scheme” to enrich themselves and “confuse the public.”
The complaint mirrors a suit filed earlier this year by John Densmore, former drummer and co-founder of the Doors. The group is also facing a lawsuit from former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, alleging breach of oral contract.
The Doors short tour continues with a date tonight in Boston at the Orpheum.
Source Billboard.com.

Since their debut with 2000

Mike Gordon of Phish, Jamie Masefield of the Jazz Mandolin Project and Doug Perkins of Smoking Grass will perform two shows as Grappa Boom at the Iron Horse in Northhampton, MA on May 31st. The trio plays original compositions as well as a variety of jazz and bluegrass standards. This trio has performed previously a couple times for fundraisers in the town of Starksboro, VT. Masefield and Perkins have also collaborated numerous times amongst the coffee houses and small bars of Burlington, VT. For ticket info visit – Iheg.com

Janes Addiction is hoping to release its first studio album in 13 years, “Hypersonic on June 24th. This will be the group’s first new album since 1990’s “Ritual de lo Habitual.”
Lead singer Perry Farrell is working hard to make sure “Hypersonic” is released before the July 3 kickoff of Lollapalooza, which Jane’s Addiction will headline. “We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us,” he admits. “We’re going from zero to mach 8!” He says Jane’s will be featuring quite a bit of the new material in its Lollapalooza set and is “going to play a certain amount of shows around the country and in the clubs to get heated up” before the festival gets underway.
“Hypersonic” picks up right where Jane’s left off in the early ’90s, powered by guitarist Dave Navarro’s signature licks, Stephen Perkins’ octopus-armed drumming, and Farrell’s high-register yelps. Among the highlights are the intense rock assaults of “Just Because” and “Wrong Girl” and the groove-rooted “The Riches,” which Farrell says “is about all the things in life that are truly enriching — and none of the subjects are stacks of cash!”
Source Billboard.com.

Epic/Legacy will on May 13 release a 15-track compilation that collects songs from George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars, as well as a number of artists who worked with Clinton, including Bootsy Collins, Walter “Junie” Morrison, Jerome Brailey’s Mutiny, and Micro Wave. The album, “Six Degrees of P-Funk: The Best of George Clinton & His Funk Family,” features four cuts from the P-Funk All-Stars, and contains nine songs that have never before been released on CD in the U.S.
The selections from Walter “Junie” Morrison (“Love Has Taken Me Over,” “Rappin’ About Rappin’ (Uh-Uh-Uh)”), Mutiny (“Funk’n’Bop,” “Lump”), Philippe Wynne (“Never Gonna Tell It,” “Breakout’), the Sweat Band (“Freak To Freak”), and Micro Wave (“Instant Reply,” “Misunderstood”), have been long out of print, at least stateside. The set is anchored by P-Funk classics “If Anybody Gets Funked Up (It’s Gonna Be You),” “Funky Kind (Gonna Knock It Down),” “One of These Summers,” and “Pumpin’ It Up.
Source Billboard.com.

Backing up last year

The Denver area’s renowned Red Rocks Amphitheatre is the subject and benefactor of a new CD compilation to be distributed through Best Buy. All proceeds from “Red Rocks Volume I: Carved in Stone” — which features songs by Indigo Girls, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, the Allman Brothers Band, Blues Traveler, and more — will go to the Preserve the Rocks Fund, which is dedicated to the restoration and upkeep of the venue.
“Carved in Stone” features 10 songs recorded between 1994 and 2002 and also include contributions from Rickie Lee Jones, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, String Cheese Incident, and Little Feat. Seven of the album’s recordings are seeing their first-ever commercial release on the compilation.
Here is the track list for “Red Rocks Volume I: Carved in Stone”:
“Bittersweet,” Big Head Todd & the Monsters”The Best of What’s Around,” Dave Matthews Band”Ghost,” Indigo Girls”Simple,” Phish”Hate To Lose Your Lovin’,” Little Feat”Close Your Eyes,” String Cheese Incident”Give,” Widespread Panic”Alone,” Blues Traveler”Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More,” Allman Brothers Band”Company,” Rickie Lee Jones
Source Billboard.com.

New Orleans funk ensemble Galactic is recording a new full-length album and has enlisted producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura to lend his talents in the studio. “Working with this band in New Orleans gives me a whole different palate of flavors,” said a statement from Nakamura, who has worked with the likes of Gorillaz, Prince Paul, and Kool Keith.
“Dan is the perfect producer for us right now,” added Galactic bassist Robert Mercurio. “We were already headed in this direction, and it’s great to have a producer who can run with that.”
The fruit of this collaboration — due in the fall on Volcano Records — will be Galactic’s first studio album in three years. It will be the follow-up to 2000’s “Late for the Future,” which debuted at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart. In September 2001, the group released the live document “We Love ‘Em Tonight: Live at Tipitina’s,” which debuted at No. 3 on the same chart.
In addition to previously announced appearances at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Manchester, Tenn.’s Bonnaroo festival, the band is also hitting a number of other fairs and package concerts this summer, including performances at Cityfest Live in Charlotte, N.C., the All Good Festival in Masontown, W.V., Jubilee Cityfest in Montgomery, Ala., and the 1000 Lakes Festival in Detroit Lakes, Minn.
Source Billboard.com.

Wilco will be placing a new six-song EP available on their web site

Dance clubs, concert halls and even outdoor festivals are in danger of being put out of business due to a new piece of legislation that passed in Congress on April 10th. According to the bill, any individual who owns or operates a venue where audience members are using drugs could be sent to jail or subjected to steep fines. The bill was tacked onto the Amber Alert Act, concerning child abductions

Blues legend, BB King and his trusty sidekick Lucille are still going strong and will release Reflections, his first album in three years on June 10th. King celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of his first recording later this year. The 13 track recording contains 12 covers, including songs by Lonnie Johnson and Clyde Otis, as well as a remake of King

What started as an annual birthday celebration for Frank Zappa, has matured into the most popular Zappa tribute act in the world. Founder, Andre Cholomondeley, has spearheaded his zealous interest and enthusiasm for his inspirational figure into a well-oiled music machine assembling parts consisting of original members from prior Zappa recordings and tours.