June 2004

Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro, bassist Chris Chaney and drummer Stephen Perkins have formed a new band with Skycycle vocalist Steve Isaacs. The as-yet-unnamed group has penned three songs and has begun recording with producer Danny Saber, who worked with Navarro on his 2001 Capitol solo debut, “Trust No One.”

Speculation has been rampant that this spells the end of Jane’s Addiction, which has been inactive since completing touring and promotion for its 2003 Capitol reunion album, “Strays.”

“I am not replacing [Jane’s Addiction vocalist] Perry [Farrell],” Isaacs wrote on his official Web site. “Even writing that like it were possible is crazy to me. Dave, Stephen, and Chris and I are just taking some time to do what is the most fun thing in the world to do — make music and write songs.”

Navarro was more specific in a Web post of his own this week, when he proclaimed, “The deal is that [the reunion] simply didn’t work out. Sometimes things just don’t work out. In all honesty, we have broken up and rejoined roughly four times over the years. Perhaps that should shed some light as to where we are now. We really don’t know. We do know that we really gave it everything we had this time and we actually made a really great record after so many years of silence.”

“Sometimes the best creative relationships are the most combustible and they aren’t meant to last forever,” he continued. Both Capitol and Jane’s Addiction’s management declined further comment on Navarro’s post.

“I don’t know what the future of Jane’s Addiction is, but I do know from being in a band for five years, that you yearn to play with other people and see what making NEW music sounds like,” Isaacs said. “Life is beautiful, magical, and way too short, and to spend time not making music makes you die a little bit inside. I know about that, too.”

The news comes just days after the Farrell-reared Lollapalooza tour cancelled its entire summer run due to poor ticket sales.

Source billboard.com.

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Copyright 2004 Billboard

A disc of recently discovered, previously unheard demos for the Clash’s “London Calling” will be included in the Legacy edition of the classic album, due Sept. 21 via Epic. Although a track list for the demos has not been finalized, it is tipped to include songs that did not make the final cut for “London Calling.” The tapes were recently discovered in storage belonging to guitarist/vocalist Mick Jones.

In addition to the original album and the aforementioned demos, “London Calling: The 25th Anniversary Edition” will boast a DVD chronicling the Clash at that point in its existence. A 45-minute documentary was created by longtime biographer Don Letts, and features recording studio footage, previously unreleased live performances, interviews with Jones, the late Joe Strummer, Topper Headon and Paul Simonon and a rare conversation with band manager Kosmo Vinyl.

The new edition will also feature full song lyrics, a new essay and rare photos by band photographer Pennie Smith.

Released in 1979, “London Calling” has come to be regarded as one of the best albums of the punk era. It features such Clash classics as the title cut, “Train in Vain,” “Clampdown,” “Guns of Brixton,” “Spanish Bombs,” “Rudie Can’t Fail” and “Death or Glory.”

Source billboard.com.

Nebraska wunderkind Conor Oberst is taking Bright Eyes on the road for what’s billed as An Evening of Solo & Collaborative Performances Featuring Bright Eyes, Jim James (Of My Morning Jacket), and M. Ward.

The three singer/songwriters mounted a tour under the same name in February. Each performer does a solo set, but all three are on stage throughout most of the show, contributing instrumentation and vocals to one another’s songs.

The jaunt runs from October 8-19, beginning in Fort Worth, Texas at the Ridglea Theatre. The tour runs up the West Coast and wraps in Vancouver, B.C.
M. Ward has several appearances scheduled prior to the tour, including the Merge Records 15th Anniversary Festival July 29 in Carrboro, N.C.

James is currently on the European festival circuit with My Morning Jacket. He’ll appear solo at the Gram Parsons tribute shows in Southern California July 9-10.

Source pollstar.com.

Wilco have settled a lawsuit filed in the U.K. by progressive electronic label Irdial-Discs over the sample that spawned the title of the band’s 2002 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

The sample, used in the distortion-laced outtro to the song “Poor Places,” is taken from The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations’s “Phonetic Alphabet Nato,” which consists of a woman’s voice repeating the words “yankee, hotel, foxtrot” in a monotone for ninety seconds.

The Conet Project is a historic collection of secret “Numbers Stations,” shortwave radio transmissions used by the espionage agencies around the world to communicate to their agents in the field.” Although the exact origins of the broadcasts are unknown, Irdial claimed that the “distortions, nuances and noises” in its recording make it distinct and available to copyright.

“When it was interpolated into the mix, Jeff [Wilco frontman Tweedy] thought since it was an unidentifiable source, it was not a copyrightable recording,” says Wilco attorney Josh Grier. “The comparison is if somebody goes out and records a lion roaring [and you sample it], the lion can’t sue you, but maybe the person who made the recording can.”

Exact terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Grier said Irdial will receive a “share of the sound recording royalty on that track.”

The Black Keys will rumble again with the release of their third album, Rubber Factory, September 7th on Fat Possum Records. The Akron, Ohio, garage blues rawk duo’s new set follows their breakthrough album, 2003’s Thickfreakness, which earned the band a spot in the final ten albums for the Shortlist Prize.

Among Thickfreakness’ converts were Sleater-Kinney and Beck, both of whom offered the Black Keys opening spots on tours last year. Those bits of good fortune were tempered by the fact that singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney barely left the road all year, a rugged schedule that prompted them to postpone a European tour late last year due to exhaustion.

“We were given opportunities we really couldn’t pass up,” Auerbach says. “But that touring really kicked the shit out of us. I just saw some pictures from Europe and we looked so fucking miserable. So we took a little time off, because we didn’t want to have anything to do with each other.”

Auerbach had started to write some of the songs for Rubber Factory while on tour last year, but the bulk of the new material began to take shape after he and Carney were able to spend a few weeks apart. When the time came to record, the Black Keys had to find a new haven to do so, as Carney’s landlord sold the house he was renting, depriving the duo of the basement that yielded Thickfreakness. Earlier this year, Auerbach and Carney hopped in the car and began to scout new locations. “There’s no shortage of old, empty industrial buildings in Akron,” Auerbach says. They settled on a warehouse that housed a tire manufacturer, a locale that gave the new album its title.

“I guess it’s probably not ideal for a studio,” Auerbach says, “but then, we don’t really know what ideal would be. The first floor of this place is a cavernous room where they stored the tires. The second floor was the lab with the offices. They just put us in the corner by ourselves, where no one could hear us.”

Auerbach promises a bit of evolution from the Black Keys, as on “The Lengths,” a song that he says features a “hypnotic vibe.” “There are a few slower songs, some acoustic guitar, there’s a more atmospheric thing going on,” he says. “And I’m happier with my songwriting. It’s still simplified and raw, but more experimental.”

But Rubber Factory won’t be a shocking departure from the spare racket of their previous two albums. “We still know what we want to do,” Auerbach says, “the same as we did when we were seventeen. I’ve heard enough records with bands changing their format that end up sucking ass to know better. We upgraded our tape player — the tape is now a bit thicker. That’s about the only thing that changed.”

Source rollingstone.com.

Ben Folds is pushing back the release date of his next solo album to early 2005 in order to give William Shatner’s upcoming collection, “Has Been,” his full attention. The set is being targeted for a September release by Shout! Factory.

“It is a great record and it is really worth going out and doing some shows in major cities,” Folds tells Billboard.com. “[Shatner] is not a musician at all — he’s not rapping or singing — but he is still part of the music. I’ve never heard a record quite like it.” Shatner previously guested on Folds’1998 solo album “Fear of Pop, Vol.1”

Shatner’s album was produced and written mostly by Folds and includes cameos by Henry Rollins, Aimee Mann and Joe Jackson, who duets with Shatner on Pulp’s “Common People.” Author Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”) also co-wrote a song with Folds for the project.

Currently on the road with Rufus Wainwright and Guster through mid-July, Folds plans on returning home to Nashville after the tour to finish his next studio release. Due out in January via Epic and currently untitled, the album includes new tracks such as “Trusted” and “Late,” as well as a few remixed or alternate versions of tracks from Folds’ recent EPs.

“Right now, it doesn’t feel like an album that has a title,” says Folds. “I think because the songs are basic enough to me, it almost has a debut solo artist feel to it. It seems less like a tangent to me in the songs and the production than ‘Rockin’ the Suburbs’ [Folds’ last studio disc], which seems like an over-the-top pop kind of [album]. This doesn’t seem like a direction to me, it just seems like songs I wrote and they are approached much more from the piano and with a little more of a live, rougher edges, feel.”

While Folds enjoys the unfettered creativity and spontaneity associated with releasing EPs (“I love putting out EPs — that keeps me sane,” he says), he foresees a day when all of his non-album projects will be released as “a cheap box set of EPs.”

Fans are finally about to get Folds’ third EP, which is due out in a few weeks and will be available via online and at his shows. Originally scheduled for release last November, “Super D” includes new tracks “Rent a Cop,” “Adelaide” and “Kalamazoo,” along with a cover of the Darkness’ “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” and, more than likely, a live version of the late Ray Charles’ “Them That Got.”

Source billboard.com.

After six years away, the Beastie Boys return this week to the No. 1 position on The Billboard 200 with “To the 5 Boroughs.” Their latest Capitol set opened with sales of 360,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

It’s the follow-up to 1998’s “Hello Nasty,” which also debuted at No. 1, selling 682,000 copies in its opening week. It remained on top for three weeks and has sold 3.8 million to date.

Source billboard.com.

Former Pearl Jam/Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons gets a lift from a host of his ex-bandmates on his solo debut, “Attention Dimension,” due in August. Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder takes the mic on a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond,” featuring Primus’ Les Claypool on bass. Chili Peppers bassist Flea guests on “Suluhiana” and “Water Song,” the latter boasting Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard on guitar.

Irons left Pearl Jam for health reasons in early 1998, following the release of the album “Yield” and an Australian tour. “I had to dedicate myself to living a life that would promote healing and a right way of life for me and my family,” he says. “The music on these recordings [is] what was creatively inspired along the way. I could not tour at that point but I still needed to create.”

“Making this music was a way for me to work through all the changes and growing I had to do to become healthy again,” he continues. “This music also helped me reconnect with some old friends and former bandmates, who I am very happy and thankful to say have performed as guest artists.”

Irons is abetted throughout “Attention Dimension” by his Eleven colleague Alain Johannes, who plays an array of instruments on seven tracks. Eleven’s Natasha Shneider offers vocals on “Hearing It Doubled,” while Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament augments the groove on “Dunes.” The cut “Breaking Sea” includes a sample of Spectrasonics’ “Heart of Africa.”

Irons joined Pearl Jam for two songs during an all-star concert last October in Santa Barbara, Calif. It was just the second time he had played with the group since he left.

Here is the track list for “Attention Dimension”:

“Jackie Groove” featuring Alain Johannes
“Suluhiana” featuring Flea, Johannes
“Ocean’s Light”
“Hearing It Doubled” featuring Johannes, Natasha Shneider
“Shine On, You Crazy Diamond” featuring Eddie Vedder, Les Claypool, Johanne, Shneider
“Underwater Circus Music”
“Dunes” featuring Jeff Ament, Johannes
“Come Running” featuring Johannes
“Water Song” featuring Flea, Stone Gossard
“Breaking Sea” featuring Johannes
“Aquaman’s Electric Band” featuring Johannes

Source billboard.com.