September 2004

The New York Dolls will release their first-ever live album, Morrissey Presents: The Return of the New York Dolls — Live From Royal Festival Hall, 2004, on September 28th. The CD and accompanying DVD were recorded at the band’s June show at the London venue as part of the Meltdown Festival.

Rabid Dolls fan, and this year’s Meltdown curator, Morrissey urged the legendary Seventies glam rockers to reunite after twenty-four years apart, and his Attack Records will release the album.

“It was just a moment of weakness that I said yes,” says singer David Johansen. “And I’m glad I did.”

The CD will consist exclusively of Dolls songs, while the DVD will feature such covers as Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart,” the Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets” and Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days.”

Sadly, The Return of the New York Dolls will be the last appearance on record by bassist Arthur “Killer” Kane, who passed away unexpectedly from leukemia on July 13th. “He was such a genius guy — really loving, and he had this intelligence that was indescribable,” Johansen says. “I was really looking forward to spending more time with him.”

Lone surviving members Johansen and guitarist Syl Sylvain may even bring the Dolls back into the studio. “I’m feeling that we’ll try and bang out a record this winter,” Johansen says, “and then hit all the festivals next summer.”

Source rollingstone.com.

Paul McCartney, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tony Bennett, Sonic Youth, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, Los Lonely Boys and Tegan & Sara will join event founder Neil Young on the bill for the 18th annual Bridge School Benefit. The shows will be held Oct. 23-24 at Shoreline Amphitheatre outside San Francisco.

Performing as part of Bridge School’s traditional acoustic format will be unfamiliar to a number of the artists, particularly McCartney. The former Beatle will be offering what is believed to be his first acoustic set since a 1991 taping for “MTV Unplugged,” which was later released on CD.

Harper will be making his second Bridge appearance. His guest turn on Pearl Jam’s “Indifference” at the 2001 event was released on a holiday single for members of the band’s Ten Club fan organization.

The Peppers, Tegan & Sara and Sonic Youth will also each be making their second Bridge School visits, while Bennett and Los Lonely Boys will be making their event debut.

As for Young, the shows will cap a brief run of performances that comprises a Sept. 15 show in Berkeley, Calif., the Sept. 17 Clean Air benefit in Duncan, British Columbia, and the annual Farm Aid benefit on Sept. 18 outside Seattle.

Tickets for this year’s Bridge School go on sale Sunday (Sept. 12) via Ticketmaster.

Source billboard.com.

Scottish alternative rock act Franz Ferdinand has won the 2004 Nationwide Mercury Prize with its eponymous debut album. The annual music-industry award, recognizing the U.K. or Irish album of the year, was presented last night (Sept. 7) at the Grosvenor House hotel in Central London.

“We didn’t expect to win this,” said lead vocalist Alex Kapranos upon accepting the honor. “The bands [nominated] this year reflect a trend in the U.K. toward fantastic music.”

Franz Ferdinand and U.K. garage act the Streets had been 3/1 joint favorites to win the award, according to bookmaker William Hill.

The winner was chosen from a shortlist of 12 albums by a 11-strong panel comprising media representatives and artists, headed by author Simon Frith. The shortlist was announced July 20, having been selected from a pool of 180 nominated albums.

The prize ceremony was broadcast live nationally by Top 40 station BBC Radio 1 and on digital TV channel BBC 4. The award was established as the Mercury Music Prize in 1992 by labels body the British Phonographic Industry and the British Association of Record Dealers. It is sponsored by the Nationwide Building Society.

The full shortlist was: Basement Jaxx, “Kish Kash”; Belle & Sebastian, “Dear Catastrophe Waitress” (Rough Trade); Franz Ferdinand “Franz Ferdinand” (Domino); Jamelia, “Thank You”; Keane, “Hopes and Fears” (Island); Snow Patrol, “Final Straw” (Fiction); The Streets, “A Grand Don’t Come for Free” (Locked On/679); Joss Stone, “The Soul Sessions” (Relentless); Ty, “Upwards” (Big Dada); Amy Winehouse, “Frank” (Island); Robert Wyatt, “Cuckooland”; the Zutons, “Who Killed … The Zutons” (Deltasonic).

Source billboard.com.

Although a label spokesperson declined to confirm specifics, Universal Music Enterprises will release a three-CD boxed set from Nirvana in November. Limited editions of the project will include a DVD, which boasts footage of the Kurt Cobain-led band playing at a 1987 house party.

The box is expected to be one of the most in-demand items at music retail this holiday season. High hopes were fueled when portions of the DVD were screened at the recent National Association of Recording Merchandisers conference.

“From what I saw at [NARM] — which was amazing — I think it’s going to blow everyone away,” Newbury Comics music buyer Carl Mello tells Billboard. “It really will out-perform any expectations that customers may have — even if their expectations are huge.”

The boxed set was originally intended for release in Christmas 2001, to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of Nirvana’s breakthrough album, “Nevermind.” But surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic were thwarted by lawsuits from Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, who objected to their planned use of the previously unreleased track “You Know You’re Right” in the set.

The artists traded vicious barbs in the press, with Grohl and Novoselic claiming Love “couldn’t care less about Nirvana fans. She is using Nirvana’s music as a bargaining chip to increase leverage for her personal gain, without any regard for the Nirvana legacy.” For her part, Love maintained Cobain was by far the driving force in Nirvana’s success, and that Grohl and Novoselic were little more than hired hands.

The dispute was eventually settled in September 2002, with the parties agreeing to earmark “You Know You’re Right” for a self-titled Nirvana compilation released on Oct. 29, 2002. The album has gone on to sell 1.45 million copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, while the song rocketed to No. 1 on both Billboard’s Modern and Mainstream Rock Tracks charts.

“We were looking forward to releasing unheard Nirvana material for our personal sense of closure,” Grohl and Novoselic said before the suit was settled. “As the cycle of life moves forward, we are each living our own lives and moving on to new things. We only wanted to go on with the assurance of knowing that all of Nirvana’s music is where it really belongs; in the hearts and minds of millions of people in the world.

As previously reported, Novoselic will revisit his Nirvana past in the upcoming book “Of Grunge & Government: Let’s Fix this Broken Democracy!” Due later this month via RDV Books, the volume will also address Novoselic’s longstanding work in political activism.

Source billboard.com.

More than four hours of footage from Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival” will make up a two-disc DVD set of highlights from the June benefit concert. Due Oct. 19 via Duck/Reprise/Warner Strategic Marketing, the release features footage of some of the greatest living guitarists, including Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Joe Walsh, Pat Metheny and Jeff Beck, as well as the event’s esteemed host.

Staged at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the all-star show was the finale of a three-day event that centered on guitarists and their craft. Proceeds benefited the Crossroads Centre, a chemical addiction treatment and education center founded by Clapton in 1997 on the island of Antigua. Royalties from the sale of the DVD will also benefit the non-profit facility.

Clapton is featured throughout the set in combination with such players as Guy, Santana, Beck, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmie Vaughan, B.B. King and J.J. Cale. Others acts represented include ZZ Top, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Dan Tyminski, James Taylor, Vince Gill, Jerry Douglas, John Mayer, Larry Carlton, David Hildago, Steve Vai and Eric Johnson.

Along with performance footage in 5.1 Surround Sound, the DVD will boast artist interviews and a photo gallery. Highlights from “Crossroads Festival” will air Dec. 1 as a PBS special.

Here is the “Eric Clapton Crossroads Festival” DVD track list:

Disc one:
“Cocaine,” Eric Clapton
“Love in Vain Blues,” Robert Lockwood Jr.
“Killing Floor,” Clapton, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin and Jimmie Vaughan
“Sweet Home Chicago,” Clapton, Cray, Buddy Guy, Sumlin and Vaughan
“Six Strings Down,” Clapton, Cray, Robert Randolph and Vaughan
“Rock Me Baby,” Clapton, Guy, B.B. King and Vaughan
“I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” Dan Tyminski and Ron Block
“Road to Nash Vegas,” Tyminski and Block
“Copperline,” James Taylor with Jerry Douglas
“Steamroller,” Taylor and Joe Walsh
“Oklahoma Borderline,” Vince Gill and Douglas
“What the Cowgirls Do,” Gill and Douglas
“After Midnight,” J.J. Cale with Clapton
“Call Me the Breeze,” Cale with Clapton
“March,” Robert Randolph & the Family Band
“Green Light Girl,” Doyle Bramhall II
“Incident at Neshabur,” Carlos Santana
“Jingo,” Santana with Clapton
“City Love,” John Mayer
“Your Body Is a Wonderland,” Mayer

Disc two:
“Rag Bihag,” Vishwa Mohan Bhatt
“Tones for Elvin Jones,” John McLaughlin
“Josie,” Larry Carlton
“Question and Answer,” Pat Metheny
“Going Down Slow,” Honeyboy Edwards
“Time Makes Two,” Robert Cray
“Give Me Up Again,” Jonny Lang
“Neighborhood,” David Hildago
“Whispering a Prayer,” Steve Vai
“Desert Rose,” Eric Johnson
“Funk 49,” Joe Walsh
“Rocky Mountain Way,” Walsh
“I Shot the Sheriff,” Clapton
“Blues in C,” Clapton
“Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” Clapton and Jeff Beck
“La Grange,” ZZ Top
“Tush,” ZZ Top

Source billboard.com.

Highlights from last year’s Tell Us the Truth tour, which featured Steve Earle, R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, Billy Bragg and Tom Morello, will be released on CD (Oct. 5) and DVD (Oct. 19) via Artemis. The sets dovetail with the Nov. 2 release of the similarly themed CD/DVD “Axis of Justice: Concert Series Volume 1,” which also features Morello alongside System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian and members of Tool and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“Tell Us the Truth: The Live Concert Recording” features solo performances by Morello (as the Nightwatchman), Jill Sobule, Mills, Earle, Bragg, the Coup’s Boots Riley and Lester Chambers. The ensemble joins together for covers of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today.”

In addition to select concert clips and a soundcheck, the “Tell Us the Truth” DVD boasts footage from the Conference on Media Reform, a free-trade protest in Miami and a press conference.

The tour sprung out of the artists’ demand for greater accountability from mass media coverage of elections and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here is the “Tell Us the Truth” CD track list:

“People Get Ready,” Ensemble
“Five Long Years,” Lester Chambers
“Every Day I Have the Blues,” Lester Chambers
“California’s Dark,” the Nightwatchman
“You’d Better Not Kill in Texas,” Jill Sobule
“War Correspondent,” Jill Sobule
“Ohio,” Mike Mills
“The Mountain,” Steve Earle
“Christmas in Washington,” Steve Earle
“Underdog,” Boots Riley
“Five Million Ways To Kill a CEO,” Boots Riley
“The Price of Oil,” Billy Bragg
“Great Leap Forward,” Billy Bragg
“People Get Ready Medley,” Ensemble
“Time Has Come Today,” Ensemble

Source billboard.com.