2004

Hollywood Records has announced a July 13 release date for Together We’re Heavy, the highly anticipated second album from The Polyphonic Spree. In stark contrast to The Spree’s debut, The Beginning Stages Of…, which was recorded in two days and only intended as a demo to help the young group book gigs, Together We’re Heavy is the result of over a year’s work in the studio by the band and producers Eric Drew Feldman (Frank Black, Sparklehorse, Tripping Daisy) and The Speekers. The substantial advances in songwriting and production on songs that have emerged as live favorites in the last year, including the anthemic “Two Thousand Places” and “Hold Me Now,” “Diamonds/Mild Devotion To Majesty” and the epic “When The Fool Becomes A King” mark the realization of this incredible ensemble. See below for a full track list.

Audiences will get a sneak preview of the new record during their upcoming tour with rock legend David Bowie. The much-talked-about road show begins March 29 at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia. Dates have recently been added to the tour in New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Barbara and Anaheim, California; see below for the full itinerary.

The group will also perform on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno on April 21 and will perform “Light & Day” during their appearance on the April 20 episode of the hit NBC-TV sitcom “Scrubs.” “We’re all huge music fans on ‘Scrubs’ and are always looking for interesting, organic ways to incorporate music into the show,” says “Scrubs” supervising producer Neil Goldman. “When a bunch of us got a chance to experience The Polyphonic Spree live, we immediately sparked to the idea of not only featuring their music, but the band itself. We’re a show that loves to push the envelope creatively, and obviously so does the group, so it seemed like a perfect match for us.”

Tour Dates Opening for David Bowie:

March 29 – Philadelphia, PA – Wachovia Center
March 30 – Boston, MA – FleetCenter
March 31 – New York, NY – Angel Orensanz Center *
April 1 – Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre
April 2 – Ottawa, QC – Corel Center
April 4 – Quebec City, QC – Pepsi Coliseum
April 7 – Winnipeg, MB – Winnipeg Arena
April 9 – Edmonton, AB – Rexall Centre
April 11 – Kelowna, BC – Skyreach Place
April 13 – Portland, OR – Rose Garden
April 14 – Seattle, WA – Key Arena
April 16 – Berkeley, CA – Community Theatre
April 17 – Berkeley, CA – Community Theatre **
April 19 – Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl **
April 22 – Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre **
April 23 – Anaheim, CA – The Pond **
April 25 – Denver, CO – Budweiser Events Center
April 27 – Austin, TX – The Backyard
April 29 – Houston. TX – Woodlands
April 30 – New Orleans, LA – SaengerTheater

* headline date
** new Bowie date

See thepolyphonicspree.com for more info.

The top musicians, promoters, managers and media companies in the live music community have all pledged their support to HeadCount, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization that aims to register 100,000 new voters.

With the presidential election nearing, voter participation has become a unifying cause among musicians and their followers. Artists such as Bob Weir, a HeadCount board member and guitarist for The Dead, are calling on fans to exercise their fundamental rights as Americans to go to the polls.

“If every Dead Head in the state of Florida had voted in the last presidential election, it would be a very different world today,

Aretha Franklin was hospitalized over the weekend with an undisclosed ailment and remains hospitalized Monday, her publicist said. The hospital where she was taken was not disclosed. She turns 62 on Thursday.

“No other information on her illness is available at this time,” her publicist, Gwendolyn Quinn, said in a statement.

The Queen of Soul has energized audiences for more than four decades, is best known for her 1960s smash hit “Respect,” but she has had countless other hits, including “Chain of Fools” and “Baby I Love You.”

Franklin has won 16 Grammy awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 1990 and most recently, an award this year for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for the single, “Wonderful.”

Source cnn.com.

Sony Electronics says it will be shipping drives in about two months that accept blank DVDs with two data layers. Philips Electronics will start selling a similar drive in Europe in April, but is not saying when it will be available in the United States.

The write-once discs can store up to 8.5 gigabytes of data, or about 4 hours of DVD-quality movies, twice the capacity of regular blank DVDs. This means capacities for computer-burned DVDs are catching up with prerecorded movie DVDs, many of which are already dual-layer.

The new technology is sure to appeal to those who back up or copy movie DVDs, since they often have to reduce image quality or remove special features to fit a copied movie onto a single-layer disc. With a dual-layer drive, an exact copy on a single disc should be possible.

The two layers of the new discs are accessed from the same side — there is no need to flip the disc over to record to the second layer. Instead, a laser beam shines through the first layer to record on the second.

Sony will sell an internal drive for $230 and an external one for $330. They will be marketed only for Windows PCs, but the external one should work on Macintosh computers with the proper third-party software.

Philips will sell two internal drives with somewhat different features, both for PCs. U.S. prices have not been set.

The drives will be able to burn regular write-once and rewritable DVDs and CDs as well.

The Sony and Philips drives will use somewhat different discs. Sony calls its variant DVD-R DL. The Philips equivalent is DVD+R DL. Both disc types should be readable in standard DVD drives and players.

Sony estimates the blank discs will cost $5 to $6. Philips does not have an estimate yet.

The dual-layer discs will be slower to burn than single-layer discs — the drives will be rated as burning at 2.4 times faster than playback speed, versus eight times for single-layer discs.

A full 8.5 gigabytes will take about 45 minutes to burn.

Source cnn.com.

OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” won two awards, including R&B/soul or rap album of the year, to lead the winners at the 18th annual Soul Train Music Awards.

The Atlanta duo, who won the Grammy last month for best album of the year, also scored the Michael Jackson Award for best R&B/soul or rap music video for “Hey Ya!” on Saturday.

The awards, named after the long-running television show, honor recording artists in R&B, hip-hop, rap and gospel music. They were held at the International Cultural Center and televised live via syndication.

OutKast was the lone multiple-winner at the ceremony hosted by Alicia Keys and producer/songwriter Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds.

Soul crooner Luther Vandross was the night’s sentimental choice, winning best R&B/soul single, male for his “Dance With My Father.”

Vandross, recovering from a debilitating stroke, continued a victory streak that saw him take home four Grammy Awards and four NAACP Image Awards at ceremonies in the past two months.

The Soul Train Music Awards celebrates artists in R&B, hip-hop, rap and gospel music.

The awards are chosen by a group of radio station professionals, talent managers and performers.

Source CNN.com.