2004

Although the recipient of the Shortlist Music Prize won’t be announced until Nov. 11, as an indication of the event’s growing prestige, the Shortlist has already lined up judges and sponsors.

This year’s judges — or Listmakers, as they’re called — are Norah Jones, the Dixie Chicks, John Mayer, Jack Black, Jim Jarmusch, the Cure’s Robert Smith, System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba, Massive Attack’s 3D and three returning names: Perry Farrell, Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme and the Roots’ ?uestlove.

MTV2 returns for the third time as TV sponsor, and XM Satellite Radio is this year’s radio partner. As it did last year, MTV2 will air a special on the Shortlist Prize that will include concert footage from the awards ceremony, which will take place at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.

XM, in addition to presenting the winner with a $5,000 check, will add programming elements for the six weeks leading up to the awards.

“The growth we’re seeing is the size of the platform we’re able to offer the finalists,” awards co-founder Greg Spotts says. “Here we are just starting, and we’ve already cemented programming with two of the most progressive national [music] outlets.”

Providing exposure for emerging acts has been the goal since Spotts and co-founder Tom Sarig started the awards in 2001. “The world doesn’t need another ivory tower award that doesn’t mean anything,” Sarig says. “We wanted it to have practical goals that help break artists who are left of center.”

That was certainly the case with last year’s winner, Damien Rice. Sarig says Rice’s album “O” (Vector/Warner Bros.) had sold about 100,000 copies in the United States at the time it won last year. It has now sold 282,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

“Winning the award is another piece of the pie that shows he’s an artist to be reckoned with,” Sarig says.

The criteria for eligibility remain the same: any artist’s full-length release that came out between July 1, 2003, and June 30, 2004, that at the time of its nomination has not been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.

Listmakers submit up to seven albums. They then receive a list of all judges’ submissions and rank their 10 favorites. From that list, 10 finalists are determined and announced at the end of September.

Sarig says the Shortlist is also looking into a possible compilation album from the nominees and a tour.

Source billboard.com.

Two tickets for both days of the sold-out Coventry, Phish

Mark Knopfler’s fourth solo album will be released Sept. 28 via Warner Bros. Dubbed “Shangri-La,” the set is the former Dire Straits leader’s follow-up to 2002’s acclaimed “The Ragpicker’s Dream.”

The 14-track album is named for the Malibu, Calif., studio where it was recorded. “People like Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Band used to hang out there,” Knopfler says. “Old California seemed to go with a pile of the stuff I was doing and some of it rubbed off on the recordings. I found myself in the ’60s a fair bit and even earlier influences from when I was small, like Lonnie Donegan and the Shadows.”

In creating “Shangri-La,” Knopfler relied on longtime collaborators Richard Bennett (guitar), Jim Cox, Glenn Worf (bass), Chad Cromwell (drums) and his Dire Straits bandmate Guy Fletcher (organ, piano).

In March 2003, Knopfler was forced to cancel tour dates in support of “The Ragpicker’s Dream” to recover from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. He returned to live performance in November, joining Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings on a bill at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

“The Ragpicker’s Dream” debuted at No. 38 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 183,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

In other news, one of Knopfler’s guitars was among those auctioned earlier this summer to benefit the Eric Clapton-founded addiction treatment facility Crossroads Centre in Antigua. The artist’s Tobacco Sunburst Schecter Strat netted just over $50,000.

Source billboard.com.

If you haven’t already forgotten about Audioslave’s roots in Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden, Tom Morello thinks you will come the next record.

“The thing that feels different [about the upcoming second album compared to the first] is there’s even more spontaneity to it,” Morello said recently. “With the last record, each of us was inevitably bringing some of our musical histories to the room. This record, it feels like, is just Audioslave. A lot of the songs grew up out of this fresh soil of getting to know each other.”

Musically, Chris Cornell naturally fit in with Rage’s former musicians from the beginning, Morello said, but now there’s a level of comfort that’s yielded more creativity (see “Audioslave ‘Surprised’ By Adventurous New Songs, Morello Says”).

“When we played the last record, we had never even played a single live show together,” Morello said. “Now we have over a year’s worth of touring under our belts and the chemistry has developed further to make it more of a unique entity.”

Audioslave have 22 songs written for their second record and are about halfway through recording them with producer Rick Rubin.

“He’s the fifth Beatle,” Morello said of Rubin. “He’s a great collaborative partner. He has a big-picture way of looking at music, which only tends to bring out the best with the artists he works with” (see “What’s Up With That Bearded Guy In The ’99 Problems’ Video?”).

Audioslave are hard at work on the album, but the bandmembers made time for a few other endeavors. Drummer Brad Wilk recently starred in a short film (see “Tool, Audioslave Members Act Out Murder Mystery” ) and Morello and Wilk performed at last weekend’s benefit for Axis of Justice, Morello and Serj Tankian’s political activist organization (see “Flea, Tool Singer Join Fight Against Hunger, Homelessness” ). Like he did on a solo tour last fall, Morello performed material under the name the Nightwatchman, but he still has no plans to record the songs.

“The Nightwatchman plays for the people,” he said. “When shows like this arise, it’s a great opportunity to play those songs that are politically-based and from the dark recesses of the Nightwatchman’s psyche. Other than that, I’m very busy.”

Source VH1.com.

What’s bad for concert promoters may be good for consumers. In a last-ditch attempt to fill seats in a lackluster summer-concert season, venues around the U.S. slashed ticket prices to as little as ten dollars — for superstar acts including Korn, Linkin Park and Snoop Dogg, the Dead, the Cure, Ozzfest and John Mayer. The price cuts were in response to a dismal summer, promoters say, with Lollapalooza, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Marc Anthony canceling tours, Norah Jones downsizing from amphitheaters to smaller venues and even major artists such as Eric Clapton and Jessica Simpson struggling to move tickets.

For one day in mid-July, concert promoter Clear Channel Entertainment dropped prices at Northern California venues to twenty dollars, including parking and fees. The company also put lawn seats at Nashville and San Antonio events on sale for ten dollars. And a ten-dollar food-and-beverage voucher was included for each twenty-five-dollar Van Halen lawn seat in select cities. Promoter House of Blues put twenty-dollar lawn seats on sale for eighty shows in seventeen venues.

“It is a stimulus,” says Alex Hodges, executive vice president of House of Blues Concerts. “If a show has been on sale for five months, you do a discount to give it a renewed sense of urgency.”

Until now, ticket prices have risen steadily for years; this year’s Top Fifty tours, according to concert-industry bible Pollstar, cost an average of $58.71, or thirteen percent higher than 2003’s $51.81. And while revenues for those tours were up eleven percent in June 2004 compared to midyear 2003, ticket sales dipped two percent.

Several promoters, including Dave Marsden of Clear Channel in Boston, have acknowledged that ticket prices are too high. But there are exceptions — the Warped Tour, one of the summer’s few bright spots, charges less than thirty-five dollars. And the Dave Matthews Band keeps prices in the forty-to-sixty-dollar range. “Our ticket prices have always been fair,” says Coran Capshaw, the band’s manager. “We’re not getting involved in any discount programs. I don’t think it’s time to hit the panic button.”

Source rollingstone.com.

Camper Van Beethoven has reunited to record its first studio album in 15 years. A rock opera of sorts, “New Roman Times” is due Oct. 12 via Pitch-A-Tent/Vanguard and features all five original members of the infamous quasi-folk rock band.

Leading the band is guitarist/vocalist David Lowery, who went on to form the commercially successful modern rock act Cracker following CBV’s demise in 1990. Bassist Victor Krummenacher and drummer Chris Pederson formed Monks Of Doom after leaving Camper, while guitarist Greg Lisher joined Swingin’ Utters side project Filthy Thevin’ Bastards.

Violinist Jonathan Segel rounds out the original group, while later-era CBV members guitarist Chris Molla and guitarist/multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck (Counting Crows) are also featured.

“New Roman Times” relays the story of a troubled young Texan. After some instrumental scene-setting, “51 7” describes his tough adolescence and home life, and a desire to prove himself that leads to enlisting in the military and a stint in a war.

In “Might Makes Right,” the character discusses his invading force’s occupation and questions whether or not God is on their side, as he’s been told. Later, “I Am Talking to This Flower” finds the drug-addled former soldier fighting his conscience back at home.

Though obviously reflecting Lowery’s views on current world affairs, the 20-track set is also inspired by the military veterans within the songwriter’s own family, including his father. To ensure accuracy in his tales, he discussed weapons and tactics with soldiers currently serving.

Despite the serious nature of much the subject matter, there is plenty of room for levity, as should be expected from an act whose best-known song is “Take the Skinheads Bowling.”

“This story isn’t really supposed to be about Iraq, Afghanistan or even war,” Lowery says. “It’s actually about the deep gulf between the ‘red’ and the ‘blue’ parts of the country. I made it a sci-fi alternate reality so that I could exaggerate the differences. Plus I could make things lighter and more tongue in cheek.”

Camper Van Beethoven’s last studio album was 1989’s “Key Lime Pie,” its second and final album for Virgin, the future home of Cracker. The album yielded a No. 1 Modern Rock Tracks hit in the band’s cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men.”

In 2002, Pitch-A-Tent produced an artifact from the CBV archives with the release of “Tusk,” a complete remake of the classic Fleetwood Mac album of the same name recorded between 1987’s “Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart” and “Key Lime Pie.”

Camper will hit the road beginning Aug. 4 in Boulder, Colo., and has dates on tap through Aug. 27 in Tucson, Ariz.

Here is the “New Roman Times” track list:

“Prelude”
“New Sons of the Golden West”
“51 7”
“White Fluffy Clouds”
“That Gum You Like Is Back in Style”
“Might Makes Might”
“Militia Song”
“R and R Uzbekistan”
“Sons of the New Golden West Reprise”
“New Roman Times”
“The Poppies of Balmorhea”
“Long Plastic Hallway”
“I Am Talking to This Flower”
“Come Out”
“Los Tigres Traficantes”
“I Hate This Part of Texas”
“Hippy Chix (Oath of the CBV)”
“Civil Disobedience”
“Discoteque CVB”
“Hey Brother”

Source billboard.com.

Bob Edwards, who recently was removed as host of National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” after nearly a quarter-century, is leaving the network to start a new morning show for distribution on satellite radio.

Edwards’ new program will be distributed through the XM Satellite Radio system, a fee-based, commercial-free digital provider, NPR reported Wednesday.

His departure from NPR — which he joined in 1974, its third year of existence — wasn’t unexpected. On a publicity tour since early May to promote his latest book, “Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism,” he said last week that he was considering a number of job offers.

Edwards was host of “Morning Edition” — a daily program offering news, commentary and coverage of arts and sports — from its start in 1979 until April 30, when he was reassigned as an NPR senior correspondent. The change, explained by NPR management as an effort to refresh the broadcast, infuriated many of its listeners, who total 13 million each week.

A phone call seeking comment from Edwards on the new venture was not immediately returned.

Source CNN.com.