Archive: 2004

Vocalist Art Garfunkel was charged with possession of marijuana over the weekend after police pulled over his limousine for speeding in upstate New York. Garfunkel, 62, of Manhattan, was caught with a small amount of marijuana in his jacket pocket and was charged with possession, a violation, reported the Daily Freeman of Kingston, N.Y.
Police said Garfunkel was riding alone when a state trooper stopped the limo around 12:20 p.m. Saturday in Hurley, 55 miles southwest of Albany. The trooper smelled marijuana after approaching the vehicle.
State police Capt. Louis Barbaria Jr. said the trooper didn’t realize who he arrested until later, although Garfunkel told him he is a celebrity. Barbaria didn’t know why Garfunkel was in Ulster County.
Garfunkel is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 28 on the charge, or he could respond by mail or have a lawyer appear for him. He faces a $100 fine, unless he has had a conviction within the past three years; police did not say whether he has.
Garfunkel recently completed a hugely successful U.S. concert tour with longtime partner Paul Simon, their first in 20 years.
Source billboard.com.

Universal Music International (UMI) is to rerelease the early work of Bob Marley & the Wailers through a 10-year exclusive licensing deal with JAD Records, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based label established in 1967 by Danny Sims, Billboard Bulletin reports.
UMI says the deal covers 211 tracks recorded from 1967-72. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. “It is thrilling, both personally and professionally, that Universal is now able to present to fans virtually the entire recorded works of one of the most prolific and influential artists of the 20th Century,” Universal Music International’s Julian Huntly said in a statement.
Sims is recognized as one of the first label executives to spot the potential of Marley. In their five years with JAD, Marley and the Wailers recorded such notable songs as “Stir It Up,” “Small Axe,” “Guava Jelly” and “Concrete Jungle,” plus material that was never released.
The first release will be a three-CD set, “Grooving Kingston 12,” due March 8 internationally. Named after the postal code for the Wailers’ Trench Town, Jamaica, homebase, it will include the first-ever CD release of the tracks “Music Gonna Teach” and “I’m Still Waiting,” plus the original version of “Concrete Jungle” and an extended version of “Trench Town Rock” with an extra scat verse.
The third disc begins with an eight-song acoustic medley featuring “Stir It Up,” “Cornerstone,” “This Train” and “Dewdrops.”
Source and track list visit billboard.com.

David Byrne, Ray Davies, Bright Eyes, Yo La Tengo, Keb’ Mo’, Nawang Khechog and artistic director Philip Glass will perform at the 14th annual Tibet House benefit concert. The event will be held Feb. 25 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Tickets can be purchased by calling the venue at (212) 247-7800; tickets that include a fundraising reception with the artists can be obtained by calling Tibet House at (212) 807-0563.
Tibet House is dedicated to the proposition that the wisdom and arts of all human civilizations vitally enrich the emerging global culture and its many cultural and educational programs. The organization’s primary goal is to preserve and restore Tibet’s unique cultural and spiritual heritage. The concert also commemorates the Monlam Prayer Festival, which was established in 1409 but canceled by the Chinese government after it took over Tibet.
Last year’s event featured performances by David Bowie, Davies, Laurie Anderson, Rufus Wainwright and Ziggy Marley, among others.
Source billboard.com.

Neil Young’s latest album, “Greendale,” will be re-released Feb. 24 by Reprise with a bonus DVD featuring behind-the-scenes footage of its creation. Issued in August, the original edition of “Greendale” was bundled with the DVD “Live at Vicar St.,” which found Young performing the new material during a solo concert in Ireland.
The Young-directed “Greendale” film, which brings to life the characters described in the album, will be rolled out nationally around the album’s re-release. Screenings begin Feb. 27 in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, with new locations added through late April. For a full list, visit Young’s official Web site .Young and Crazy Horse are also planning to return to the road, beginning Feb. 19 in Vancouver. Eighteen dates are on tap through March 21 in Amherst, Mass., including a March 17-18 stand at New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
The “Greendale” film is tentatively scheduled for a summer release.
Source billboard.com.

Modern rock acts Grandaddy and Saves The Day will co-headline a spring tour due to launch March 1 in Santa Cruz, Calif. The six-week journey will also feature the Fire Theft, the Seattle-based group featuring three former members of Sunny Day Real Estate. The 41-date trek is scheduled to wrap April 17 in Los Angeles.
The tour is Grandaddy’s fourth major outing in support of last year’s V2 album, “Sumday,” which peaked at No. 84 on The Billboard 200. Grandaddy has recently toured with Pete Yorn and the Super Furry Animals.
The upcoming dates will be promoted with a free downloadable limited-edition EP available through Apple’s iTunes Music Store. A track list and release date for the EP will be announced shortly, and the digital songs will be available to fans that have purchased “Sumday.”
Saves The Day is touring in support of its DreamWorks debut, “In Reverie,” which peaked last year at No. 27 on The Billboard 200. The Fire Theft’s 2003 self-titled Rykodisc debut reached No. 11 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart.
For a complete list of dates visit billboard.com.

With midnight extravaganzas, extended curfews and no-holds-barred performances, New Years Eve has become the quintessential rock ‘n roll holiday. So to celebrate the energy only NYE can achieve, we decided to offer a visual sampling of some of the most highly regarded shows from new years ’03. From the car drop in Miami to The Cartmans playing NYC, it was a night to remember, or completely forget, depending on how much champagne you had.

Sometimes it

Aside from lyrical turns into the West African language of Yoruba, there is no hidden message within the music of Brooklyn based Antibalas. This fourteen-plus band brings a relentless attack of R&B style horn figures, call and response chanting, horns, bass, funk-styled guitar chords within a polyrhythmic euphoria. But it

In case you haven

According to the Mt. Washington Weather Archive, during the recent weeklong freeze, January 17th was going to be the best day to make a summit attempt. The daytime air temps were above freezing and the wind wasn’t expected to be too much to handle. As it turned out, in the 24-hour period of the 17th, the avg wind speed was 94 mph with a maximum gust of 145 mph. Glide’s resident outdoor enthusiast took that forecast as a personal invite to climb the world’s windiest spot.

In the ever-evolving cast of the Dead, Joan Osborne (vocals) and Rob Barraco (keyboard/vocals) are out and jam band guitarist/singer extraordinaire Warren Haynes is in. The veteran player plans to remain active in both Gov’t Mule and the Allman Brothers Band in addition to performing with the dead.
In the midst of a Gov’t Mule tour, the new Dead lineup will debut Feb. 9 at the band’s second annual Winter Jam at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. The band is completed by Phil Lesh (bass), Mickey Hart (drums), Billy Kreutzmann (drums), Bob Weir (guitar), Jimmy Herring (guitar) and Jeff Chimenti (keyboards).
The Dead’s mail order ticketing (GDTS Too) offered a limited amount of tickets for the show, with orders closing yesterday (Jan. 20). Tickets go on sale Sunday to the general public through Ticketmaster.
The band’s official Web site says a summer tour will take shape in two legs, with the first launching in mid-June and lasting through July 4. The second leg will kick off late in July and run through August.
Gov’t Mule will kick off a tour Jan. 27 in Indianapolis, which will feature a mix of headlining shows and, as previously reported, dates opening for Kid Rock. In March, Haynes will be in New York for the Allman Brothers’ annual stand at the Beacon Theatre.
The Dead’s February 2003 show at the Warfield marked its official name change from the Other Ones. After several years estranged, the surviving principal members of the Grateful Dead — Lesh, Hart, Kreutzmann and Weir — reunited under that banner in summer 2002 with Herring, Chimenti and Barraco rounding out the lineup.
Contemporary blues artist Susan Tedeschi joined for several dates on the Other Ones’ 2002 fall reunion tour. Osborne signed on for the Dead’s 2003 Summer Getaway run, the second leg of which was a co-headlining bill with Bob Dylan.
Source billboard.com.

The nation’s record companies Wednesday sued another 532 people for illegally distributing copyrighted music over the Internet, stepping up their attack against online music piracy.
Record companies filed suits against 532 people for illegally distributing copyrighted music over the Internet. CNNfn’s Jen Rogers reports.
The move is part of an ongoing effort by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to protect the rights of record companies and songwriters, and to bolster the legal distribution of music online.
The U.S. recording industry filed 261 lawsuits last September against people it claimed have illegally downloaded and distributed copyrighted music.
Source CNN.com.

With the centuries-old revolutionary cry of “No taxation without representation,” a Vermont ski town wants to hop the border to neighboring New Hampshire. Town officials in Killington, Vermont, say they pay the state more than $20 million in taxes each year, and see only $1 million in state aid. New Hampshire, 25 miles to the east, has no income or sales tax.
“It kind of reminds us of colonial days,” Town Manager David Lewis told the Associated Press. “England wasn

Britain’s biggest-selling hiking magazine apologized Wednesday after its latest issue contained a route that would lead climbers off the edge of a cliff on Britain’s tallest peak.
The February edition of Trail magazine gives advice to walkers caught in bad weather on Ben Nevis in Scotland about how to make a safe descent.
But the magazine’s directions would instead lead readers off the north face of the 4,406-feet (1,322-meter) mountain, which is notorious for its changeable weather and has claimed the lives of several climbers.
Guy Procter, the editor of Trail, acknowledged the magazine had inadvertently erased the first of two crucial bearings needed to get off the summit. He said that happened during the editing process.
“I’m quite gutted at this mistake because we print up to 200 of these routes a year, and this is the first time we’ve got it wrong,” said Procter.
The Mountaineering Council of Scotland issued an alert on its Web site about the mistake.
“Getting off Ben Nevis is probably one of the most infamous navigational tasks in the British Isles,” said council spokesman Roger Wild. Describing the mistake in the magazine, he said, “Anyone following that route in poor visibility and with snow cover could easily have walked straight off the edge.”
Procter said he was confident that the experienced walkers who make up most of Trail’s 36,000 circulation would not be endangered by the error.
“No Trail reader would countenance going out on any mountain without a map, and the route is given a high technical rating, serving further to deter the novice,” he said. “This gives me reason to be optimistic that our omission will swiftly be picked up by our readers.”
Trail was criticized by mountain rescue teams last year for claiming three popular hiking routes were snow-free in winter.
Source CNN.com.

Veteran West Coast rap outfit Cypress Hill returns March 23 with “Till Death Do Us Part” (Columbia), its seventh album and first since 2001’s “Stoned Raiders.” The set will be preceded next month by first single “What’s Your Number?”
“This is one of the first albums where everything just fell into place,” says front man B-Real in a statement. “Songwise, it just really came together,” he adds of the album, which features guest appearances by Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and Twin, Damian Marley and producer the Alchemist.
“What’s Your Number?” is a musical tribute to the Clash’s classic “Guns of Brixton,” with a backing track performed by a live band featuring Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. Other songs on the disc include “Can’t Stop the Gunshot,” “Latin Thugs,” “Smoke It Up,” “Street Wars,” “Last Laugh” and “Bang Out.”
Source billboard.com.

On the heels of a succesful collaboration late last year at Slim’s in San Francisco, John Popper is teaming up again with DJ Logic at a pair of shows in the New York-New Jersey area next month, billed as the “John Popper Project”. February 11th will be held at Suite 16 (127 8th Ave at 16th Street) and a February 12th show has been confirmed for The Conduit in Trenton, NJ.
Rounding out the lineup for the John Popper Project will be Tad Kinchla on bass and old friend Marcus Bleecker (of Mosaic) on drums in addition to Popper and DJ Logic.
Source bluestraveler.net.

Combining cross-country race skiing and rifle marksmanship, Biathlon originated in Scandinavia where primitive hunters traveled on skis to pursue game in the winter months. In the late 1700s, Swedish and Norwegian border patrol ski troops held the first Biathlon competition. It became an Olympic sport in 1960 in Squaw Valley and has grown into the most popular winter sport in Europe.

After spending much of last year on the road – including several weeks with Neil Young – countrified folk-rocker Lucinda Williams is ready for more. She’s announced a new North American run, set to begin February 20 at John Ascuaga’s Nugget in Sparks, Nev., and continuing around the country through mid-March. Since 1998’s Grammy-winning Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Williams’ popularity has skyrocketed, and she’s become significantly more prolific – releasing Essence in 2001 and World Without Tears in 2003, both on Lost Highway Records.
Source pollstar.com.

Always finding a way to keep busy, Warren Haynes is going to take Gov

Every taper has a similar dream from time to time the night before a show. In my dream I