Indian Summer is a pop rock gem, proving Carbon Leaf can hone their sound to glimmer with tasteful melodies, smart lyrics and delicate chops that you can truly grasp for numerous listens.
Similar to the snow parks being built at ski resorts, bike trail managers have begun creating designated areas for kickers, bridges and obstacles. Not everyone is jumping for joy, but freeriding is here to stay.
Iggy and the Stooges, the Strokes, the New York Dolls and Bo Diddley lead the lineup for Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Festival. An offshoot of Little Steven’s Underground Garage radio show, the event will be held Aug. 14 at New York’s Randall’s Island. Tickets are $20 and are available through Ticketmaster.
Rounding out the lineup is the Raveonettes, the Pretty Things, the Mooney Suzuki, the Romantics, the Chesterfield Kings, the Fuzztones, the Electric Prunes, the Contrast, Cocktail Strippers, the High Dials, the Chains and Flaming Sideburns. The winner of Little Steven and Dunkin’ Donuts’ Underground Garage Battle of the Bands, to be held July 23 at New York’s Irving Plaza, will also get the chance to perform at the festival.
The Garage Festival stage will be created by Pink Floyd production designer Mark Brickman. Organizers also claim the event aims to “set the world record for most go-go dancers appearing in one show.”
Source billboard.com.
Singer-songwriter David Poe is organizing a pair of concerts to benefit Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry’s campaign. The Living Room in New York City will host Duncan Sheik, Joseph Arthur, Jesse Malin, Jesse Harris and Clem Snide’s Eef Barzelay on July 20th. And the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Golden Smog, Kraig Johnson and Big Star will take the stage at First Avenue in Minneapolis two nights earlier.
Poe projects that the shows could raise about $100,000 for Kerry’s campaign coffer, but he also sees them as an opportunity to promote voter registration. He points out that since eighteen-year-olds got the right to vote, fewer have actually exercised it each year, with only thirty-six-percent of eighteen to twenty-year-olds casting their ballot in the last presidential election. “If you do the math,” he says, “and get that number up to around fifty-percent, Kerry could win this thing by a landside . . . and you won’t have to deal with anything like hanging chads. Politics and voting begins at the grassroots level.”
Following these two shows, Poe is hoping to organize a few others in some battleground states where support for Kerry and President George W. Bush is split evenly. “Like a lot of people,” he says, “I don’t want to wake up the day after the elections, kicking myself for not having done everything I could, especially if the outcome of election is not what I hope it will be.”
As with activism-minded artists like Moby (whose cafe, Teany, will provide beverages before the New York show) and Steve Earle, Poe and company have put pet causes on the backburner due to, what he calls, “intense dissatisfaction with the current administration,” prompting the current call for political fundraising. “This is quite different from a benefit for a charity,” he says, “because the recipient of the proceeds is not only a politician — rather than a clubbed seal — but he’s also a very wealthy man. So now I have to raise money from people who make less money than I do and give it to a millionaire. It’s an irony, and I loves me some irony. But having said that, I really do support him. He’s chosen to serve, unlike a lot of rich people, and he seems to have a voting record that reflects a concern for humanity.”
The two concerts are being organized in conjunction with the Concerts for Kerry Organization (concertsforkerry.com), which has hosted almost twenty shows so far this year with several more planed. Jack Black, Grant-Lee Phillips, Victoria Williams, Mark Olson and comedian David Cross will perform at other events in July.
Source rollingstone.com.
Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” took in a whopping $21.8 million in its first three days, becoming the first documentary ever to debut as Hollywood’s top weekend film. If Sunday’s estimates hold when final numbers are released Monday, “Fahrenheit 9/11” would set a record in a single weekend as the top-grossing documentary ever outside of concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX theaters.
If Sunday’s estimates hold when final numbers are released Monday, “Fahrenheit 9/11” would set a record in a single weekend as the top-grossing documentary ever outside of concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX theaters.
Adding the film’s haul at two New York City theaters where it opened Wednesday, two days earlier than the rest of the country, boosted “Fahrenheit 9/11” to $21.96 million.
“Bowling for Columbine,” Moore’s 2002 Academy Award-winning documentary, previously held the documentary record with $21.6 million.
“Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore’s assault on President Bush’s actions after the 2001 terrorist attacks, won the top honor at last month’s Cannes Film Festival and has attracted attention from both sides in the presidential campaign.
The movie has been embraced by left-wing groups, which mobilized members to see it during the opening weekend. Conservative groups sought to discourage theaters from showing it and asked the Federal Election Commission to examine its ads for potential violations of campaign-finance law regulating when commercials may feature a presidential candidate.
Source yahoo.com.
In January, legendary gospel vocal group the Blind Boys of Alabama approached roots rocker Ben Harper and asked him to produce their new album.
At first he passed. “I just couldn’t commit that much time to other people’s music, because I’m making music at such a rapid pace in the studio right now doing my own thing,” Harper says. “They came back and asked about a couple songs. It was such a privilege to be asked and I had to look at my life and say, ‘There should not be anything keeping me from working with these guys.’ They’re one of the musical wonders of the world. They’re like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon.”
So, in late January, the Blind Boys, Harper and members of his band the Innocent Criminals moved into Studio B at Los Angeles’ Capitol Studios for five days to record a couple of songs. The early sessions netted five tracks, including the upbeat “Church House Steps,” the a cappella “Mother Pray” and the moving spiritual “There Will Be a Light.”
Harper found himself halfway through a dream project and decided to continue, culling songs from his catalog of unrecorded material. The crew reconvened in mid-March and finished the balance of the album in another five days. There Will Be a Light, an eleven-song collection by Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama is tentatively scheduled to be released on August 24th. Other song titles include “Where Could I Go?,” “Take My Hand” and a stunning cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Satisfied Mind” sung by Harper and Blind Boy Jimmy Carter.
The three-time Grammy-winning Blind Boys have high hopes for the project. “I think this is going to be a wonderful album,” George Scott says. “To tell you the truth, I believe they’re going to be callin’ us to get another Grammy.”
Adds Clarence Fountain, “Working with Ben was just as sweet as honey in a rock.”
Harper is even more effusive about his new recording mates. “I was extremely intimidated, because of the legend and because of my heightened level of reverence for the men and the music they’ve created,” he says. “The challenge of working with these guys is to not get goose bumps. I’m spending half my days in shivers. It’s crazy.”
Source rollingstone.com.
Late last summer I brewed my annual stout. But rather than going back to the cherry and hazelnut flavorings I tinkered with to moderate success, this time I took it up a notch and brewed my first Blueberry Stout.
Rhino Records has set an Aug. 17 release date for two retrospectives celebrating the work of influential quartet Talking Heads. The label’s revamp of the live package “The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads” will mark the first CD issue of a fan-favorite release from 1982, while “The Best of Talking Heads” is the group’s first U.S. single-disc greatest-hits set.
Both titles were assembled with the involvement of all of the band’s members — David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz and Jerry Harrison.
Originally a double-vinyl set, “The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads” has been buffed up to a two-disc release with the addition of 13 previously unreleased live tracks spanning 1977-1981. Also appended to the album are three cuts from a 1979 promotional-only live disc — The Girls Want To Be With the Girls,” an early version of “Drugs” titled “Electricity” and “Found a Job.”
“The Best of Talking Heads” is an 18-track collection of the band’s most popular tunes, including “Psycho Killer,” “Burning Down the House” and “And She Was.”
Last fall, Rhino released the three-CD, one-DVD box set “Once in a Lifetime,” including songs from throughout the band’s career as well as all its videos. A 1992 Sire/Warner Bros. compilation, “Popular Favorites 1976-1992: Sand in the Vaseline,” surveyed each of the band’s studio albums across two discs and added five then-previously unreleased songs.
In related news, former Heads frontman Byrne will follow a July European tour with another North American run. He is touring behind his latest album, “Grown Backwards,” released in April by Nonesuch.
Source billboard.com.
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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