January 2005

Jefferson Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden died Tuesday at his home in Petaluma, California, after a battle with colon cancer. He was sixty-six.

Dryden joined Jefferson Airplane in 1966 and played with the band during its heyday, drumming on their breakthrough, Surrealistic Pillow, and playing shows with the group at Woodstock, Altamont and the Monterey Pop Festival.

“For me, the incarnation of the Airplane I liked the best was the one with Spencer, Paul [guitarist Kantner], Marty [singer Balin], Jack [bassist Casady], Grace [singer Slick] and myself,” says Jorma Kaukonen. “We struggled together . . . occasionally lived together . . . argued together . . . and made some great music together.”

The nephew of Charlie Chaplin, Dryden was drumming at a strip club in Hollywood when he was recommended to Jefferson Airplane’s manager by fellow skinsman Earl Palmer. Dryden took over for Skip Spence, who had left and later formed Moby Grape.

After Dryden split from Jefferson Airplane in 1970, he played with Grateful Dead side project New Riders of the Purple Sage in the Seventies, and with members of Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service in a knowingly titled combo called the Dinosaurs in the Eighties.

Dryden had fallen on hard times in recent years, losing his home and possessions in a September 2003 fire. The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule played a benefit last year for him at Slim’s in San Francisco, raising $36,000 to help pay for a pair of hip replacement surgeries and pending heart surgery.

Dryden attended a DVD release party for Jefferson Airplane last September, at the Great American Musical Hall in San Francisco, in what became his final public appearance.

Dryden was married three times. He is survived by his sons Jessie and Jackson.

Source rollingstone.com.

Just as the release of their 2002 debut, Turn on the Bright Lights, was followed by over two years of touring, Interpol are supporting their sophomore effort, last year’s Antics, with nearly as rigorous an international jaunt. The New York foursome return next month to launch another string of U.S. dates. The fifteen-city tour, with opening act Blonde Redhead, kicks off February 7th in Cincinnati and wraps on February 28th in Philadelphia.

All this after opening for the Cure’s Curiosa summer festival, headlining a twenty-two-city tour of North America last fall and spending January in Japan.

After doing their duty stateside, the moody indie darlings will rush back for more U.K. dates, followed by shows in Germany, Italy, France and Spain.

Interpol U.S. tour dates, with Blonde Redhead:

2/7: Bogarts, Cincinnati
2/8: Liberty Hall, Lawrence, KS
2/9: Fillmore Auditorium, Denver
2/10: The Big Easy, Boise
2/11: Paramount Theatre, Seattle
2/13: Roseland Theatre, Portland, OR
2/14, 2/15: Warfield Theatre, San Francisco
2/18: Grand Olympic Auditorium, Los Angeles
2/20: SOMA, San Diego
2/21: Coconuts, Tucson, AZ
2/23: Austin Music Hall, Austin
2/24: Numbers, Houston
2/25: TwiRoPa, New Orleans
2/27: Disco Rodeo, Raleigh, NC
2/28: Electric Factory, Philadelphia

Source rollingstone.com.

Indie rock outfit the Decemberists will unveil a new album, “Picaresque,” March 22 via Kill Rock Stars. The 11-track set was produced by Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla and recorded in a church in the group’s Portland, Ore., hometown. “Picaresque” is the follow-up to 2003’s acclaimed “Her Majesty the Decemberists,” which has sold 40,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Highlights of the new set include the multi-faceted, spy-themed “Espionage,” the horn-drenched, celebrity deflating “16 by 32” and the gently chugging, organ-tinged “The Sporting Life,” a humorous reflection on failed athletic pursuits.

The Decemberists have yet to announce tour plans in support of the new album, but frontman Colin Meloy is expected to perform some of the material on his upcoming 10-date solo trek, which begins Thursday (Jan. 13) in Seattle. According to the group’s official Web site, Meloy will be selling a tour-only EP “comprised entirely of Morrissey rarities covers.”

Here is the track list for “Picaresque”:

“The Infanta”
“We Both Go Down Together”
“Eli, The Barrowboy”
“The Sporting Life”
“Espionage”
“Lost at Sea”
“16 by 32”
“Engine Driver”
“Bus Mall”
“The Mariner”
“Angels”

Here are Meloy’s solo dates:

Jan. 13: Seattle (Triple Door)
Jan. 14: Portland, Ore. (Doug Fir)
Jan. 16: San Francisco (Cafe du Nord)
Jan. 17-18: Los Angeles (Hotel Cafe)
Jan. 19: Chicago (Schuba’s)
Jan. 21: Arlington, Va. (Iota)
Jan. 22, 24: New York (Fez)
Jan. 23: Cambridge, Mass. (TT the Bear’s)

Source billboard.com.

Coldplay is putting the finishing touches on its third studio album, expected in March or April via Capitol. Initial sessions for the as-yet-untitled set with producer Ken Nelson were set aside, with the U.K. rock act opting to start over with producer Danton Supple, who mixed Coldplay’s 2002 breakthrough, “A Rush of Blood to the Head.”

“It’s been quite turbulent,” frontman Chris Martin tells NME of the sessions. “We’ve been through a lot of songs and a lot of sounds, a lot of studios. It took us a long time to realize the four of us should go into a rehearsal room again and play together rather than rely on technological assistance.”

Among the tracks earmarked for the album include “The Hardest Part,” “Square One,” “‘Till Kingdom Come,” “What If,” “X&Y” and “Talk,” which is said to feature the main riff from Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love.”

Coldplay is expected to make its return to the live stage, possibly armed with new material, as part of a March 12 benefit for California radio station KCRW in Los Angeles.

Source billboard.com.

The wife of reggae star Bob Marley said Wednesday that she plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his “spiritual resting place,” Ethiopia.

The reburial is set for February when monthlong celebrations of Bob Marley’s 60th birth anniversary will be held in Ethiopia and both Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley told The Associated Press.

“We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia,” said Rita, the former backing singer for Marleys band, The Wailers. “It is part of Bob’s own mission.”

Marley was born in St. Ann, Jamaica on Feb. 6, 1945 but died of cancer in 1981.

Rita said Marley would be reburied in Shashemene, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of Addis Ababa where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.

Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.

Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.

“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” said Rita, a Cuban-born singer who married Marley in 1966.

“How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place,” she said. “With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right.”

Together with the African Union and the U.N. children’s agency, Rita has organized celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley’s birthday to be held in Addis Ababa.

The monthlong celebration, dubbed “Africa Unite” after one of Marley’s songs, aims to raise funds to help poor families in Ethiopia.

The Marley Family, Senegal’s Baaba Maal and Youssou N’Dour, Angelique Kidjo of Benin and other African and reggae artists will sing as part of the US$1 million (

Queens Of The Stone Age are gearing up for their first tour since late 2003, which comes in support of their highly anticipated Interscope album, “Lullabies To Paralyze.” According to its official Web site, QOTSA will begin touring in Europe and February and touch down in North America in March.

Due March 22 via Interscope, “Lullabies” is led by the single “Little Sister,” which is already burning up the airwaves on such stations as WXRK New York and KNDD Seattle.

Other tracks on the set include the relentless “Everybody Knows That You’re Insane,” the ominous “Tangled Up in Plaid” and a mellower-than-usual album closer, “Long Slow Goodbye.” Short films for “Everybody Knows That You’re Insane” (directed by Chapman Baehler) and “Someone’s in the Wolf” (directed by Terry Richardson) are expected to be posted on the QOTSA site later this month.

“Lullabies” is the follow-up to 2002’s “Songs for the Deaf,” which peaked at No. 17 on The Billboard 200 and has sold more than 917,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

In related news, frontman Josh Homme’s side band, the Eagles Of Death Metal, recently recorded a new album in eight days. The set is tentatively titled “Death by Sexy.”

Source billboard.com.