The Black Keys have announced a series of U.S. tour dates to follow their upcoming run in Australia. The blues rock duo, touring in support of 2004
It seems one man can make a difference. Local New York musician David Lott did more than just watch the tsunami devastation on the nightly news and read the reports in the morning paper. He actually took the tragedy on a personal level and made a call to action.
]With the release of Brian Wilson
Combining an explosive and delicate balance of electronic textures, from deep house, drum and bass to more traditional jazz, funk and world music – 2005 is looking like a breakout year for Lotus, Philadelphia’s favorite band of nomads.
The Slip have announced that they will be playing three shows in Japan in February. This is their fifth trip to Japan.
Japan Tour
-Feb 18th at Shibuya O’east in Shibuya Tokyo.
-Feb 19th – catching the break at the Greenroom Festival
(“surf rock event”)in Yokohama Osanbashi Hall
-Feb. 20th the first show in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto at MOJO WEST
Timo Shanko will be joining the band on saxaphones.
In the wake of an unfinished copy of his new album leaking onto the Internet last month, Beck will offer fans a bounty of reasons to purchase the real deal. Due March 29 via Interscope, “Guero” will be released as a standard CD, a double-disc package with two videos and a 5.1 audio mix and a third edition featuring four remixes.
Videos for “E-Pro” and “Black Tambourine” will be included on the double-disc set, while Boards Of Canada, Octet, Dizzee Rascal and, as first reported here, Royksopp, contribute the remixes on the third package.
On Tuesday (Feb. 1), Beck quietly unveiled the “Hell Yes” EP on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, featuring remixes of the title track and “Que Onda Guero” by 8-bit and remixes of “E-Pro” and “Girl” by Paza. A video for “Hell Yes” directed by Mumbleboy is also available on iTunes.
Beck has yet to confirm tour dates in support of “Guero,” but he played his second surprise show in recent weeks last Friday at Echo in Los Angeles, which featured a number of tracks from the new album.
Source billboard.com.
Is music something you own or something you rent?
How music fans answer that question in coming months will help determine the viability of a new slate of online music services that offer to fill portable music players with an unlimited number of songs for a monthly fee.
While the music subscription approach has grown in recent years, far more music fans have opted to buy songs by the track, a business model popularized by Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store and its hugely successful iPod portable player.
But the release late last year of new copy-protection software from Microsoft Corp. may begin to change that. The software frees subscribers to move their rented tracks from their computers to certain portable music players.
The system works by essentially putting a timer on the tracks loaded on the player. Every time the user connects the player to the PC and the music service, the player automatically checks whether the user’s subscription is still in effect. Songs stop playing if the subscription has lapsed. If the user doesn’t regularly synch up the player with the service, the songs go dead as well.
“This is potentially the first serious challenge that the iPod is going to face,” said Phil Leigh, president of Tampa, Fla.-based Inside Digital Media. “What these devices are going to be able to do is attack iPod where it’s weak.”
Several online music purveyors see portability as selling point that can lure consumers to their subscription services. Forrester Research projects music subscription revenues will more than double this year to $240 million, largely because of portability.
RealNetworks, MusicNow and MusicNet, which distributes its service through brands like America Online and Cdigix, all have plans to launch portable subscription services this year or early 2006 at the latest.
Napster LLC and F.Y.E., another MusicNet distributor, began offering portable subscriptions late last year through the Windows Media Player software, code named Janus.
Napster plans to turn up the heat on Apple with a $30 million advertising campaign debuting during Sunday’s Super Bowl to promote a relaunch of its portable subscription service, dubbed Napster To Go.
“This is really the first subscription service supporting Janus that’s going out in a big way,” said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Napster is charging a lot harder than the rest of them.”
Napster’s service is $14.95 a month
Now that frontman Rivers Cuomo has completed a semester of school at Harvard University, the track list for Weezer’s new album is “97% settled,” according to the band’s official Web site. The as-yet-untitled set is due in May via Geffen; first single “Beverly Hills” will hit U.S. radio outlets in late March.
The selection process is nearing completion thanks to “some heavy listening sessions between the band and producer/mentor Rick Rubin,” the site reports. “A few songs got swapped out and switched around, and there is high confidence in the final selection, which now includes a few songs from the late ’03 recording sessions that were originally left behind in favor of the new sessions in July-October ’04.”
Cuomo still has to complete his vocals for three songs, at which point the album will be ready for mixing.
As previously reported, Weezer earlier this week announced its first show since late 2002, which will come on the first day of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., on April 30. A full North American and European tour is expected to follow.
Source billboard.com.
Baltimore Gas & Electric) must have experienced a huge power spike, due largely to the massive array of pedals and effect boards the band had strewn across the stage.
There’s so much going on in so many of these songs that it’s tough to get a foothold
