June 20, 2005

Indie rock titans such as Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, the Black Keys and Cat Power have signed on to perform at Arthur Magazine’s first ArthurFest. The event will be held Sept. 4-5 at Barnsdall Art Park in Los Angeles. Two-day passes go on sale tomorrow (June 21) via Ticketweb and a handful of Los Angeles-area music stores.

Other acts confirmed for ArthurFest include Olivia Tremor Control, T-Model Ford, Merzbow, Six Organs Of Admittance, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Dead Meadow, the Juan Maclean, Josephine Foster, Wolfmother and Comets On Fire.

“It’s very easy to put one of those things together if the artists don’t have rings and rings of handlers around them,” Arthur editor-in-chief Jay Babcock tells Billboard.com. “They get excited because they get to play with their peers.”

On site, festivalgoers can expect screenings of avant-garde films and a dedicated T-Model Ford booth at which he will “dispense wisdom & possibly kisses for a small price.” The legendary bluesman writes a regular column for Arthur dubbed “T-Model Knows Better.”

“T-Model is our answer man in the magazine, so he will do crisis counseling,” Babcock says. “He’s dealt with a lot of crises in his life, involving murder, theft, rape, death of pets and ants in the kitchen. Nobody knows how old he is but we think he’s in his early 80’s. He likes to say, ‘Can’t read, can’t write, but I can play this guitar if I have to.'”

Arthur is also planning related shows Sept. 1-3 at such Los Angeles venues as Spaceland, Echo and the Vanguard Theatre. For more information, visit the magazine’s Web site.

Source billboard.com.

The White Stripes have announced a series of east coast dates to follow their August U.S. tour in the west and midwest. Dates of interest include a 9/24 show at Keyspan Park with The Shins and Brandan Benson and two shows at the Opera House in Boston, MA.

9/8 Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles Ballroom *
9/9 Indianapolis, IN @ The Murat Theatre *
9/10 Columbus, OH @ Ohio Theatre *
9/12 Cincinnati, OH @ Cincinnati Music Hall *
9/13 Louisville, KY @ Palace Theatre *
9/14 Cleveland, OH @ Playhouse Square Center

For “Back Home,” his first album of new original material since 2001’s “Reptile,” Eric Clapton tapped the talents of longtime collaborator Simon Climie, as well as such guests as Steve Winwood, John Mayer, Stephen Marley and Robert Randolph. Due Aug. 30 via Reprise/Duck Records, the disc boast 12 tracks that were recorded at the same time as the Robert Johnson covers that made up last year’s “Me & Mr. Johnson.”

“I wanted to make a studio album without quite knowing what it was going to be,” Clapton says. “We kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it was going to take a long time, but when we got stuck or if it wasn’t moving fast enough we’d stop and do a Robert Johnson song. That would clear the air and we’d go back and carry on for the new album. As a result, we ended up with a complete Robert Johnson album first.”

Clapton solely wrote only the new album’s title track, while he and Climie co-authored five of the songs on “Back Home,” including first single “Revolution.”

Also included are versions of George Harrison’s “Love Comes to Everyone,” the Spinners’ “Love Don’t Love Nobody” and a rendition of the Stevie Wonder/Syreeta Wright song “I’m Going Left,” as well as two songs co-written by guitarist Doyle Bramhall II and one by Vince Gill (“One Day”).

In addition to keyboardist Climie, who co-produced the album with Clapton, the artist tapped such familiar players drummer Steve Gadd, bassists Nathan East and Pino Palladino, guitarists Bramhall and Andy Fairweather Low and keyboardists Billy Preston.

Source billboard.com.

The Ramones and the Grateful Dead will both be feted with multi-disc summer releases from Rhino.

Due Aug. 16, the box set “Weird Tales of the Ramones” will compile 85 tracks onto three discs of music and include the DVD debut of “Lifestyles of the Ramones.” Originally issued in 1990, the latter rounds up the band’s complete Sire music video collection, bolstered by six clips the Ramones made during their run on the MCA-affiliated Radioactive label.

Musically, “Weird Tales” pulls highlights from 1976’s “Blitzkrieg Bop” through 1996’s “R.A.M.O.N.E.S.,” including such classics as “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Rockaway Beach,” “Rock ‘N’ Roll High School,” “Do You Remember Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio?” and “I Wanna Live.” Also featured are the band’s covers of the Searchers’ “Needles and Pins,” the Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” and Love’s “7 And 7 Is.”

The box will also include a comic book featuring the work of 25 top graphic novel/comic artists, including Rick Altergott (“Doofus”), Sergio Aragones (Mad magazine), Bill Griffiths (“Zippy the Pinhead”), Xaime Hernandez (“Love and Rockets”) and John Holmstrom. In addition to Punk magazine, Holmstrom has to his credit illustrations on the back cover and throughout the liner notes of the Ramones’ 1977 album “Rocket To Russia” and the cover of the following year’s “Road to Ruin.”

Meanwhile, on July 12, Rhino will release the two-disc Grateful Dead concert set “Truckin’ up to Buffalo, July 4, 1989.” The soundtrack to the Monterey Video DVD of the same name features audio taken from the show’s 24-track analog master tapes and mastered in HDCD.

This version of the Dead — guitarist/singers Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bassist/vocalist Phil Lesh and keyboardist/vocalist Brent Mydland — was enjoying resurgent popularity, still riding the wave of the 1987 single “Touch of Grey,” which reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100. This summer tour came in advance of “Built To Last,” which would be the band’s final studio album.

To accompany the music, the “Truckin'” package features rare photos of the band and liner notes written by Blair Jackson, publisher of the Dead fanzine “The Golden Road” and author of the biography “Garcia: An American Life.”

Source billboard.com.