September 2005

Already battling an injured knee, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme collapsed after a Monday show in Hamburg, forcing the cancellation of the next evening’s concert in Stuttgart. According to QOTSA’s Web site, Homme “was diagnosed with exhaustion and ordered to bed by a local doctor.”

The statement adds that Homme “has been performing every night on this tour despite his physical condition (due to a knee operation less than a week before he left for tour), and it finally caught up with him. He is resting now and in a stable condition.”

The remaining dates on the group’s European tour are scheduled to resume tomorrow (Sept. 3) at Spain’s Azkena Rock Festival. Homme is also expected to be healthy enough to begin QOTSA’s North American tour with Nine Inch Nails, which begins Sept. 16 in San Diego.

It’s been a rough few months for the California-based rock act, which have found Homme battling the aforementioned knee injury as well as a lung infection that required the cancellation of a February European tour.

But QOTSA fans do have a lot to look forward to. An Aug. 23 show at London’s Brixton Academy was taped for an as-yet-untitled CD/DVD due Nov. 22 via Interscope, and the group has also recorded a cover of Joe Walsh’s “In the City” for the soundtrack to the upcoming video game “The Warriors.” In addition, Homme has remixed two songs from Death From Above 1979, which will join QOTSA and NIN on the road this fall.

Source billboard.com.

The White Stripes’ Sept. 27 concert at the Merriweather Post Pavilion Theatre in Columbia, Md., will be streamed live online via the National Public Radio Web site, NPR.org. The show will mark the first time the band has Webcast one of its performances and will also include sets by support acts the Shins and M. Ward.

The Columbia gig will fall in the midst of the White Stripes’ fall tour in support of its latest album, “Get Behind Me Satan.” The run kicks off Thursday (Sept. 8) in Milwaukee and closes with an Oct. 1-2 stand in Detroit.

Released in June, the Third Man/V2 disc debuted at No. 3 on The Billboard 200 and has sold 507,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Source billboard.com.

Blues veteran R.L. Burnside, who experienced a late career renaissance after being rediscovered by Fat Possum Records in the 1990s, died today in a Memphis hospital. He was 78. Fans wishing to make a donation can write the Freeland & Freeland Trust Account at P.O. Box 269, Oxford, MS 38655. All proceeds will benefit Burnside’s widow, Alice Mae. Burnside is also survived by 12 children and numerous grandchildren.

“His health was declining,” Fat Possum founder Matthew Johnson tells Billboard.com. “I’m trying to get an official cause of death, but the hospital can’t get it out. He was our man. He was the first artist we signed, and our biggest. We were lucky to have a relationship.”

Born in Harmontown, Miss., on Nov. 21, 1926, Burnside worked as a farmer in nearby Coldwater, Miss. As a youth, he was exposed to the blues of such local masters as Fred McDowell and Joe Callicott and began playing in his late teens.

“I watched him,” Burnside said of McDowell in a 1996 interview with Billboard. “We lived pretty close to him at one time. I watched him and picked up a lot of stuff from him (and guitarist) Ranie Barnett. They was guys that was all around, close. I watched them play, and I kinda put my style with it.’

In 1967, fife-and-drum bandleader Othar Turner led folklorist George Mitchell to Burnside, who recorded several performances released by Arhoolie Records in 1968. For many years thereafter, he performed regularly in local juke joints, including one run by bluesman (and future labelmate) Junior Kimbrough.

By the ’70s, his notoriety had spread to the point that he toured in Europe and recorded for Swing Master in the Netherlands and Arion in France.

It wasn’t until the ’90s that Burnside gained fame in the U.S. He appeared in director Robert Mugge’s 1991 documentary “Deep Blues” and on the 1992 Atlantic soundtrack album. He cut two acclaimed albums for Fat Possum; the records, “Bad Luck City” (1993) and “Too Bad Jim” (1994), were produced by writer Robert Palmer, whose 1981 book was the basis for Mugge’s film. In 1996, he also recorded an album with underground rock act Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, “Ass Pocket of Whiskey” (Matador).

After 1999 heart surgery, Burnside kept his appearance schedule to a minimum, but continued to release music for Fat Possum, including last year’s “A Bothered Mind,” which debuted at No. 6 on Billboard’s Top Blues Albums chart.

Source billboard.com.

As several hundred enthusiastic supporters rallied to keep CBGB’s open, the landlord of the venerable punk club announced Wednesday that the lease on the 32-year-old landmark will not be renewed.

The Bowery Residents’ Committee, landlord of the building on the Bowery, “believes it is in the best interest of our clients