2005

Scotland’s Snow Patrol is one of those bands that’s been known in the U.K. a lot longer than they’ve been known in the U.S. The gushing reviews for the first album released in the U.S., Final Straw, is actually their third album if you live across the Pond.

But their first U.S. tour last year did great and after a hard-earned rest, they’ll be back in April, kicking things off at Stubb’s in Austin, Texas on the 24th. Traveling through Dallas, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle, Calgary, Winnipeg and other cities before winding things down in Minneapolis May 11th.

The band just changed its founding bass player, and this time they’re bringing a band called Embrace, a Leeds-based unit that has built a following overseas. They’ve only done a few showcase dates here and SxSW, but the response has been overwhelming. According to Embrace’s label, Lava Records, fans lined up for hours to get into their L.A. show.

Source pollstar.com.

In an effort to let all fans be a part of the shows, Widespread Panic have announced the launch of a new website, www.LiveWidespreadPanic.com, in association with nugs net enterprises, where fans will have the opportunity to download concerts in their entirety from select dates. The site will kick off with free MP3 downloads of the first three shows on March 24, 25 & 26 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta (available only for a limited time).

Powered by nugs.net and its content delivery platform, LiveWidespreadPanic.com will provide high quality soundboard recordings in both MP3 and CD-quality FLAC files. The full-length concerts will be available for $10.95 as MP3 or $15.95 for the higher quality FLAC format. All files are compatible with Windows, Mac and Unix and may be played on the iPod or other portable MP3 players, played in any music jukebox software, or burned to CD. Additionally, each show comes with custom printable booklets, tray inlays, and CD labels. The legions of fans collecting live tapes of the band for 20 years will now be able to tap directly into the band’s soundboard via LiveWidespreadPanic.com and download professionally recorded concerts within days of the performance.

The band has recently released a live album titled Live at Myrtle Beach on Widespread/Sanctuary Records. Despite their time off from touring, Widespread Panic continued to release live CD’s throughout 2004, much to the delight of their fans, including Night of Joy, the acoustic leaning

On the surface, DJ Spooky’s new collaboration with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo is just the latest example of his try-anything aesthetic, which has produced avant-garde turntable symphonies alongside dancefloor-fillers.

But “Drums of Death,” due April 26 on Thirsty Ear, is more than Spooky cutting up rhythms from one of metal’s greatest drummers. With its cameos from Chuck D and covers of vintage Public Enemy material, the album also functions as a sort of homage to Def Jam’s pioneering rock-rap fusions of the ’80s.

“Basically Def Jam is kind of like the Motown of our current moment,” Spooky tells Billboard.com. “They are the empire. But I look at when Rick Rubin was producing bands like Slayer, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys as a kind of template for a lot of the things I’m into now.”

Thus, “Drums of Death” offers new versions of Public Enemy’s “B-Side Wins Again” (featuring guitar from Living Colour’s Vernon Reid), “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” and “Public Enemy No.1,” alongside equally hard-hitting originals like “Quantum Cyborg Drum Machine.”

To read more visit billboard.com.

Recording industry executive Andy Gershon sees opportunity in the online file-sharing networks that most of his rivals decry as havens for music pirates. As president of V2 Records, home to such established acts as The White Stripes and Moby, Gershon mines such Internet distribution channels for new fans and revenues.

“The cat is so far out of the bag and so far gone that it’s pointless to keep fighting it,” Gershon said. “I might as well make as many people fans of our music, whether they illegally download it or not.”

A number of mostly independent recording artists and labels have experimented with and embraced the freewheeling digital distribution that the Internet affords. And many worry that a victory by major recording companies in a landmark file-sharing case now before the U.S. Supreme Court (news – web sites) could short-circuit the very technologies that they believe are making a more level playing field of the music business.

The nation’s high court is to hear arguments next Tuesday on whether the entertainment industry can hold file-sharing software firms Grokster Inc. and StreamCast Networks, which distributes Morpheus, liable for what computer users do with the technology.

Lower courts have sided with the software makers, which assert their so-called peer-to-peer technology is as legitimate as a videocassette recorder or a copy machine.

To read more, visit yahoo.com.

Kings of Leon, DJ Krush and RJD2 are the latest additions to the 2005 Bonnaroo festival. This will be the second appearances for Kings of Leon and RJD2 who played in the festival in both 2004 and 2003 respectively. For a full list of the performers, visit the festival

Nikka Costa has set a May 24 release for her second Virgin album, “can’tneverdidnothin’,” which was originally expected last year. In advance of the set she will join labelmate Lenny Kravitz’s Electric Church: One Night Only! outing and playing solo headlining shows on some of the tour’s off days.

“I know it has been quite sometime but things are movin’ finally over here so keep the faith,” Costa said last month in a post on her official Web site. “‘can’tneverdidnothin” is finally finished and I’m gettin’ ready to get my serious groove on!”

The soulful singer/songwriter indulges her rock and funk influences on the set, which she wrote and co-produced. Led by first single “Till I Get To You,” the album also features “Fatherless Child,” a tribute to her father, noted arranger/producer Don Costa.

The set is the follow-up to 2001’s “Everybody Got Their Something,” which reached No. 63 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and No. 120 on The Billboard 200.

Costa’s live work gets underway with a solo gig April 1 in Santa Ana, Calif., while dates on the Kravitz tour begin April 5 in Dallas. At deadline Costa’s schedule featured confirmed shows through a Los Angeles gig at the Roxy on the day of the new disc’s release and a performance the next night at Anaheim, Calif.’s House of Blues.

Here are Costa’s tour dates:

April 1: Santa Ana, Calif. (Galaxy)
April 2: Tucson, Ariz. (City Limits)
April 4: San Antonio, Texas (Sanctuary at Sunset Station)
April 5: Dallas (Nokia Live; w/Kravitz)
April 6: Austin, Texas (La Zona Rosa)
April 7: Houston (Verizon Theater; w/Kravitz)
April 9: Atlanta (Tabernacle; w/Kravitz)
April 10: Charlotte, N.C. (Owens Auditorium; w/Kravitz)
April 12: Orlando, Fla. (The Social)
April 13: Miami (Jackie Gleason Theater; w/Kravitz)
April 16: Philadelphia (Electric Factory; w/Kravitz)
April 17: Atlantic City, N.J. (Borgata; w/Kravitz)
April 19: Baltimore (Fletcher’s)
April 20: Washington, D.C. (DAR Constitution Hall; w/Kravitz)
April 21: New York (Beacon Theater; w/Kravitz)
April 23: Hartford, Conn. (Oakdale; w/Kravitz)
April 24: Boston (Orpheum; w/Kravitz)
April 26: Cleveland (Music Hall; w/Kravitz)
April 27: Toronto (Massey Hall; w/Kravitz)
April 29: Detroit (State Theater; w/Kravitz)
April 30: Indianapolis (Music Mill)
May 1: Chicago (Congress Theater; w/Kravitz)
May 3: Madison, Wis. (Luther’s Blues)
May 4: Minneapolis (State Theater; w/Kravitz)
May 6: Milwaukee (Rave; w/Kravitz)
May 7: St. Louis (Pageant; w/Kravitz)
May 8: Columbia, Mo. (Blue Note)
May 9: Kansas City, Mo. (Memorial Hall; w/Kravitz)
May 11: Denver (Fillmore; w/Kravitz)
May 1: Portland, Ore. (Schnitzer Hall; w/Kravitz)
May 14: Vancouver (Orpheum; w/Kravitz)
May 16: Seattle (Paramount Theatre; w/Kravitz)
May 18: San Francisco (Bill Graham Civic Center; w/Kravitz)
May 19: San Diego (Copley Symphony; w/Kravitz)
May 21: Las Vegas (The Joint; w/Kravitz)
May 22: Los Angeles (Wiltern; w/Kravitz)
May 24: Los Angeles (Roxy)
May 25: Anaheim, Calif. (House of Blues)

Source billboard.com.

Six months after the low-key launch of the CD/DVD hybrid known as DualDisc, major labels are planning a big show of faith in the fledgling format: Two of April’s highest-profile releases — BruceSpringsteen’s Devils and Dust and Rob Thomas’ solo debut, Something to Be — will be available only as DualDiscs. The format pairs a standard CD on one side of a disc with a DVD on the flip side that offers video content and, often, a surround-sound mix of the record.

DualDisc versions of the new Nine Inch Nails and Bon Jovi albums are in the works, and a flood of extras-packed reissues — from AC/DC’s Back in Black to David Bowie’s Reality — are already exploiting the format. “In the long term, we definitely see a transition from CD to DualDisc,” says Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business for Sony BMG. Sony, which owns Springsteen’s label, Columbia Records, formed a consortium last year with the other three major record companies to promote the newdiscs.

To read more, visit rollingstone.com.

Living Colour and Yohimbe Brothers guitar virtuoso Vernon Reid will be touring this summer with The Roots as their lead guitarist. Reid has stepped in to temporarily fill the void left by the departure of the Roots’s guitarist Ben Kenney. No word yet on whether The Roots have named a permanent replacement.

Source rollingstone.com.