Archive: 2005

Although Transistor Radio may be a come-down from Ward’s prior release, the full sounding Transfiguration of Vincent, M.Ward

Z-Trip, UNKLE and Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt have been added to the lineup for the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, to be held April 30-May 1 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif.

After making his Coachella debut in 2002 with a near-legendary set featuring a surprise appearance by Beck, Z-Trip acknowledges the difficulty in topping it this time around.

To read more visit billboard.com.

More than a year-and-a-half after first revealing plans for the project to Billboard.com, Ry Cooder’s musical portrait of a lost Los Angeles Mexican neighborhood will finally see release in late spring. Across the 15 tracks of “Chavez Ravine,” the artist brings back to life the hillside community that was destroyed by developers in the 1950s and since 1962 has been home to Dodger Stadium.

“It’s a story/concept record about Chavez Ravine,” Cooder told Billboard.com in November 2003, “our L.A. classic Hispanic Pachuco tale of woe, corruption, politics, the Red Scare, the little and the big, neighborhood vs. corporate, all rolled into one.”

The songs on “Chavez Ravine,” due June 7 on his own Perro Verde Records imprint through Nonesuch, are sung in Spanish and English. Helping Cooder weave the pastiche of conjunto, corrido, R&B, Latin pop and jazz are Chicano music great Lalo Guerrero, late Pachuco legend Don Tosti, singer Little Willie G. (Thee Midniters), Ersi Arvizu (The Sisters) and veteran East L.A. band El Chicano.

“I think we did a pretty good job at using this music to demonstrate a lot of things about daily life and good ways,

G. Love & Special Sauce and Particle are among the artists who will perform on the inaugural Xingolati Groove Cruise. The three-day, three-night charter will depart Los Angeles Oct. 14 en route to Ensenada, Mexico, on board the Carnival Cruise Lines’ ship Paradise.

The event will feature sets by the John Popper Project featuring DJ Logic, the Everyone Orchestra, DJ Greyboy, the Mutaytor, DJ Laird, Perpetual Groove, Lowpro Lounge, Soul Rebels Brass Band and Delta Nove. Organizer Guy Grand Productions (GGP) is also promising performance art and circus theatrics to amuse 2,000 fans.

For more Xingolati information or to reserve a space, visit Xingolati.com.

Moby kicks off his North American tour in support of his new album,

Piano man Ben Folds has set down a run of spring dates to support the release of his upcoming album, Songs For Silverman.

Tour Dates –

5/03/05 Chicago, IL @ Riviera Theatre
5/04/05 Royal Oak, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theatre
5/05/05 Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room In Murat Center
5/08/05 Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club All Ages On Sale TBA
5/09/05 Durham, NH @ Univ. Of New Hampshire – UNH Fieldhouse
5/10/05 New York, NY @ Town Hall Theatre
5/13/05 Philadelphia, PA @ Electric Factory
5/14/05 Boston, MA @ Avalon Ages

In other Ben Folds news, Ben’s cover of Dr. Dre

Speculation has it that the Black Crowes are doing a stealth six night club run as Mr. Crowes Garden. These shows will precede the band

No doubt, studio albums for jam bands do little to really showcase the band

With their flair for electronics, low end bass and climatic riffs, Ratatat might do well for themselves by learning to stretch things out a bit. After the appetizing forty-five minute set, there was clearly room left for a main course at Higher Ground.

Weezer is eyeing a May release for its fifth studio album, “Make Believe.” As previously reported, the Geffen set will be preceded in the coming weeks by the single “Beverly Hills,” a video for which was shot two weekends ago at the Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.

According to the band’s official Web site, the Marcos Siega-directed clip should “start shaping up” by “the end of the weekend.”

“The song speculates about living the life of movers and shakers, but concludes that there’s no way to cross over from the ‘real world’ to the ‘fantasy world’ (even if one who is ‘normal’ has indeed become ‘famous’),” the site says. “But for a few minutes the idea is tossed about, taken to the level of longing for a life of extreme celebrity.”

At deadline, Weezer’s only confirmed U.S. show is April 30 at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. Seven European dates are on tap in June.

Here are Weezer’s tour dates:

April 30: Indio, Calif. (Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival)
June 3: Nurburgring, Germany (Rock am Ring Festival)
June 4: Nuremberg, Germany (Rock im Park Festival)
June 5: Hamburg (Grosse Freheit)
June 10: Nickelsdorf, Austria (Nova Rock Festival)
June 13: Birmingham, England (Academy)
June 14: London (Brixton Academy)
June 17: Glasgow (Carling Academy)

Source billboard.com.

Regina Spektor will celebrate the release of her new album, SOVIET
KITSCH with her national television debut on “Late Night With Conan
O’Brien” on Thursday, March 10th and a national tour starting March
22nd in Philadelphia, PA. Ending the tour at The Roxy Theatre in Los
Angeles on April 21st, Spektor will be the musical guest on “The
Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on April 20th.

Below are the following tour dates :

March 22nd North Star Bar Philadelphia, PA
March 25th Black Cat Washington, DC
March 30th Bowery Ballroom New York, NY
April 1st Paradise Lounge Boston, MA
April 7th Magic Stick Detroit, MI
April 11th Schubas Chicago, IL
April 13th Lola’s Portland, WA
April 14th Crocodile Caf

For its ninth Campus Invasion tour, MTV has tapped U.K. rock trio Muse as the headliner and moved the franchise over to its mtvU-branded college network. Opening April 8 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla., the 20-date tour will also feature fellow U.K. rock act Razorlight.

At deadline, a dozen stops were confirmed through an April 28 show at Ohio’s Kent State University. Full details will be posted on mtvU.com.

Beginning April 25, mtvU will air a Campus Invasion special with performances and artist interviews. The network is seen on more than 700 U.S. college campuses.

Beyond performances, each stop on the tour will feature an interactive village open for students to visit during the day. Activities include video game competitions, physical challenges and makeovers. The network will also interview students and showcase the local music scene.

Here are mtvU

New York’s legendary rock club CBGB, which helped launch such seminal acts as Blondie to the Ramones, faces closure if it does not resolve a dispute over unpaid rent with the homeless charity that owns the building.

Club owner Hilly Kristal said the dispute dated from 2001, when the landlord presented a $300,000 bill for unpaid rent.

Though most of that has now been repaid, the club was handed another bill earlier this year for $76,000 which it has not paid. The club’s lease comes to an end in August and talks on renewal are stalled.

To read more visit billboard.com.

The Mars Volta has announced North American tour dates in support of the band’s latest release Frances the Mute. Tickets for most shows go on sale either March 11th or 12th. Check out themarsvolta.com for on-sale dates.

4/22 San Diego, CA RIMAC
4/25 Austin, TX Austin Music Hall
4/26 Houston, TX Version Wireless Arena
4/28 New Orleans, LA Orpheum Theater
4/29 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
5/01 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
5/05-5/06 New York, NY Roseland Ballroom
5/07 Providence, RI Lupos
5/09 Worcester, MA Palladium
5/10 Boston, MA Avalon
5/12 Montreal, Canada Metropolis
5/13 Toronto, Canada Kool Haus
5/15 Detroit, MI State House
5/16-5/17 Chicago, IL Riviera
5/19 Minneapolis, MN Wilkins

Photos by Robert Massie of moe. at the House of Blues, Cleveland, OH – 2.16.05.

You can view more of Robert’s work at jampics.com

Alta and Snowbird

Less of a proving ground, more an early marathon stride, RAQ is finally beginning to settle into a balanced rhythm, one less concerned with external pressures, and tightly focused on creating their own

Bob Dylan may need more than one cup of coffee for the road in 2005: The sixty-three-year-old legend’s schedule includes a spring tour with country veteran Merle Haggard, a possible repeat of last summer’s outing with Willie Nelson, the paperback release of his best-selling memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, and a Martin Scorsese-helmed documentary.

First up is the two-month-long tour with Haggard, beginning Monday in Seattle. The country singer-songwriter’s 1969 hit “Okie From Muskogee” (“We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street”) assailed the counterculture that claimed Dylan as a leader. But the sixty-seven-year-old Haggard says he’s “as big a Bob Dylan fan as anybody. I haven’t been a show opener for years, and I wouldn’t open for just anybody. But I’m honored to do it for Bob. There’s a lot of similarities between us: We both play guitar, we both live in America and we’re both probably better songwriters than we are singers.”

Haggard says he hasn’t yet bought a copy of Chronicles, but more than 500,000 others have. “It’s an enormous success — one of the best-selling memoirs of the year,” says David Rosenthal, executive vice president of the book’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, “Everything about this book has exceeded our expectations.” Chronicles was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, with a winner to be announced on March 18th. (Another date to watch: Pulitzer Prize nominees are unveiled on April 4th.) A paperback version is due in October. Simon & Schuster also plans to publish Chronicles: Volume Two, but don’t expect Dylan to deliver a manuscript anytime soon. “It’d be wonderful to have it in the next few years,” says Rosenthal. “But we’ll get it when we get it.”

The excavation of Dylan’s past will continue in Scorsese’s two-part documentary, No Direction Home, due to air on PBS in September, followed by a DVD release. The three-and-a-half-hour film will draw from ten hours of taped Dylan interviews, conducted by his manager, Jeff Rosen. Using previously unseen footage from Dylan’s archives, the movie will reportedly focus on the start of his career, from 1961 to 1966. “It’s nonfiction — maybe,” Scorsese said in January. “With Bob Dylan, you never know.”

A two-CD collection of outtakes and live recordings used in the film is tentatively set for an August 16th release, as the seventh volume in Dylan’s Bootleg Series. The documentary will also spawn the Bob Dylan Scrapbook, which will include Dylan artifacts such as lyric sheets and contracts.

Meanwhile, Dylan is in the early stages of planning a second tour with Nelson. As for a new studio album, Dylan told Rolling Stone in October that he has “a bunch” of new songs written and that he hoped to record them “sometime in the beginning of the year.”

Bob Dylan tour dates:

3/7: Seattle, Paramount Theater
3/8: Seattle, Paramount Theater
3/9: Seattle, Paramount Theater
3/11: Portland, Chiles Center
3/12: Portland, Chiles Center
3/14: Oakland, Paramount Theater
3/15: Oakland, Paramount Theater
3/16: Oakland, Paramount Theater
3/18: Reno, NV, Reno Hilton
3/19: Las Vegas, Aladdin Theater
3/21: Los Angeles, Pantages Theater
3/22: Los Angeles, Pantages Theater
3/23: Los Angeles, Pantages Theater
3/25: Los Angeles, Pantages Theater
3/26: Los Angeles, Pantages Theater
3/28: Denver, Fillmore Auditorium
3/29: Denver, Fillmore Auditorium
4/1: Chicago, Auditorium Theater
4/2: Chicago, Auditorium Theater
4/3: Chicago, Auditorium Theater
4/5: Chicago, Auditorium Theater
4/6: Chicago, Auditorium Theater
4/8: Milwaukee, WI, Eagles Ballroom
4/9: Milwaukee, WI, Eagles Ballroom
4/11: Mt. Pleasant, MI, Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort
4/12: Detroit, Masonic Temple Theater
4/13: Buffalo, NY, Shea’s Performing Arts Center
4/15: Boston, Orpheum Theater
4/16: Boston, Orpheum Theater
4/17: Boston, Orpheum Theater
4/19: Newark, NJ, New Jersey Performing Arts Center
4/20: Verona, NY, Turning Stone Casino and Resort
4/22: Mashantucket, CT, Foxwoods Resort Casino
4/24: Atlantic City, NJ, Borgata Resort Spa and Casino
4/25: New York, Beacon Theater
4/26: New York, Beacon Theater
4/28: New York, Beacon Theater
4/29: New York, Beacon Theater
4/30: New York, Beacon Theater

Source rollingstone.com.

Brian Wilson is taking his SMiLE to Europe for the spring and summer festival season, including a slot at England’s legendary Glastonbury, then returning to North American shores for an August and September leg.

In recent years, the founding Beach Boy toured mainly theatres and performing arts centers, venues with the kind of acoustics that accentuate the complex vocal and instrumental pieces Wilson wrote for Pet Sounds and last year’s SMiLE.

This time around, he’s throwing a few more sheds into the mix.

After hitting such European festivals as Glasto and Roskilde, Wilson returns to the States August 8th with a stop at Bank of America Pavilion in Boston.

He’ll swing through some other major East Coast sheds as well, including Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va.; the P.N.C. Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, N.J.; and Tommy Hilfiger at Jones Beach Theatre in New York.

He’ll play some indoor dates as well, including the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee; Paramount Theatre in Seattle and Arlene Schnitzer Hall in Portland, Ore.

Wilson will wrap things up with a swing down the West Coat with stops September 3rd at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, Calif., and a tour finale at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles the next day.

As with last year’s outing, the centerpiece of the show will be a performance of SMiLE in its entirety. The album, released in September after almost 40 years in the making, brought Wilson his first career Grammy Award last month for “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow.”

Source pollstar.

Laconic genre-blender Jack Johnson starts a summer tour August 1 in Houston, Texas at the Verizon Wireless Theater. The dates cover more than 30 markets throughout the U.S. and Canada and end on September 17 in Toronto at the Molson Ampitheatre.Special guests on the dates will be ALO and Matt Costa.

Pre-sale tickets will be available through www.jackjohnsonmusic.com starting March 12. General public on-sales for most dates is March 19.

Jack Johnson’s new album, In Between Dreams, hits stores March 1 and will be the first music CD to be released with the 1% for the Planet logo. 1% for the Planet (1% FTP) is an alliance of businesses committed to leveraging their resources to create a healthier planet.

Source pollstar.com.