2006

Jeremy Enigk, Badly Drawn Boy, Zero 7, Lady Sovereign, Alejandro Escovedo, Jose Gonzalez, the Veronicas, Particle, Great Big Sea, Sonya Kitchell and Rogue Wave are among the acts that have joined the lineup for Bumbershoot: Seattle’s Music & Arts Festival.

As previously reported, the event will take place Sept. 2-4 at the Seattle Center. Among the earlier confirmed acts are Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest, AFI, Hawthorne Heights and Yellowcard. More artists will be announced next month; tickets go on sale July 15 via Bumbershoot.org and Ticketmaster.

The great singer-songwriter and performer Billy Preston, the real “Fifth Beatle,” has died after a long illness as a result of malignant hypertension that resulted in kidney failure and other complications.

As a result of a medical insult, he’d been in a deep coma since last November 21, but was still struggling to recover. He died at Shea Scottsdale Hospital in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he’d lived for the last couple of years.

Billy was called the Fifth Beatle because he played keyboards on “Let It Be,” “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” He also played on the Rolling Stones’ hit song “Miss You,” and often played with Eric Clapton. He also did the organ work on Sly & the Family Stone’s greatest hits.

Preston’s own hits include “Nothing From Nothing,” “Will It Go Round in Circles” and “You Are So Beautiful,” which Joe Cocker turned into an international hit.

Source: foxnews.com

Rock trio Oysterhead is hoping to mount its first tour since 2001 later this year, drummer Stewart Copeland said during a teleconference with journalists today (June 6). As previously reported, the group, which also features guitarist Trey Anastasio and bassist Les Claypool, will return to live duty later this month at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn.

Oysterhead’s lone album, “The Grand Pecking Order,” was released in 2001 by Elektra. The trio spent Memorial Day weekend rehearsing at Claypool’s California home in preparation for Bonnaroo.

“The plan was always to be an intermittent band and come down from the mountain every five years or so,” Copeland said. “It’s a shoot from the hip sort of thing – not tour, album, tour, album. We come together when we goddamn feel like it. [But] the Bonnaroo invitation came at the right moment. As soon as the three of us are together, all kinds of stuff starts to happen.”

Copeland is thrilled that playing with Oysterhead exposes him not only to different audiences but unique approaches to his craft. “In my world you have to have a song and you play songs and a set list, for that matter,” he said. “We actually do have songs and lyrics [but] we use those songs to leap out from. It’s a whole new thing for me to get that buzz from an audience that’s expecting a brand new piece of music. If we reach those pinnacles, reach those surges, that will enliven the bus ride back to Nashville!”

In related news, Copeland revealed that his documentary “Everyone Stares,” culled from home movies shot during the Police’s heyday, will play on Showtime in August and then arrive on DVD a month later via Universal Music Enterprises.

The DVD will include extra material such as backstage footage with “a different vibe,” according to Copeland. “You can see [guitarist] Andy [Summers] scowling at me. It’s band life that I didn’t have room for in the movie.” “Everyone Stares” will also be screened during Bonnaroo.

Source billboard.com.

Beck has finished recording his next studio album and will release it this fall via Interscope. While there is no official street date for the as-yet-untitled effort, it comes only a year-and-a-half after his last full-length set, “Guero,” hit stores.

According to Beck’s Web site, the new album was produced by Nigel Godrich, who has been behind the boards for such prior releases as 1998’s “Mutations” and 2002’s “Sea Change.”

Beck will be previewing new material this month during a 10-date North American tour, which also visits Tennessee’s Bonnaroo festival. In August, he will hit the European festival circuit and open two dates for Radiohead in Edinburgh and Dublin.

Source billboard.com.

U.K. rock trio Doves has hit the studio to record its fourth studio album. The as-yet-untitled set will be put to tape on a farm in Manchester, according to the group’s Web site.

“We’ve been in there for a couple of weeks now mainly setting gear up and ironing out our usual technical problems,” the band wrote in a recent posting. “We’ve also bought some great vintage studio gear we’ve always fancied.”

The band is planning to record everything on the farm and produce the record itself. “But knowing us lot, that could all change if we get sick of the smell of cow sh*t on the farm,” the band said.

read more at Billboard

Vince Welnick, who took over as the Grateful Dead’s keyboard player in 1990 after a succession of predecessors met untimely deaths, has died at the age of 55, according to an announcement on his Web site.

“Vince passed from this earth on June 2, 2006 … after a decade of battling tragedy while creating beauty and light around him,” the announcement said. It did not give a cause of death.

The San Jose Mercury News said he died in a hospital on Friday after being taken from his home in Forestville, California, and it quoted a person at his home as saying “it looks like he took his own life.”

Welnick had previously spoken of a deep depression after Jerry Garcia, founding guitarist of the iconic psychedelic rock band, died in 1995 and the group disbanded.

Welnick is the fourth keyboard player for the band to have died, and his Web site referred to the position as a “particularly doomed spot.”

He once told an interviewer, “A lot of people ask about that and my stock answer is that I am aware of the fact that you could die doing this job, but I was somewhat dying of boredom before the job came up so I thought I’d take my chances.”

Originally a member of the 1970s rock band “The Tubes,” Welnick joined the Grateful Dead after longest-serving keyboard player Brent Mydland died in 1990 of a drug overdose.

Previously, pianist Keith Godchaux died in a car accident in 1980, a year after he left the band, and founding vocalist and keyboard player Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died in 1973 of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage.

After the Grateful Dead broke up and ended its 30-year run as one of America’s biggest touring acts, Welnick formed his own group, Missing Man Formation. He also toured with other groups including Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart’s band.

He did not take part in various reunions of the Dead’s other surviving members.

“His service to and love for the Grateful Dead were heartfelt and essential. He had a loving soul and a joy in music that we were lucky to share,” the band said in a statement.

In an extension of the band’s “curse of the keyboard player,” Scott Larned, cofounder and keyboard player for the nationally-touring Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra, died last year of a heart attack.

Source yahoo.com.

Paul Simon, B.B King, Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello and Etta James are among the stars slated to perform at the 27th Annual Festival International de Jazz de Montreal.

The event