Favorite Seventies Artists In The News

Posted by Administrator on Dec. 18th, 2015

David Bowie has made a second song from his forthcoming album Blackstar available for streaming. "Lazarus," described as a broody downtempo song that veers into alt-jazz territory, is six minutes long and peppered with saxophone and dirty guitars. "Look up here, man, I'm in danger I've got nothing left to lose, I'm so high it, makes my brain whirl. Dropped my cell phone down below. Ain't that just like me?" Bowie sings. "Lazarus" shares its title with Bowie's off-Broadway musical, which runs until Jan. 20 at the New York Theatre Workshop and is reportedly the only track from Blackstar to be featured in the production. The official video for "Lazarus" will drop Jan. 7, the day before Bowie's birthday and the release of Blackstar. - Billboard, 12/18/15...... The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced on Dec. 17 that classic rockers Chicago, Cheap Trick, Deep Purple, Steve Miller and Hip-Hop pioneers N.W.A. will be inducted into its class of 2016 during a ceremony on Apr. 18 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President and CEO Joel Peresman said the first four classic rock acts will begin to fill in some of the perceived "holes" in the Hall's ranks, which some critics have charged with being too elitist and dismissive of some of rock's massively popular acts. "This year, there was more free-form discussion where people could truly be advocates and ask more and better questions," Peresman said. "[The committee] could dig a little deeper into the importance and the impact of these bands and discuss them in greater depth and make more of a case that maybe helped get them on the ballot," he added. Despite being eligible before, it was the first time Cheap Trick, Miller and Chicago (which won the public fan vote, tallying nearly 37.7 million nods) had been nominated for induction, while Deep Purple and N.W.A have appeared on the ballot before. The original quartet and septet lineups, respectively, of Cheap Trick and Chicago are being inducted, while the Deep Purple roster will encompass the group's first three lineups, including three teams of singers and bass players. Should former Chicago member Peter Cetera perform with the band at the ceremony, it would be the first time since 1985 he has done so. Other intriguing reunion possibilites include estranged Cheap Trick drummer Bun E. Carlos and Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who left the band in 1993. Blackmore has said in the past that he "could care less" about being inducted into the rock hall, and that he likely would not attend the ceremony if Deep Purple were inducted. Acts nominated this year but not making the cut include The Cars, Chaka Khan, Chic, Janet Jackson, The J.B.'s, Los Lobos, Nine Inch Nails, The Smiths, The Spinners and Yes. It will be the second time the RRHOF ceremony has been held at the Barclay Arena, and HBO will again film the ceremony for broadcast later in the spring, most likely in May. - Billboard, 12/17/15...... AC/DC announced on Dec. 14 that the 2016 leg of their current Rock or Bust tour will kick off Feb. 2 in Tacoma, Wash. The 20-city U.S. leg will also include stops in such major markets as Las Vegas (2/5), Denver (2/8), Chicago (2/17), St. Louis (2/20), Dallas (2/23), Houston (2/26), Kansas City (2/29), Atlanta (3/8), Washington, D.C. (3/17), Detroit (3/20), Cleveland, Oh. (3/26), and Philadelphia (4/1) before wrapping on Apr. 4 at New York's Madison Square Garden. The Aussie rockers also announced two U.K. dates in 2016 -- in London on June 4 and Manchester on June 9 -- with the London gig representing the first major concert at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park since it was used to host the 2012 Olympic Games. The band has spent much of 2015 touring, with shows throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia. - Billboard, 12/14/15...... Jimmy Buffett announced on Dec. 17 that a musical based on many of his classic beach-bum hits -- including ''Margaritaville," "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes," "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and "A Pirate Looks at Forty" -- is currently in the works with a world premiere eyed for sometime in 2017. The show will have Buffett's blend of rock and country tunes and an original story by writers Greg Garcia and Mike O'Malley, with direction by Christopher Ashley. "The idea of turning 'Margaritaville' into a musical has been percolating for quite a while, but finding the right people to tell the right kind of story to go with the right songs from my catalogue took some time," Buffett said in a statement. "Now we have found our crew and I am happy to sail with them to Margaritaville. It's going to be a fun voyage," he added. - AP, 12/17/15...... Paul McCartney is among the 16 musicians appearing in a new video for a charity single, "Love Song to Earth," that is being relesed to raise awareness of climate change and benefit the Friends Of The Earth organization and the UN Foundation, as well as influence the United Nations Climate Change conference, which took place in Paris earlier in December. "Love Song to Earth" is described as "a song with the power to fight climate change and maybe change the world," and also features such acts as Jon Bon Jove, Sheryl Crow, Fergie, Sean Paul, Natasha Bedingfield and Leona Lewis. - New Musical Express, 12/18/15...... The producers of Grease: Live, the upcoming TV musical based on the hit 1978 film Grease, have announced their small-screen live event will be staged in front of a studio audience. Director Thomas Kail and set designer David Korins said in Dec. 16 that an audience "in the multiple hundreds" will populate Rydell High and other locations featured in the 1950s-set musical, which airs on Jan. 31 on Fox and will be broadcast live from the Warner Bros. backlot. The show will be a combined version of the original stage musical, first produced in Chicago in 1971, and the perennially popular 1978 film that starred John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. The producers hope the studio audience -- who will be seen on camera though not in costume, handling props or delivering lines -- will give the Fox event a fresh, and potentially more risky, angle to distinguish it from NBC's live broadcasts of The Sound of Music, Peter Pan and The Wiz. The cast for Grease: Live includes Julianne Hough as Sandy, Aaron Tveit as Danny, Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, Carlos Pena Vega as Kenickie, Carly Rae Jepsen as Frenchy and Keke Palmer as Marty. - Billboard, 12/17/15...... Michael Jackson's classic 1982 album Thriller has become the first album ever to be certified 30 times multi-platinum for U.S. sales, marking more than 30 million sales in America, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) announced on Dec. 15. "RIAA has awarded Gold & Platinum records on behalf of the music business for nearly 60 years, but this is the first time an artist has crossed the 30X multi-Platinum plateau," RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman said in a statement. "We are honored to celebrate the unique status of Thriller in Gold & Platinum history. What an exceptional achievement and testament to Thriller's enduring spot in our hearts and musical history." The latest Jackson milestone continues the King of Pop's reign as the most selling artist of all time with over 100 million sales for Thriller worldwide and 1 billion total sales to his credit. Thriller was released Nov. 30, 1982, and spent nearly 2 1/2 years on the Billboard album chart with 37 weeks at No. 1, holding the modern day record. It was also the first album in history to spend its first 80 weeks in the album chart's top 10, which has only been replicated once since. Worldwide, Thriller topped charts in nearly every market, and won a record-setting 8 Grammys with nominations in 12 categories -- another first. - Billboard, 12/16/15...... In other Michael Jackson news, an unproduced screenplay centered on Jackson's pet chimp "Bubbles" has topped the 2015 Black List, a collection of Hollywood's best unproduced screenplays. Written by Isaac Adamson, Bubbles is narrated by the chimp himself, who details his life within The King of Pop's inner circle through the scandals that later rocked Jackson's life and eventually led to Bubbles' release. The script topped the list of 81 screenplays with 44 votes. Three of the last seven Academy Awards for best picture went to scripts featured on previous Black Lists, as well as eight of the last 16 screenwriting Oscars. Top 2015 Oscar contenders The Revanant and Spotlight were previously featured on the list in some form. - Billboard, 12/15/15...... Amazon Studios has announced it will develop a limited bio series about the Grateful Dead that will be based on the 2003 book Home Before Daylight: My Life On the Road With the Grateful Dead by band roadie Steve Parish. GD founding member Bob Weir will executive produce the project along with Parish, and Weir will oversee all aspects of music for the series. The project has yet to find a writer, but meetings will be taking place over the next several weeks in search of one. - The Hollywood Reporter, 12/15/15...... To help celebrate its 40th anniversary, Queen's iconic 1975 song "Bohemian Rhapsody" has been reinterpreted by the English National Ballet, Royal Academy of Music and Trinity Boys Choir. Footage of two ballet dancers, the choir and a string quartet from RAM can be seen in a new video cut with the original video for the song, and clips of the band's performance of the song on Christmas Eve, 1975. "We all realised it was something wonderful and we should give it our heart and soul," Queen's Brian May recently told the BBC in an interview about the song. - New Musical Express, 12/16/15...... A gravesite marker for late blues icon B.B. King was dedicated on Dec. 11 at his grave in Indianola, Miss. King, who died at age 89 on May 14 in Las Vegas due to type 2 diabetes, was returned to his beloved Mississippi for burial on May 30. More than 100 relatives, friends, fans and former employees gathered at the gravesite to dedicate the black granite slab that eventually will become the centerpiece of a memorial garden outside the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. The garden will be part of a $4.5 million expansion of the King museum that tells his life story. - AP, 12/13/15...... Former Roxy Music member and veteran music producer Brian Eno reportedly pledged to pay £250 for the "trademark black Leninist hat" of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn at the annual Stop The War fundraiser in London on Dec. 11. Eno has previously voiced his support for Corbyn, and in August he spoke in support of him at a Labour leadership rally. Speaking at the time, Eno said: "I don't think electability really is the most important thing. What's important is that someone changes the conversation and moves us off this small-minded agenda." - New Musical Express, 12/14/15...... Adam Roth, a New York City guitarist and composer who was a staple of the then New York underground scene in the Lower East Side since the late 1970s, died on Dec. 16 following a battle with stage four bile duct cancer. He was 57. Roth, who was also known for his work as a TV composer and frequently collaborated with his friend Denis Leary, played in a number of bands that frequented iconic venues of the scene such as CBGB and Max's Kansas City. Roth later wrote the music for Leary's hit drama series Rescue Me and his comedy show Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll more recently, for which he also served as John Corbett's guitar "voice" and the show's tech adviser. - Billboard, 12/17/15.

Bruce Springsteen announced on his E Street Radio broadcast on Dec. 9 that he plans to release a solo album that's "more of a solo project" in the upcoming year. "The project I've been working on is more of a solo project," said Springsteen, who recently released a The River deluxe reissue and performed on Saturday Night Live. "It wasn't a project I was going to probably take the band out on. So I said, 'Gee, that's going to push the band playing again until a ways in the future.' It'll be nice to get some playing in so you don't wind up being two or three years between E Street tours. This will give us a chance to get out there and stretch our muscles a little bit." The New Jersey rocker added that he had no plans to tour after putting out the new The River release, but he "missed playing with the guys" and "playing, period." He'll be playing The River in its entirety in his upcoming tour, and noted he'll still find some way to work some other material into the set, probably in the form of encores. "We plan on picking out some of the best of our outtakes for the end of the show, and there will obviously be some fan favorites," he said. "I don't know myself how it will play out. It should be interesting and a lot of fun for the fans." - Billboard, 12/9/15...... In 1979, a group of rock musicians including Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash co-founded Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) to advocate for a "No Nukes" future. Now some 36 years later, Raitt says she and her anti-nuclear power activist friends are ready to push back on the pro-nuclear power arguments heard during the recent climate talks in Paris. "There's no solution for nuclear waste," says Raitt. "There have been incredible cost overruns and delays in nuclear plant construction. And nuclear power plants continue to pose the security threat of terrorism," she adds. After a Harvard University professor and editorial writers for the The New York TImes and Guardian newspapers called for a reconsideration of nuclear power as a carbon-free energy source to combat climate change, Raitt acknowledged that "there are a lot of smart people on the side of pro nukes... But I find a lot more people making the anti-nuke argument." Raitt will kick off a tour behind her upcoming new album, Dig in Deep, a week before the LP's Feb. 26 release in Northridge, Calif., and some of the proceeds -- as well as on tours by Browne, Nash, and David Crosby -- benefit the Guacamole Fund, which supports the ongoing anti-nuclear-power efforts of MUSE and other organizations. - Billboard, 12/11/15...... A 1964 Porsche SC Cabriolet once owned by Janis Joplin sold for $1.76 million at a Sotheby's auciton in New York on Dec. 11, far surpassing the $500,000 it was estimated to bring. With seven bidders competing, the staggering sale price set a record for the highest price ever paid for a Porsche 356 at public auction. Joplin bought the German-made auto at a used car lot in 1968, and enlisted one of her bandmates, Dave Richards of Big Brother and the Holding Company, to customize the vehicle with a "History of the Universe" mural. When completed, psychedelic imagery covered the body from headlights to tailights, The Porsche had been inherited by Joplin's siblings, Michael and Laura, and for the past two decades had been on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Oh. - New York Daily News, 12/11/15...... Jimmy Page, who recently confirmed he'll be starting work on a new solo LP in 2016, has told Guitar World magazine that he also plans on touring in the new year with a live band that are "totally different" to Led Zeppelin. The guitarist said earlier in the year that he was getting "match fit" to perform again and that he was "warming up on the touchlines." Page said that on his next tour he "would play material that spanned everything from my recording career right back to my very, very early days with The Yardbirds (and) there would certainly be some new material in there as well." - NME, 12/10/15...... In other Zeppelin-related news, former frontman Robert Plant has just recorded a cover of Elbow's "The Blanket Of Night" for a new compilation album that will benefit the refugee crisis in Europe. Plant has teamed up with the British Red Cross for his contribution, which was produced by Kings of Leon producer Ethan Johns. "We have a worldwide international catastrophe -- talking about it is one thing, doing something about it is another," Plant says. "The position we are in, it's paramount we all do our best one way or another to help." The album, titled The Long Road, is due Mar. 4, 2016. - NME, 12/9/15...... Meanwhile, late Led Zepp drummer John Bonham's son Jason Bonham has revealed he sat in with Phil Collins for a week of secret rehearsals in 2014 when Collins was determining if he was capable of playing shows after dealing with back and neck issues. Although Collins eventually decided against returning to performing then -- instead opting to have his surgery in 2015 so he can hit the road in 2016, Jason Bonham says he's still buzzed about the experience and that Collins is "one of my real heroes." "Other than my dad I would say Phil is probably my No. 2 guy to go to," Bonham says. "I've been a huge fan since Abacab, and then of course his solo stuff." Bonham, who is currently on the road with his Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience show, added that he "hasn't heard anything" about being recruited by Collins again when the latter tours in 2016. - Billboard, 12/9/15...... Singer/guitarist José Feliciano was on hand to christen a new exibition dedicated to the Puerto Rican-born musician in San Juan on Dec. 8. "Jose Feliciano: Our Musical Ambassador" documents the career of the pioneering crossover singer and guitarist, famous for such hits as his cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire" and the Christmas song, "Feliz Navidad." Photos of Feliciano's childhood in Puerto Rico and later New York City are included in the exhibition, which displays albums, awards and ephemera from early in his career, when his versions of "Light My Fire" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" were on the charts. The exhibition will continue at the National Popular Culture Foundation in San Juan through 2016. - Billboard, 12/8/15...... The Beatles' 1968 spiritual retreat in northern India, which had become overgrown with foilage in recent years, has just been turned into a tourist attraction after being renovated and reopened to the public. The band famously visited the sanctuary set in a forest near Rishikesh, India during March and April of 1968, seeking enlightenment through transcendental meditation and were said to have written some 48 songs during their stay, many of which appeared on their "White Album". However, the visit was ultimately cut short, after guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was accused of making sexual advances to actress Mia Farrow, who was also a guest. An Indian forestry official told the BBC that his workers have now "cleaned up the place and lined the pathways with flowers... We are making some gardens and putting some benches for visitors." Future plans, according to the official, include setting up a cafeteria and a souvenir shop while "retaining the place's rustic look." The retreat, which has long been a place of pilgramage for Beatles fans, was formally reopened on Dec. 8, and admission is around £7. - New Musical Express, 12/9/15...... The Kinks guitarist and co-founder Dave Davies will play his only UK show of 2015 at the London Islington Assembly Hall on Dec. 18. Davies, who helped shape the sound of the Kinks with his singing and lead guitar on such classics as "Come On Now" and "I'm Not Like Everybody Else," will perform both solo songs and Kinks classics that showcase his unique writing style and revolutionary guitar sound he created on such classics as "You Really Got Me." Tickets are available at www.alt-tickets.co.uk/dave-davies-tickets. - Noble PR, 12/10/15...... During an appearance on the UK television show Loose Women, actor Burt Reynolds said that his fellow thespian Charlie Sheen, who recently revealed he was HIV positive, "got what he deserved." "His father [Martin Sheen] is a very, very decent man and a dear friend of mine," Reynolds remarked. "I feel bad for him but Charlie -- I don't feel bad for him. He's getting what he deserves. If you're going to misbehave like that, they're going to get you...He misbehaved badly. Very badly. But you know, when you're that age, it's tough. All those things are coming at you and it's difficult." Reynolds, who is promoting his new autobiography But Enough About Me, also shared his opinion about actress Angelina Jolie, the daughter of his Deliverance co-star and close friend Jon Voight. "[Jon is] very kind. I love him so much. He doesn't deserve the kind of treatment that his daughter Angelina Jolie is giving him. They've reconciled but she still has moments. I remember when she was ten years old and I met her and I went over to Jon and said, "you're in big trouble, she is going to be wild! I hope she doesn't hurt you." The 79-year-old Reynolds is reportedly struggling with complications from a quintuple heart bypass he underwent in Feb. 2010, and his condition has raised the concern of his doctors. - Celebitchy.com, 12/10/15..... The current owners of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch, which Jackson purchased in 1987 for a $19.5 million price tag, are reportedly having a tough time finding a buyer willing to pay their $100 million asking price and are turning to overseas buyers to take the property off their hands. Wealthy clients in China are being urged to snap up the late "Thriller" singer's former home in Santa Barbara County in California, which has already been on the market for six months. The ranch is a 1,091-hectare estate complete with the mansion, guest cottages, farm and lake, and was abandoned by the singer after it was raided by authorities who were investigating charges of child molestation.