‘Superman’ Prequel TV Series ‘Krypton’ Coming To Syfy

by Merrill Barr

While its film slate is still in its early stages, there’s little to be said against about the state of DC’s TV universe in terms of development (for the most part). It appears it’s about to get another addition to the roster thanks to David S. Goyer and the Superman origin story, in the form of Krypton.

A few weeks ago, word trickled out that Goyer was in the process of developing a new prequel series set on Superman’s home world. Now those rumors are not only official, but we now know whicch network has dug deep for the new show.

According to a new report from IGN, Goyer and executive producer Ian Goldberg (Once Upon a Time, FlashForward) have teamed with Syfy for the series, and released the first synopsis promising some new chapters in the superhero’s live action history:

Years before the Superman legend we know, the House of El was shamed and ostracized. This series follows The Man of Steel’s grandfather as he brings hope and equality to Krypton, turning a planet in disarray into one worthy of giving birth to the greatest Super Hero ever known.

Both Goldberg and Goyer are the mastermind behind the pilot’s story (unsurprising, given Goyer’s work on Man of Steel) set to follow Jor-El’s father – Superman’s grandfather – with Goldberg handling script duties.

Should it go to series, Krypton would join the already running Arrow and Flash (which are a sure lock for second and fourth seasons respectively), as well as Gotham (should it be renewed),the currently in development Supergirl at CBS and TNT’s Young Justice (should they go to series) and Constantine (if renewed by NBC).

At the moment, it appears DC’s all too happy with making television series which run independent of one another in order to expand their lead on rival Marvel – only just now be putting their second series on the air with Agent Carter as part of the extended Marvel Cinematic Universe. Essentially a ‘quantity over quality’ strategy, though it’s hard to dispute the many who argue Flash and Arrow are the two best superhero shows currently running on the medium.

How all this relates to Krypton is hard to say, though. It’s unlikely the new series will tie back into Man of Steel or any of the other DC television projects, so the question is whether or not the powers that be can throw enough time, effort and money into the show to make it the best thing it can be. Unfortunately, we won’t know the answer to that until we see some footage.

What’s unclear at the moment is what this means for Goyer’s other DC project, Constantine, a series that just went into limbo when NBC opted to cease production after the first 13-episodes of season one but not outright cancel the series due to a lack of ratings data as the show didn’t premiere until late October, thus leaving little room to calculate the effect of DVR increases.

What are your hopes for a TV series based on Superman’s homeworld? Did Man of Steel‘s take on the planet raise your hopes for what a Krypton TV series could be, or does the talent or network raise concerns? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The premiere date of Krypton is currently unknown.

.

A.K.A. JESSICA JONES: See David Tennant and Mike Colter on the Set

by Allison Keene 2 days ago

Now that we can definitively say that Marvel and Netflix’s first collaboration, Daredevil, has been a great success, it’s even more exciting to consider the next installments of the Defenders series. And, right on cue, we are just now getting a few tidbits from the set of A.K.A. Jessica Jones, starring Krysten Ritter.

In these photos released over the last few days, we get a first look at David Tennant as the really, really evil villain Killgrave, with his own a.k.a. as The Purple Man. (For a detailed look at who the Purple Man is, and why he should be feared, you can check out the details here).

Image via Marvel Comics

Also, there are several new images of Mike Colter as fellow Defender Luke Cage. Colter has recently been scaring us Good Wife fans as Chicago drug kingpin (allusions!) Lemond Bishop, a role he’s fantastic in, so I’m particularly excited to see him team up with Ritter (who has so deserved a leading part after Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23; ignore the title, the show was so funny and incredibly underrated).

There may not be a lot of humor in A.K.A. Jessica Jones, though, as Daredevil has already introduced us to a very dark side of the MCU that the other series will likely mimic (especially because Jones’ story is steeped in tragedy from the outset).

.

THE MESSENGERS Review: Angels Are Among Us on the CW

by Allison Keene 5 hours ago

Angels, demons, “The Man” (who appears via meteor) … these feel like dark portends for any show. But with only the pilot available for review, it’s hard to know where The Messengers may fall on the spectrum of CW series. Is it doomed like The Tomorrow People, or will it get steadily better (and build up an audience) like The 100? Though it very closely follows NBC’s Heroes model, is it instead more the heir apparent to Supernatural? To start, The Messengers features a lot of the hallmarks of almost any given CW series — the cast is young and attractive, and there is a superpower/fantasy hook — but it also actually feels a little ambitious in its themes.

Image via The CW

Still, this setup may sound achingly familiar: The Messengers follows the story of five individuals whose lives change dramatically after a meteor hits in the desert and sends out a wave of energy that seemingly kills them — but only briefly. As they return to life, they find that they have new powers, and as they struggle to understand their abilities, they also deal with new complications in their lives.

Luckily, they all also live within driving distance of Houston, which is apparently the meeting place for the chosen ones. Vera (Shantal VanSanten), a NASA-level researcher, is the first to witness the meteor impact, and the first to meet the parcel it was carrying: a mysterious figure known as “The Man” (played by Diogo Morgado, who portrayed Jesus in The Bible miniseries; ironic, as he is likely a Lucifer figure here). But, it is Evangelical preacher Joshua (Jon Fletcher) who reveals the first “message” from God. Fire and brimstone are coming, he tells his congregants who are used to hearing messages of hope. Satan walks among us!

This sets up an apocalyptic backdrop for the heroes, who also include young mom Erin (Sofia Black-D’Elia), undercover agent Raul (J.D. Pardo), and high school swimmer Peter (Joel Courtney). As they make their way to Houston by hook or by crook, their lives begin to intersect, as they will (eventually, one presumes) team-up to fight against evil.

Image via The CW

Despite the worrying sign of angel wings — which the show thankfully uses sparingly — The Messengers has a vibe to it that’s extremely reminiscent of Heroes, Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural (especially the religious tie-ins). There’s no “save the cheerleader” mandate, but it’s close: “The Man” does tempt Vera to kill a nurse in a coma (Anna Diop) who is obviously important in some way, in order for Vera to get information about her abducted son. Save the nurse!

So far, it’s unclear exactly what the messengers are meant to do, or what their powers may help them achieve, but despite some hokey elements, the series does a decent job of creating an intriguing framework in its pilot. It’s far more grounded — currently, although don’t count on it staying that way — than the over-the-top angel series Dominion on Syfy, but it’s a far, far cry from the beauty and emotional complications of something like Wim Wenders‘ 1987 film Wings of Desire (be as patient and accepting as you like, this is still the CW). But more than anything, The Messengers actually seems like it has something to say. Like the messengers themselves, there’s no way to know if the future (or next episodes) will bring something good, or truly awful. But we’re listening. For now.

Rating: ★★★ Good — Proceed with cautious optimism

The Messengers premieres Friday, April 17th at 9 p.m. on the CW

.

REVOLUTION Fans To Get Resolution Through a Digital Comic Book Series

by Allison Keene 2 days ago

For fans of series cancelled before their time (at least, in the minds of the storytellers and the fans), this Revolution digital comic book is great news. I can think of half a dozen TV series off the top of my head, maybe even a bakers dozen, that would be a joy to see have new life in a comic series. If this is the new trend (instead of from comic to screen, but from screen to comic), bring it on.

For those unaware, Revolution ended after two seasons on NBC in May of 2014, but fans have been clamoring ever since to see it brought back somewhere else (Netflix is always the go-to these days, since they have a habit of resurrecting series, but there are plenty of other options, like even Yahoo!Screen, who recently took on Community).

Image via DC Comics (click for full size)

Though the show will not be returning to TV, it will wrap up its stories in a four-chapter digital comic book that will be released through DC Comics. The distribution will be, fittingly, episodic, with the first chapter being release Monday, May 4th, with subsequent chapters coming every two weeks afterwards.

You can read all of the details below in the press release from Warner Bros. And congratulations, Revolution fans — you didn’t get exactly what you wanted, but you are getting some closure, which is more than most of us can say for the shows we’ve loved and lost too soon.

BURBANK, CA (April 15, 2015) — Fans of the Warner Bros. Television series Revolution, which ended a two-year run on NBC in May 2014, are going to get a resolution to the show’s storylines that were left open-ended in the final broadcast episode.

In response to passionate fan efforts to revive the show, the entire creative team behind the series — including executive producers Eric Kripke, J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Rockne S. O’Bannon and Jon Favreau — regrouped to create a special four-chapter digital comic book with DC Comics that will serve to continue and ultimately resolve the adventures last seen in Revolution’s second season finale.

Image via Warner Bros. (click for full size)

Revolution writers David Reed and Ryan Parrott handled the writing duties of the digital comic’s four chapters, after breaking the story in the writers’ room along with the rest of the Revolution creative team, which included Kripke, O’Bannon, Paul Grellong, David Rambo, Trey Callaway, Anne Cofell Saunders, Ben Edlund, Matt Pitts and Jim Barnes. A photo of the team at work on the digital comic, along with a special guest who fans will recognize, can be seen here.

Illustrated by DC Comics’ artist Angel Hernandez, each of the four separate digital chapters will also have a specially designed cover, and will roll out every two weeks beginning Monday, May 4. A sneak peek at three of the illustrated Revolution characters — Charlie Matheson, Miles Matheson and Sebastian Monroe — can be seen here.

The four chapters will each be debuting exclusively on www.ComicBook.com for one week before being made available for viewing on Revolution’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Revolution. Fans can also use the #RevolutionComic hashtag on Twitter to find out more information about the digital comic.

Here is the rollout schedule for each chapter on www.ComicBook.com:

• Chapter 1 – Monday, May 4
• Chapter 2 – Monday, May 18
• Chapter 3 – Monday, June 1
• Chapter 4 – Monday, June 15

Revolution creator/executive producer Eric Kripke had this message for fans regarding the digital comic:

April 15, 2015

Dear Revolutionaries, Patriots, and Soldiers of the Monroe Militia,

So first of all—thank you. Seriously. Sincerely. The loyalty you’ve shown REVOLUTION these past months has been touching and overwhelming—it’s meant more to me than you’ll ever know. And in case you were wondering—yes, we’ve been listening. We’ve read the tweets. We’ve seen the incredible petition. We’ve followed #RelocateRevolution. Please know that you’ve been heard.

And solely because of your efforts, we wanted to pay you back—to give you something fantastic. And while, unfortunately, we simply can’t make more episodes of the show (alas, there are financial realities we can’t overcome), we can do the next best thing. Which is end the story. On our terms. Exactly the way we would have.

So J.J., Jon and I are pleased and proud to announce the REVOLUTION endgame: a four-issue series coming soon from DC Comics. If you take a look at the attached photo, you’ll see that we brought back the entire writing staff to work on it. The band’s back together! (And if you study the photo closely, you’ll notice a certain young, plucky Matheson who also joined us). Everyone has generously agreed to work for little or no money. They’re doing it, because like you, they’re passionate about this story and want to see it end correctly.

So stay tuned. We’ve got lots of work to do. We’ll keep you posted—in the coming months, you can expect more details, sneak peeks, and early artwork. But Miles, Monroe, Rachel, Charlie, Aaron, Neville and the rest will return for the epic finale to the REVOLUTION storyline. We hope you’re as excited as we are.

And again—thank you. This is because of you. This is for you.

Much love,

Kripke

From J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions, Supernatural’s Eric Kripke and Warner Bros. Television, Revolution was a post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama series that centered around one family’s struggle to survive 15 years after a mysterious worldwide blackout. Created by Eric Kripke and executive produced by Kripke, Abrams, Bryan Burk, Rockne S. O’Bannon and Jon Favreau, the series was produced by Bonanza Productions in association with Bad Robot Productions, Kripke Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television.

Jessie Mueller Confirmed To Star in Sara Bareilles Musical Waitress

By Michael Gioia
17 Apr 2015

Mueller was among the Broadway actors who took part in the A.R.T.'s recent New York City workshops of Waitress. It was previously reported that the Bareilles musical would be her next project post Beautiful.

She played the central role of Jenna, "an inventive waitress trapped in a small-town diner and a loveless marriage. Pregnant and lonely, Jenna finds relief in making creatively-titled pies — and in a budding romance with an unlikely newcomer."

Mueller in Beautiful
Photo by Joan Marcus

"The workshop was so exciting," Mueller previously told Playbill.com. "There was just this energy in the room. Coming from Diane Paulus and from Sara, there was like an energy — there was a crackling that was happening. I think people are going to be surprised. They're going to get introduced to these characters and be surprised by how much there's a little bit of themselves in everyone that appears in the play. It's just a really hearty, meaty story about life and choices and all the stuff we have to navigate as we go through life. And then, on top of it, there's just this gorgeous music that she's written that sounds like her, but it's so of the world that they've created for the piece.

"Whether or not the world knows it yet — she's already a superstar — but I think that [Sara Bareilles is] one of those people who we're going to look back on in 30 years, and she's going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I think she's that kind of writer, and she's that kind of talent, and it's really inspiring to be around somebody like that. It's inspiring to be around women like that in a business that I think is very difficult. I mean, I'm not in the music business, but I'm in a part of the entertainment business, and I just have so much respect for people who can keep their core, keep their individuality, and navigate a career in the way that they dictate because I think that's what I get from those two women, [Carole King and Sara Bareilles]."

The new Bareilles-scored musical will make its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in August 2015. As previously reported, it may be headed to Broadway following its Cambridge engagement, although a Broadway timeline or theatre have not yet been announced.

Finding Neverland director Diane Paulus and choreographer Mia Michaels will reunite for the project. Additional casting and creative team members have not yet been announced.

The New York City workshop cast also included Christopher Fitzgerald, Amber Iman, Bryce Pinkham, Andy Karl, Keala Settle, Dierdre Friel and Barrett Wilbert Weed, among others.

Playbill.com broke the news of Waitress in June 2013 when Tony Award-winning producers Barry and Fran Weissler revealed that they were collaborating with their Tony-winning Pippin director Paulus on the new musical to be scored by Grammy Award nominee Bareilles. The Weissler's Tony-winning revival of Pippin premiered at A.R.T. prior to its acclaimed Broadway arrival.

Waitress will begin previews in Cambridge, MA, Aug. 1. Opening night is yet to be announced. Paulus is the artistic director of A.R.T.

"Corrina Corrina" screenwriter, director and producer Jessie Nelson has penned the book for Waitress.

Visit americanrepertorytheater.org.

Below, Bareilles performs "She Used to Be Mine" in concert and describes how the song fits into Waitress.

At Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony, a Generational Push and Pull

By JOE COSCARELLI - APRIL 19, 2015 - NY Times

CLEVELAND — Although the show went on for five hours, a few things managed to go unmentioned at the 30th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on Saturday night here. Among the relevant topics not discussed: the solo catalog of Ringo Starr, who became the fourth and final Beatle to gain entry to the Hall twice over, this time as an individual; disco, rap and dance music, some of the rock-adjacent genres not represented in this year’s class; and the conspicuous decades-long absence of Bill Withers, one of the show’s honorees, from the music industry.

.

Mr. Withers, in a rare public appearance since ceasing to record or perform live in the 1980s — after gifting the world timeless hits like “Lean on Me” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” — alluded to his indefinite hiatus in a crowd-pleasing speech. “I watch a lot of ‘Judge Judy,’ ” he said. “I’m not out and about.” (Mr. Withers also managed to sneak in some insider digs, referring to record labels’ A&R executives as “antagonistic and redundant.”)

.

But at an event dedicated to conserving and protecting a musical tradition, Mr. Withers, 76, held back any real gripes about the business of rock ’n’ roll, and even sang backup for John Legend during a cover of “Lean on Me.” Stevie Wonder, in his induction speech for Mr. Withers, also skipped over the abrupt end to the soul singer’s career. Instead, the ceremony was about holding up — and keeping a tight grip on — consensus icons of the art form, like the late Lou Reed, inducted for a second time after his entry with the Velvet Underground, and the blues-rock guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who died in a helicopter crash in 1990 at age 35.

.

Also welcomed into the Hall of Fame: the pop-punk godfathers Green Day (in their first year of eligibility, which occurs 25 years after an act’s debut record); the “5” Royales, an influential ’50s rhythm and blues group; Chicago’s multiracial Paul Butterfield Blues Band, from the ’60s; and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, representing women in rock for the evening.

.

In large part a history lesson, the show took more risks when it looked forward. “There’s an effort to keep things relevant,” said Joel Peresman, the president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, in an interview on Thursday, ahead of the show.

.

Inducting Ms. Jett from far outside the canon was Miley Cyrus, the pop provocateur, who opened her speech by describing “the first time I wanted to have sex with Joan Jett.” Ms. Jett is “what Superwoman really should be,” Ms. Cyrus said.

Ringo Starr became the fourth Beatle to gain entry to the Hall twice over. Credit Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

.

But even with a millennial ambassador on stage, the generational push and pull could be felt. Ricky Byrd, the guitarist for the Blackhearts, said his 13-year-old daughter was “truly not impressed by any of this,” unless it meant she could meet the rapper Iggy Azalea. “In my world, there is only one Iggy you want to meet,” Mr. Byrd said — meaning Iggy Pop — to whooping applause.

.

Still, Mr. Peresman had pointed to the incorporation of current artists as a sign of progress for the institution. Tucked into the back bottom corner of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum down the street from the ceremony was the “Right Here, Right Now” exhibit, featuring costumes and props from artists like Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Lady Gaga. “You have an audience coming in here that you want to keep engaged,” Mr. Peresman said. “You definitely always want to have younger people come, because you want them to learn.”

.

Ms. Cyrus’s Instagram feed could make a nice interactive addition to the collection: Before joining Ms. Jett onstage for a fiery rendition of “Crimson and Clover,” she posted photos of herself in leather overalls, breasts exposed (save for pasties adorned with two letter “J”s), and making an obscene hand gesture to a “no smoking” sign backstage.

.

“It’s important to see another strong woman who does things her way — and she does,” Ms. Jett said of her spiritual protégé, before calling rock a subculture of “integrity, rebellion, frustration, alienation” — one that makes “eternal teenagers of all who follow it.”

Bill Withers, left, sang backup on his hit “Lean on Me” with John Legend.

.

Actual teenagers were present and screaming from the rafters for Green Day, who were introduced by Fall Out Boy, another punk-influenced, pop-leaning act. Pete Wentz, Fall Out Boy’s bassist, said in an interview, “If we want rock ’n’ roll to keep being this big, meaningful spirit and idea, then you have to be progressive and open to the idea that our culture is moving forward.”

While the packaging may be different, he added, “The things Kanye West is doing right now are super rock ’n’ roll.” (Mr. West will not be eligible for the Hall until 2028, although hip-hop acts like N.W.A. and LL Cool J have so far stalled on the ballot.)

.

Appearances this year by modern rock ambassadors like Beck, Dave Grohl, John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr. and Tom Morello were more traditional. Patti Smith and Laurie Anderson gave moving tributes to Mr. Reed — “Everything that Lou taught me, I remember,” Ms. Smith said — while Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, pregnant in a studded leather jacket, delivered a sharp version of Mr. Reed’s “Vicious.”

.

By the time Paul McCartney told a drummer-centric version of the Beatles’ origin story, it was past midnight and the crowd was growing visibly restless. (An edited version of the show will air May 30 on HBO.) Ringo Starr shared his solo moment anyway, welcoming most of the night’s performers back for “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

.

Amid the rockers was Ms. Cyrus, and even Mr. Withers again squeezed in front of a microphone. He appeared to be singing, although it was impossible to pick out any one voice. By the time the group moved into the final number, “I Wanna Be Your Man,” Mr. Withers had slipped back offstage, leaving to the others the burden of legacies.

Thanks Mick.

Jack Bruce, Ann Wilson Feature on Acoustic Beatles Tribute Comp

Cream bassist's final recording, a cover of "Eleanor Rigby," will appear on 'Keep Calm and Salute the Beatles.'

Terry O'Neill

The Beatles' classic ballads will be the focus of an upcoming tribute album featuring acoustic Fab Four covers by artists like Jack Bruce, Heart's Ann Wilson, Todd Rundgren and more. Keep Calm and Salute the Beatles, due out April 28th, will feature Bruce's cover of "Eleanor Rigby," recorded just prior to the Cream bassist's death last October. The Revolver cover is being touted as Bruce's final recorded performance.

Former King Crimson and current Asia singer John Wetton, Howard Jones, the Rascals' Felix Cavaliere, KC of KC and the Sunshine Band and Judy Collins are also among the 16 artists to supply tracks to the Beatles tribute comp.

Keep Calm and Salute the Beatles was overseen by Yes producer Billy Sherwood, who contributes his own acoustic cover of "Something." Sherwood previously curated similar acoustic tributes for the Doors, the Who and Supertramp, Ultimate Classic Rock reports.

While those comps leaned heavily toward prog-rock covers, Sherwood opted for a more Seventies soft-rock sound with his Beatles tribute, recruiting artists like Helen Reddy, Leo Sayer and Stephen Bishop.

Keep Calm and Salute the Beatles Track List

1. Ann Wilson - "Across the Universe"
2. John Wetton - "Penny Lane"
3. Jack Bruce - "Eleanor Rigby"
4. Liz Madden - "Blackbird"
5. Andrew Gold - "Norwegian Wood"
6. Todd Rundgren - "You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away"
7. Helen Reddy - "All You Need Is Love"
8. Judy Collins - "I’ll Follow the Sun"
9. Howard Jones - "And I Love Her"
10. Felix Cavaliere - "Ticket To Ride"
11. KC of KC and the Sunshine Band - "Let It Be"
12. David Clayton-Thomas - "Yesterday"
13. Martha Davis - "Nowhere Man"
14. Stephen Bishop - "All I've Got to Do"
15. Billy Sherwood - "Something"
16. Leo Sayer - "Hey Jude"

Van Morrison: 'I Didn't Know I Was Going to Have This Body of Work'

On playing harmonica with James Brown, singing with Jim Morrison at the Whisky, and his new duets LP

By David Fricke April 17, 2015

Van Morrison resurrects deep tracks on his new 'Duets' LP. Mick Hutson/Getty

"This is the meat of what I do," Van Morrison says of his new record, Duets: Re-Working the Catalogue. "I like working with challenges. And I like working with other singers." Morrison, 69, resurrects deep tracks from albums like 1977's A Period of Transition and 1991's Hymns to the Silence with heroes and friends including Steve Winwood, Mavis Staples, Taj Mahal and the late Bobby Womack. Morrison also reunites with peers from Britain's Sixties-R&B boom like Chris Farlowe and P.J. Proby, who turns up in a new take on the 2002 tribute "Whatever Happened to P.J. Proby." Morrison subtitled his new album like a memo. "It's the reality of working the catalog," he says, "having fun but being practical, too. Because nobody else is working it."

The opening track with Womack, "Some Peace of Mind," is poignant, given his passing last summer. How was his health at the session?
We did the track in October 2013. I knew he wasn't too well. But he didn't show it on the day. He looked pretty good. When I suggested the song [from Hymns to the Silence], he said, "Yeah, I can relate to the lyrics."

Bobby was always on my list for Duets. This idea has been around for a long time. I approached George Benson [who sings "Higher Than the World," from 1983's Inarticulate Speech of the Heart] in the early Nineties. We were doing a gig in Montreux, Switzerland; he was with the Count Basie Orchestra. He said, "Sure, count me in."

One of your earliest duets was in 1966. Your band Them was at the Whisky in Los Angeles, and you sang with the opening act's vocalist – the Doors' Jim Morrison.
We did "In the Midnight Hour" and "Gloria." He was really raw. He knew what he was doing and could do it very well. One thing that surprised me in their set was that Kurt Weill song ["Alabama Song"]. Nobody thought of doing that then.

In 1971, you cut the first of many duets with John Lee Hooker. What was it like singing with someone with such an unpredictable sense of rhythm?
Easy. John said about me, "This guy knows it. And he can do it." There was no pondering or thinking. We just knew it and did it.

I first met John Lee when I was about 18, in London. I would always go to see him at the Marquee Club. When I went to the States, I reconnected with him. He used to come to my gigs, like when I played at the Keystone in Berkeley. He'd say, "Man, I love that song 'T.B. Sheets' " [on Morrison's 1967 LP, Blowin' Your Mind]. Then he recorded a version of it. He didn't give me songwriting credit [laughs]. But that's OK.

Another great early duet is from 1971 — "4% Pantomime," with the Band.
I sang it with Richard Manuel. I was living in Woodstock, and Robbie [Robertson] asked if I could write a song with him. That's what came out of it. That song was about Richard — he's in the lyrics.

On Duets, in "Real Real Gone," you cite inspirations such as Solomon Burke and James Brown. Did you work with them?
I did a duet with Solomon that hasn't been released. James wanted me to play harmonica on a jam. There was nothing rehearsed [laughs]. And I got to duet with Bobby "Blue" Bland.

What did I learn? Dynamics, which doesn't happen a lot in rock. I'm not really rock. It's not what I do. Soul, rhythm & blues, folk — there are all kinds of elements in my music. And there's psychodrama — theater — as well. This is where dynamics comes in. You don't get that in rock music.

In making this album, did you find other songs that you're keen to revisit?
There's loads of them. Part of the problem was there are so many to pick from. There's 350 to 400 in the catalog.

That's a lot for one singer-songwriter.
The work was created for survival reasons. I had to make two albums a year for Warner Bros. I was churning out songs, and not every song got on an album. Over the years, for every album that came out, there was another that didn't make the cut.

I didn't know I was going to have this body of work. It was probably the Nineties when it started to become unmanageable [laughs]. It's even more unmanageable now. But the more you create, the more you have to manage later on. Because I'm the only one who knows what it is.

.

Posted in music | tour dates on April 23, 2015

D'Angelo playing NYC again.

• Sunday 21 June 2015

• D'Angelo

  Forest Hills Stadium, Forest Hills, NY, US

  Buy tickets

Wednesday 01 July 2015 – Saturday 04 July 2015

D'Angelo Open'er Festival 2015

Gdynia, Poland

Buy tickets

Monday 06 July 2015

D'Angelo

Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, Italy

Buy tickets

Tuesday 07 July 2015

D'Angelo

Estathe Market Sound, Milan, Italy

Buy tickets

Monday 13 July 2015

D'Angelo

Roundhouse, London, UK

Buy tickets

Friday 07 August 2015 – Sunday 09 August 2015

D'Angelo Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival 2015

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, US

Melody Gardot Draws on the Death of Emmett Till for ‘Preacherman’ Video (Exclusive)

• By
• Eric R. Danton

Emmett Till was murdered 60 years ago, an event that continues to resonate for singer Melody Gardot, among others, in her new song “Preacherman.” A video for the tune premieres today on Speakeasy.

The black-and-white clip starts with two minutes of exposition as a pair of children walk through a field, cane poles on their shoulders, under a foreboding sky. Their fishing outing comes to an abrupt end when they spot something in the water, and they return with a woman who wades in to retrieve the body floating beneath the surface as Gardot’s song begins playing, her sultry, soulful voice accompanied by spooky electric guitar.

Gardot learned about Till’s role in the ensuing civil rights movement from her drummer, Chuck Staab, and the two of them co-wrote the lyrics for “Preacherman.” The Philadelphia singer finds parallels between the murder of Till and the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Florida, Michael Brown last year in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner last year in New York City, which she calls “crimes.”

“What’s sad isn’t just that racism is still an issue, but rather that these kinds of crimes had already been widely publicized and understood as senseless and yet we continue to see them committed,” Gardot says. “It begs the question: how long do we continue to repeat our mistakes before we learn from them enough to know not to continue in the same senseless manner?”

Director Calum MacDiarmid shot the video last month in Mississippi, where the cast included one of Till’s cousins, Edelia Carthan (the woman gazing out a shop window at about the 5:10 mark). Carthan responded to a casting call for extras posted online. “It was good fortune that brought us together,” Gardot says. “A gift from the universe.” The video will be available after today on the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation website.

“Preacherman” comes from Gardot’s upcoming album “Currency of Man,” the singer’s fourth full-length album and the follow-up to her 2012 release “The Absence.” Gardot made her recording debut in 2005 with the EP “Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions.” The seven-song effort stemmed from music therapy sessions that Gardot began as part of her recovery from a 2003 accident that left her bedridden for a year with head and spine injuries and a broken pelvis she received when she was struck by a car while bicycling in Philadelphia.

“Currency of Man” is due June 2 on Verve/Decca.

Apr 20, 2015

Watkins Family Hour Covers Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Steal Your Heart Away’ (Exclusive Song)

• By
• Eric R. Danton

Watkins Family Hour

After 13 or so years of public rehearsals, the Watkins Family Hour is taking their show on the road this summer—and they’ve recorded an album to go with it. The group, featuring Sara and Sean Watkins, Fiona Apple, Benmont Tench, Don Heffington, Greg Leisz and Sebastian Steinberg, premiere their version of Fleetwood Mac’s song “Steal Your Heart Away” today on Speakeasy.

Perhaps best known as members of progressive bluegrass band Nickel Creek, the Watkins siblings started the Watkins Family Hour in 2002 as a monthly residency at Largo at the Coronet in Los Angeles where they and their musical friends would play cover versions of songs they loved. “Steal Your Heart Away” has been part of their repertoire for a long time, Sara Watkins says, after she first heard the tune on a mix CD her friend Davíd Garza gave her.

“The whole CD was a terrific collection of songs, but ‘Steal Your Heart Away’ sounded like a classic and perfect for the Family Hour,” she says. “We’ve played this song for years and years now. I remember when we first worked it up, it just seemed to play itself.”

The Watkins Family Hour doesn’t radically reinterpret the tune, which appeared on Fleetwood Mac’s 2003 album “Say You Will.” With Sara Watkins on lead vocals, the song is a little faster and punchier, with an arrangement that emphasizes her violin and deep chords from Tench on piano. (Tench plays with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, while Steinberg was part of Soul Coughing. Leisz on guitar and Heffington on drums have contributed to dozens of albums by artists including Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Lucinda Williams.)

The group’s self-titled debut also includes version of the Grateful Dead’s “Brokedown Palace,” Bob Dylan’s “Going Going Gone,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” and Roger Miller’s “Not in Nottingham” from the soundtrack to Disney’s 1973 animated film “Robin Hood.”

“The Watkins Family Hour” is due July 24 on Family Hour Records/Thirty Tigers. They’ll kick off their first tour the same day at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island and then make their way west and then south before closing the road trip Sept. 15 in Athens, Ga. See their full itinerary below.

https://soundcloud.com/th...ay/s-SJ52k

Follow @erdanton on Twitter.

Tour Dates

July 24 – Newport, R.I. – Newport Folk Festival
July 28 – New York – City Winery
July 29 – New York – City Winery
July 30 – New York – City Winery
Aug. 1 – Nashville – City Winery
Aug. 2 – Nashville – City Winery
Aug. 5 – Chicago – Old Town School of Folk Music
Aug. 6 – Chicago – Old Town School of Folk Music
Aug. 14 – Berkeley, Calif. – Freight & Salvage
Aug. 15 – Berkeley, Calif. – Freight & Salvage
Aug. 21 – Portland, Ore. – Aladdin Theater
Aug.22 – Seattle, Wash. – Tractor Tavern
Aug. 23 – Seattle, Wash. – Tractor Tavern
Sept. 8 – Alexandria, Va. – The Birchmere
Sept. 9 – Alexandria, Va. – The Birchmere
Sept. 10 – Carrboro, N.C. – Cat’s Cradle
Sept. 11 – Asheville, N.C. – The Grey Eagle
Sept. 12 – Asheville, N.C. – The Grey Eagle
Sept. 13 – Atlanta, Ga. – Terminal West
Sept. 15 – Athens, Ga. – Georgia Theatre

.

Watkins Family Hour at Largo

March 19, 2015 in Music

On February 15, Sean and Sara Watkins hosted another Watkins Family Hour show at Largo at the Coronet.

For about ten years running, Sean and Sara Watkins have hosted the “Watkins Family Hour” show at the Largo at the Coronet here in LA. The audience attending Watkins Family Hour will hear original songs, country music, old-time three-part harmony bluegrass, music hall jazz tunes, traditional folk songs, Gospel, reels, jigs and any other kinds of music Sean and Sara and their band feel up to playing that night.

In addition to their cracker jack band, Sean and Sara are joined every show by their friends from the various musical circles the siblings are part of. Unannounced prior to the show, the guest artists provide a fun element of surprise and chance to each show.

Oh, and the cracker jack band? On piano, Benmont Tench. On pedal steel, Greg Leisz. On bass, Sebastian Steinberg. And on drums, Don Heffington. Within the group is a rock n roll Hall-of-Famer and a Heartbreaker, a future HoF-er, sidemen to countless A-list musicians, session players on numerous extraordinary albums. The four gentlemen have collectively changed and moved the needle on the direction of popular music countless times over several decades.

For the February edition of the WFH, the siblings were joined by their long time friends and WFH regulars, Fiona Apple, Glen Phillips and Jackson Browne. The show took place the night after Valentine’s Day which got the musicians speaking about love; real and imagined, true and manufactured. Sean spoke of how it was Glen that got them to start playing at Largos. He spoke of how lucky he is that he’s able to listen to a Jackson Browne track one day and several days later suggest to the man himself that they play it. Sara and Fiona talked of shooting presidents. Ummm….you had to be there.

I had the honor of photographing the show. Here are some images from the night. Enjoy!

Interesting Interview about various things and where here last name came from:

Marc Anthony Goes Mogul, Launches His Own Entertainment Company Magnus Media

By Angie Romero | April 24, 2015 12:10 PM EDT

Marc Anthony photographed by Douglas Friedman on Feb. 8 at Casa de Campo in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Grooming by Jami Harper. Styling by Ben Goglia. Clothing by Kohls. Photographed by Douglas Friedman

The company seeks to empower established and up-and-coming Latino artists.

Salsa icon Marc Anthony is taking a cue from Jay Z and other music moguls and launching his own company, Magnus Media, which describes itself as “a diversified entertainment company focused on developing new ventures that bridge content creation and commerce.”

The company is based in Miami and is a partnership between Anthony and Michel Vega, a veteran agent and former head of Latin music at William Morris Endeavor. Vega now serves as chief executive officer of Magnus Media LLC, which seeks to invest in artist and content development while establishing links with global brands. The latter is of particular interest to Anthony, who seeks to go beyond the traditional endorsement deal with this venture.

“Magnus is a company that is long overdue,” said Anthony in a statement. “It's simple, really. Latino artists are among some of the world’s biggest brands. Unfortunately though, many of my colleagues, and new artists coming up, too, haven’t had the support to turn that influence into long-term businesses that build value. We’re going to change the game, and have a lot of fun doing it.”

The fact that it is created, owned, and run by a Latin artist and focused specifically in the Latino market ostensibly makes it one of the first companies of its kind launched in the post digital revolution, with the closest counterpart in the general market being Jay Z's Roc Nation.

As for why Anthony is equipped to pull it off, Magnus CEO Michel Vega tells Billboard, "Marc has had an incredible career as a music superstar and obviously is still going strong, but there’s so much more he brings to the table beyond that. He’s a prolific actor who’s been directed by Martin Scorsese and has been on Broadway. He’s got a very acute marketing sense, and with respect to artists, we’re going to be able to tap into his A&R sensibilities. He’s going to be very involved in the process of guiding the artists from that point of view."

Magnus has announced several divisions, including artist management, music publishing, a music label, digital content creation, film and television -- and what they are dubbing “an entertainment-centric marketing practice focused on leveraging the power of top Latino content creators in the U.S. and worldwide.”

Though the company's focus will be Latino artists -- both established and developing -- Vega says it is also "very interested in the YouTube and Vine space" and developing content creators from those platforms that don't necessarily fall under music.

"The prototypical artist and content creator for us is someone who has a creative ability and a desire to be prolific across the board in different media," said Vega, adding that "the time is right because the digital revolution has changed everything. Now the consumers are empowered and the content creators have amazing tools that were never available before. The content creator has a direct relationship with fans and with some guidance and some infrastructure in today’s world, with today’s technology, the sky’s the limit."

One area Magnus isn't looking to jump into is the streaming business -- at least not initially. Says Vega, "Streaming is definitely the wave of the future, but right now we’re taking a step back and analyzing what’s going on in the marketplace and then we’re going to figure out what the best solution is."

When asked about its film and television arm, Vega says the company will go beyond licensing and also look to create fresh programming.

Will they be the ones to give us the next success story in the vein of Jane The Virgin or Empire? That remains to be seen, but Vega isn't shutting out any possibilities. "I don’t think anything is crazy right now," he says. "There is a lot of excitement and there are some amazing ideas that we’re exploring. The great thing is that we’re not opposed to any great idea."

Announcements are expected to be made soon with regard to Magnus' artist roster, as well as brand partnerships in hospitality, sports, and telecommunications.

Thank you JoeBala for taking the time to post these montages about the music scene..fun and informative reading.

I think between you, ID' , and Mickey... this forum would be in a continue loop of talking about the same thing.Helll, I'm still listening and buy stuff from the defunct "New Music Thread".

THANK YOU.

Don Henley Vs. Concert Cellphone Use: ‘The Madness, the Rudeness… Must Stop’

by Ultimate Classic Rock Staff - April 26, 2015

On their most recent tour, the Eagles did what they could to prevent people from using their smartphones. Now, Don Henley has found kindred spirits in the indie band Mumford & Sons, who are trying to implement the same policy.

.

“Bravo to Mumford & Sons for taking a stand on cell phone use at their pre-album-release performance,” he wrote on Facebook. “The madness, the rudeness, the thoughtlessness must stop. Constantly looking at the world through a viewfinder is not seeing. Listening to live music while recording on a ‘smartphone’ (or texting every 5 seconds) is not hearing. Experiencing life second-hand is not living. Be here now.”

.

Henley is referring to a decision by Mumford & Sons to ban all use of cellphones during their May 4 show at the 1,700-seat Brighton Dome in Brighton, England. The group notified fans of this via e-mail saying that, if fans do bring their phomes, they will be required to check them and pick them up at the end of the show, adding that there will be a minimum wait time of an hour for the line.

.

Mumford & Sons instituted the same policy last month in London. They are prepared to release Wilder Mind next month and do not want the general public’s first perceptions of the new songs to be via YouTube. “It’s so nice playing a show without everyone on their mobile phones,” keyboard player Ben Lovett said. “We just wanted to have an intimate moment where people weren’t checking the latest feed. We just wanted to have a moment where we could see everybody’s faces.”

.

The Eagles have made it clear that they don’t want fans using their phones while they are on stage. Announcements were made on the PA system and the video screens before the show. Ushers were instructed to reprimand those who ignored the ban and throw out repeat offenders.

But as one fan, who spent $700 for two tickets to an Eagles concert last year, pointed out, it’s not just about trying to get a grainy picture or video of the group. “How many of the 20,000 people who attended have kids, elderly parents, concerns that they must remain attached to?” he wrote.

ConFunkShun returns with "More Than Love"

Kimberly C. Roberts, Entertainment Reporter | Posted: Tuesday, April 28, 2015

It was the Golden Age of Funk in America, when throughout the 1970s, bass-driven, horn-heavy bands such as Mandrill, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & the Gang, Graham Central Station, Crown Heights Affair, Brass Construction and Parliament-Funkadelic literally forced young folks onto the dance floors of house parties, discos and college campuses across the country. All were comprised of fabulous musicians, but the band that literally put the “fun” in funk with the 1978 release of the danceable single “Ffun,” was ConFunkShun.

.

After a lengthy hiatus and lead singer Michael Cooper’s stint as a solo artist, ConFunkShun is back with “More Than Love,” featuring the current lineup of Michael Cooper, Felton Pilate, the Rev. Karl Fuller, Kurt “KC” Clayton, Eric “EQ” Young, Ronald Moton, Brian Collier, Dale Edward Chung and Ellis Gino Blacknell.

.

Now available in stores and online outlets, the 14-track CD, the band’s first new studio album in more than 20 years, features a quieter, gentler ConFunkShun that updates its signature sound without sounding forced. It utilizes the sparse production that is prevalent in today’s tracks, pulling back on the band’s trademark raucous horn licks of the 1970s.

.

Once again, the lead vocals are by ConFunkShun’s musical mastermind, Felton Pilate, along with Michael Cooper, one of the ionic voices to emerge during the glory days of funk — an era that also included Lionel Richie (The Commodores), Steve Arrington (Slave), Sugarfoot (Ohio Players), Jeffrey Osborne (LTD), Larry Dotson (The Bar-Kays) and Larry Blackmon (Cameo).

.

Back in the day, Cooper’s unique and assertive baritone could deliver a seductive ballad such as the ever-popular “Love’s Train” or command a chosen female to “Chase Me!” and he remains in fine form.

.

“More Than Love” gets off to a great start with the Charlie Wilson-esque “Your Night,” and edgy “Dance N With a Grown Man” is probably the best example of the band’s new approach.

Cooper eloquently expresses his preference for plus-sized women in “Big Girl,” and there is a fresh take on the Curtis Mayfield classic, “Move On Up,” which features a surprising Cajun vibe.

Unable to restrain themselves any longer, the guys end the album with the pure old school funk of “Nite-Liters.”

.

Baby boomers and classic R&B fans are well aware that for veteran artists, the problem is not the music itself — it’s getting airplay and distribution for their new projects. Hopefully, “More Than Love” will make it to Urban Adult Contemporary radio, but either way, it’s the perfect disc to roll with in the car this summer.

TD3 said:

Thank you JoeBala for taking the time to post these montages about the music scene..fun and informative reading.

I think between you, ID' , and Mickey... this forum would be in a continue loop of talking about the same thing.Helll, I'm still listening and buy stuff from the defunct "New Music Thread".

THANK YOU.

Thank TD3. Woah, That's really nice to hear. I'm glad you're getting a kick out of it. Enjoy! Please don't hesitate to post any news.

Nelly Readies Country Music EP

Newly-independent rapper and Florida Georgia Line collaborator goes south for upcoming 'Heartland' project

Nelly performs with Florida Georgia Line in 2013. The rapper is currently working on a country EP. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Fifteen years after the release of his debut album, Country Grammar, Nelly is gearing up to record a proper country record.

The news arrived earlier this week courtesy of the rapper's new manager, J. Erving, who announced Nelly's crossover plans during an interview with Billboard.

"He's a free agent on the label side now," Erving explained, "and is working on a country-based Heartland EP, which should be really interesting. He may be one of the first hip-hop artists to jump into that space in an authentic way with Florida Georgia Line and Tim McGraw, so we think he has an opportunity to grow that base even more."

A native of St. Louis, Nelly has often mixed a drawling, rural twang with his hip-hop hooks, although he didn't fully embrace country music until 2004. That year, he scored an international hit with "Over and Over," a genre-bending collaboration with "Live Like You Were Dying"-era Tim McGraw. Nine years later, Nelly teamed up with Florida Georgia Line for a popular remix of "Cruise," whose sales helped the song become the top-selling digital country single of all time.

Florida Georgia Line returned the favor by appearing on 2013's M.O., Nelly's last solo album. The record sold roughly 25,000 copies during its first month of release, though, making it a commercial flop by Nelly's usual standards. Earlier this month, the rapper ran afoul of the law in Putnam County, Tennessee, when marijuana, methamphetamines and numerous firearms were found aboard his tour bus, roughly 80 miles east of Nashville.

.

Tatiana Maslany on That Emmys Snub and Playing Nine Roles on 'Orphan Black'

Star of BBC America's hit show breaks down musical inspirations for her characters, obliterates idea of "strong female characters"

By Brian Hiatt April 27, 2015

"There's an idea that the acting is less important than the special effects," Tatiana Maslany says, discussing her lack of Emmys. Vera Anderson/Wireimage

On the addictive BBC America hit show Orphan Black, star Tatiana Maslany doesn't just give one of the best performances on television — she gives nine of them, and counting. The thriller, now kicking off its third season, is centered on a mysterious government cloning program. Maslany, 29, plays wildly different people with identical DNA, from the oft-terrifying, near-feral Helena to passive-aggressive suburbanite Alison. They share scenes on the show, too, via a seamless fusion of visual effects and virtuosic acting. Maslany, a native of Canada, called from the set of a movie she's shooting in the frigid northernmost province of her home country. "We built an igloo the other day," she says. "As you do."

It's 50 below zero where you are, but at least you only have to play one character, right?
Yeah, it's basically like I'm on a beach right now.

It's insane that you've never gotten an Emmy nomination — do you think there's a prejudice against acting in genre shows?
There's an idea that the acting is less important than the special effects [in those shows], but what's funny about our show is that the special effects and the acting are one and the same. They couldn't exist without each other. It's not like we're sending spaceships flying around — we're just putting two characters played by one person in a room together. To me, our show is more of a character drama with elements of comedy and horror than a sci-fi show.

Did you have any doubts about your ability to pull off all of these roles?
When I auditioned for the show, I was blindly ignorant of the challenge of it, just sort of excited. Then, the day I got the part, I was like, "Ah, I can't do this, there's no way!" [Laughs] How do I even lead a series, let alone lead it in this way?

You use music to get into character for each clone, and you chose Prodigy's "Breathe" for the main clone, U.K. street kid Sarah. Why?
The riff at the beginning is dirty, sexy and sort of raw. There's something about it that's just, like Sarah. It became her. I really liked Prodigy growing up, and they're from the U.K. I feel like Sarah would've partied to that music when she was younger.

What do you use to capture Helena's raised-by-wolves oddness?
Antony and the Johnsons and Tom Waits. Antony was the big one, because it contrasts with the hardness of [Helena's] exterior. There's something about his music that's so haunting, so emotional and so kind of hurting, but also whimsical.

Helena never stops eating — what's that about?
[Laughs] That was like an extension of her unsocialized thing. When we first started putting food in front of her, it was like, "Oh, she's just a garbage can." Then the writers were like, "Put more food in front of her, make it the worst combinations of food, and make her do 50 takes in a row. Perfect."

Do you really believe people could be that different despite being biologically identical?
I did some research about twins versus clones. It turns out twins raised separately would have more similarities than clones raised in different environments, because twins share the same womb. Knowing that gave me a lot of freedom to make these girls completely different. It reminds us of the potential for any one person to have a thousand outcomes in their life, a thousand possibilities.

Orphan Black gets praised for its "strong female characters." But you have found that idea reductive, right?
I've never heard the term "strong male character." That doesn't mean anything. So what does "strong female character" mean? We're so ready to put a label on something instead of leaving room for every different kind of expression, every vulnerable, weak, funny, vulgar, stupid thing. It's just people, right? There are layers and levels, and you can't put somebody in a box, you know?

Do you look in the mirror at the end of a day of switching personae and go, "Who are you?"
[Laughs] The most psychologically confusing thing we do on the show is when we have one clone impersonate another clone. But I think it'd be harder to do, like, a one-woman show than to do this, because then you're switching between characters without any pause and without any time.

Has it occurred to you that you should be paid by the clone?
I keep bringing it up.

.

Kathryn Hahn on 'Happyish' and Finding Her Inner 'Fartist'

Cringe-comedy MVP on her Showtime series and what she finds funny: "I like going for the sweaty laugh"

By David Fear April 27, 2015

Kathryn Hahn as Lee in 'Happyish.' Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME

"We Went to School Together, Right? I think that would be the movie people recognize me from the most." Kathryn Hahn is cracking wise; check her IMDb film stats, and you will not find any such title listed among her credits. But when the 40-year-old actress gets stopped on the street, that's the go-to line people use — the old chestnut you trot out when you recognize someone famous but can't quite place him or her. "It's only started happening recently; I find it hilarious, but it drives my husband crazy," she says. "I get 'We loved you on SNL' a lot as well, and I have to say 'Thank you, I’m not Ana Gasteyer, but I hear you and totally appreciate it, she’s amazing!'"

Even if you couldn't place her face, trust us: You've definitely seen Hahn steal scenes in movies by going for the uncomfortable comedy sweet-spot. She's the one singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" while getting it with John C. Reilly at Thanksgiving dinner in Step Brothers; the pregnant woman who accidentally gets fisted by Sacha Baron Cohen when she goes into labor in The Dictator; the suburbanite awkwardly feeling up Jennifer Aniston's breasts in We're the Millers; and the Type-A nightmare of a political consultant who keeps dropping TMI tidbits in the last few seasons of Parks and Recreation. (She's also the female rabbi who gets pulled into the Pfefferman's family feuds in the Amazon hit Transparent, which starts filming its second season in June.)

And though her latest high-profile project, the Showtime series Happyish, could ultimately nip the were-you-in-my-math-class questions in the bud, the show about a couple frustrated by professional instability and middle-age malaise does not necessarily feature a gentler, tamer Hahn: Within the first few episodes, she goes on a rant about Dora the Explorer that ends with her flipping the cartoon character the bird. Though, as she's keen to point out, that's child's play compared to the cartoon coitus required of her costar Steve Coogan. "I mean, he does fuck a Keebler elf," Hahn says. "Not just any Keebler elf — a topless, geriatric one. I got off lucky."

Taking a brief break in between production duties, Hahn spoke with us about Happyish's revival after its original star Philip Seymour Hoffman passed away, why the uncomfortable laugh is her comfort zone and finding her inner "Fartist."

You were involved with Happyish early on, right?
Pretty early, yeah. [Showtime president] David Nevins sent me the script to read about three years ago. No one was attached to it then, and I had no context for what it was about or who [showrunner] Shalom Auslander was. I just thought, Oh my god, this is so brave and risky. And then realizing that Shalmo never scripted anything before — his background was as a memoirist — I just thought this is great, he doesn't know what rules there were to break. Okay, I'm in. Then about a year passed, and Phil came on.

You're talking about Philip Seymour Hoffman?
Yeah. We'd shot a pilot with him, and he was ready to jump into it. And then...I mean, it was devastating. Just devastating on all levels. We were grieving, and there was a long period after he passed away where we didn’t know what the future was going to hold for this. Eventually, we started to look at it again, and then a fire got lit once Steve Coogan became interested. It became a slightly different thing with him; any comedy nerd worth their salt is obsessed with Steve, including me, so we able to get it going.

He's as fearless as you, cringe comedy-wise.
He'll fuck a Keebler elf, yup [laughs].

And you flip off Dora the Explorer.
We hit the Dora stuff and a lot of Doc McStuffins jokes, which is another show my kids were really obsessed with. Such a vaguely porny name, Doc McStuffins.

"Growing up in Ohio, that’s the best comedy training ever. You can keep your Groundlings or your Second City, people. I got Catholic school in Cleveland Heights, bitch!"

You've worked a lot with improvisational comedians, but your background was mostly classic theater training, correct?
Yeah, though I was always a class clown type, always fucking around. But I never went the comedy or improv route. I think always just thought it was, you know: improvisation, blergghh! And now having had worked with a number of people who’ve trained in it and understand how it actually works, I'm in awe of what they do. I’m nowhere near that level. But I come from a very funny family; it was a tough dining room table. And just growing up in Ohio, that’s really the best comedy training ever. You can keep your Groundlings or your Second City, people. I got Catholic school in Cleveland Heights, bitch! [Laughs]

So when you walked on to the Anchorman set and you're surrounded by these improv heavy hitters...
Oh, I was terrified. I felt like I was just treading water for hours, trying not to drown. It was just so fast. That was my first entry into it, and to watch people like Will Ferrell and Steve Carell go at it was incredible. The only kind of onscreen experience I had before that was on a TV procedural drama where it’s line for line, hit your mark, and you spend the rest of the morning repeating it. So to walk on to an Adam McKay set where it was anything goes — that was pretty liberating.

The only way I can kind of exist in that world is...I can’t just show up unprepared and then say witty, funny things. I’m just not that bird. I need a detailed idea of who I’m playing, and then when I start improvising, I can draw the funny stuff from that arsenal. And you’re only funny against the person you’re playing against. This is why I love the comedy community so much, because you need that support. You can't just show up and ignore everybody else and then try to be "funny." I mean, I guess you could do that, but it’s not the kind of comedy that I find funny.

The guess would be that you find outrageousness funny, judging by your scenes in, say, Step Brothers or The Dictator.
Yes! [in fake newscaster voice] "Kathryn Hahn, mother of two, will now talk about having both of Sacha Baron Cohen's hands in her birth canal…" [Laughs] What can I say? I lean toward the unhinged. I like people that are on the verge, walking the fine line of having only one foot in reality. One of my favorite films of all time is John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence; it's not a comedy at all, but it informs so much of what I do comedy-wise. Those performances in there are just so raw. So yeah, I love the sweaty laugh. The uncomfortable, nervous laugh — that's such a turn on.

Was that what attracted you to playing the political consultant in Parks and Recreation?
Just to be part of that ensemble was the attraction. The writers on that show knew my funny bone better than I do. I'm sure every actor who played a bit part or a recurring role on the show will tell you the same thing: It was an ideal experience. Look at that cast, where they started five or six years ago and where they are now. You got to watch an all-star team develop in real time!

What was it like to join an ensemble like that after they had four or five years of working together under their belt already?
Oh, they were all just dicks and ignored me the entire time. I had to sit by myself at lunch every day, and….[Laughs] It was great. I miss those guys. Plus there were dance parties every day in the hair and makeup trailer, and I miss those a bunch.

You'd collaborated with Transparent's writer-director Jill Soloway before, on the indie movie Afternoon Delight — so you know she was a huge talent. But did anybody have any idea that the show would end up being this huge crossover hit and cultural talking point?
It's funny, because I knew from working with Jill she was a voice to be reckoned with, and that the world had better be prepared. I knew that she was so good with dialogue, great with actors, and that she would go to uncomfortable places that most people won't. And if I'm being honest, I really grew up making that movie, just in terms of…well, my inclination is always to say, "Don't call me an artist. Call me a fartist."

I'm sorry, did I hear you correctly?
You did. I said I prefer to be called a "fartist." [Laughs] It's just easier than saying I’m an "artist." In fact, that’s what I’m going to call my silent, black-and-white movie: The Fartist. It will be silent except for one sound effect, which will be used liberally. [Pause] Sorry, what were we talking about again?

Working on Afternoon Delight. You were explaining how you grew up making while making that movie.
Right. My point was, I’d never really felt like I'd had the chance to do something that required me to go some fairly dark places, or that required me to take myself seriously to a degree. And that film did; it felt like it brought something else out. It made me feel like, Kathryn, you can’t just show up and be the class clown this time; you have to bring some skills. And it's because of Jill Solowway — she’s a miracle worker.

No, wait, even better: She's a witch! That's what we kept saying on set. It was like, how do you get people to do the things they do in your series? There has to be magic involved somehow, right? The only comparison I could make to being on that show was when I was studying theater in graduate school and we were doing plays at four in the morning…you’re working so hard with a group of people but you need up feeling so energized, so buzzed. I used to think it was just sleep deprivation but…[laughs]. It’s that sense you get where you’re just working together in sync and everything feels so simple. That's how it is with Transparent. None of us knew it would become a big talking point but it doesn't surprise me that it was a hit. It's such a personal story for her but the way she told it felt like everybody's story. I'm excited to see where it goes.

.

Ice Cube Talks 'Friday': ''Bye Felicia' Is Such a Throwaway Line'

On its 20th anniversary, the rapper looks back at a stoner-comedy classic: "It's the movie you check out when you're baked."

By Kory Grow April 20, 2015

Ice Cube and Chris Tucker in 'Friday.' The stoner-comedy classic will be getting a theatrical re-release on 4/20. Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line Cinema

A full 20 years have puff-puff passed since the stoner comedy Friday lit up movie theaters and became not just a cult sensation but a bona-fide classic. The hilarious film – about potheads Craig (Ice Cube) and Smokey (Chris Tucker) trying to enjoy a day off while avoiding both the neighborhood bully and a local drug dealer – launched the careers of helium-voiced motormouth Tucker and director F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job, Straight Outta Compton), and helped the rapper-turned-actor add screenwriter and movie producer to his resumé. It also provided America with memes like "You got knocked the fuck out!" and – just in the past year – "Bye Felicia!" (The character's name is actually spelled Felisha in the film.) The movie, which was made for an estimated $3.5 million and went on to gross $28 million, became such a left-field hit that it spawned two sequels.

Looking back on its success, Ice Cube is still surprised by the ways in which people have embraced it. "To me, it's one of the Number One movies you check out when you're baked, or you're getting down," he says. "There's people that have Friday parties, where they rent all three movies and just kind of enjoy 'em. It's morphed into this big thing, and it started off as this little, cool idea. To me, that's what I'm most proud about: It's become part of not only just American culture, but there's people all over the world that really love it. That's how movies should be."

To celebrate the way the comedy has become such an enduring hit (no pun intended), its producers are releasing a director's cut of the film back into U.S. theaters for one day only – 4/20, of course – via Fathom Events. Additionally, its double-platinum soundtrack, which went to Number One and contained Dr. Dre's hit "Keep Their Heads Ringin'," was recently reissued on vinyl with 3-D "smoking" art. Rolling Stone recently caught up with Ice Cube to find out what he thinks of Friday's success.

When you began work on Friday, what kind of movie were you hoping to make?
We wanted to make what we called a "hood classic." I grew up on the Cheech and Chong and Sidney Poitier–Bill Cosby movies; I loved Carwash and Uptown Saturday Night and Hollywood Shuffle, with Robert Townsend. Whether they're American classics or not, that's another story. But they are neighborhood classics, and we were aiming to do a movie that the neighborhood would want to watch over and over and over again, and that's what we achieved.

Does Friday reflect where you grew up?
Yup. Everything that happened in Friday has happened on my block, at one time or another. It's really a lot of different Fridays wrapped up into one day, so that's why it's so authentic – because it's all real to an extent.

What did you want to say about your neighborhood with this movie?
At the time, people had looked at South Central like it was hell on earth. You had movies like Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society, shit coming out like this movie called South Central, and all of them show the horrors of living where we lived. But growing up in South Central, we feel like, damn, we was having fun. Wait, what did we miss? We know it had its bad moments, but for the most part, there's no place I would rather grow up.

It was like some shit you just roll with, and you knew how to adapt. You knew how to laugh instead of cry. We wanted to put it in a movie and show that the neighborhood we grew up in wasn't this terror zone, it was just this place that had good days, and it had bad days. It was very unpredictable, which made it dangerous – but for the most part, we had fun growing up. So I was like,"Yo, we need to show how we do on our street," and not make it a horror story.

Right now you're working with F. Gary Gray again on Straight Outta Compton, about your days in N.W.A, which made South Central look pretty scary.
Well, you know, it is extreme. But it's not extreme every minute of the day.

How much of the Friday script is autobiography?
Damn near all of it, man. You just think of Lil Chris (Jason Bose Smith) knocking down the trashcan, and me chasing him down the street and wanting to whoop his ass. That's definitely real. And my brother is the one who got fired on his day off; he was working for UPS. So it's like the little tidbits out of life. I just put them all in a movie.

The bully in the movie, Deebo, was pretty scary. What was your neighborhood Deebo like?
Just like the Deebo in the movie. Cool sometimes, but it depends on what he was on and what he was after, or who he knew or didn't know, or how well he knew you. Things like that. Everybody I think, in some way, had some kind of Deebo in they life. That, to me, is why the movie is so special.

The other reason its special is that it's not just a stoner movie.
It's cool – get high and all that – but the movie is memorable because it's the day that the bully got his ass whooped, and everybody loves that day, you know what I mean? That, to me, is the reason this movie has such big appeal. It's something so relatable, and then everybody can have a Friday. Everybody can kick it on they porch with they crazy friend, and trip off the neighborhood, so to me, it has so many different things that makes it appealing.

Did you begin the script with the idea of the bully getting his ass whooped?
Well, to me, it was really about two guys with nothing to do, and getting into damn near everything. It was what we did on a daily basis sometimes. To make something like that into a movie, you have to figure out how to give it a plot. Like, what is the simple song that we're trying to sing? We had to find that, and to me it was like, OK, the crescendo is Deebo getting what he deserves. That has to be the peak of the day. It all worked out.

"Back then, we got down a little bit, but the weed wasn't as good as it is now."

You wrote the movie with rap producer DJ Pooh. Were you and he like Craig and Smokey?
In a way, totally. Pooh was a big-time producer with a rapper by the name of King Tee, and they were kind of a dynamic duo in early LA hip-hop. I started working with Pooh on my second album. He helped produce a lot of the tracks with a group called the Boogiemen, so I would go and hang with him – and if anybody knows Pooh, he's one of the most creative people I've ever met. He's, like, 1,000 ideas coming out at once, so what I would do was try to harness those ideas so they could be potent. Because when you've got 1,000 ideas, 500 of them are crazy, and 500 of them are great, so I wanted to hone in on the great ones.

He was always cracking jokes and always smoking weed, and we're in the studio making music, but we're laughing the whole time. He's a jokester. We were fans of movies like Hollywood Shuffle, fans of In Living Color, and Robert Townsend had a lot of specials on HBO back then, which were funny. A few characters like John Witherspoon's [Craig's dad], I got them from watching those comedies. So we just started talking about how we needed to do a movie that shows the neighborhood that we grew up in, and how it is for real. So we started to think, well, what could that movie look like? To me, it felt like a Cheech and Chong movie. It felt like, yo, this is some shit Cheech and Chong would do.

How much weed were you smoking back then?
Not as much as I'm smoking now [laughs]. Back then it was like, we got down a little bit, but the weed wasn't as good as it is now [laughs].

California changed that.
Yeah. California chronic ain't nothing nice [laughs].

This movie was Chris Tucker's big breakout. What made you want to cast him?
In the movies he had done before – he did a small part in House Party 3 – he was underused. This dude was a lot funnier than he was given screen time, so I was like, I'll do a movie with this cat. I'm gonna let him go. He ran with it. I can't really picture nobody else doing it. Pooh was originally supposed to be Smokey, but New Line got word of Chris Tucker, then it was a wrap.

He recently posted a picture of the two of you together. Are you working on something new?
No, we've met a few times. We're still trying to work together. We meet every now and then, have lunch, and try to figure it out, but it's not easy because we've got to find the perfect movie, and we're trying to follow up a classic. We were trying to do a fourth Friday movie, but New Line Cinema don't wanna come up with enough money to do it. Until they figure out that they're sitting on a $100 million movie, it's like they won't budge.

"Somebody tells you, 'Bye Felicia,' and you know that they're fed up with your ass."

The original Friday has so many quotable lines. What do fans recite to you most?
I hear "You got knocked the fuck out" a lot. I hear "Bye Felicia" now is the new fucking term from the movie.

What's your take on the way "Bye Felicia" has taken off? There's a TV show called that now.
It's crazy. To me, it's like such a throwaway line in the movie. It's a line where Craig is just so fed up with Felisha for coming over to ask the most stupid, unusual stuff. It's, like, the most fed-up, dismissive line now. Somebody tells you, "Bye Felicia," and you know that they're fed up with your ass. You done got on they last nerve. So it's kind of cool that [this line] from 20 years ago is part of pop-culture right now.

It's funny how it has just become a thing now.
Yeah, it's like the movie came out yesterday.

Gary Clark Jr. Previews 'Dope' New Album

"I've just been hiding out in Texas," says blues guitarist, who talks fatherhood and reveals details about second LP

Gary Clark Jr. is self-producing his second studio album. Scott Dudelson/Getty

Since he released his 2012 debut Blak and Blu, a lot has happened in Gary Clark Jr.'s life. He's become a huge live draw, toured the world multiple times, won a Grammy, played with everyone from the Foo Fighters to the Rolling Stones, got engaged to model Nicole Trunfio and became a dad. "I forgot what sleep's like, but it's cool," he tells Rolling Stone of fatherhood.

Now, Clark reveals, he's almost done with his second album: "I'm finishing up a record. I think it's going awesome. I get to make noise and see what happens. I think it's dope."

Blak and Blu was recorded largely in Los Angeles with producers Rob Cavallo, a longtime Green Day collaborator, and Mike Elizondo, who's had a hand in everything from 50 Cent's "In Da Club" to Tegan and Sara's Heartthrob and Avenged Sevenfold's Hail to the King. While the record helped establish Clark's potential, it didn't quite match the fire of his live show. This time, the guitarist has opted to record in a more familiar setting and take more control behind the boards.

"I'm producing," he says. "I've got a squad of guys that are helping me translate the visions and the sounds in my head and make it blast back out through the speakers, so it's been good. I've just been hiding out in Texas. I had to bring it back home." Clark adds he's been recording at Arlyn Studios, "the place where Stevie [Ray Vaughan] cut records. It's really good."

Last week, Clark paid tribute to Vaughan at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, playing with Vaughan's old band, Double Trouble. For Clark, it was the closest he's ever felt to his hero: "I never got the chance to play with him or see him play live – I was a young dude chasing girls on the playground.

"It's a trip," he adds. "When I first started playing in 1996, I turned on the TV and all those guys were playing on a Stevie Ray Vaughan retrospective. That changed the direction of my life.... I was trying to hold back emotions [onstage], man. It's a heavy moment. Those guys are the real deal and paved the way for a lot of young guitar players. Those are the guys that put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears in for a guy like me to be here talking to you."

LOL$: How Comedians Became the New Touring Superstars

Kevin Hart is selling tickets on a level not seen since Steve Martin in the 1970s. And he's not alone

By Steve Knopper April 23, 2015

Kevin Hart Bennett Raglin/BET/Getty

In 2008, Kevin Hart had a chance to tour with three other stand-up comedians in a package at large theaters across the country. He turned it down, choosing to headline his own tour at smaller, 1,000-seat venues. "We even took less money to do that," says his live agent, Mike Berkowitz, who also represents Louis C.K., Amy Schumer and Aziz Ansari. "By the end of that tour, we were doing 2,500-seaters. It was a turning point."

Today, Hart is headlining one of the biggest comedy tours in years, if not ever — What Now? sold more than 600,000 tickets as of last month, according to Billboard, grossed $35 million and has sold out numerous arenas throughout the summer. The tour is part of a live comedy boom that, while not quite in the league of the Rolling Stones or Madonna, allows Hart, Ansari, C.K. and others to sell out New York City's Madison Square Garden.

"It's vibrant again," Rick Greenstein, agent for John Oliver, Jamie Foxx and Dave Chappelle, tells Rolling Stone. "These guys can make money in eight or 10 different ways — they do a [TV] show and their standup goes up 300, 400, 500 percent. One feeds the other." Or, as Louis C.K. told his e-mail list in January after selling out four shows at MSG, "If you keep buying the tickets, I have to keep doing the shows." Chappelle, for his part, has sold out multiple theatre shows in Detroit, Atlanta and elsewhere.

While Greenstein says comedy tours are beginning to sell tickets on the level of big-name pop and rock stars, that phenomenon is generally rare. Last year's top-grossing comic, ventriloquist Jeff Dunham, made $17 million and hit just 55 on Pollstar's list of top North American shows; Jerry Seinfeld grossed $14 million and made Number 67. (By comparison, One Direction's gross was more than $127 million in 2014.) Those who play MSG and other large venues generally can't maintain that sales level across the country. "I wouldn't say it's going to dominate the [concert] business," says Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor-in-chief, "but certainly comedy as a business is booming."

Live comedy has been surging for several years — mostly due to a rise in social media, YouTube and Netflix, but also a wave of new talent from Broad City to Hannibal Buress to Key and Peele, whose "Substitute Teacher" video, for example, has more than 74 million views. "I don't feel it's ever not been big. When there's a disaster, people still want to laugh," says Stacy Mark, a partner with WME, the huge talent agency that represents top comedians. "It's just everybody's starting to catch up to it."

Billboard estimated live comedy ticket sales at $300 million last year, and more and more 2015 standups are doing arena-level business. The Black and Brown Comedy Get Down tour, with George Lopez and Cedric the Entertainer, has sold roughly 10,000 to 13,000 tickets per show, according to promoters, while the recent Wild West Comedy Festival, with Hart and Lewis Black in Nashville, drew 51,000, more than doubling last year's attendance. "Every city has at least one comedy festival now, of varying degrees of size," says Nick Nuciforo, head of comedy touring at United Talent Agency. "There are more comedians playing theatres and arenas than ever before."

Hart's tour is selling out on a Seventies Steve Martin level due in part to the Get Hard co-star's ubiquity in films, TV shows and savvy, high-profile appearances at events such as the NBA All-Star Game. Plus, Berkowitz says, the best comedians in recent years are telling stories about their lives, allowing fans to evolve with them the way they have with Bruce Springsteen or James Taylor. "The art of being more personal, and [employing] storytelling — that was rarer 10, 15, 20 years ago," he says. "People were telling jokes about airlines in front of a brick wall at a club."

Another key factor in live comedy's resilience: Even the best seats are affordable. Chappelle at Red Rocks Amphitheatre last summer cost just $60, and Hart's tickets range from $20 to $150. Stand-ups rarely have to drag around dozens of trucks full of special effects and pay musicians and large entourages the way bands do. "There have always been acts that can play arenas — Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Chris Rock — but all these people seem to be doing it at the same time," says Geof Wills, president of comedy for top promoter Live Nation, referring to Chelsea Handler, who played arenas a year ago, and Jim Gaffigan, who plays amphitheatres this summer. "One comic does it and another says, 'Aw, yeah, I want to get that done, too.'"

.

Ariana Grande Breaks Free and Into Tears at Madison Square Garden: Concert Review

9:50 AM PDT 3/21/2015 by Ashley Lee

Paul Familetti

Ariana Grande at Madison Square Garden

The Bottom Line

The petite diva effortlessly fills the arena with her four-octave range on fun, flirty numbers, staged with a heavy hand on production design.

Venue

Madison Square Garden,
New York City
(Friday, March 20)

The petite diva turns up the volume on the Honeymoon Tour, her first arena jaunt with her back-to-back albums, 'Yours Truly' and 'My Everything.'

"Good music, good choreography and a great time — I want to make sure that my fans have the best night of their lives," Ariana Grande says in a video clip that opens her Honeymoon Tour. For the sea of preteens who donned lace or light-up cat-ears, it was 90 minutes of fun, flirty and frothy numbers, staged with heavy production design and filled by the petite diva's unfathomably huge voice. Which is exactly why they bought every ticket.

Grande's lighthearted arena jaunt, which includes two sold-out nights at Madison Square Garden, is the 21-year-old's first major touring effort after releasing two back-to-back albums and collecting comparisons to Mariah Carey for her four-octave soprano range and expert falsettos. Choosing to focus on music after breaking through on Nickelodeon's Victorious and Sam & Cat sitcoms, Grande still nods to her onscreen character, Cat Valentine, by donning a pair of elaborately embellished cat-ears with her now-signature cascading ponytail for most televised performances, and nearly every number in her show.

And after the audience sang along loudest to Justin Bieber's "Boyfriend" just before showtime, Grande rose onstage to deafening screams for the party-starter "Bang Bang," complete with 11 dancers, sporadic fireworks, and bubblegum pink lights. Her set bounced between the best of Yours Truly and My Everything (plus a throwback to 2011's "Pink Champagne" and a plug for her Hunger Games: Mockingjay track "All My Love" with Major Lazer), and Big Sean, Nicky Minaj, Iggy Azalea, Childish Gambino and others who accompanied her via video screen, with Grande rapping along and a DJ pumping up the crowd. Yet it was the three-piece string section that enriched her set most, especially on "Tattooed Heart" and "One Last Time."

Grande's show hopped between the decades: the roaring Gatsby-esque '20s, the mod aesthetic of all her "Problem" performances to date, and the futuristic world of her "Break Free" video, each paired with a combination of smoke, fireworks, confetti and generic video graphics of lasers, clouds, rain or lightning. She disappeared via descending platforms very often, to swap in another of seven Marina Toybina looks (and matching ears) and make another grand entrance — floating in on a cloud for "Best Mistake," standing on a chandelier for "Right There" and appearing on a higher riser for "Love Me Harder." Such a heavy hand on production design to pump up number after number seemed occasionally unnecessary, as Grande shined most (articulation-less tendencies aside) when standing on a relatively bare stage, belting "Honeymoon Avenue" into her bejeweled mic and relishing every run with her eyes closed. One additional facet that did pay off: "Why Try" was prefaced with a video by Imogen Heap, who explained how her voice-manipulating Mi...loves work just before Grande experimented with them live.

However, the lifelong performer skipped and strutted comfortably across the venue's stage, just blocks away from the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre where she first broke out in Broadway's teen musical 13 in 2008. A video stream showing the audience, which included her brother Frankie Grande and many other close friends, brought her to tears. "You guys have made me so emotional, … I'm so honored and excited to be here, thank you so much, cool, I love you," she kept repeating, and saying later, "I've already cried 65 times tonight, so I really don't want to cry again. ... I really love you guys on a personal level, talking to you guys on Twitter when I can't sleep and seeing you guys dance and sing."

These were the rare moments in which Grande addressed the audience directly, which made for what seemed like an emotionally-distant set. But for her fans — who follow her on every social media platform, which the singer uses liberally, intimately and without pretense — the concert was an opportunity to see the natural performer freely, as the scream-worthy pop star filled MSG for two consecutive nights (risers, fireworks and all) and impressively hit every single high note without missing a beat. So when Grande pleaded to her "babes" to sing the chorus of "My Everything" after she cried and apologized her way through the second verse, they happily obliged.

She did so just after getting notably personal by including an audio clip of a chat with her late grandfather. "Music — you want to do something in music? Go ahead and do it," he tells her. "Don't be afraid of it. There's so much music; you gotta work on it. Don't let them challenge you; don't let them intimidate you. Do your thing, that's the only way to do it."

Set list:

Bang Bang
Hands on Me
Best Mistake
Break Your Heart Right Back
Be My Baby
Right There
The Way
Pink Champagne
Tattooed Heart
One Last Time
Why Try
My Everything
Love Me Harder
All My Love
Honeymoon Avenue
Break Free
Problem

Joni Mitchell Awake and Responsive Despite Coma Rumors

Joni Mitchell (Photo : Robert Knight Archive / Getty)

After being found unconscious in her Los Angeles home on March 31, Joni Mitchell was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center. Her health update has caused quite a stir while some sources explain that Mitchell is in a coma, while other combat the rumors.

According to her website at the time, she was "in intensive care in an L.A. area hospital but is awake and in good spirits." Mitchell previously divulged information about Morgollens Disease, the crippling illness that prevents the Canadian singer/songwriter from performing. She defined it as "this weird, incurable disease that seems like it's from outer space."

Earlier today, TMZ reported the "Big Yellow Taxi" singer was unresponsive and in a coma when news broke out that longtime companion of over 44 years, Leslie Morris, pursued becoming her conservator in a court filing, giving her responsibility for health decisions in Mitchell's absence.

"Contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet today, Joni is not in a coma," reads a statement on JoniMitchell.com. "Joni is still in the hospital - but she comprehends, she's alert, and she has her full senses. A full recovery is expected."

The court filing involved a statement from Mitchell's doctor, stating that Mitchell would be unable to make court appearances for four to six months, notes USA Today.

The health update on Mitchell's official website continued to say "The document obtained by a certain media outlet simply gives her longtime friend Leslie Morris the authority - in the absence of 24-hour doctor care - to make care decisions for Joni once she leaves the hospital. As we all know, Joni is a strong-willed woman and is nowhere near giving up the fight. Please continue to keep Joni in your thoughts."

.

Review of the short film 'My Sense of Modesty'

Hollywood Figures Urge Talent Agencies to Diversify

Posted by admin on April 21st, 2015 10:17 PM |

(L-R) Part of the Multi-Ethnic Coalition Sonny Skyhawk, George Takei & Edward James Olmos

Edward James Olmos, Sonny Skyhawk, George Takei Join Multi-Ethnic Coalition’s Calls to Talent Agencies for Collaboration

Los Angeles, CA —

Talent firms remain a major barrier to full inclusion of the nation’s diversity in television and film. According to the 2014 Hollywood Diversity Report by UCLA’s Bunche Center for African American Studies, “minority talent remained underrepresented on every front at the dominant agencies,” as directors, leads, creators, and writers in film and television.

That is a problem, given the “tremendous influence” major talent agencies wield, which continues to “shape the labor market of the film and television industry.” Without representation, especially in the top talent firms, people of color are denied a fair chance at advancing their careers in the entertainment industry.

The coalition, which includes American Indians in Film and Television, Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, NAACP Hollywood Bureau, and National Hispanic Media Coalition, will be contacting major talent agencies for meetings to discuss their diversity efforts. Since 1999, the coalition has met annually with the top four television networks–ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC-pushing for better inclusion of minorities both in front of and behind the camera to more accurately reflect the reality of America’s diverse population.

Prominent entertainment industry figures of color urged the agencies to meet with the coalition.

“It’s long past time for Hollywood talent agencies to get it right and tap into the incredible talent pool of Latinos and other people of color that has always existed. I urge the agencies to work with the experts on diversity, the Multi Ethnic Media Coalition, to move the needle on inclusion.” –Edward James Olmos

“Although the major talent agencies are located in Los Angeles, the most diverse city in the world, they seem largely unaware of the amazing talent that exists in communities right under their noses. They should partner with these coalitions for their mutual benefit: more representation and jobs for Asian American and other actors of color, and more dollars for the agencies.” – George Takei

“Despite demographic changes and technological advances, talent agencies are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to providing and casting people of color in general, and that is totally unacceptable. We challenge them to enter the 21st. century of reality, and the Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition stands ready to work together, shoulder to shoulder, to help them not only change that negative dynamic, but to be inclusive of the reality and present make-up of American audiences and performers.” — Sonny Skyhawk, founder of American Indians In Film & Television, and 37-year member of the Screen Actors Guild

“We live and work in more demographically and culturally diverse towns and cities. It is time that those in front of the cameras and behind them represent and reflect present day communities. We’re calling on the Agencies to recognize the changes from the communities to the viewing audiences and change business as usual to include more people of color on your teams, in your pitches, on the screens and behind the scenes. Diversity isn’t just good business, it’s the only business and should be reflected everywhere in Hollywood.” – Robin Harrison, NAACP Hollywood Bureau

The Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition’s call to meet with the talent agencies comes after entertainment industry outlet Deadline Hollywood ran an offensive article on the casting of people of color on television shows. The article included quotations from unnamed talent agents who seemed more inclined to complain about fewer opportunities for their white clients than seeking to expand their talent pools to include qualified people of color. This prompted a widespread community outcry, including a number of Hollywood celebrities of color who took to Twitter to speak out against the article. Deadline issued an apology on March 29.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) is a media advocacy and civil rights organization for the advancement of Latinos, working towards a media that is fair and inclusive of Latinos, and towards universal, affordable, and open access to communications. Learn more at www.nhmc.org. Receive real-time updates on Facebook and Twitter @NHMC.

American Indians in Film and Television (AIIFT) is an advocacy group that endeavors to defend and enhance the interests of American Indians in the mediums of film, television and telecommunications.

The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC) has agreements with ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC committing them to work to increase diversity on-screen and behind the camera. APAMC members include such organizations as the Asian American Justice Center, East West Players, Japanese American Citizens League, Media Action Network for Asian Americans, National Federation of Filipino American Associations, OCA, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Visual Communications.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest nonpartisan civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. You can read more about the NAACP’s work and our five “Game Changer” issue areas here.

.

Actress and widow of Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows has died

Ben E. King, Soulful Singer, Dies at 76; ‘Stand by Me’ Was One of His Hits

Photo

Ben E. King, the smooth, soulful baritone who led the Drifters on “There Goes My Baby,” “Save the Last Dance for Me” and other hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and as a solo artist recorded the classic singles “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand by Me,” died on Thursday in Hackensack, N.J. He was 76.

His lawyer, Judy Tint, said Mr. King, who lived in Teaneck, N.J., died at Hackensack University Medical Center after a brief illness, offering no further details.

Mr. King was working in his father’s Harlem luncheonette in 1956 when a local impresario, Lover Patterson, overheard him singing to himself and persuaded him to join a group he managed, the Five Crowns.

Lightning struck when the group, then known as the Crowns, performed at the Apollo Theater on a bill with the original Drifters in 1958 and attracted the attention of George Treadwell, who managed the Drifters and owned the name.

Mr. Treadwell had been feuding with his group, which had entered a lean period after Clyde McPhatter, its lead singer, was drafted into the Army in late 1954. He fired the Drifters en masse and replaced them with Mr. King and three of his fellow singers.

Atlantic Records assigned the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to produce the group’s recordings. The match turned out to be inspired, yielding a streak of hit records that helped the Drifters achieve crossover success. Mr. King’s suave but impassioned vocals had a lot to do with it.

“He had a way of retaining a gospel grit in his voice but at the same had an easy, debonair style that was appealing and ingratiating,” said Ken Emerson, the author of “Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era,” about the Midtown Manhattan center of pop music songwriting.

“There Goes My Baby,” released in 1959, reached No. 2 on the pop charts. It was followed by “Dance With Me,” “This Magic Moment,” “I Count the Tears,” “Lonely Winds” and “Save the Last Dance for Me,” a No. 1 hit.

Mr. King left the Drifters in 1960 and embarked on a successful solo career. “Spanish Harlem,” written by Mr. Leiber with Phil Spector, reached the Top 10 that year. “Stand by Me,” which Mr. King helped write, reached the Top 10 in 1961 and again in 1986, when it was used in the soundtrack of the Rob Reiner film of the same name.

“Because he recorded the work of so many great songwriters, his own songwriting is often overlooked,” Mr. Emerson said. “But he co-wrote ‘There Goes My Baby,’ and ‘Stand by Me’ originated with him.” He was also the principal writer of “Dance With Me.”

Rolling Stone ranked “Stand by Me” 122nd on its list of the 500 greatest songs. In 1999 BMI, the music licensing organization, announced that it was the fourth-most-recorded song of the 20th century, having been played more than seven million times on radio and television.

Mr. King was born Benjamin Earl Nelson on Sept. 28, 1938, in Henderson, N.C., and grew up in Harlem, where his father had moved the family when he was a child. He took the surname King, which belonged to a favorite uncle, soon after joining the Drifters.

He began singing in church choirs and during high school formed a doo-wop group, the Four B’s, that occasionally performed at the Apollo. “To me, singing was fun,” he said in a 1993 interview with the website Classic Bands. “I never even visualized for a second doing what I’m doing.”

Mr. King was similarly offhand in describing his songwriting. In an interview with Bill Millar, the author of “The Drifters: The Rise and Fall of the Black Vocal Group” (1971), he said, “I’d sit down with this old guitar I have that’s missing all but three strings — no one else could play it, but I pick out tunes, and, when I have something, I’ll play it for someone who can write it.”

He was singing with the Five Crowns when, in 1958, the group signed with R&B Records, a fledgling label run by the songwriters Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. As the Crowns, the group recorded one song, “Kiss and Make Up,” before the company went out of business. The relationship proved fruitful, however. Pomus and Shuman went on to write “This Magic Moment” with Mr. King, as well as “Save the Last Dance for Me.”

Recording for Atco, a subsidiary of Atlantic, Mr. King scored modest successes in the 1960s with “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied),” “I (Who Have Nothing),” “Seven Letters” and “Tears, Tears, Tears.” In 1968, he performed on the single “Soul Meeting,” a minor hit for the Soul Clan, an Atlantic supergroup whose members also included Solomon Burke and Joe Tex.

By the end of the decade his career was in decline. He rebounded with the 1975 funk hit “Supernatural Thing, Part 1,” and in 1977 recorded a well-regarded album with the Average White Band, “Benny and Us.” He continued to turn out albums for Atlantic into the 1980s, recording “Let Me Live in Your Life” (1978), “Music Trance” (1980) and “Street Tough” (1981).

Mr. King later recorded for a variety of independent labels and performed regularly in clubs and small concert halls in the United States and abroad.

He is survived by his mother, Jenny Nelson; his wife, Betty King; two daughters, Terris Cannon and Angela Matos; a son, Benjamin Jr.; four sisters, Joyce Powell, Gladys Johnson, Deborah Nelson and Stacy Nelson; three brothers, Jeffrey, Calvin and Billy; and six grandchildren.

“I still think my whole career was accidental,” Mr. King told Classic Bands. “I didn’t pursue it. I feel like I’m cheating sometimes.”

New Music Releases

Songs Of The Day:

o

o

Amy Winehouse's Dad to Doc Makers: 'You're a Disgrace'

"You should be ashamed of yourselves," late singer's father reportedly told 'Amy' filmmakers

By Ryan Reed May 1, 2015

Mitch Winehouse, father of the late singer Amy Winehouse, claims that a documentary on his daughter portrays him a bad light. Charlie Forgham-Bailey /eyevine/Redux

Earlier this week, Amy Winehouse's family "disassociated itself" from the upcoming documentary Amy, claiming the film is "both misleading and contains some basic untruths." Now the late singer's father, Mitch Winehouse, has issued some harsher words for the project in an interview with The Guardian. "It was horrible," he said of the movie, adding that he even confronted the filmmakers directly after a screening. "I told them that they were a disgrace. I said: 'You should be ashamed of yourselves. You had the opportunity to make a wonderful film and you've made this."

He said the family had previously been approached numerous times with documentary ideas, chronicling his daughter's upbringing, musical skill, drug addiction and death at age 27 in 2011. But the first pitch that rang true was from Amy director Asif Kapadia. Mitch had been impressed by the filmmaker's "brilliant" 2010 doc Senna – a biopic of Brazilian motor racing champion Ayrton Senna – and "thought [they] were in safe hands." Winehouse was also encouraged when the team asked permission to contact Amy's ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil.

But Amy's father claims that Kapadia and crew are "trying to portray [him] in the worst possible light" through misleading editing. (The film reconstructs the singer's tragic story using archival footage, interviews and previously unseen recordings.) One scene reportedly shows Winehouse saying that his daughter didn't need rehab. "It was 2005," he said. "Amy had fallen – she was drunk and banged her head. She came to my house, and her manager came round and said: 'She's got to go to rehab.' But she wasn't drinking every day. She was like a lot of kids, going out binge-drinking. And I said: 'She doesn’t need to go to rehab.' In the film, I'm relating the story, and what I said was: 'She didn't need to go to rehab at that time.'"

Winehouse, a former London taxi driver, has often been portrayed in the media as a fame-seeker who exploited his daughter's success to springboard into his own career. (In 2010, he released his own debut LP, Rush of Love. He also wrote a best-selling 2012 memoir, Amy: My Daughter.) But he defends his reputation to The Guardian, emphasizing his work with the Amy Winehouse Foundation, a charity established after the singer's death.

"When we started the foundation, my book was a Number One bestseller for 10 weeks," he said. "We got over £1m in advances worldwide, and every penny went into the foundation. I sing all over the world, every penny goes into the foundation. I'm just talking about balance – there is no balance. They're happy to portray me as a money-grabbing, attention-seeking father who wasn't there. Amy wouldn’t want that, because Amy knows that is not the truth. My concern is that a potential funder might see this film and go: 'Why would we want to give money?' They can say what they like about me, I couldn't care less, but when it affects the foundation, that's when it hurts."

Winehouse says he doesn't plan to pursue legal action over the film — at least not at this point. In a recent interview with The Sun, he mentioned the possibility of suing for "libel or slander" after the documentary is released. "Our lawyers will view the film and reserve the right to do that and see whether there are any grounds," he said.

Despite his anger over Amy, Winehouse can't bring himself to boycott the film. "I'm starting to get on my own nerves with whingeing," he told The Guardian. "I'd like to say to people: 'Don't go and see the film,' but that would be depriving her fans of some incredible videos of Amy when she was younger. And I mean incredible. She was funny."

He echoed that sentiment on Twitter earlier this week. "Let me be clear about film," he wrote. "There is film of Amy that is fabulous. You should see it. Make your own minds up about the rest of film."

.

2015 Billboard Latin Music Awards: Santana wins, receives Spirit of Hope honor

May 1, 2015 3:32 PM MST

Carlos Santana at the 2015 Billboard Latin Music Awards.

Rodrigo Varela/Getty Images

Congratulations are in order to Carlos Santana for winning two trophies at the Billboard Latin Music Awards Thursday night in Miami. The event was broadcast live on the Spanish language television network, Telemundo. It was held at the BankUnited Center on campus of the University of Miami.

Santana was also the recipient of a special honor, Billboard’s “Spirit of Hope” Award for his work with the Milagro Foundation. The special award was presented to Carlos by Juanes, who later performed with the guitar master for the English-language song “Black Magic Woman,” in addition to the Latin songs “La Flaca,” and “Juntos.”

Rafael Amaya and Roselyn Sanchez were the presenters for Top Latin Albums going to Santana for his chart-topping “Corazon.” That album debuted at number one on the Top Latin Albums chart. Santana gave his acceptance speech in Spanish, followed in English with “Thank you and goodnight.”

The Billboard Latin Music Awards are based on sales and chart performances in the complete Latin genre. It also honors the most popular in Latin music for recording artists, songs, and albums. “Corazon” also scored a second win for Top Latin Pop Albums Artist of the Year. Another big winner during the awards program went to Romeo Santos. While winning his first award of the evening, Santos thanked Carlos Santana and others for collaborating on his album.

Santana’s fellow Mexican-American artist, the late Selena Quintanilla-Perez, received a beautiful tribute performed by Jennifer Lopez. The actress and singer portrayed Selena in the 1997 film. It was 20 years ago in March 1995 when the superstar Tejano singer was murdered.

This is the 2015 Billboard Latin Music Awards complete list of winners:

OVERALL ARTIST CATEGORIES

Artist of the Year

Romeo Santos

Artist of the Year, New

J Balvin

Tour of the Year

Marc Anthony

Social Artist of the Year

Shakira

Crossover Artist of the Year

Drake

SONGS CATEGORIES

Hot Latin Song of the Year

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"

Hot Latin Song of the Year, Vocal Event

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"

Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Male

Romeo Santos

Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Female

Natalia Jimenez​

Hot Latin Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

​Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizarraga

Hot Latin Songs Label of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Hot Latin Songs Imprint of the Year

​Sony Music Latin

Airplay Song of the Year

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"

Airplay Label of the Year

Universal Music Latin Entertainment

Airplay Imprint of the Year

​Sony Music Latin

Digital Song of the Year

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"

Streaming Song of the Year

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"

ALBUMS CATEGORIES

Top Latin Album of the Year

Romeo Santos, “Formula,” Vol. 2

Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Male

Romeo Santos

Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Female

Jenni Rivera

Top Latin Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

​Santana

Top Latin Albums Label of the Year

Universal Music Latin Entertainment

Top Latin Albums Imprint of the Year

​Sony Music Latin

LATIN POP CATEGORIES

Latin Pop Song of the Year

Enrique Iglesias featuring Descemer Bueno & Gente de Zona "Bailando"​

Latin Pop Songs Artist of the Year, Solo

Enrique Iglesias​

Latin Pop Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Camila

Latin Pop Airplay Label of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Latin Pop Airplay Imprint of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Latin Pop Album of the Year

Enrique Iglesias "Sex & Love"

Latin Pop Albums Artist of the Year, Solo

Enrique Iglesias

Latin Pop Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

​Santana

Latin Pop Albums Label of the Year

Universal Music Latin Entertainment​

Latin Pop Albums Imprint of the Year

Republic

TROPICAL CATEGORIES

Tropical Song of the Year

Romeo Santos featuring Drake "Odio"

Tropical Songs Artist of the Year, Solo

Romeo Santos

Tropical Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Chino & Nacho

Tropical Songs Airplay Label of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Tropical Songs Airplay Imprint of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Tropical Album of the Year

Romeo Santos, “Formula,” Vol. 2

Tropical Albums Artist of the Year, Solo

Romeo Santos

Tropical Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico​

Tropical Albums Label of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Tropical Albums Imprint of the Year

Sony Music Latin

REGIONAL MEXICAN CATEGORIES

Regional Mexican Song of the Year

Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizarraga "Hermosa Experencia"​

Regional Mexican Songs Artist of the Year, Solo

Gerardo Ortiz

Regional Mexican Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Banda Sinaloense MS de Sergio Lizarraga​

Regional Mexican Airplay Label of the Year

Universal Music Latin Entertainment

Regional Mexican Airplay Imprint of the Year

Disa​

Regional Mexican Album of the Year

Various Artists "Las Bandas Romanticas de America 2014"​

Regional Mexican Albums Artist of the Year, Solo

Jenni Rivera

Regional Mexican Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Julion Alvarez Y Su Norteno Banda​

Regional Mexican Albums Label of the Year

Universal Music Latin Entertainment

Regional Mexican Albums Imprint of the Year

Fonovisa​

LATIN RHYTHM CATEGORIES

Latin Rhythm Song of the Year

J Balvin featuring Farruko "6 AM"

Latin Rhythm Songs Artist of the Year, Solo

J Balvin

Latin Rhythm Songs Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Plan B

Latin Rhythm Airplay Label of the Year

​Sony Music Latin

Latin Rhythm Airplay Imprint of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Latin Rhythm Album of the Year

Wisin "El Regreso Del Sobreviviente"

Latin Rhythm Albums Artist of the Year, Solo

Wisin

Latin Rhythm Albums Artist of the Year, Duo or Group

Calle 13

Latin Rhythm Albums Label of the Year

Sony Music Latin

Latin Rhythm Albums Imprint of the Year

Sony Music Latin

WRITERS/PRODUCERS/PUBLISHERS CATEGORIES

Songwriter of the Year

Anthony "Romeo" Santos

Publisher of the Year

Mayimba Music, Inc., ASCAP​

Publishing Corporation of the Year

Sony/ATV Music

Producer of the Year

Anthony "Romeo" Santos

SPECIAL AWARDS

Lifetime Achievement Award

Roberto Carlos

Billboard "Spirit of Hope" Award

Carlos Santana

“I feel like I made the album that I absolutely love. I so love it! Lyrically it’s so honest, it’s deeper than anything I’ve written before. Musically, I think it’s the richest music I’ve ever made.”

Good things come to those who wait. That is what they say. And Andreya Triana has certainly kept us waiting – 4 years to be exact – to release a new body of work full of soul. Her EP ‘Everything You Never Had Pt. II’, came out November 17th on Counter and, though only comprising of 4 tracks, it’s just enough to fill you up nicely until her second album is released next year.

It seemed like a good time to catch up with her, therefore we did. We took some photos and had a chat to find out more about the 4 year gap (we’re nosy like that), Bonobo, the recording process…you know, the usual. Except for a little rant about celery, which, I’m not too sure how that happened.

Releasing the EP, you’ve sung about your mum and her support and how you guys grew up in London. How did your environment influence your sound and your music?

It’s just by my everyday life. I think my songs are very honest and they’re just about what I experienced on day to day. You know getting on the bus, round the bus in Brixton and all the characters that you see. Music blaring in the background and the smells you smell in Brixton market.

I use to live in Brixton as it is always wonderfully colourful and bustling! Did you have a lot of support from your family?

Yeah, pursuing music as a career, I have had a hell of a lot of support in the early days when I couldn’t pay my rent and I had to call my mum like “Mum can you lend me fifty quid” (fake crying). She was brilliant you know? And crashing on mates couches all the time. I’ve had a hell of a lot of help. I’ve been very lucky. I’m very grateful.

You said you’ve grown up in a multicultural background, what’s your favourite cuisine?

Oh that’s a tough one as I love all food. Apart from celery, ew that’s so bad.

Yeah I don’t get celery either. It has no redeeming qualities.

I know! It takes over everything. If it’s in a salad, it’s like “I want the salad to be about me”. It takes makes the whole salad takes like celery.

Such an egotistical vegetable.

I know! It’s like ‘calm down celery.’

So no celery…

No celery. I love Vietnamese food!

Sushi. I love sushi!

Got to love some sushi. Back to music! You’ve released the EP the 17^th of November, so been quite a while since your first album. Do you wanna give me a little recap of what’s gone on?

Obviously, first album came out in 2010 and now it’s 2014. I’ve just been hanging out… No, it’s been a really crazy and intense journey. 2010 my album came out and then the amazing guy who produced my album, Bonobo, also featured me on some tracks of his – that year I think his album got Best Electronic Album and mine got Best Soul on iTunes. So it was just nuts. I toured all over the world with his album, and then toured like crazy for my album. It was pretty much a good two years. And after that I was like “I need to stop” and I really want to push myself as hard as I can in terms of my songwriting, in terms of my craft, in terms of my vocals, my lyrics. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Since then I’ve written 60+ songs and narrowed them down to 12 to go on the album. So I’ve just been trying as hard as possible.

That’s amazing. What was the working relationship like with Bonobo because that came about in a really natural way, through mutual friends, no? He’s electronic and you’re soul – so what’s it been like?

It was awesome! It was just like working with a mate, he’s crazy talented and really encouraging and really supportive. So it was like “let’s just do some tunes, see how it turns out”. So yeah, I’ve got nothing but good memories really!

You really stress the importance of live music. Especially the first album, you said everything was done live apart from literally one track. Have you still got the same approach to your music?

I have a very different approach now. The new album, I think it sounds a bit more gritty. It sounds bigger, it probably sounds a bit less polite. There’s huge harmonies, there’s foot stomps and hand claps. We created beats by banging door frames and stuff. I really just let loose and tried some shit you know.

It’s a full sound.

Yeah! I tried to make that anyway.

What’s your writing process? It’s such a difficult question, everyone must ask you that…

I think I’m pretty much the same every time. I liked to start off with a couple of chords or three chords. I just go round those couple of chords and from there the melodies kind of comes. And as you’re singing a rough melody, random words start coming out and that’s how the song grows. I’m always amazed at the process. You start off and you’re like “yeah it should be this” and then you get a rough thing, and then it’s like “okay I have to write a second verse”, now it’s got to make sense. And when you’ve finished it, it’s like “wow, how did that happen?” It’s a really magical process. Sometimes it’s like climbing up a hill and other times it’s totally flows.

It just happens. It’s always something different to what you expected at the beginning!

Yeah. You’ve just got to let it be. It’s a great thing, I love writing songs.

What’s your recording process?

My recording process kind of differs from track to track and who I’m working with. But for this album, for example, I went over to LA to work with Matt Hales who produced the whole album. So he basically listened to my demos and stripped them down to the bare minimum. So it was probably the vocal and guitar, or the vocal and piano. And then we just threw some ideas around. I could’ve said that I was hearing these crazy sounds for this bit, or he could be saying I heard this for this. We just build it up layer by layer. As we did that there became more things and we just add them.

It’s just a very organic process. Sometimes you start out and you’re like “it should be like this” and then it turns out to be something different but it’s a million times better.

Yeah. How do you feel about the album? How would you sum it up?

I feel like I made the album that I absolutely love. I so love it! Lyrically it’s so honest, it’s deeper than anything I’ve written before. Musically, I think it’s the richest music I’ve ever made. So I love it. I just hope people will now.

You said earlier that it was less polite, which I think was quite interesting – are you more outspoken now than before?

Well I called it less polite because I think I was quite shy on my first album, I held quite a lot of things back. This time I was just like, “this is what I want to say” you know? This is how I want to say it. It is what it is. Just trying to do my thing.

Who are your favourite artists?

Ooh there’s a lot. At the top of my list are Lauryn Hill, Bjork, Jamie Lidell, Emily King and Donny Hathaway.

o

[img:$uid]http://i.imgur.com/sapj2YE.jpg[/img:$uid]



New Music: Miguel's "Coffee (F**king)" feat. Wale

Wild Heart, the follow-up to the Kaleidoscope Dream album , is due in June.

Audio

Cinco de Mayo - the Basics

By Christopher Minster

Latin American History Expert

Basic Guide to Cinco de Mayo:

Cinco de Mayo is probably the holiday most often celebrated that no one understands. What’s it all about? How is it celebrated? What does it mean to Mexicans? Here are the answers in a handy guide.

What is Cinco de Mayo?:

Literally "the Fifth of May," Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican Holiday celebrating the Battle of Puebla, which took place on May 5, 1862. In 1861, France sent a massive army to invade Mexico, as they wanted to collect on some war debts.

The French army was much larger, better trained and equipped than the Mexicans struggling to defend the road to Mexico City. It rolled through Mexico until it reached Puebla, where the Mexicans made a valiant stand, and, against all logic, won a huge victory. It was short-lived, as the French army regrouped and continued; eventually taking Mexico City, but the euphoria of an unlikely victory against overwhelming odds is remembered every May fifth.

Isn’t it Mexico’s Independence Day?:

That's a common misconception. Mexico celebrates its independence on September 16, because it was on that day in 1810 that Father Miguel Hidalgo took to his pulpit in the village church of the town of Dolores and invited his flock to take...d join him in overthrowing Spanish tyranny. Independence Day is a very important holiday in Mexico and not to be confused with Cinco de Mayo.

How Big a Deal is Cinco de Mayo?:

Cinco de Mayo is a big deal in Puebla, where the famous battle took place but it really isn't as important as most people think.

September 16, Independence Day, is a much more important holiday in Mexico. For some reason, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated more in the United States of America, by Mexicans and Americans alike, than it is in Mexico. One theory for why it is more popular in the USA is that at one time, it was celebrated in all of Mexico and by Mexicans living in former Mexican territories such as Texas and California. It was ignored in Mexico after a while but still celebrated north of the border, which never got out of the habit of remembering the famous battle.

How is Cinco de Mayo Celebrated?:

In Puebla and in many USA cities with large Mexican populations, there are parades, dancing and festivals. Traditional Mexican food is often served or sold. Mariachi bands fill town squares, and a lot of Dos Equis and Corona beers are served. It’s a fun holiday, really more about celebrating the Mexican way of life than about remembering a battle which happened 150 years ago. It is sometimes referred to as a “Mexican St. Patrick’s Day.” In the USA, schoolchildren do units on the holiday, decorate their classrooms and try their hand at cooking some basic Mexican foods. All over the world, Mexican restaurants bring in Mariachi bands and offer specials for what’s almost certain to be a packed house.

17 February 2013

The Question of U: Jill Jones Talks 2 Beautiful Nights

When it comes to questions about her life and career, Jill Jones is not afraid to say what's on her mind.

Jones met Prince in 1980, on the Dirty Mind Tour, when she was doing backing vocals for R&B legend Teena Marie, who was the opening act. She was already honing her chops and is listed as co-writer on two Teena Marie songs “Young Girl in Love” from the 1980 album Lady T and “The Ballad of Cradle Rob and Me” from It Must Be Magic, released in 1981.

She later moved to Minneapolis around 1982 and worked with Prince in various capacities for more than 10 years. She eventually signed a contract with Prince's Paisley Park Record label and released a self-titled album in 1987. However, the release was not the success she had hoped for, with the album and all three singles failing to chart on either the U.S. Billboard Pop or R&B Charts.

Jones and Prince started work on a second untitled Paisley Park album in the early 1990s, and three tracks were recorded:“My Baby Knows How to Love Me,” “Flesh and Blood” and “Boom Boom,” with a music video being shot for the last song. However, differences of opinion led to the plans for the second album being abandoned and Jones moved to New York to quietly let her contract with the record label expire in 1993.

For many Prince fans she has left an inescapable legacy: her iconic voice can be heard on Prince songs such as “1999,” “Pop Life” and “Hello,” among many others; she was featured in two movies starring Prince, “Purple Rain” in 1984 and “Graffiti Bridge” in 1990 and she was memorably showcased in Prince's breakthrough video for the single“1999” – wearing just lingerie and a captain's hat.

She also did vocal work, sometimes uncredited, for associated artists albums' such as Apollonia 6, Vanity 6, Mazarati and more. It has also been said that she inspired Prince's “She's Always in My Hair,” which is the b-side of “Raspberry Beret,” one of his biggest hits.

In addition, she has worked with other artists including Ryuchi Sakamoto, and Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, of Chic. She released her second album Two in 2000 and more recently in 2009, she released the dance music single “Living for the Weekend”.

Jones recently agreed to speak with K Nicola Dyes for “Dyes Got the Answers 2 Ur ?s” by telephone in a free-form interview to reflect on her life and career in her own words:

My childhood...half of my childhood was spent in Ohio where I lived with my grandparents. The other half my childhood was spent in LA, where I went to live with my mother and stepfather...

My teenage years were surrounded by the music industry. My mom was with the Motown family. My stepfather was Fuller Gordy (brother of Motown Records Founder Berry Gordy). I had everybody's albums... I did not want for music in the house. Everybody was stimulating and creative...not really eating dinner at 6 o'clock so much.

Teena Marie was the sister I never had. My mother was her manager and she lived in our house. She took me everywhere. We drove up the (California) coast. She took me to school. I hung out with her and her friends. She was very supportive of my craft and music. (She taught me to) get my own style. I could imitate Barbra Streisand perfectly. She taught me about songwriting. We would go up to the house and see Smokey (Robinson) and Marvin (Gaye). (It was) a one-of-a-kind lifestyle, especially coming from Ohio.

Songwriting is the escape. The place where you can vent. The place where you can say anything you want, (that) you can't say in real life. You can work things out. Sometimes I just want to pay tribute to certain things and certain people. I've since taken up writing as well and I find that to be the same thing. Having things fictionalized a little bit helps.

It all changed when I moved to California, because I originally wanted to get into law...the practical side of me always fancied being an attorney, because we had a family friend who was an attorney. When I came out here it brought out the creative side, it also brought out the competitive side, because I attended Beverly Hills High School. It really changed after touring with Teena, working with Rick James and touring with all those people.

Rick James could be very sweet. He was very intelligent. Based upon the fact that he knew me when I was a teenager, he was always pushing education, always asking me why I wasn't in school. I would bring my friends to hang out at his house when I was supposed to be in school... My stepsister Iris Gordy was pretty instrumental in putting together his first album. Rick was a bigger-than-life person and he enjoyed being that way; that was his personality. After I started working with Prince, he would always take the piss out of me when he saw me...

I met Prince on tour with Teena, on the Dirty Mind Tour. I think it was in Florida... We had left Rick (James') Tour and I was singing backing vocals for (Teena Marie).

Life on the road... Oh, I love it! I love being in a different place everyday. I (didn't) have to clean, I barely packed. I didn't have a problem with being on the road.

Jill Jones on coming of age: I definitely got over any kind of hang ups. I'm not (going to be) rolling around with a lot of wrinkles on my face doing threesomes... I remember that being on tour, the old guys who would try to pick you up. And I'd be like “ yuck, he's 32!” and (my) mother is saying things like, “you know he has a jet.”

I learned so much... I don't know, I'm still learning so much... I learned a lot about being independent and about being overprotected because (when you're on tour) you are in a capsule and surrounded by a chosen few. I learned that even when you don't feel well, you still have to perform, but, once you're out there you feel a little bit better. I learned a lot about men on the road. I learned about women, too. They sold themselves really cheap. I do know that I learned a lot about how women can be and that everybody wants to be special... at least for one night... and learning that they may not be. It's a really bizarre situation...

I used to think that Prince and I would have been friends during the duration, during our whole lives. Because we had a really strong friendship... You can be with people for 10, 12 years, it's phases of your life, you just close the book and you just put it on the shelf. So, it's so bizarre when people ask anything about him, it was just a phase in my life. It's nothing in particular, it's just my point of view of certain phase in my life. It's always in retrospect. I used to say, when I got older, if I was on the Swiss Alps and I was milking cows, there would be somebody that would come across the hill that asked about Prince!

I've never tried...Ooh, let me think for a second. Let me think. I've never tried... parasailing? (Laughing). I would say skydiving. Never tried that. I've never tried on a size 4 shoe. I've tried on a size 5. I guess some of those crazy things like jumping out of a plane...I've never drunk dialed President Obama.

I don't understand why the political arguments going on today, are the same ones that were going on when Abe Lincoln was president. I don't understand why (there are) Republicans, who are broke as shit, who don't want a minimum wage increase. I don't get the Republican mentality when people are broke! I don't understand how best friends can go out with your exes...

I hate when people ask, oh, I don't know if I hate anything anyone asks me. I guess it's okay people for to ask me, I just don't have to answer. I think that when people ask your age, they associate that with your demise and what they think you should be doing. I think when you're newly married, people shouldn't ask when you're having kids. Because you don't know what their deal is and I think it's personal.

People would be surprised that I have a really, really crazy temper. Maybe they wouldn't be surprised at a hot temper. They would be surprised to know that I am trying to learn German right now. My husband is German and (the language) is really, really hard. People would be surprised to know that I want to live in Germany.

I love my family. I love that the universe has given me many opportunities to have a family. Even going back (to being) on tour I liked having a family. I adore my husband, when I was getting married I just looked at him and I thought "what took you so long to get to here?" I love that everyone gets along. My family. My cats and all my pets that I've ever had.

Jill Jones on Tipper Gore (and the Parents Music Resource Center): Tipper Gore was on our ass. (MTV) banned my video ( for the single "Mia Bocca"). They would only play it in the middle of the night, at 3 am... She directly impacted my life, she actually did in a weird way...

My first album was a very long pregnancy, good God, it took so long get out. It was a really ace album, but, the timing was way off. I don't think everyone was ready for it. Radio wasn't looking for it. There's a rap convention in Atlanta that I went to and people came up to me saying “you're Black? I didn't know you were Black! I would've played your record.” I just came back to Prince, like, “should I just get a tan?” White people somehow knew I was Black and they said “I'm not playing that house Negro on the radio.”

The album was dead in the water. Then, I went to a function and I think I was crying. A Warner Brothers executive (Rob Dickens, CEO of Warner Brothers UK) saw me and he put money into the project to do promotion in Europe. We made the (music) video (for the single "Mia Bocca")...They (Europeans) always liked Josephine Baker, that whole thing always worked. I was discriminated against in my own country. I opened for Jody Watley in LA and, seriously, the crowd just stood there whole time with their arms crossed. I was angry dancing. I was singing “G-Spot” and I was like “I'm not going to shake my ass.” I know (on past tours) I would go out in my bra and panties, but, then I put on my trench coat and I'd leave. I just threw the mike down and walked off the stage. Prince came to me and said “is that it, are you done?” Maybe he created the diva in me.
I think the album was a very intellectual album. We made a decision to take a lot of the poppy songs off. Once Clare Fisher puts the strings on it... I wanted to leave them on... That's where I sealed my fate to never have a hit record...(Prince) could have given me "The Glamorous Life". Sheila E. would come to the studio to play basketball and I did not know that the child was going in (to the studio) late at night and singing the songs...

The second album... My mother passed away in '95. When she was diagnosed in cancer in '94, I had a deal with London Records. Steve Fargnoli hooked me up with them. My contract expired with Prince in 1993 on April 15... which I remember because it was seven years to the day. When my mom passed...I didn't want to sing. I don't think I handled it as professionally as I should have. I wrote a letter to my manager that said “You're just too busy going through the corporate world, because you don't know what the fuck you're doing.” And I faxed it. And we were dropped... I (later) recorded (the album Two) with Chris Bruce and it was cathartic. I had a new boyfriend at the time and that was a nightmare. (I) just had to get it all out. That record came and it was supposed to come. (The song) "Gorgeous Wonder" is about my daughter and she just saved me in so many ways. I just ended up going into interior design through friends. It was very trying and tricky. I remember (one time) that I was bartending and the RZA (from the Wu-Tang Clan) came in and said “you're Jill Jones” and I was like “No, I don't understand” and I pretended like I was French. Don't let your pride swallow you up...because that is a mistake. Everything's fixable and your good friends would never make you feel bad about it...

True friendship...learning a lot about it. I don't know what it is. I think it's the intimacy that I have with (some) people, but, it's always tested. People disappoint you. I know I tolerate a lot of other people's mistakes. I don't know. Honestly, I don't know what to say.

I want to know how to stop over analyzing and to kind of just not take things so personally anymore.

Can I? What does that mean, can I? Now it's at the point of why can't I?

I wish that I did not see so many homeless people and that they had their own home. I wish that the bankers that perpetrated all this fraud would be prosecuted and in jail for a long time. I wish good health to all my friends and family. I wish everybody had health care...

Ten years. Ten Years (emphasis added). Wasted. Yeah, ten years wasted. And I don't think fondly of these ten years, the ten years that I'm thinking of... But, I got a good song out of it.

My musical influences, this is the thing, I hate that question...Of course David Bowie, of course Led Zeppelin, of course Billie Holiday. Even Barbra Streisand. To me Prince was a great influence...Ryuchi Sakamoto. Classical pieces. I just love Rachmaninoff. I love Radiohead. I love Fiona Apple...I love people who are actually just a little bit themselves. They have hitches and flaws...

Jill Jones on the unfinished second Paisley Park album: We (Jones and Prince) were kind of were at two different roads. The song (“Boom Boom”) was from 1982 and it seemed forced. He kept remixing it. I went to do the video, but, it was late, it was too late. And I just ended up going back to New York, got married and waited until my contract expired. During this time he called me-- and I was at a friend's house-- and said, "you don't have any charisma, you should dye your hair black and you need to get breast implants like Brigitte Nielsen." I was furious... Dickens (CEO of Warner Brothers UK) was instrumental at one point with Roger Davies, my manager, when we were trying to complete my second album alone. Without Prince. But, Prince rejected every attempt we tried.

I've done a lot of interesting pieces of material. I've done many internal journeys, spiritual journeys...I can do a lot of things, I'm curious, everyone would be surprised by that. I've done crocheting and I have also done knitting.

The music business is not the same as it used to be...it's worse. The music business is now just isolated by a few of the old guard and they are just picking at it like vultures. They have reduced people to this value and it's disgusting...The music business is full of spineless people who are getting 20 to 25 percent of these kids' money for licensing and merchandising...Have you looked at how many plays you need to get on Spotify just to make $3,000? What is crazy is that they were doing this back in my day. They made money on the vinyl and they made money on the plastic. But, you know, here we are.

Pop stars can be boring. They are boring nowadays. I mean, American pop stars are boring. I love the Brits. I don't know if anybody really wants to have good content anymore. Maybe it's generational. I think it's superficial. It's synthesized. It's synthetic. They're equally as processed as the food in the grocery stores...it's synthetic and processed and it's fake.

Nowadays, people are just in flux. Things are suspended. Nowadays, everyone has had a big pill that has them in a coma. People don't have any verve, they've just lost it. Nowadays, I don't think people go out to gigs a lot, live performances, they don't really watch them.

My mother...amazing lady. Strong, sensitive, compassionate. But, she let a lot of people walk all over her, unfortunately, and she was a lot more forgiving than I was.

My father... I don't know him. I had two conversations with him on the phone. When I was younger I cared, but, now I don't care anymore. I got over my daddy issues a long time ago, but, that was in God's hands and I think that worked out. He had a really salty character that might have impacted me. I think we were touring and I called my father and Prince said you should never call him again. And I said, you're right, he wouldn't even come to the show. He was just a sperm donor.

The future...God willing, I will learn more. I will be doing a new album which I'm working on now. I want to be busy doing things. I want to be open to being more creative. I'm more interested in film things behind the scenes. I don't know, we'll see. Right now I am wrapping up a Dance album.

Prince records Baltimore tribute song in wake of Freddie Gray riots

May 2, 2015 4:27 AM MST

[Edited 5/10/15 14:50pm]

All Free NYC Summer Concerts 2015:

Link: http://nycfreeconcerts.co...aZBng.dpbs

T- Boz of TLC talks foundation and The Main Event tour with NKOTB

May 5, 2015 9:48 PM MST

The New Kids on the Block have just began their summer tour titled "The Main Event". The band is touring with special guests Nelly and TLC in a 360 round setting.

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The idea to tour together began last year when New Kids on the Block and the TLC performed at the Mixtape Festival in Hershey, Penn. This tour will return to the Mixtape Festival with Vanilla Ice on June 27th.

While in Los Angeles for tour rehearsals, TLC's Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins teamed up Chideo for a special charity concert called "T- Boz and Friends Unplugged" concert at The Grammy Museum. The charity concert raised money and awareness to sickle cell disease.

In addition to T- Boz, the show featured Raphael Saadiq, Faith Evans, Kat Graham and T-Boz's girl group ATLA.

All proceeds from the event went to the Sickle Cell Foundation, a charity that she has been a part of for years as she herself battles the disease.

I spoke with T- Boz right before the event. Click on the video link to see what she had to say about the event, TLC and The Main Event Tour.

The "The Main Event" ends in Buffalo, New York on July 2nd. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster and Live Nation.http://www.ticketmaster.c...ist/735744

Here are the tour dates for The Main Event tour:

May 5 – Vancouver, British Columbia, Rogers Arena
May 6 – Tacoma, Washington., Tacoma Dome
May 8 - San Jose, California, SAP Center
May 9 – Inglewood, California. The Forum
May 11 – San Diego, California., Viejas Arena
May 12 – Glendale, Arizona., Gila River Arena
May 14 – Dallas, Texas, American Airlines Center
May 15 – New Orleans, Louisana., Smoothie King Center
May 16 – Houston, Texas, Toyota Center
May 18 – Oklahoma City, Okla., Chesapeake Energy Arena
May 19 – Kansas City, Missouri., Sprint Center
May 20 – Saint Paul, Minnesota., Xcel Energy Center
May 22 – St. Louis, Missouri., Scottrade Center
May 23 – Rosemont, Illinois Allstate Arena
May 26 – Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. Bank Arena
May 27 – Nashville, Tenn., Bridgestone Arena
May 29 – Auburn Hills, Michigan., The Palace Of Auburn Hills
May 30 – Grand Rapids, Mich., Van Andel Arena
May 31 – Indianapolis, Indiana., Bankers Life Fieldhouse
June 2 – Charlotte, N.C., Time Warner Cable Arena
June 4 – Sunrise, Florida, BB&T Center
June 5 – Orlando, Florida, Amway Center
June 6 – Atlanta, Georgia., Philips Arena
June 7 – Louisville, Kentucky., KFC Yum! Center
June 9 – Norfolk, Virgina, Norfolk Scope Arena
June 10 – Washington, D.C., Verizon Center
June 12 – Uncasville, Conn., Mohegan Sun Arena
June 13 – Bethlehem, Penn, Sands Bethlehem Event Center
June 14 – Pittsburgh, Penn, Consol Energy Center
June 16 – Columbus, Ohio, Nationwide Arena
June 17 – Cleveland, Ohio, Quicken Loans Arena
June 19 – Philadelphia, Penn., Wells Fargo Center
June 20 – Uniondale, N.Y., Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum
June 21 – New York, N.Y., Madison Square Garden Arena
June 22 – New York, N.Y., Madison Square Garden Arena
June 24 – Boston, Ma., TD Garden
June 27 – Hershey, Penn, Hersheypark Stadium (MixTape Festival)
June 28 – Toronto, Ontario, Air Canada Centre
June 30 – Montreal, Quebec, Bell Centre
July 2 – Buffalo, N.Y., First Niagara Center

.

Tickets on sale today for 2015 Brubeck Festival

Karrin Allyson

The Brubeck Institute at University of the Pacific has announced the lineup for the 2015 Brubeck Festival. The former spring event is set for October 16-17 in Stockton and will feature the Grammy Award-winning Pacific Mambo Orchestra, SFJAZZ Collective and vocalist Karrin Allyson. Tickets go on sale today.

Established by the University of the Pacific in 2000, the Brubeck Institute impacts society through the arts, continuing the life's work of Dave and Iola Brubeck in education, community engagement and as a catalyst for social change. Institute programs include the Brubeck Collection, Brubeck Festival, Outreach Program, Summer Jazz Colony and Brubeck Fellowship Program. Brubeck Fellows, comprising the Brubeck Institute Jazz Quintet, are winners of seven DownBeat awards for best collegiate jazz group in the country. University of the Pacific, with campuses in Stockton, Sacramento and San Francisco, was established in 1851 as the first chartered university in California.
This year's festival honoring the 1942 Pacific graduate Dave Brubeck will be held in partnership with Pacific Homecoming and Parent and Family Weekend celebrations with jazz performances on Oct. 16 and 17.
"We are delighted to present our signature Brubeck Festival events in conjunction with Pacific's Homecoming and Parent and Family Weekend celebrations," said Simon Rowe, executive director of the Brubeck Institute. "We feel our evening concerts will provide an entertaining cross-cultural experience. We are also thrilled to invite people to the Pacific campus for our annual symposium and Jazz on the Green celebrations."

Want to keep up with the best in Bay Area jazz and blues?
Subscribe to me: Have our jazz and blues Examiner columns sent to your inbox. Click the SUBSCRIBE button on this page. It's free. (And I won't spam you or give out your information.) Bookmark me: http://www.examiner.com/j...rian-mccoy. CONTACT ME FOR YOUR JAZZ AND ARTS GRANT WRITING NEEDS

.

Beatles radio show celebrates fifth anniversary with tribute concert

May 6, 2015 11:38 AM MST

With Jeremy Clyde and Chad Stuart of Chad and Jeremy.

Courtesy The Beatledd Fab Four Hour - used by permission.

View all 11 photos

“The Beatledd Fab Four Hour,” hosted by Edd Raineri celebrates its fifth anniversary May 7 and the list of guests he's had over those five years is pretty impressive. “For being on a small station, we can certainly hold our own,” he told Beatles Examiner. Over the last 5 years, the show's guests from the Beatles world have included former Beatle Pete Best and former members of Wings Denny Laine, Denny Seiwell, Laurence Juber and Henry McCullough.

Courtesy The Beatledd Fab Four Hour - used by permission.

He's also featured several Beatles relatives, close friends and associates, including Louise Harrison, sister to George Harrison; Julia Baird, John Lennon’s half-sister; Pauline Sutcliffe, Stu Sutcliffe’s sister; May Pang; Neil Innes; Tony Bramwell; Billy J. Kramer; Andy White; Ken Mansfield; Sam Leach; Beatles’ recording engineers, Ken Scott and Richard Langham; John Lennon recording engineer Dennis Ferrante, Chas Newby, who played bass with the Beatles, Gary Van Scyoc of Elephant’s Memory, musician Gary Wright and Lennon personal assistant Fred Seaman.

And there has been a long list of '60s singers and personalities, including Tommy James, Lou Christie, Chad & Jeremy, Susan Cowsill, Gary Lewis, Peter Noone, Rick Derringer, Eddie Money, Mitch Ryder, Mark Farner, Janis Ian, Chris Montez; Tommy Roe; Terry Sylvester of The Hollies; Bob Miranda of The Happenings; Dennis Tufano of The Buckinghams; Billy Kinsley of The Merseybeats; La La Brooks of The Crystals; Peggy Santiglia of The Angels; Walter Egan; Ron Dante of The Archies and Barry Manilow’s producer; Gary DeCarlo from Steam; Greg Kihn, Phil “Fang” Volk of Paul Revere & The Raiders; Terry Kirkman of The Association; Frank Jeckell, founder of The 1910 Fruitgum Company along with many Beatles’ authors.

Raineri also conducted the final interview with Davy Jones just days before he died. “Among the topics we spoke about in Davy’s last interview was his (other) home in northeast Pennsylvania close to where we’re located, a new song he was working on, 'Written In My Heart,' a new musical that he had written, the Monkees’ legacy and the great songwriters who contributed to their success, racing his horses at the race track here in Wilkes-Barre; and his appearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' the same night the Beatles debuted in America in February 1964. I was a bit surprised when he said he was not a fan of The Beatles or a fan of anybody.” Raineri has also interviewed fellow Monkee Peter Tork.

A special live show will take place next month to pay tribute to the show's milestone. “To celebrate our five-year anniversary on WRKC, I’m bringing ‘1964 The Tribute’ to perform at The F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts in Wilkes-Barre”, said Raineri. The show will take place June 6.

And the radio show plans to keep the Beatles spirit going. “There’s the fantastic music, classic Beatles, outtakes, covers, 60’s music blocks. We’re always working the fringe. That’s what makes it so much fun,” he said.

You can hear “The Beatledd Fab Four Hour” live from 7 to 8 p.m. ET Fridays on WKRC-FM (88.5) in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. It's also live online on the station's website. You can also connect with the show on its Facebook page.

.

Joni Mitchell Update, Phil Rudd on Future with AC/DC and Charges

May 6, 2015 11:30 AM MST

Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Good news for Joni Mitchell fans and well-wishers. The folk legend could be released from the hospital soon, but a date has not been set. Mitchell is also still unable to confer with doctors on her medical care or long treatment, as confirmed by attorney Alan Watenmaker, who had also compelled to a judge to place the singer-songwriter’s longtime friend Leslie Morris in charge of health care decisions for Mitchell.

Superior Court Judge David S. Cunningham III appointed Morris as Mitchell’s conservator on Monday, which will gives the ability for Morris to confer with doctors and make decisions about Mitchell’s treatment and lifestyle once she leaves the Los Angeles hospital she has remained since late March. Reasons for Mitchell’s hospitalization remains undisclosed, and Morris will not have any control over Mitchell’s finances.

In other music news, former AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd recently spoken publicly about the assault drug charges which could not only get him some jail time, but also put an end to his music career. In speaking with Australia’s A Current Affair, Rudd admitted to having no correspondence with former bandmates since his brush with the law, but holds out hope of rejoining the group anytime soon, and has even tried to get in touch with guitarist Angus Young, but to no avail.

When asked about his case, which has been adjourned until June 26th, Rudd said the he “saw the error in his ways”, and the incident (charges of possessing cannabis and threatening to kill) was “a mistake”.

.

How can you support the local musicians and venues

May 6, 2015 12:23 PM MST

Support - join - enjoy great talent

Kelley Adinolfi

Unfortunately too many people choose not to support the local musicians and venues. when you support the local music events you are supporting the town you live in and the businesses that keep the area alive.

Reasons to support the Local Music Events :

1. Musicians are people like you - they might seem like rock stars on stage but behind the scenes they are just like you, working a full time job to support their families. When you purchase a t-shirt or CD from a local musician you are helping them pursue their musical passions, which in turns benefits you because they are producing and performing for your entertainment.

2. Going to see a local band / musician perform is much cheaper on your wallet and you get more entertainment for your buck.

3. Musical Diversity - The more performances locally you support, the more variety of music you have to choose from in the future.

4. When you purchase and wear local merchandise, you are showing pride in your home town and your place within the community.

5. Musicians are a healthy part of the local economies. When you support the local musicians you are supporting the local business owners and employees. The local bars and venues - you are keeping their doors open.

6. When your favorite local band / musician becomes famous you can always say " I was there at the beginning"

7. The local shows are more intimate - you are able to be within feet of them performing and usually are part of the performance. You also get the chance to socialize with the artists before or after their set at no charge.

8. Local Musicians are there for you - they are there to entertain you. The least you can do is support them by showing up and having a great time listening to them.

Support the local musicians by :

Showing up at the performances - Usually you can see 3 or 4 bands perform for a small cover charge - $5 to $10.

Spread the word on social media for your favorites : Even if you are not planning on attending a show - if you get an invite accept it - never decline it. When you accept it your friends will see the event - maybe they are not friends with the band and didn't get that invite - so by you accepting maybe someone else will show up and support them. When you decline the event - it goes no further - no-one on your wall can see it.

Word of mouth - tell someone about a great band you have seen or heard.

Like their pages on Facebook, Follow them on Twitter, get to know them on every social site you can think of. If they are not on there suggest it to them.

Support the local venues by :

Showing up at the events they sponsor - if you don't show up they most likely won't have it again. By supporting the venue you are keeping someone off of unemployment.

Spread the word on the social media sites that the venues have other things going on besides the live music. Get out there during the week and on the weekends. Enjoy the time with your friends while keeping the community alive.

Let your favorite Musician or Venue know about our weekly Live music article, have them send us their information.

Marvel gives 'Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope' a comic remastering

May 6, 2015 12:50 PM MST

Marvel Comics, via Wookieepedia

Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope
Based on a screenplay by George Lucas
Writer/Editor: Roy Thomas
Artist: Howard Chaykin
Consulting Editor (1977): Archie Goodwin
Cover Artist (2015): Adi Granov

The original comic adaptation of the greatest space-fantasy film of all is remastered for the modern age! Weeks before George Lucas' first Star Wars film hit theatres, Marvel gave fans their first look at Luke Skywalker, boldly asking: "Will he save the galaxy, or destroy it?" You may know the answer, but that doesn't spoil the fun of seeing Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope like never before...including scenes that never made the silver screen! When Princess Leia is taken prisoner, Luke, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 ride to the rescue and take on Darth Vader in his awesome Death Star. It's six against a galaxy - one that's far, far away and a long time ago! May the Force be with you, in the mighty Marvel manner! - from the back cover blurb, Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope

With Star Wars’ 38th anniversary approaching and the release of Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens only seven months away, Marvel Comics is reissuing its classic 1977-1983 comic book adaptations in a trio of hardcover graphic novels.

On May 5, 2015, Disney-owned Marvel Worldwide published Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, a 128-page volume that contains issues 1-6 of Marvel’s original 1977 Star Wars comics.

The Comics - Then and Now

Originally introduced in April of 1977, the six-issue series was scripted by a young writer named Roy Thomas and drawn by Marvel’s legendary Howard Chaykin, the artist who also created Star Wars’ first poster in 1976. Based on an early version of George Lucas’s fourth draft of the Star Wars screenplay, Thomas’s comic adaptation gave fans their first truly visual look at Star Wars nearly a month before the film’s premiere.

Though Thomas’s script adheres closely to Lucas’s finished film, the comic book adaptation tells a slightly different version of the events in Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope.

For instance, Thomas introduces Luke Skywalker in a scene that intercuts the capture of Princess Leia’s consular ship with panels of the young moisture farmer seeing the battle through his macrobinoculars. Director Lucas shot those scenes at the insistence of some of his friends who thought Luke needed to be in the movie earlier, but discarded them (as well as another scene which showed Luke and his friends in Toschi Station) because they slowed the movie’s pacing.

There are other, more subtle divergences between the comic adaptation. In his introduction to the remastered version, actor Peter Mayhew, who plays Chewbacca the Wookiee in five of the seven Star Wars films, writes:

In the comics, Chewbacca often comes off as a barrel-chested bruiser rather than the gentle giant he was in the films. Seeing another artist’s interpretation of the characters, whether it be in comics or book form, is always fun for me.

Other minor changes include:

• Darth Vader uses the Force to summon a cup across a Death Star conference room during his confrontation with an Imperial admiral.

• Jabba the Hut (only one t in this iteration) is depicted as a vaguely humanoid alien in a scene that was filmed but deleted from the 1977 film. This sequence was restored for the 1997 Special Edition; the humanoid alien was replaced with a CGI-rendered slug-like Jabba the Hutt based on the character’s appearance in Return of the Jedi.

• The two Rebel fighter squadrons’ call signs in the comics are Blue and Red; in the film, Luke Skywalker’s X-wing squadron was Red, while the Y-wings belonged to Gold Squadron.

My Take

Marvel Comics has reissued the six issues that comprise this 2015 collection several times. In 1977, before VHS videocassettes were widely available and decades before the invention of DVD and Blu-ray discs, comic books allowed fans to relive the adventures of Luke Skywalker and his Rebel friends in a visual medium. Consequently, Marvel’s Star Wars issues #1-6 were so in demand that the publisher reprinted them in various formats, including a black-and-white trade paperback edition and a super-sized Marvel Special Edition Featuring Star Wars #3 (1978).

The 2015 remastered edition is a refined version of Marvel Special Edition Featuring Star Wars #3. It presents Star Wars issues #1-6 in one volume divided into six chapters. Each chapter break is introduced with a remastered reproduction of its corresponding comic book issue.

The six chapters are:

1. Star Wars

2. Six Against the Galaxy

3. Death Star!

4. In Battle with Darth Vader

5. Lo! The Moons of Yavin!

6. The Final Chapter?

The six covers by Howard Chaykin are recreated in their over-the-top 1970s style, with wildly imaginative illustrations that capture the swashbuckling spirit of the story but don’t accurately reflect the issues’ content. (On the cover for issue 36, for instance, Chaykin depicts a lightsaber duel between Luke and Vader with this breathless teaser line: See Luke Skywalker Battle Darth Vader!)

The comic books’ original artwork and most of the text have not been messed with - much. Disney-owned Marvel did not compel Thomas to rewrite his script to fit the film’s established canon, nor did Chaykin have to redraw Chewbacca so the Wookiee looks less like “a barrel chested bruiser.” Luke Skywalker is still Blue Five (instead of Red Five), and lightsabers are still referred in the text as “lightsabres.” There’s even an old uncorrected typo (“you’ry my only hope” instead of “you’re my only hope”) in one Chapter Two panel.

And for those wondering if Disney is engaging in a corporate bit of historical revisionism, there is some of that. For instance, the cover art for Issue #1 still says “Marvel’s Official Adaptation of the Monumental 20th Century Fox Movie!” However, all other references to Fox in interior pages have been removed.

The major artistic difference between the 1977 comics and their 2015 remastering (other than the format and price) is that colorist Marie Severin’s 70s Pop style color scheme was replaced by a more subtle new coloring done by artists from Chris Sotomayor’s Sotocolor. Sotocolor retouched every panel in the six issues to give them a more coherent and modern look.

In addition, Sotocolor color-corrected the energy blades of the lightsabers belonging to Star Wars’ two Jedi characters, Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, especially on the covers. In Chaykin’s 1977 art, all the lightsabers, including Darth Vaders, were rendered in red.

However, the Star Wars films established that only Sith lords use lightsabers with crimson energy blades, so Sotocolor recolored Luke and Obi-Wan’s laser swords to the more canonic blue.

All in all, Marvel’s remastered version of Star Wars - Episode IV; A New Hope is a nice compromise that will please most fans. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel by changing the 1977 comics text or art except as noted. The book even includes then-editor in chief Stan Lee’s introduction to Issue # 1 and Roy Thomas’s essay “The Story Behind Star Wars: The Movie and the Comic Mag.”

This slim hardcover edition, which includes a code for digital copies for Apple iOS and Android devices, makes a nice addition to any fan's Star Wars library.

.

Selina Speaks! An Interview with Gotham's Camren Bicondova

By Tim Beedle Monday, September 29th, 2014

Gotham continues tonight on Fox, which means fans will finally discover what happens to Oswald Cobblepot after the pilot’s shocking ending. They can also expect to learn a lot more about the show’s young Catwoman-to-be, at least if the episode’s title, “Selina Kyle,” is any indication. Even without lines, Selina was a standout in the Gotham premiere, so we were thrilled when we recently got a chance to speak to the fifteen-year-old actress behind her, Camren Bicondova, about what it’s like taking on such an iconic role, how it feels being a part of Batman’s world and what she actually thinks about cats.

In the pilot, Selina Kyle was pretty much just an observer. How does it feel to now be a part of the story?

It’s pretty awesome. I mean, I was excited to be in the pilot either way, whether I had lines or not, because I got to utilize my dancing. But now I’m really excited because I get to show what I’ve come up with for the character. It’s a little scary. But I’m excited about it.

You mentioned dancing. Are you a dancer?

Yes, I am!

Several actresses have played Selina Kyle before, but you’re the only one who’s played her at such a young age. How would you describe her at this point in her life?

At this point, she’s just trying to survive on her own in Gotham City, and the way that she does that is by pickpocketing and stealing stuff. So really, she’s just a survivor at the moment.

Were you influenced by the way any of those actresses played Selina Kyle as an adult? Or did you try to approach this performance as something completely new?

I did watch their performances, originally for inspiration. But then, as I was watching I realized that it would be a little awkward if I used the same characteristics that women used while playing Selina Kyle. I mean, obviously she does have those characteristics, but it’s like minus ten because she’s a teenager. So I’m just reading the scripts and going with my instincts, and asking the writers if I have any questions. And DC Comics too, since they’re involved with the series. I’m just going with the flow.

How familiar were you with Selina Kyle as a character and the whole Batman world? Had you seen the movies or maybe read the comic books? Or was it all pretty new to you?

It’s all pretty new to me. I knew of Catwoman and Batman, but I didn’t know the details. I didn’t know the whole comic world that they were involved in until I started researching, and I love it now. It’s really awesome.

What was the first thing you did when you learned that you got the role?

I honestly don’t remember because I was in so much shock that I kind of blacked out in my head. I either jumped up or I fell down with excitement. I thought when I got the call that they were going to tell me that I got the role of Lucy, because I thought that I was auditioning for a girl named Lucy. But they said, “You’re actually the next Selina Kyle.”

I was like, “Oh, uh, that’s, uh, cool!” I was just in shock. It’s nerve-wracking, but it’s a good sort of nerves.

Your character develops a pretty close relationship with Bruce Wayne. How have you enjoyed working with David Mazouz?

He’s really fun. He’s my buddy on and off screen. He’s an amazing actor and I’ve learned a lot from him, as much as the other cast members. He’s a cool dude.

Do you think he’ll make a good Batman one day?

Yeah, I think he’ll be a pretty cool Batman. I kinda get a Batman vibe from him, you know?

Well, now that I’ve learned you’re a dancer I’m wondering, are you teaching him moves? He could probably learn from you.

I tried! Well, he tries. Yeah… [laughs] He tries! [laughs more] He’s funny.

Finally, do you have any pets? Are you a cat person?

I do have a pet and I am a cat person. I have a cat with me at home. He’s sitting right next to me, as a matter of fact. His name is Mr. G and he’s my other buddy. [Ed. note: To see Mr. G in action, click here.] He’s pretty chill. He actually thinks he’s a dog. He begs like a dog, and I walk him on a leash. It’s good because I like the activeness of having a dog, but I like the independence of a cat, and my cat is pretty much a dog and a cat morphed together so it’s pretty awesome.

I’m not sure what Catwoman would think of your cat thinking he’s a dog, though.

Yeah, I don’t know either. [laughs]

.

Director Anne Fletcher dishes about her new flick 'Hot Pursuit'

May 5, 2015 11:58 PM MST

Shelby Lynne on Cleaning Out Her 'Dark Dixie Closet' for New Album

Singer-songwriter looked to everything from her tragic family past to equal rights for inspiration on 'I Can't Imagine'

By Stephen L. Betts May 6, 2015

Shelby Lynne drew on dark, personal inspirations for her new album, 'I Can't Imagine.' Rebecca Sapp/WireImage

Whether she's crooning a traditional country tune with George Jones, as on her 1988 single "If I Could Bottle This Up," paying tribute to Dusty Springfield with the glorious Just a Little Lovin' from 2008, or grooving on West Coast-inspired country-rock, as she does throughout the sensational, just-released LP, I Can't Imagine, Shelby Lynne is all about the vibe. That's why it made perfect sense to the singer-songwriter to take a record she started at home in California and finish recording it in the heart of Cajun country, at Dockside Studio in Maurice, Louisiana. The result is Lynne's 13th full-length album and her first for Rounder Records, and is yet another dazzling showcase for her emotion-packed vocals and the richly textured storytelling rooted in the Southern tradition of her Alabama upbringing.

"Anytime you go to the South, it just naturally sings something — whether it's mournful or joy," Lynne tells Rolling Stone Country. "There's something about the South that naturally tells its own story. So when you involve your own stories with it, which is the goal, it's a combination of something that's already there and hopefully something to come."

As open as she was to the idea of merging the two musical cultures on record, Lynne always intended to return to the Palm Springs area, where she has lived for nearly two decades, to finish recording. Although she left behind (and rarely looks back at) a turbulent upbringing in Alabama, where she and younger sister Allison Moorer (who released her own exceptional album, Down to Believing, in March) endured the horrific shooting death of their mother at the hand of their father, who then took his own life. Life in the Moorer household up to that point, however, was one that included plenty of music. Raised in tiny Frankville, Alabama, home of the Frankville Old Time Fiddlers Convention for nearly 90 years, Lynne says she began talking and singing at about the same time.

"I was one of those little three year olds that they put up on the piano to sing," she recalls. "When I learned to play the ukulele and make some chords, Daddy put Allison and me in the damn fiddler's conventions, which are basically acoustic talent contests. We won the prize for $25. I learned to play ukulele at about seven or eight, so that would make Allison about four. We were just babies."

While it's safe to assume "child prodigy" is a term that fits both sisters, one thing anyone who has met Lynne, or at least read about her, in the past two-plus decades knows is that also labeling her "outspoken" is putting it mildly — or, as she herself might suggest in her distinctive Southern drawl, "fuckin' mildly." And although she doesn't often relive the past, preferring to "Be in the Now," just as one of the songs on the new album suggests, Lynne does occasionally conjure up particularly strong childhood memories with her intricately detailed, vivid lyrics. "Following You," one of the songs from I Can't Imagine that was penned as a solo effort, is ostensibly about her squirrel hunting adventures as a young girl, accompanied by her father. But at its heart, the chilling, beautiful tune is really a sobering meditation on the complicated relationship Lynne and her father shared within — and beyond — his deeply troubled lifetime.

Shelby Lynne performs in New York. Ben Gabbe/Getty Images

"I would always walk behind him," she says of those treks through the woods, a shotgun hoisted on her shoulder. "[The song is] like me following him and reading his thoughts and doing everything that I know he wants me to. I'm following him even though he doesn't know where he's going. I'm gonna let him know that I'm gonna be his little girl. I'm gonna do everything I'm supposed to do. But I really know that he's a dumbass [laughs]. When you're the kid that I was and you know that Daddy has his demons. . . once you get to be 11 or 12 and .22 rifle-totin' size, you realize that you're dealing with a human being that has a lot of facets. So you start figuring out this person you admire. That's me thinking about him. . . when I think about him."

Another of the memorable tracks from I Can't Imagine that deals with childhood, and not just Lynne's specifically, is "Down Here," a brooding, bluesy number that incorporates the telling phrase "three-dollar bill," alluding to the simile that begins "queer as a" (without explicitly saying it). It's yet another reminder that the South's relationship with LGBT issues, while having progressed, still has a long way to go. A notoriously private singer, Lynne rarely discusses her life outside of music, but when pressed on the subject, she will say that she has been open to a variety of personal experiences throughout her lifetime, many of which might make a genteel Southerner blush, and also might open her up to cold, harsh judgment from others — if she actually gave a shit about what anyone else thinks.

"Down Here" addresses the turmoil of, in Lynne's words, "my dark Dixie closet," and her prepubescent realization that she wasn't quite like those in her peer group. It's a subject she hasn't tackled quite as directly in her songwriting before, but only because it wasn't time.

"I didn't try to sit down and write it," she explains. "'Down Here' wrote itself, just like most of my songs. I sit down and wait for it to come through my body, and for the pencil to move."

It's crystal clear that having to discuss why "Down Here" is all too timely doesn't exactly thrill her. But, as with most questions asked of her in regard to what inspires her writing particular subjects, once she starts talking, she has plenty to say.

"This is the thing: I believe in equal human rights," she says, drawing out each of those last three words for emphasis. "I am not a political person except in my own private time. I have no agenda except that everybody should be treated with dignity and respect, whether it's race or being homosexual or anything. I just believe everybody should be nice to everybody. It was on my mind, there was something in the news about some Southern family that had thrown out their kid [for being gay], and they got it on tape. I'm so sick of this! How do you dismiss your child because they're different?

"I get to thinking about the South and how I felt when I was a little kid," she continues. "Feeling, 'Wow, I am different. I feel it in my heart, and I know that I don't have anything to do with it. I'm being who I am and what I am.' Immediately, when you know that and you're eight or nine years old, you start going, 'Well, I have to start acting differently. Because it's obvious what I'm feeling is not really acceptable around here.' So you just start being and becoming who you are and hope and make the best of it. By the time you're an adult and you have a voice, an opinion and a way of life that's your own, you have to be secure in the fact of who you are. That's the whole goal with 'Down Here,' it's just saying you're not alone. Because [singing] 'Out in the country, out in the hills, out in the country, there's a three-dollar bill.' And they're everywhere. And I mean they. . . all. . . you. . . me. . . all. So, I'm hoping that song can reach some little Southern child or some Southern person and they can go, 'Goddammit, she feels like I feel.'"

"Down Here" was co-written with and features vocal assistance from one of her first-time collaborators on the LP, Clarence Greenwood. A bluesy, soulful rocker and true son of the South, Greenwood is perhaps better known by his stage name: Citizen Cope.

"Clarence is the everyman," says Lynne. "I'm a huge believer in what Clarence represents, what he does, his music, his vibe, his lyrics. There's something so poetic and musical about his voice. It comes from deeper than the vocal cords. It's something that stretches from a long, long, long, long time ago. I fell in love with his music. I just wanted to see if he would share something with me. I called him and since then we've become good pals. Music opens the great doors to communicate."

Lynne has also cultivated a close relationship with her band, including right-hand man, guitarist and keyboard player Ben Peeler, with whom she collaborated on "Sold the Devil (Sunshine)," a Motown-infused tune about a fearless tête-à-tête with Satan.

"Just imagine standing in front of the devil and he's forced to buy a dash of sunshine from you," she says with a laugh. "I'm ready to take that motherfucker head-on and sell him some sunshine and smile the whole fucking time and say, 'What you gonna do about it, motherfucker?' I'll stand on my tiptoes with the devil. I'm ready. I believe I've probably done it before. He's welcome to stand in my face anytime and I'll sell him some sunshine. That's a good example of letting the song take you where it's going to go. We went in there and cut it once. Two or three of these were just cut once."

Her preference for as few takes as possible, Lynne confesses, stems from her first recordings on a major country label, Epic — a time that was epically dissatisfying as far as her experience in the studio was concerned.

"I have dreadful memories from my early Nashville days of record producers telling me to sing a song over and over and over. So, before the fucking record came out, I hated the song. I don't sing the songs any more than one or two times. If I ain't got it then, then fuck it, I ain't puttin' it on there. I will not be told what to do. I will not be told what to sing, unless I really, really, really trust. In Nashville, they didn't really give a fuck whether I trusted them or not. It was like, 'Here, sing this.' Those times are way gone."

Also featured on I Can't Imagine is multi-instrumentalist Pete Donnelly, whose work with pop-band the Figgs was far removed from Lynne's own experience but with whom she says she instantly clicked. In addition to contributing a co-write on the album's title track, Donnelly and Lynne co-penned the bitterly ironic and captivating "Better," about a woman Lynne says has gone completely off the rails. "She's been out all night, drunk as shit," Lynne explains. "She stopped and fucked somebody on the way home."

Lynne has also added a new member to her family of collaborators: lauded Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, who in addition to having recorded more than a dozen acclaimed albums has had his songs covered by Emmylou Harris, Michael Bublé and Rod Stewart, among others. With Lynne, the Juno Award-winning tunesmith penned two of the albums more optimistic, upbeat tracks: "Be in the Now" and "Love Is Strong." The two have previously been featured — separately — on a seemingly unlikely project: an album by pop crooner Engelbert Humperdinck, as well as on a benefit LP.

"All writers love Ron because he's just the shit," Lynne notes. "I wanted to collaborate on this record, and I had Ron in the back of my mind. We kept colliding, musically, but had never met. I cold e-mailed him and said, 'Do you wanna write a song?' He said, 'Yeah, but I'm in Toronto.' I said, 'Great! I'm in Palm Springs, what's your e-mail?' There you go. I've never laid eyes on him."

Although she now runs her own label, Everso Records, Lynne says I Can't Imagine was released on Rounder, quite simply, because they asked for it.

"I got the I Am [Shelby Lynne] and Love, Shelby masters back," she says of the pair of career-defining albums originally released in 1999 and 2001, respectively, the former of which led to a belated Best New Artist Grammy. With Rounder's re-release of a deluxe version of I Am Shelby Lynne came the proposition of releasing fresh music from Lynne, her first full-length LP since 2011's Revelation Road.

"I said, 'Well, I ain't really thought about makin' a new one, but all right.' Everso owns I Am and Love, Shelby. Everso's happenin'. She's alive and kickin', she's just takin' a break. I love Rounder. It's one of the last of a dying breed. They've always kept it fucking true. I wanted a label like Rounder one day. Something that stays consistent, stays classy. There's nothing put out on there that's gonna be out just to make a buck. It's gonna be good-quality shit."

For over 25 years now, Shelby Lynne has built an exceptional career in music out of just that: consistent, good-quality shit.

.

Elsa y Elmar Takes John Lennon Latin Prize

• Latin

By Judy Cantor-Navas | May 06, 2015 4:15 AM EDT

Elsa y Elmar

Courtesy Photo

Colombian indie pop artist and Berklee grad wins songwriting competition’s español category

Colombian singer-songwriter Elsa Carvajal has won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest’s Latin category. The prize was awarded for “Me Viene Bien,” a song with an ethereal groove recorded by Caraval under the name of her electronic indie pop project, Elsa y Elmar.

Caraval, who is from the Bucaramanga, a mountainside city in Colombia, began studying jazz as a teenager. She is a recent graduate of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, where she began recording as Elsa y Elmar.

The singer-songwriter refers to her sound as “spiritual pop.”

The 2014 Lennon Award Winners were announced on May 1. Winners receive a package of studio gear and other products from contest sponsors.

Elsa y Elmar will compete with artists in eleven other genre categories for the title of song of the year, which brings with it a $20,000 prize. Latin artists Prince Royce, Wisin and Gaby Moreno are among those who involved in the judging of the contest, according to the contest Web site.

.

Avery Wilson Impressed With His New Single On 'The Voice' Top 6 Results & Totally Would've Beat the Other Past Contestants

Jessica Molinari

The producers are loving the homecoming theme this season and tonight is no exception. While http://www.bustle.com/art...-next-week" href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/77990-usher-cee-lo-green-gwen-stefani-are-all-returning-to-the-voice-next-week">last week’s homecoming was for the coaches, this week was for the past contestants. Contestants and winners from seasons dating all the way back to the beginning came back to impress their coaches with their own singles and show the present contestants what they can look forward to. The homecomings of Craig Wayne Boyd, Vicci Martinez, Avery Wilson, and Jacquie Lee got me thinking — if they were they were competing against each other, who would win? After hearing all their performances there was one clear winner — Avery Wilson.

Don’t get me wrong — all four singers did an amazing job. They’ve come so far since their days competing on The Voice stage and obvious why the producers asked them back. But Wilson blew me away as soon as he opened his mouth to sing his first note. His talent is so pure and natural that it literally blows you away. It’s insane to think that Wilson didn’t even make it to the Live Playoffs when he competed in Season 3. The then-16-year-old was eliminated in the Knockout Rounds in a major upset. Wilson was later signed by none other than Clive Davis — proving to his ex-coach, Cee Lo Green, that he made a horrible decision.

Wilson put himself on the map tonight with his performance of his single “If I Have To.” It’s an amazing song with powerful lyrics and insane vocals. Though all of the past contestants have amazing new songs, his stood out as being superior — and I can’t wait to download it and listen to it on replay. But now that I’ve answered my original question, I have one more to ask you — is Wilson talented enough to beat out the crazy talent of this season? I’ll let you answer that one on your own.

Image: Tyler Golden/NBC

.

New Music: Avery Wilson – ‘If I Have To’

RCA Records

May 5, 2015

Avery Wilson, known for competing on NBC’s “The Voice” and for his rousing Vine song covers, premieres his debut single “If I Have To.”

At the humble age of 18, the Connecticut-born crooner recently signed with RCA Records and is currently working on his first album under the mentorship of Clive Davis and Sean Garrett.

“Do I need you? Do I love you? Well I’ll go blind for you to see I do,” Avery belts on the mid-tempo ballad. “When you need proof and words won’t do, I’ll walk on fire just to get to you.”

“If I Have To” is a strong first single, from the profound lyrics to the robust production. As a vocalist, Avery rivals the likes of Usher, Justin Timberlake and Maxwell with an expansive range and precise control.

On Tuesday evening, Avery returns to “The Voice” to perform his single for the first time. Download “If I Have To” on iTunes now.

.

Ciara Kicks Off ‘Jackie Tour’ in Chicago

May 4, 2015

Aligning with the arrival of her sixth album Jackie, Ciara kicked off her 18-date Jackie Tour Sunday night in Chicago. The tour is the singer’s first in more than six years.

“Praying ur first night on ur new #Jackie Album tour goes amazing! Wish I could be there in Chicago to watch you dominate the stage!” tweeted rumored boyfriend Russell Wilson before CiCi hit the stage.

Ciara treated fans to a handful of well-known hits including “1, 2 Step,” “Promise” and “Ride,” plus “Dance Like We’re Making Love” and “I Bet” from Jackie. Topping off the big night, one lucky concertgoer received a lap dance from Ciara herself.

Among the crowd was fellow singer and Chicago’s own Jennifer Hudson, who shared a few photos from the show. “She did that! Get @ciara ! So proud of u!” Jennifer wrote in one caption.

Jackie is in stores now. See below for the remaining dates on Ciara’s trek:

Jackie Tour

May 3	Chicago, IL	House of Blues
May 5	New York, NY	Best Buy Theatre
May 7	Boston, MA	House of Blues
May 9	Silver Spring, MD	The Fillmore
May 10	Glenside, PA	Kenswick Theatre
May 12	Charlotte, NC	Fillmore
May 13	Atlanta, GA	Center Stage
May 15	Miami, FL	Fillmore
May 16	Tampa, FL	The Ritz Ybor
May 19	New Orleans, LA	Joy Theatre
May 20	Houston, TX	House of Blues
May 22	Dallas, TX	House of Blues
May 23	San Antonio, TX	The Aztec Theatre
May 24	Corpus Christi, TX	Brewester Street Ice House
May 27	San Diego, CA	House of Blues
May 29	Riverside, CA	Riverside Municipal Auditorium
May 30	Los Angeles, CA	Club Nokia
May 31	San Francisco, CA	Regency

.

Jack Ely, Who Sang the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’, Dies at 71

By SAM ROBERTSAPRIL 29, 2015

Photo

The Kingsmen, from left, Don Gallucci, Jack Ely, Lynn Easton, Mike Mitchell and Bob Nordby. Credit Gino Rossi

Jack Ely would later insist that as a 19-year-old singing “Louie Louie” in one take in a Portland, Ore., studio in 1963, he had followed the original lyrics faithfully. But, he admitted, the braces on his teeth had just been tightened, and he was howling to be heard over the band, with his head tilted awkwardly at a 45-degree angle at a single microphone dangling from the ceiling to simulate a live concert.

Which may explain why what originated innocently as a lovesick sailor’s calypso lament to a bartender named Louie morphed into the incoherent, three-chord garage-band cult classic by the Kingsmen that sold millions of copies, spawned countless cover versions and variations, was banned in Indiana, prompted the F.B.I. to investigate whether the song was secretly obscene, provoked a legal battle and became what Frank Zappa called “an archetypal American musical icon.”

For Mr. Ely, the 2-minute-42-second demo recording turned out to be a one-hit wonder. He was bounced from the group, which he helped found in 1959, after the drummer, Lynn Easton, decided he wanted to be the lead singer instead.

Mr. Ely died on Tuesday at 71 at his home in Redmond, Ore. His son Sean said that Mr. Ely was a Christian Scientist and had not sought treatment, but that he believed the cause was skin cancer.

Jack Brown Ely was born in Portland on Sept. 11, 1943. His father, Ken, was a singer of such prominence, Dave Marsh wrote in “Louie Louie” (1993) — one of several books prompted by the song — that the crooner Rudy Vallee sent him a congratulatory telegram when his only son was born. Ken Ely died when Jack was 4.

He began taking piano lessons and gave his first recital before he was 7, then discovered the guitar when he was 13 and saw Elvis Presley on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

After Lynn Easton’s mother enlisted Jack to perform at a local yacht club, joined by high school colleagues, the Kingsmen were born. They never practiced at Jack’s house (his stepfather hated the racket), but the band prospered even as they graduated and Jack enrolled at Portland State University.

In 1962, while playing at a club in Seaside, Ore., he noticed that the jukebox was spinning overtime with Rockin’ Robin Roberts and the Wailers’ 1961 version of “Louie Louie,” a song that Richard Berry, a Los Angeles musician, had written on a napkin and recorded in 1957.

Mr. Ely persuaded the Kingsmen and the band’s manager to record the song. They booked the Northwestern Inc. studio in Portland for an hour on April 6, 1963.

“It was more yelling than singing ’cause I was trying to be heard over all the instruments,” Mr. Ely recalled, according to Peter Blecha, a music historian, in his book “Sonic Boom! The History of Northwest Rock: From ‘Louie Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ ” (2009). He also began the third verse a few bars too soon and paused while the band caught up.

In an interview with the Oregon newspaper The Bend Bulletin in 1987, Mr. Ely recalled: “I stood there and yelled while the whole band was playing, and when it was over, we hated it. We thought it was a totally non-quality recording.”

Paul Revere and the Raiders, another Portland band, recorded the song the same week. Arnie Ginsburg, a Boston disc jockey known as Woo-Woo, played the Kingsmen’s version twice and pronounced it the worst recording of the week. But it became a No. 2 hit nationally and stayed in the Top 40 for 13 weeks. In 2007, Rolling Stone magazine called it the No. 4 most influential recording of all time.

Ousted by Mr. Easton in August 1963, Mr. Ely tried and failed to rejoin the band after the song became a hit. He formed his own band, which he initially also called the Kingsmen, and recorded “Love That Louie,” prompting lawsuits that required Wand Records to credit him as lead vocalist on future “Louie Louie” pressings, granted him $6,000 in royalties and barred Mr. Easton from lip-syncing the song in television appearances, according to Mr. Marsh.

Mr. Ely was drafted into the Army, returned to the United States in 1968, trained horses, was active in Rockers Against Drugs and was an advocate of legislation that would grant royalties to recording artists and record labels as well as songwriters.

Sean Ely said his father’s other survivors were his third wife, Dawn; another son, Robert; and a daughter, Sierra.

High school and college students who thought they understood what Mr. Ely was singing traded transcripts of their meticulously researched translations of the lyrics. The F.B.I. began investigating after an Indiana parent wrote to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1964: “My daughter brought home a record of ‘LOUIE LOUIE’ and I, after reading that the record had been banned on the air because it was obscene, proceeded to try to decipher the jumble of words. The lyrics are so filthy that I cannot enclose them in this letter.”

The F.B.I. Laboratory’s efforts at decryption were less fruitful. After more than two years and a 455-page report, the bureau concluded that “three governmental agencies dropped their investigations because they were unable to determine what the lyrics of the song were, even after listening to the records at speeds ranging from 16 r.p.m. to 78 r.p.m.”

Mr. Berry’s words, with a first verse that begins, “Fine little girl she wait for me/Me catch the ship for ’cross the sea,” are in fact completely benign. Whatever obscenities people thought they heard, the Kingsmen’s version hewed closely to the original — lyrically if not musically.

Mr. Blecha said Mr. Ely had assured him he had not inserted “incorrect lyrics,” but Mr. Blecha was convinced that Mr. Easton had uttered a single four-letter obscenity in the background of the recording when he accidentally struck the rim of his drum.

Asked to account for the song’s popularity, Mr. Blecha replied, “You could dance to it, and as kids, with the rumors that there was something nefarious going on, you couldn’t grab our attention with anything better than that.”