this from the latimes.com, love that a man is giving something back to the music that made him a few dollars!
Record executive Mo Ostin gives $10 million to UCLA for new music center
Mo Ostin, a record executive and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who sent the likes of Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young and Paul Simon into the recording studio, now will send students at UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture into a studio that bears his name.
Read the rest at latimesblogs.latimes.com
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great story about the value of album cover art
Are these the laziest album covers ever?
YOU PROBABLY haven’t listened to Smash Song Hits by Rodgers and Hart lately. It’s a record that remains rarely heard, despite being one of the most influential albums of all time – not for the music, but for the world’s first album cover.
Alex Steinweiss was 22 when he fell into a job as art director at Columbia Records, then a new division of the Columbia Broadcasting System. He was meant to focus on advertising materials but in 1940, aged 23, he designed the cover art for Smash Song Hits, thinking music buyers would be more drawn to records if the brown paper bags they had previously been wrapped in were replaced with something a little more eyecatching.
Read the rest at the irishtimes.com
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Metallica’s Hetfield and Ulrich Talk New Riffs
Michael Leonard
Metallica are scheduled to enter the studio later this month, and the band have until recently remained tight-lipped on plans. Now, drummer Lars Ulrich has told Metal Hammer magazine that there will be no shortage of material when the foursome’s 10th studio album gets started.
Ulrich explained, “James [Hetfield] told me in Australia that he had over 700 [new] riffs. That was slightly overwhelming. When I spoke to him yesterday, he told me that he’d been playing guitar again in the last couple of weeks. And listen; when James tunes his guitar, he comes up with three to five usable guitar riffs. It’s kind of frightening. James is not allowed to play guitar without being recorded. Literally! There are also hours and hours of jams and tuning-room shindigs.”
Read the rest at Gibson.com
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Jason Bonham Completes New ‘Led Zeppelin’ Track
Michael Leonard
Drummer Jason Bonham has completed a track written by Led Zeppelin in 2008… but it will appear on the next Black Country Communion album.
Bonham worked with Led Zep’s Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones on a reunion project following Led Zeppelin’s one-off London show in 2007. But all was abandoned when singer Robert Plant declined to take part, and the three couldn’t settle on a satisfactory replacement.
Read the rest at Gibson.com
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this is marvelous!
Kid Rock Donates $100,000 to Detroit Organizations, American Red Cross
by Amy Sciarretto
Kid Rock was feeling generous this past weekend. The rapper-rocker-country singer-Detroit native-ex-husband of Pamela Anderson donated $100,000 towards a variety of charitable organizations and accepted the Great Expectations Award from the Detroit branch of the NAACP at their 56th Annual Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner
Read the rest at noisecreep.com
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Go-Go's Retirement Off...New Music May Be Coming
In their 33-year career, the Go-Go's have only released four albums, including three during their 80's heyday and 2001's God Bless the Go-Go's. As of last summer, it appeared that would be their full career output as they readied their Farewell Tour. Then Jane Wiedlin was injured in a hiking accident and the whole good-bye was put on the back burner.
Read more at our friends at vintagevinylnews.com
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lovely cover art....
ALL SHALL PERISH: New Album Artwork Unveiled
Commented the band: "This time around we chose Brent Elliott White (DEATH ANGEL, JOB FOR A COWBOY, WHITECHAPEL) to handle the artwork duties.
Read more at Blabbermouth
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Kind Of Like Records To Release Cynics Debut LP
Following the release of the "Dave & Angela" EP, Cynics have announced the release of their debut album "Don't Need Much." The record is due out June 13th on CD in the UK through Household Name Records and June 14th on vinyl in the US through Kind Of Like Records.
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never heard of the man, though i bet he has some good music. you be the judge on this one, you knew someone would exploit the situation, but he is wrong to do so?
Bob Cheevers Releases Powerful New Single: "The End of Bin" About Death of bin Laden
Americana artist Bob Cheevers, releases potent new song and video in wake of the May 1st capture and death of Osama bin Laden
Americana artist Bob Cheevers has just recorded a powerful and controversial new song and video about the death of Osama bin Laden called “The End of Bin”. Cheevers is an Emmy winning songwriter and 2011 Texas Music Award nominee.
Cheevers says "I’ve never been known for writing 'protest songs', but I have the feeling while writing "The End of Bin" that I might have experienced just a bit of what Neil Young felt like when he was reacting to the Kent State tragedy and writing "Ohio" This terrorist war we’ve been waging for a decade has taken lots of tolls and when I listen to and watch the video we shot of this song, I can feel in my gut, hear in my voice, and see in my face the anguish of those tolls.”
After having written over 3000 songs, Cheevers knows a great song in the making, and states, “The writing process is generally very organic in the beginning then turns into process... but the writing of this song never went to process. I felt like an old time reporter scribbling down on my little notepad what I was hearing and watching. When what I was writing 'felt' complete, I remember going back and placing a couple sections in different spots to strengthen the syntax and then smiling at all of the things I’d felt were captured on that page, needing only a little nudge here and there to paint the clear picture in my head.”
Bob, the son of a radio star in the 20s and 30s, grew up in Memphis and got a soul full of music. He later had success in the late 60s with a Top 40 charting pop career including, ironically, singing lead on the TV theme “Love American Style” and playing shows in almost every state. Later, having spent 16 years as a journeyman writer in Nashville, he got the experience that has led to the refinement of his craft.
He says regarding “The End of Bin,” “I heard it in my head, and literally sat down with my guitar and played it from start to finish never having played it before. So often, songs are given to the writer...the writer just being a conduit for the information. Some things need to be said for the people who feel them but don't have the words to express their feelings.” After ten years of touring Europe, Cheevers has lots of friends and fans over there who are echoing the sentiments he sings about in this song. Archetypes...beliefs that exist across miles if not the ages, that are shared by people and civilizations with no particular connection between them. Some people call those truths.
Bob Cheevers says: “This song is about the demise of a man who in my estimation, according to the deeds attributed to him, deserved to die. OK...you can say only 'God' has the right to take a life. You can interject any kind of religious or philosophical thought process into this situation. There are schools of thought about everything in life. I jokingly say that 'Opinion is the lowest form of knowledge...but that's just my opinion.' My opinion is that Bin Laden died as he lived... with blood on his hands. Only this time, it was his own blood. This piece was my visceral response to what I saw unfolding Sunday night May 1st.
Consider the context and feel free to think the way you think and do...and know that I'm doing what David Crosby said to do in his song "Long Time Coming"..."Speak out against the madness.""
Radio can download the song for free here
"The End of Bin" on iTunes
http://www.bobcheevers.com/
"The End of Bin" May 1, 2011 by Bob Cheevers
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great, indepth write up at guitarinternational.com with a vet of the music industry:
David Coverdale Reveals the Surprising Blueprint for Whitesnake
By Rob Cavuoto
David Coverdale and company return to their no-holds-barred, bluesiest, sexiest rock n’ roll roots with Whitesnake’s 11th studio album, Forevermore, the band’s first in more than two years. Coverdale has reignited an explosively fruitful vein of creativity with guitarist and co-writer-producer Doug Aldrich, guitarist Reb Beach, drummer Brian Tichy and Michael Devin on bass. As with all Whitesnake’s albums, Coverdale unleashes his incomparable vocal chops with emotional fervor. Armed with an arsenal of key players, the CD shows the world that the “snake” is an unstoppable wall of guitars!
I had the chance to sit with one of the premier and legendary frontmen of all time while rehearing for his upcoming world tour to chat about his latest release, Forevermore, his musical arsenal, as well as all things “snake.”
He even dropped a hint of two about a possible book How White is Your Snake? On stage as well as off, he is powerhouse of raw energy and excitement. Somebody better let this guy loose on stage or he’s going to explode!
Read more at guitarinternational.com
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DEF LEPPARD's 'Mirrorball' To Receive European Release Via FRONTIERS
Germany, Switzerland, Austria: June 17
June 23: France
Rest Of Europe: June 20
"Mirrorball" will be available on June 7 exclusively at Walmart and Sam's Club locations in the United States and Canada. The album will include a 50-minute DVD that contains live performances and intimate backstage footage of the band captured on the road. A special limited vinyl edition will also be made available. "Mirrorball" will also be available online, marking the first time the band's music will officially be made available for digital purchase.
Read more at Blabbermouth
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this is one of the most comprehensive looks at one of the most seminal lps of our time. take the time to read the article, who knew?
Looking back on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, the record that changed Nashville
by Daryl Sanders
Whether you drop the needle on the first side of the crackling vinyl LP, cue up track one of a gleaming aluminum disc, or pop in your earbuds and click the wheel, the first thing you hear retains the shock of newness: a marching-band drumbeat, then the yawp of a trombone like a huge intake of breath, followed by a carnivalesque riot of woozy horns and whoops and shouts. In some ways, it sounds outside time, like a Salvation Army parade stomping and hollering past a far-off grandstand. And yet it still sounds fresh and spontaneous, as if it could have been recorded last week.
But it wasn't. Forty-five years ago this month, Columbia Records released Bob Dylan's landmark double album Blonde on Blonde, an album recorded almost entirely in Nashville. Not only is it widely regarded as one of Dylan's best records, but it routinely shows up whenever artists, critics and rock historians list the 10 greatest rock albums ever made. For Music City, the album was nothing less than transformative, elevating Nashville as a recording center on par with New York and Los Angeles.
Read the rest at nashvillescene.com
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Andrew WK producer Don Fleming re-issues Velvet Monkeys
This reissue of the Velvet Monkeys debut 1982 release, Everything is
Right, features Don Fleming (later of Gumball and producer of Sonic Youth,
Teenage Fanclub, Screaming Trees, Hole, Alice Cooper, Joan Jett, Andrew
W.K.) on vocals and guitar, Elaine Barnes on vocals and keyboards, Stephen
Soles on bass and Jay Spiegel (Half Japanese, Gumball, Dinosaur Jr.,
Lookies) on drums. This is a June 7 release on Fleming's venerable Instant
Mayhem label.
Skip Groff, producer of many notable Washington, D.C. bands, first
recorded the Velvet Monkeys in 1981 at Don Zientara's Inner Ear Studio.
Drive In and Shadow Box, were featured on Groff's Connected LP, a
sampler of D.C bands released in 1981 on Limp Records. The band followed
with the 10 song cassette-only Everything is Right, released on their own
Monkey Business label in July 1982. Three additional live songs from a
show at the Chancery in D.C. on New Year's Eve 1981 have been added to the
original release for this reissue.
The Velvet Monkeys were formed in Washington, D.C. in 1981 and found many
like-minded bands in the mushrooming local scene including Half Japanese
(with whom Fleming, Barnes and Spiegel also played), Tiny Desk Unit, The
Nurses, and Chalk Circle. The band was originally a three-piece combo that
included prominent use of a Dr. Rhythm drum machine. By late 1981, drummer
Jay Spiegel, a.k.a. the Rummager, joined the line-up and the band began
their move from minimalist art-rock toward an increasingly heavier sound.
The digital reissue of Everything is Right is the first release on Don
Fleming's Instant Mayhem label since partnering with digital distributor
IODA. The audio was restored from the original analog tapes and remastered by Fleming. Instant Mayhem will release reissues of Fleming's older catalog (w/Velvet Monkeys and Gumball) as well as new projects. The next two releases for the label are a new solo EP titled Don Fleming 4, and a new album by To Live and Shave in L.A. called The Cortège.
http://www.instantmayhem.com/
www.myspace.com/thevelvetmonkeys
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and in music history for today:
In 1891, the Music Hall (later Carnegie Hall) had its grand opening with its first public performance. The first performer was Pyotr Llych Tchaikovsky.
In 1900, "The Billboard" (later called "Billboard") began weekly publication instead of monthly after six years of publication.
Chris Montez recorded "Let's Dance" in 1962.
In 1963, on a recommendation by George Harrison, Dick Rowe (head of A&R at Decca records, and the man who turned down The Beatles) went to see The Rolling Stones play at Crawdaddy Club, London. The band were signed to the label within a week.
In 1967, "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie entered the US charts where it will eventually hit #4. The John Phillips written song became a sort of anthem during the hippie movement.
In 1968, Buffalo Springfield played their last show. Richie Furay formed Poco, Neil Young began a solo career and Stephen Stills teamed up with David Crosby and Graham Nash in Crosby, Stills and Nash.
Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" was released in 1968.
In 1986, the announcement was made that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame would be located in Cleveland, OH.
In 1990, a John Lennon tribute concert was held in Merseyside, England with Al Green, Joe Cocker, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz, Lou Reed, Joe Walsh, Wet Wet Wet, The Christians, Kylie Minogue and Deacon Blue.
birthday wishes to Bill Ward (Black Sabbath) (63) and Ian McCulloch (Echo & the Bunnymen) (52) among others.
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