Plus Keith Richards' autobiography, Annie Lennox's clothing
By Mark C. Brown May 18, 2010 1:47PM
It was chronic constipation, not the tens of thousands of drugs he took, that killed Elvis Presley. That’s the claim of George Nichopoulos – the famous “Dr. Nick” who prescribed more than 10,000 pills to Presley in 1977 alone – who, surprise, surprise, is promoting a new book. Never mind that Elvis had 14 drugs in his body when he died, including 10 times the prescribed amount of codeine and toxic levels of Quaaludes, according to Peter Guralnick’s legendary Elvis biographies. And the good doctor is conveniently overlooking the fact that such sedatives cause constipation. Finally, Dr. Nick goes on to blame Elvis’ death on his refusal to have a colostomy. He makes Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, look positively classy.
A lot of fuss has been made about the producers of “The Hurt Locker” going after fans who illegally download it. Good luck with that. Bootlegging of movies and music continues unabated, and the famed site The Pirate Bay has even posted a blog mocking all attempts to shut it down.
Too bad David Crosby has already used the title “If I Could
Only Remember My Name.” Keith Richards is putting out his autobiography soon. Some of it was from memory, some of it came from "talking to some of the people that were there and their
version of events to try and correlate it all was very interesting, a kind of
kaleidoscopic bunch of experiences."
Finally, Annie Lennox – one of the best singers and humanitarians in music – worked a couple of days in a used-clothing shop, selling off her own wardrobe for charity.
Ronnie James Dio succumbs to cancer
By percy thrillington May 17, 2010 10:32AM
NEW YORK — Even as he endured grueling chemotherapy treatments to rid his stomach of cancer, Ronnie James Dio showed the fiery passion that made him a metal legend, flashing his famous devil's horns signal as he lay in a hospital bed.
"This hasn't really been a problem for me. Cancer? I'll kick the hell out of you," declared Dio in March in an interview with KIAH-TV in Houston, where he was being treated for the disease. "I refuse to be beaten in any shape or form so I'm going to beat you, too."
But on Sunday, Dio – whose famous wailing vocals gave Black Sabbath a second life – succumbed to the disease, at age 67.
"Today my heart is broken," Wendy Dio, his wife and a manger, wrote on the singer's website. "Many, many friends and family were able to say their private goodbyes before he peacefully passed away.
"Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all," she continued. "We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us ... Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."
His publicist Maureen O'Connor said he died in Los Angeles.
Later Sunday, Black Sabbath bandmate Geezer Butler posted a picture of Dio on his website, with the caption: "Goodbye My Dear Friend."
Dio revealed last summer that he was suffering from stomach cancer shortly after wrapping up a tour in Atlantic City, N.J., with the latest incarnation of Black Sabbath under the name Heaven And Hell.
Though Dio had recently undergone his seventh chemotherapy treatment, he was hopeful to perform again. Earlier this month, Heaven And Hell canceled its summer tour, but Dio did not view being sidelined as a permanent thing.
"Wendy, my doctors and I have worked so hard to make it happen for all of you, the ones we care so much about, that this setback could be devastating, but we will not let it be," he said in a statement. "With your continued love and support, we ... will carry on and thrive. There will be other tours, more music, more life and much more magic."
Dio, who grew up in upstate New York in the town of Cortland, had his first taste of rock fame as the lead singer of the band Elf. From there, the spotlight grew, and in 1975, he became the first lead singer of Rainbow, the heavy metal band put together by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who had just quit Deep Purple. Dio recorded three albums with the group until creative differences led him to leave.
But there was another band that needed his help. In 1980, after Ozzy Osbourne left the hugely successful and groundbreaking metal band Black Sabbath, the band tapped Dio to fill his spot.
In an interview, Dio acknowledged how difficult it was to step into the shoes of such a famous frontman.
"Ozzy especially had some real staunch fans, and for someone else to come into Sabbath, God, that was sacrilegious," he said.
Instead of serving as just a placeholder with the band, however, he united with them to create the album "Heaven And Hell," considered by many critics to be one of the finest heavy metal albums ever.
His time with the band would be known as "Black Sabbath, the Dio years," touching off an intense debate among fans as to which singer was the true essence of the band, a discussion that lasts even to this day.
His tenure with the band was on-and-off, though. His first stint with the band lasted only two years.
He also enjoyed a successful solo career with his self-titled band, Dio, in between his three runs with Black Sabbath (1980-82, 1992, and 2007-09, when the band toured as Heaven And Hell, to differentiate it from Osbourne-led versions of Sabbath).
Many of his most memorable songs revolved around the struggle between good and evil, including his signature tune "Heaven And Hell." He also drew heavily on medieval imagery in songs like "Neon Knights," "Killing The Dragon" and "Stargazer."
Besides his growling voice, he became known for making the "devil horns" sign a heavy metal signature – a sign he said came from his Italian grandmother, who used it to ward off evil.
"He possessed one of the greatest voices in all of heavy metal and had a heart to match it," said Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French, whose band toured with Dio since 1983 and was to do so again this summer at European rock festivals. "He was the nicest, classiest person you would ever want to meet."
Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx, whose band toured with Dio, said he was shocked to learn of his death.
"Ronnie was one of the kindest souls I have ever met and his talent was beyond inspirational to so many of us," he said in a statement. "I still have this image of him standing on stage in front of 100,000 belting out 'Man on the Silver Mountain' and remember the shivers it sent up my spine. He will be missed by all of us.
Dio organized an all-star charity collaboration in 1986 called "Hear N' Aid" to raise money for famine relief in Africa, styled on the successful "We Are The World" campaign of a few years earlier.
His solo hits included "Rainbow In The Dark," "The Last In Line" and "Holy Diver."
His last album was Heaven And Hell's "The Devil You Know," released in April 2009.
In addition to his wife, Dio is survived by son Daniel, grandchildren Julie and Joey, and father Pat.
Gillian Welch sideman/collaborator leads Americana Music Association Awards nominations
By percy thrillington May 14, 2010 7:54PM
The Dave Rawlings Machine has netted four nominations for the upcoming Americana Music Association Awards, while Ryan Bingham and Ray Wylie Hubbardscored three nods each when the nominees were revealed Wednesday (May 12).
Emmylou Harris and Todd Snider announced the nominations during a breakfast sponsored by BMI and held at the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops, who earned a nod for duo or group of the year, opened the proceedings with a lively five-song set that had many in the crowd tapping their feet and shooting videos with their cell phones.
Winners will be announced Sept. 9 at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium during a show hosted by Jim Lauderdale. The awards presentations will be the high point of the 11th annual Americana Festival and Conference taking place Sept. 8-11 at the Sheraton Nashville hotel.
In town to play the Grand Ole Opry, the Carolina Chocolate Drops gave the crowd a delightful short course in the string band music of the 1920s and '30s, opening with "Don't Get Trouble in Your Mind" and rolling through "Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine" (which they played on the Tuesday night Opry), the instrumental "Genuine Negro Jig" (the title song from their current album) and "Cindy Gal" (which they learned from a 91-year-old African American fiddle player in North Carolina). The trio concluded with the sassy woman's revenge song, "Hit 'Em Up Style," originally recorded by R&B singer-songwriter Blu Cantrell.
Here is the complete list of nominees:
Album of the Year
The List, Rosanne Cash
A Friend of a Friend, Dave Rawlings Machine
Downtown Church, Patty Griffin
A. Enlightenment B. Endarkment (Hint: There Is No C), Ray Wylie Hubbard
Song
"The Weary Kind," written by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett, performed by Ryan Bingham
"Drunken Poets Dream," written by Hayes Carll and Ray Wylie Hubbard, performed by Ray Wylie Hubbard
"Ruby," written by Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch, performed by the Dave Rawlings Machine
"I and Love and You," written and performed by the Avett Brothers
Artist
Ryan Bingham
Patty Griffin
Levon Helm
Steve Earle
Ray Wylie Hubbard
New and Emerging Artist
Sarah Jarosz
Ryan Bingham
Hayes Carll
Corb Lund
Joe Pug
Duo or Group
The Avett Brothers
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Band of Heathens
Dave Rawlings Machine
Instrumentalist
Buddy Miller
Dave Rawlings
Will Kimbrough
Sam Bush
Smash Hits joins Spin with online archive
By percy thrillington May 13, 2010 1:15PM
One thing the British do better than Americans is music magazines. Sure they tend toward ludicrous hyperbole and demand a cycle of hype and backlash that reduce most bands and solo artists to bulk slurry for sausage rolls, BUT they also have more enthusiasm, more minute-to-minute coverage, and, let's be frank, more excellent photos in a month than most of their U.S. counterparts have in a year. One of the more controversial UK music tabloids of the past was Smash Hits, which, between 1978 and 2006 did much to treat the cool indie underground with splashy, full color teen mag-style energy. An uncomfortable mix for some—and there was plenty of teen pop in the mix as well—the magazine's style was nonetheless highly influential. And fun to read or just look through. It was written for, and aimed at kids. Sort of like rock music once was—only what they aimed at those kids was stuff like a cut and paste layout of the lyrics to Gang of Four's "At Home He's a Tourist." Nice! Now one devoted fan is archiving the back issues, in loving page-by-page hi-res scans, on a Blogspot/Flickr-powered site called Like Punk Never Happened. I warn you now. Click on that link and say goodbye to your productive day.
Not just hallucinations, but actual vision. Also, meet the funniest rock 'n' roll attorney in the world.
By Mark C. Brown May 11, 2010 5:13PM
The Grateful Dead as the first social media users? The Atlantic makes a pretty persuasive argument that instead of being a bunch of stoned-out hippies, “business scholars and management theorists... are discovering that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created ‘customer value,’ promoted social networking, and did strategic business planning.”
Had to be accidental, don’t you think?
As the countdown to Tom Petty's new album "Mojo" continues, Petty continues to leak songs. Here's another killer, "I Should Have Known It." The great Mike Campbell cuts loose.
“Let It Be” finally turns 40, the first posthumous album from the Beatles, released just weeks after they announced their breakup. And 40 years later it's still nowhere near as bad as John Lennon claimed.
Joe Walsh threatened to sue a political candidate with the same name for using “Walk Away”
as a campaign theme and daring to change the lyrics as well. This guy’s lucky Joe didn’t pull out
his chainsaw. He did, however, pull out the most hilarious lawyer in the world,
Peter Paterno, whose cease-and-desist letter is a work of comic art. Excerpts: “As a former
Presidential candidate, Joe Walsh knows how tough it is to get elected” and a
hope that “we don’t have to go all Jackson Browne on you.” Read the whole thing here.
Three of the four members of The Fray studied the music business in college classes, and even that didn't help. They just got a legal setback after discovering that a former manager owns 50% of their publishing.
Got some time to kill? The BBC has produced a six-hour documentary on the Rolling
Stones, streaming from their website.
Plus a quick overview of modern music plagarism and more.
By Mark C. Brown May 6, 2010 9:45AM
This list is a little dated, but makes the feisty argument that Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti,” Nirvana’s “Nevermind,” The Who’s “Tommy” and the entire Grateful Dead catalog are among the worst albums of all time.
Coldplay alleged ripping off of Joe Satriani made headlines last year, but they're hardly the only modern-rock band taking, um, "inspiration" from songs that came before. Check out this montage of lifted lines and riffs.
The name Rick Roberts might not ring many bells because he has stayed underground for so long. He was the main singer and songwriter for Firefall, the guy behind the songs "You Are the Woman," "Strange Way" and "Just Remember I Love You." He also did a couple of solo albums that have been long out of print, but they're available now. Maybe you don't remember Roberts' name, but you might recognize the people who played on those solo albums - Joe Walsh, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Jackson Browne, Randy Meisner, Al Perkins, Chris Hillman, David Crosby, Joe Vitale and more.
Finally, Muse has put a full concert up streaming online. Enjoy.
Street team graffiti to be removed
By percy thrillington May 5, 2010 7:38PM
You may recall that the street team for Roger Waters's The Wall tour recently besmirched the Elliott Smith memorial wall in Los Angeles with fake street art advertisements, causing a bit of an uproar. Now Waters has apologized and vowed to remove the offending wheatpaste. What a guy!
Roger Waters of Pink Floyd knows the artistic potency of an image on a wall. But his recent campaign to wheat-paste an anti-war quote from President Eisenhower across American cities to promote his touring revival of the Floyd staple “The Wall” unexpectedly proved his point, after his employees pasted the quote over the storefront of Solutions speaker repair in Silver Lake. The wall has served as an impromptu fan memorial to the late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith for nearly a decade.
Smith passed away in Los Angeles in 2003, and fans have left personal messages and quoted lyrics on the wall, the backdrop to the cover art of his album “Figure 8,” ever since. But as of Monday night, fans noticed that the wall also featured Waters’ image of a soldier cradling a child with the Eisenhower quote nearby.
Though the oft-abused wall has also been a favorite target for taggers and is frequently overwhelmed by non-Smith-related writing, local reaction to Waters’ wheat pasting, including an L.A. Weekly blog post, was swift and critical. In a phone interview Tuesday evening, Waters apologized to any Smith fans who found his choice of walls callous.
“It was absolutely an accident,” Waters said. “I didn’t want to disrespect Elliott Smith’s fans, and I’ve instructed (the team) to remove the wheat paste immediately. It was a random pasting in the normal course of this, and I want to make it public that we had no intent to offend or cover up something precious.”
Waters, who said he was unfamiliar with Smith’s work until this incident, said the national wheat-paste campaign is being coordinated from his New York offices and that the street art team based there didn’t know the wall’s importance to L.A. music fans.
A multimillion-selling artist accidentally using a memorial to a beloved local singer to promote the revival tour of a classic album is unfortunately ironic. For Smith fans, it could underscore a cultural generation gap where a small independent album like “Either/Or” is as canonical to them as “The Wall” is to the mainstream.
Waters, who headlined Coachella in 2008 and brings his "Wall" tour to the Staples Center on Nov. 29, wrote a similar apology on his Facebook page Tuesday. He hoped his team wouldn’t be singled out among many others who have regrettably used the wall for non-Smith-related art or tagging.
“It’s not like this was some pristine monument and Roger Waters is the Big Bad Wolf who covered it up,” Waters said.
The pasting is made of biodegradable material, he said, and will be easily and quickly removed out of respect for Smith fans. But in hindsight, Waters felt the Eisenhower quote, about both the personal, economic and social costs of waging warfare, wasn’t too far afield from the work of Smith, a singer who articulately documented intimate emotional pain.
“That’s why I was so incensed when I read that article that said I paid someone to disrespect Elliott Smith,” Waters said. “I admit I didn’t know his music, but I’ve talked to people who do and it’s clear he was a young man who felt deeply, and any empathetic person wouldn’t have an issue with publicizing that quote.”
“I would guess, and this is only a guess,” he said, “but it’s my guess that he would have been sympathetic to that message.”
Music biz viral campaign vandalizes Elliott Smith mural
By percy thrillington May 4, 2010 3:25PM
This is major-label viral marketing gone wild.
Former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters has launched a "viral," "street" campaign for his upcoming The Wall Live tour, which consists of hiring street artists in LA and NYC to strategically place a pacifist quote by Dwight "WTF" Eisenhower on several "hip" locations.
We wrote about this weird piece of "uptown (big ad agencies, megalomaniac superstars and big labels) meets downtown (street art)" marketing ploy last week, but now it seems the project has gone too far.
This is the revered, totally impromptu/grass roots "Elliott Smith Memorial Wall" on Sunset next to the Malo restaurant. The mural was Smith's background on a series of photos taken by Los Feliz/Silver Lake portraitist Autumn De Wilde, was immortalized on the cover of the Figure 8 album, and after the singer's tragic death it became a repository for his fans' messages and wishes. (It has also been tagged by street artists many times.).
follow msn music
music news
- Rihanna, Coldplay and Carly Rae Jepsen score APRA noms
- Kelly Rowland rescheduling summer tour dates for 'The X Factor'
- Kid Rock, Rolling Stones on scalping, summer tours
- Jessica Alba joins Aerosmith onstage
- Singer Nick Carter to release memoir Sept. 24
- Rolling Stones Hall of Fame exhibit opening in Cleveland
- Jon Bon Jovi lashes out at Justin Bieber over concert delays
- Darius Rucker rides 'Wagon Wheel' to top of charts
- Richie Sambora: Jon Bon Jovi needs to stop trash-talking
- Marianas Trench and Drake lead the way at MuchMusic Awards
