Brian Wilson performed some of his new songs about California for a hometown crowd Wednesday, the premier on U.S. soil for material that will be included on his Sept. 2 release "That Lucky Old Sun."
Event was the filming of a Yahoo! concert that will appear online on Labor Day, the day before the album's release on Capitol Records. Wilson and his band, featuring a new drummer and bassist, performed a quartet of Beach Boys classics before diving into the new material, which strives to evoke L.A. in the '50s and '60s when Wilson was growing up in Hawthorne, soaking up the music of the Four Freshmen and Chuck Berry. (Wilson and his band  debuted the material at a London concert.)
The new songs performed tap into  a post-"Smile"-era vibe: the tunes are lush and harmony-soaked, rich in dynamics  and shifts in meter, dominated by keyboards. The lyrics are wistful reconnections with the Beach Boys early days, pledges of allegiance to the sun, the surf, his late brothers and that surfer girl from long ago.
A number of interesting reference points crop up: "Forever My Surfer Girl" is a first cousin of the Four Seasons; the medley of "Can't Wait too Long" (a "Smile"-era remnant) and "Midnight's Another Day" is the sort of balladry that came to define Wilson at the time of "Pet Sounds"; "Going Home" is a blues at its core yet includes some fun-loving eight-vice a cappella singing; and "Southern California" is about the most sentimental piece in the Wilson songbook.
The Beach Boys founder also took questions from the audience and in his own unique way delivered short, emphatic answers - except for when he listed all the drugs he did in the '60s and '70s, noting "they didn't do me much good."
The one answer, though, that brought an instant hush to a crowd filled with fans who bought those early hits as they were being released on 45s pertained to the question about what song, besides "Be My Baby" did he wish he wrote.
He didn't have to think about. With no hemming or hawing, he blurted out " 'What a Fool Believes.' Doobie Brothers."  That's Brian for you.
(James Minchin III took the new photos of Brian Wilson).

The set list:
California Girls / I Get Around / Help Me Rhonda / Good Vibrations / Morning Beat / Forever My Surfer Girl / Can't Wait Too Long >  Midnight's Another Day / Going Home / Southern California Dream / California Girls / I Get Around

John Oates debuted songs from his forthcoming solo album at a well-attended private party Tuesday at the Mint, sprinkling the evening with tales from throughout his career, most of which involved relationships with other songwriters.
Set began with three songs from the second Hall & Oates disc, 1973's "Abandoned Luncheonette," the album that Oates feels connects best with his "1000 Miles of Life," which he will self-release in September through his website. Some of the new material does bear the unmistakable folk-soul chord progressions of early H&O tunes, but Oates has ventured into several different directions that hit paydirt, especially his gospel-infused take on Jerry Lynn Williams' "Sending Me Angels"  and the title track, which he wrote with his keyboardist Jed Leiber and singer Geoff Byrd, who climbed out of the audience to sing some full-bodied harmonies. Veteran H&O bassist-guitarist T-Bone Wolk and drummer John Michel anchored the band.
Besides the "Luncheonette tunes," one of which was "She's Gone," which was accompanied by the real-life story - girl fails to show on a New Year's Eve date and never calls -  he also performed 1980's "Change of Season," which he has recut for the new album.

An occasional look at who debuted out of the top 50 or: After all that ink and blog entries, Black Kids are being outsold by 126 other acts.

54. U2 "Live From Paris" 10,000 sold
66. Counting Crows "Live From SoHo" 9,000
68. Buddy Guy "Skin Deep" 9,000
82. Avett Brothers "Second Gleam" 8,000
83. Pepper "Pink Crustaceans" 7,000
86. Dr. Dog "Fate" 7,000
123. Classic Crime "Silver Cord" 6,000
127. Black Kids "Partie Traumatic" 5,500
131. Hell Rell "Black Mask Black Gloves" 5,000
153. CSNY "Deja Vu Live"4,000
189. CSS "Donkey" 3,000

1989 was a start of creative resurgence for Bob Dylan, coming just after he had spent time re-learning the guitar by studying Mississippi blues styles of the 1920s and '30s. It is also the starting pint for the eighth edition of his "Bootleg Series.."
"Tell Tale Signs" will comprise unreleased studio recordings, demos, alternate takes, live cuts and songs from film soundtracks from 1989 through 2006. It will be released Oct. 7.
In addition, bobdylan.com has been redesigned to facilitate social networking among Bob Heads. For many the best place to congregate is here.
Site is offering a free download of "Dreaming Of You," recorded during Dylan's 1997 sessions that spawned "Time Out Of Mind."
"Tell Tale Signs" will be released in three configurations: two CDs and a booklet; a three-CD package with an additional dozen tracks and  and a hardcover book of Bob Dylan singles artwork spanning his entire career; and a four-LP set with all the elements of the two-CD set. 
The soundtrack tunes are from "Lucky You" ("Huck's Tune"), "Gods & Generals" ("'Cross The Green Mountain") and "North Country" (an alternate take of "Tell Ol' Bill").
Live tracks include "High Water (For Charley Patton)" (Niagara, N.Y., 2003); "Cocaine Blues" (Vienna, Va., 1997);  "Cold Irons Bound" (Bonnaroo, 2004); and "Tryin' To Get To Heaven" (London, 2000).
Now we must wait and hope that some day the series will include great shows from the '97-'02 bands.
Complete track list after the jump.

Boz Scaggs will take a second dip into the standards repertoire and Decca Records will make sure he is eligible for the best traditional pop vocal album Grammy by releasing his album on the awards' final date of eligibility.
"Speak Low" will be released on vinyl on Sept. 30 and in all other forms on Oct. 28.
Gil Goldstein produced, arranged and plays piano on the record. Rest of the quartet backing Scaggs is Alex Acuña (drums), Bob Sheppard (woodwinds), and Scott Colley (bass). Intriguingly, his website has a a Japanese poster for a show featuring Toto as a co-headliner; the members of Toto were Boz's backing band  during his "Silk Degrees" heyday.
The track list
1. INVITATION (Bronislaw Kaper)
2. SHE WAS TOO GOOD TO ME (Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers)
3. I WISH I KNEW (Mark Gordon and Harry Warren)
4. SPEAK LOW (Ogden Nash and Kurt Weill)
5. DO NOTHING TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME (Edward Kennedy Ellington and Keith Sidney Russell)
6. I'LL REMEMBER APRIL (Gene De Paul, Patricia Johnson and Don Raye)
7. SAVE YOUR LOVE FOR ME (Buddy Woodrow Johnson)
8. BALLAD OF THE SAD YOUNG MEN (Frances Landesman and Thomas J. Wolf, Jr.)
9. SKYLARK (Hoagy Carmichael and John H. Mercer)
10. SENZA FINE (Campos Cesarea, Gine Paoli, and Alec Wilder)
11. DINDI (Aloysio De Oliveira, Ray Gilbert, and Antonio Carlos Jobim)
12. THIS TIME THE DREAM'S ON ME (Harold Arlen and John H. Mercer)

Jack White and Alicia Keys have recorded the theme song for the 22nd James Bond film “Quantum of Solace.” “Another Way to Die,” written and produced by White, is the first duet in Bond soundtrack history.
White follows Chris Cornell who was the first male solo rock artist to perform a Bond theme. Over the 22 films, four rock bands have done themes (Paul McCartney & Wings, Duran Duran, Garbage and a-Ha) but only one woman rock singer, Sheryl Crow, has a Bond credit. Shirley Bassey has recorded the most Bond themes, three.
J Records will release the soundtrack on Oct. 28. David Arnold will again compose the score, making it his fifth Bond project.

The Walkmen are making their new album available three weeks early, selling downloads to raise money for  Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Band and Amie Street are making "You & Me" available as part of the website's Download To Make A Difference program.It is the program's second major release.
For each album purchased, AmieStreet.com will donate $5 in honor of Luca Vasallo, a 7-month-old friend to the band. The Walkmen's new album is being released by Gigantic Music and marketed and distributed by the Orchard.

The June results for gold and platinum records handed out by the RIAA and it's a good month for little fun facts and figures.

THE KIDS
Ashley Tisdale, who plays Sharpay Evans in Disney’s two "High School Musical" films,scored her first gold records for the album "Headstrong" and the single "He Said, She Said." Metro Station, a band no one over the age of 16 has heard, got one for their single "Shake It."
Ray J dialed up his his first gold mastertone certification for "Sexy Can I."
THE SONGS THAT REFUSE TO DIE
Shakira's "Hips Don’t Lie" went double platinum.
Evanescence’s "Fallen" is now 7X platinum
THE CROWDED SHELVES OF VETERANS
Madonna got her 44th career gold certification (for "Hard Candy"). Neil Diamond took home his 40th gold for "Home Before Dark."

One of the most impressive elements of the last Underworld show I reviewed was the images beamed behind Darren Emerson, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith. When most of the time is spent staring at your shoes or watching men twist knobs, the art was the most riveting visual aspect of the concert.
In the weeks preceding and following the All Points West Music and Arts Festival, the ArtJam of Underworld; A Multi Media Exhibition will be on display at New York's Jacobson Howard Gallery (33. E. 68th St.)
Running Aug. 1-15, the Jacobson Howard Gallery installation will be a multi-media installation of video, sound, sculpture,drawing, painting, photography and text/writing. The space will be in constant flux with work being created on site, positioned, repositioned, altered, removed and then replaced and reconfigured once more. Forages into the city to gather material will also be made, brought back to the space and reconfigured.
Artist Robert Morris calls artjam "a continuous project altered daily" that has been an ongoing conversation between Smith, Hyde and John Warwicker of tomato.
The most recent installation at the Makuhari Messe in Tokyo formed part of the space for an Underworld concert, the Oblivion Ball. The ArtJam took the form of a live painting performance on a 130-foot long wall that was 30 feet high.

Producer/composer Yoav Goren is launching Imperativa with the release of “Trailerhead” by Immediate and “Epicon” by Globus. Physical copies will be available in online and physical stores beginning Aug.  26.
Among the tracks on “Trailerhead” are pieces written for the trailers of  “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” “Spiderman 2,” “The Fantastic Four” and “The Da Vinci Code.” “Onward to Freedom,” featured in NBC’s “XX Olympics: The Torino Games,” won an Emmy.
Globus, which features Goren as a member, performs music written for trailers with lyrics added.

Orchestral music featured in numerous film trailers will be released online Tuesday by a new record company Imperativa.

David Byrne and Brian Eno  will self release their first partnership in 27 years.
“Everything That Happens Will Happen Today,” the result of a year of recordings in London and New York,  will be released Aug. 18 as a digital download. On Aug. 4, a free download to preview the album will be made available here.
Significantly different from their first collaboration, “My Life in Bush of Ghosts,” which featured 11 additional musicians and “found” voices, the new recordings almost exclusively feature Byrne’s lyrics and voice alongside Eno’s electronic tracks.
Eno explained in a press release that went out Monday morning: “When we started this work, we started to think we were making something like electronic gospel: a music where singing was the central event, but whose sonic landscapes were not the type normally associated with that way of singing. This thought tapped into my long love affair with gospel music, which, curiously, was inadvertently initiated by David and the Talking Heads.”
Byrne will conduct a tour under the banner of  “David Byrne, Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno” that will begin in the fall in the U.S. He will visit Australasia early next year and Europe in March, playing the new material plus Talking Heads songs that Eno produced.
Track listing and the musicians' notes are after the jump.

Guitar Hero: The Rolling Stones edition has a nice ring to it.
It's the last frontier for the band that has seemingly saturated the world with its music and live performances, but seems to be on its last legs when it comes to making new recordings, which will now be handled by Universal. And catalog, perhaps the most vital part of the Stones' revenue stream, is sputtering at the moment: only 200 copies of their career-spanning hits package "40 Licks" have been sold in the U.S. this year. Album's cume is at 300,000 - after six years of being on shelves - suggesting that licensing for film, TV and games is the light that shines brightest for the band's true future.
A producer told me quite some time ago that a new Stones album needs to sell 2 million copies to break even due to the cost involved in recording, marketing and production. They need territories beyond the U.S. to cover their nut.
“Voodoo Lounge,” from 1994, has sold 1.9 million copies in the U.S.; “Bridges to Babylon” has moved 1.2 million copies in its 11 years; and 2005’s “A Bigger Bang” has sold only 545,000 copies.
Details were not released Friday in London where the signing was announced, but the truly good news for anyone in the Stones camp comes once an album is released - the band then usually tours for a year and a half. The question is, has Universal structured the deal so they participate in that income?

Keyboardist/producer George Duke will release his latest album, "Dukey Treats," on Aug. 26. Album is a throwback to the golden age of funk and soul and features bassist Christian McBride, percussionist Sheila E and trumpeter Michael “Patches” Stewart.
His label, Heads Up, issued a video interview:

Interview by Don Davis

After a nearly five-year hiatus, the loungetronica band Supreme Beings of Leisure return “11i.” A throwback to the group's self-titled 1998 release, “11i'”revisits the same 'sexy sounds for sexy people' aesthetic with a bit more introspection.
SBL frontwoman Geri Soriano-Lightwood shares some of her opinions with the Set List about iPods, her crush on Anthony Bourdain and her new obsession with sake.

What does “11i” mean?
11i is a visual play on the Roman numeral 3, as in third album. 11 is also an important number for both Ramin and I. We were both born on 11 days, we always have 11 songs on our albums, and it seems to randomly pop up in other ways for us. It's our magic number.

You took a couple years off after 2002's “Divine Operating System.” What did you do during the hiatus? And what was it like going back into the studio?
We had to live up to the name. Actually, the truth is not that glamorous. Between 1997 and 2002, I had every major life experience thrown at me. I got married, bought two homes, had a kid, my mother died of brain cancer, and then my father died of an ailing (broken) heart. This was all while recording, promoting and touring the first two albums. By the time I came home from our second tour for “Divine Operating System,” I was fully exhausted and burnt out. I also saw that my daughter needed me to be more present for her. Ramin also had family health issues that came up, which he needed to attend to. We took it easy and slowly wrote the album during that time. We were lucky to have had that luxury.

How has the Internet affected the SBL mission? Has the Supreme Beings MySpace page had an impact on your added exposure?
SBL has always been an "Internet band." We were very early adopters and innovators, producing some of the first Flash content (site and videos) for the Web, thanks to the help of my talented husband and my brother-in-law. We were dubbed the first band to break on the Internet back in 1998. It really was the perfect tool for us to brand ourselves and lent itself nicely to our image. This was all back in the day, however, when the Web was less-populated. These days, the amount of content out there is a bit overwhelming, and the novelty has worn off. People are less patient and just want the facts. MySpace works for that. I'm not sure that MySpace can compete with the impact our early sites had on our career, but it has been a good way to keep in touch with our fans. They certainly have made things a lot easier for us musicians.

What about performing live? Are there plans for a tour?
I love performing. Being on the road with our band (Sheldon Strickland, Tanq Graham and Machine Brandin) is the fun part. Meeting our fans and connecting with them fills us up; it's why we do this.
We have been kicking around some plans to tour -- nothing firm yet, but since Ramin and I both have families now, the timing is proving to be a bit tricky. We'd love to and hopefully will be announcing some dates soon.
For now, those who live in L.A. can come check us out at the Echoplex on Sept. 12.

Q: Comic-Con is all anyone is talking about this week. Why is there no Music-Con?
A: Would that not be wonderful - music fans given the opportunity to interact with the musicians who are important to them and labels providing sneak peeks into what will be coming out over the next several months. But here's the reality: The people who travel to Comic-Con - regardless of whether they are dressed in costume - have a vested interest in character, a story, an artist, etc. It's not all that different than the L.A. Times Book Fair at which zillions of authors display their wares and make contact with readers. The music industry has always enjoyed a buffer between the public and the artist whether it be radio or retail, allowing those gatekeepers to handle the introductions between the creators and those who adore them. Just as the majors have been slow to grasp how to deal with the change in the retail landscape, so, too, have they been slow to to embrace the new generation of third parties who can provide artist access in conunction with their operations.
There is really only one place where passionate music fans can connect with artists in convention setting and that's Fan Fair in Nashville which, like Comic-Con, has grown enormous and been turned into CMA Fest.
The fan-boys have all of their paraphernalia and want to collect more; last I checked, no one has been able to sign a download - and that's the one product labels are most interested in selling. A Music-Con, one that would bring together new and established artists, producers and others who could tell stories - and not just pitch a product or look at a crowd with disdain, would be a welcome addition to the fan world.

Q: If someone is going to a local festival, any idea who they are likley to see?
A: Certainly. After charting out about six festivals occurring between now and the end of Labor Day weekend, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are the act most likely to appear at a festival.Black Keys are also a popular booking on the fest circuit.

Q: When Danger Mouse made the "Gray Album" he was considered something of a genius. When "Crazy" was played every hour on every radio station in America he became a bona-fide genius and Cee-Lo was working his way up the genius ladder, too. Now they're starting a U.S. tour and nobody's talking about them. Why?
A: Danger Mouse - Brian Burton - has become the Eric Mangini of pop music. A year with a winning record and the New York Jets coach is a genius  and making a cameo on "The Sopranos"; the next year he can only win 25% of the games and he's lucky to be the stiff in the first reel on "Law & Order." So Mouse, or Mr. Burton as the New York Times likes to write, is doing things like producing Beck's album and making sure he something to fall back on if the Gnarls thing does not rebound.
Truth be told, in the fickle world of pop music, the Downtown/Atlantic Records team stuck with making "Crazy" the song that everyone everywhere heard and delayed the release of second, third and even fourth singles. They got a little traction with "Gone Baby Gone," but nothing to signal that it was still worth working the first album. Second album gets released and there's no "Crazy," or even a reasonable facsimile. Gnarls Barkley gets labeled a one-song band and is busy playing the Slow Food Nation Festival and being referred to as  "the guys who sing 'Crazy'" rather than a serious band that delivers a fine concert.

Q: What's the deal with the Mr. Burton thing in the New York Times. Why do they always have to use the real names of hip-hop artists?
A: That issue was raised in a rather interesting story by the Columbia Journalism Review. What is more intriguing is that soon after this was written, the Times did a profile of Beck Hansen in which he is never referred to as Mr. Hansen. he is Beck. Nowhere else in the paper is anyone referred to by their first name. Brian Burton is, of course, Mr. Burton; the Ramones were always treated as if that's what it says on their birth certificates.

Q: You are tracking the number of concerts you attend in 2008. What's that number up to?
A: Counting tonight's Diana Ross show at the Hollywood Bowl I will have 52 shows and 156 acts left to see in my quest to hit 100 concerts/300 acts in the year.

Two former members of the Smashing Pumpkins have sued Virgin Records saying their never gave permission to the company to distribute their work digitally and that they have never been compensated for sales to date.
James Iha and Darcy Wretzky filed a lawsuit Thursday in California Supreme Court asking to be compensated for all money generated from various digital deals in addition to damages.
Iha, one of the band's guitarists, and bassist Wretzky allege that when Virgin sought the band's permission to supply digital versions of the Smashing Pumpkins music only group leader Billy Corgan signed an amendment to the band's initial contract. In addition to allowing downloads, Corgan agreed to let Virgin implement a mid-price sales campaign on the Pumpkins' catalog.
They also contend that a royalty payment for digital sales of the band's work was sent to Corgan in 2007 and that they were never compensated. After discovering 100% of the royalties had gone to Corgan, Iha and Wretzky requested copies of digital income statements and never received them,.

Randy Newman played the songs from his upcoming album straight through Wednesday night at Largo at the Coronet, concluding with two short encores. New album, "Harps and Angels," will be released Aug. 5.
The set:
Harps and Angels / Losing You  / Laugh and Be Happy / A Few Words / A Piece of the Pie / Easy Street / Korean Parents / Only a Girl / Potholes / Feels Like Home / You Can Leave Your Hat On / Louisiana 1927 /The World Isn't Fair / I Love L.A.

With Gregg Allman having recovered from Hepatitis C, the Allman Brothers Band have booked two dozen concerts between  Aug. 12 and Oct. 11. Concerts will be a bit of a throwback to the days when the Allmans did shows with the Grateful Dead: Bob Weir and Ratdog are on the bill for the first batch  and Phil Lesh and Friends are on the second leg.
The Aug. 12 gig in Bethel, N.Y. will be with the Dave Matthews Band as well. 
Dates with Ratdog are:
AUGUST
12     Bethel, N.Y.                   Bethel Woods Center
13     Wantagh, N.Y.               Nikon at Jones Beach Theater          
15     Holmdel, N.J.                 PNC Bank Arts Center
16     Mansfield, Mass.              Tweeter Center
19     Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Performing Arts Center
20     Hartford                New England Dodge Music Center
22     Canandaigua, N.Y.       Constellation Brands PAC
23     Camden, N.J.                Susquehanna Bank Center
25     Hershey, Pa.                Hershey Park Pavilion
27     Clarkston, Miss.             DTE Energy Music Theatre
28     Chicago                  Charter One Pavilion
30     Morrison, Colo.              Red Rocks Amphitheatre

SEPTEMBER
26     Fayetteville, Ark.           Bikes Blues and BBQ Festival (no Weir)
27     Robinsonville, Miss.       Horseshoe Casino (no opener)
30     Columbia, Md.             Merriweather Post Pavilion (with Lesh)

OCTOBER
7     Pelham, Ala.                 Verizon Wireless Music Center (with Lesh)
8     Orange Beach, Ala.     The Amph at The Wharf (with Lesh)
10/11  Atlanta                  Chastain Park Amphitheatre  (no opener)
Band is also looking to book gigs on Oct. 1, 3 and 4.

Posted by Matt Kivel

A semi-circle of acoustic guitars surrounded Ray Davies as he took to the stage  with side-guitarist Bill Shanley. The pair plowed through a number of early Kinks tunes, with Shanley improvising loosely. Unfortunately, Shanley’s busy blues solos and subtle harmonies only seemed to distract from the lyrics and core melodies.
There weren’t too many musical surprises — aside from the 1965 raga-inflected“See My Friends” and a brief snippet of the ebullient “Have a Cuppa Tea” — but  Davies’ feistiness and unrelenting sense of humor kept the crowd’s attention and illicited a good deal of participation throughout the evening.
At the Grove Tuesday, Davies performed:

I Need You / Where Have all the Good Times Gone / Till the End of the Day / After the Fall / I’m Not Like Everybody Else / The Tourist / Dedicated Follower of Fashion / Sunny Afternoon / Dead End Street / Ape Man / The Working Man’s Café / The Morphine Song / Hymn For a New Age / Vietnam Cowboys / A Well Respected Man / See My Friends / 20th Century Man / Celluloid Heroes / Tired of Waiting For You / Set Me Free / All Day and All of the Night / Days / Lola

Andrew Barker weighs in the new video of  Young Jeezy featuring Kanye West, "Put On"

Many former drug-dealers have parlayed tales of street hustling into lucrative rap careers, but few have done so with as little insight and wit as Atlanta's Young Jeezy. At best, his songs are insubstantial, socially irresponsible trifles that sound pretty good blasting out of car stereos; at worst, his slow Southern drawl is the sound of intelligence being steadily siphoned from the brain.
By those very specific standards, new single "Put On" ranks among his better works. Though the somber video seems to suggest that Jeezy is turning his sights toward politics, he quickly returns to themes (and for that matter, rhymes) that should sound familiar to anyone who's heard any of his previous records -- all over a serviceable Drumma Boy beat that should go over well on radio.
In other words, all goes according to script until the latter half of the song, when Kanye West shows up. Much like the urge to hop on the disco bandwagon ruined many a promising rock song in the late '70s, here Kanye scuttles a perfectly good guest verse with some of the most inexplicable Auto-Tune abuse yet put to wax. It provokes a strange sort of cognitive dissonance -- his lyrics are surprisingly sad, lamenting his anger and loneliness after the death of his mother, yet every syllable is manipulated to sound like Stephen Hawking on helium. But as off-putting as it is, it's neither monotonous nor predictable, making it the highlight of the tune by default.

Traditionally priced a bit higher than the local retailer - if indeed they exist in your neck of the woods -   Starbucks outlets have begun to clear out their stock of CDs, pushing up sales rise for a number of acts who have been on the charts for awhile.
Historically, Starbucks has prepurchased considerable stock of CDs in what is known as a "one-way," i.e, they cannot be returned to the distributors, so it's either sell or destroy.
The few Starbucks I have visited have scaled down to just four or five discs, the most prominently displayed being John Mellencamp's fine - and finely recorded - "Life, Death, Love & Freedom."  The disc sold 56,000 copies in its first week. It was pushed with a full page color ad in the Sunday New York Times, a media buy that we probably will not be seeing Starbucks repeating in connection with music.
While John is celebrating, so, too might others. Jason Mraz's "We Sing We Dance We Steal Things" sold an extra 4,000 copies in the week. "Flavors of Entanglement" by Alana Morissette, who did a Starbucks exclusive release in the days before those sales appeared in the top 200, was up 3,000 copies. Jakob Dylan's "Seeing Things," a combination Columbia-Starbucks release, rose 52 slots on sales of 9,000, also a 3,000-unit spike.
The coffee company's John Coltrane sampler "Opus" was up 600 units - hey! every little bit helps - to 5,000 cold.Carly Simon's "This Kind of Love" returned to the top 200 on sales of 4,000.

Jeff Beck has cult, Beck Hansen has his and Christophe Beck obviously does too. How else to explain the Sept. 9 release of Beck's music cues from the "Buffy and the Vampire Slayer" TV show - five years after its last episode aired.
Rounder Records has pulled together 29 tracks from seasons 2, 3 and 4 (fall 1997 through spring 2000) of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”  Season 1, pictures, was released in 1999.
Beck, who scored most of the series, mixed and produced the soundtrack. Beck also scored "Once More, With Feeling," the series' musical episode for which the soundtrack has sold more than 200,000 copies.
Track listing is after the jump.

George Clinton celebrated his 67th birthday with P-Funk Allstars performance of Parliament and Funkadelic's best-known songs - "Tear the Roof off the Sucker," "One Nation Under a Groove" -  at the intimate Zune club in L.A. Sly Stone, Freda Payne, John Frusciante and a bevy of photographers were among the party-goers; between the 19-or-so band members and the shutterbugs, there was only limited space for the celebrating horde. Even Sir Nose had no place to dance.
Second floor of the three-story  building was devoted to Clinton's paintings, the best of which are heavily inspired by Basquiat. And bizarrely, cognac can be used to make tasty mojito. 

Neil Young talked with Charlie Rose about composing, marriage to Pegi and the concept of faith. His temple, he says, is the forest.

Columbia Records will release "David Gilmour Live In Gdansk" in five different configurations on Sept. 16.
Set was recorded at the final performance of his 2006 "On An Island" tour, a concert held  in the Gdansk shipyards with an orchestra. Zbigniew Preisner conducted the Baltic Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra at the concert.
The options:
1) 2 CD + 1 concert/documentary DVD and 12-page booklet
2) 2 CD and 12-page booklet
3) 2 CD + 2 DVD and 12-page booklet.Extras DVD includes three unreleased "Barn Jams" and and 5.1 audio version of "On An Island."
4) 3 CD + 2 DVD and 24-page booklet. Extra CD has bonus live tracks.
5) 5 LP Box Set and 20-page booklet, plus web-pass to download the album, features:
The story behind the show: Former president of Poland Lech Walesa and Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz invited Gilmour and his band to perform in commemoration of the 26th anniversary of the founding of the trade union Solidarity.  The concert was titled “It Started in Gdansk – The Space Of Freedom” and was held on Aug. 26, 2006. In 1989, the Solidarity Trade Union toppled the Communist government.
It is the first ever live recording with an orchestra of Pink Floyd’s "High Hopes" and "A Great Day For Freedom."

Sunset Junction, one of the more popular outdoor music festivals in L.A. will be headlined by Cold War Kids, the Black Keys and a slew of R&B performers from the '60s and '70s.
Event takes place Aug. 23 and 24 in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles on two stages, one on Sunset Boulevard between Fountain and Sanborn and another on Santa Monica Boulevard between Hoover and Sanborn.
The 28th annual street fair will also feature the reunited Beachwood Sparks and Broken Social Scene. Among the R&B greats on the bills are Isaac Hayes, who led Brooklyn festival last month, Billy Paul, Jeffrey Osborne, Stephanie Mills and Jeane Carne.
Admission will be $15 in advance and $20 day of show. Schedule is after the jump.

On the face of it, Rick Rubin's idea to have Crosby, Stills & Nash do an album of covers sounds like an "American Idol" for the AARP crowd.
The members of this trio are first and foremost songwriters, and one has to wonder how they might come up with a collection of tunes that won't make them sound like Johnny-Cash-come-latelys.
CSN -and the guy known as Y - were an important act to me in my formative years, so when this news broke I have to admit to being keenly interested. David Crosby, Graham Nash and Stephen Stills qualify for Social Security right now so I am guessing they want to mix the old with the new, displaying how older material can be relevant and how the old guys can interpret the new stuff. All the songs are by well-known acts they have said.
Their unreleased version of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin" made it onto the reissue of their debut album so I am guessing that's out for the Rubin album. Otherwise the songs I'd like to see them tackle are:

Coldplay "Yellow"
Los Lobos - "Angels With Dirty Faces"
Bob Dylan - "Simple Twist of Fate"/"Mr. Tambourine Man"/"The Mighty Quinn"
Tom Petty - "Crawling Back to You"/"Mary Jane's Last Dance"
Elton John - "Come Down in Time"
John Legend - "Save Me"
Bruce Springsteen - "If I Should Fall Behind"
Oasis - "Wonderwall"
Jayhawks - "Blue"/"Waiting for the Sun"
Pink Floyd - "Wish You Were Here"
Paul Simon - "Old Friends"/"Graceland"
U2 - "Where the Streets Have No Name"
Ryan Adams - "When the Stars Go Blue"
Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Dani California"
Buddy Holly -"Everyday"

Only made it out see three shows last week taking my quest to hit 100 shows and see 300 artists in 2008 down to 59 and 165.
Meanwhile, on the stereo
Home: Jason Reeves "The Magnificent Adventures of Heartache"; the Moody Blues; "Elton John"; Benji Hughes "A Love Extreme"; John Mellencamp "Life, Death, Love and Freedom"; Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis "Two Men With the Blues; Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore"
Car: Peter Salett "In the Ocean of the Stars"; Eric Hutchinson; the Moody Blues' "Days of Future Passed"

By Daniel Frankel

Paul McCartney is looking to work it out with Quebec nationalists who don’t want the non-French-speaker to perform in Quebec City to help celebrate the locale’s 400th anniversary Sunday.
The kerfuffle made front-page news in the local Globe-Mail newspaper Friday, with McCartney responding to a protest petition launched by Quebec painter Luc Archambault.
The painter had called for the former Beatle to “inform about the situation in which we (francophones) live in Quebec” during his free concert in front of some 200,000 Sunday. A number of Quebec nationalists have voiced concern regarding the presence of McCartney’s English lyrics at the celebration.
“Come on Quebeckians (sic), love me, baby,” McCartney told the paper, adding he doesn’t feel informed enough to make such a political statement.
“I’m not that fluent, but I love speaking French,” McCartney added. “If anything, most English people learn French in school. If they are going to learn a language, it’s French. In my school, it was weird, because I learned Spanish and German. I never learned French in school… so yes, I’ll be looking to speak a bit of French.”

Upon release in the 1960s and early '70s, every Moody Blues album had a song that made you take notice. Arty and orchestral, the Moody Blues had a sound like no other act beaming through the FM, they served as a link between the Beatles  and the progressive Brits of the '70s such as Pink Floyd. Lyrically thy connected with the love crowd while musically dabbling in a realm separate from most of pop music.
Significantly, they somehow managed to limit the number of times they went over the top.
Like other British acts of the day, Kinks and the Who most notably, they were rooted in American R&B and needed to develop a unique sound to garner attention. They scored a hit single, “Go Now,” made key changes in personnel and then flourished in an art-rock realm that had no predecessors.
They were a consummate album act, releasing only one or two singles per album. They had a minor masterpiece in “Days of Future Passed,” which features the gorgeous “Tuesday Afternoon” and the majestic “Nights in White Satin,” and the ambitiousness of the recording remains visceral 40 years later. (The spoken parts are a bit dated, but so be it).
The Moody Blues catalog of seven albums released between November 1967 and November 1972 was reissued this week by Universal Music. It struck me that they deserve a new appraisal, a look through the prism of 2008, a time when the orchestrated music of the Moody Blues  is something of a blueprint for music back in favor.
About 15 years ago, I reviewed for the L.A. Times one of their shows in which they were backed by an orchestra and playing all of “Days” plus the hits. Overall experience was not as good as it could have been, a result of song selection, performance and songwriting. The editor suggested that I make it about the material and note that their material is not on the level of Lennon-McCartney. Then again, whose is?
After spending a week of listening to the Moody Blues, here are my observations.

ALBUM: Days of Future Passed
DETAILS: Released in November 1967, it entered the album chart in May 1968 and hit No. 3 in 1972 after "Nights in White Satin" was released as a single.
THE HIT: "Nights in White Satin"
BONUS TRACKS:  A BBC version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"; five singles from the year preceding the album's release; and four alternate versions
MUSICAL REVELATION: "Peak Hour."
LINER NOTES REVELATION: Initial concept was a rock version of Dvorak's Ninth Symphony
ALL MUSIC GUIDE REVIEW: “Refreshingly original …  sandwiched among the playful lyricism of "Another Morning" and the mysticism of "The Sunset," songs like "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Twilight Time"  were pounding rockers within the British psychedelic milieu, and the harmony singing (another new attribute for the group) made the band's sound unique.” Four and a half stars (out of five).
NEW OVERVIEW: A remarkable mixture of classical and Broadway overtures, the song cycle about the periods in a day only sounds dated in the spoken word mumbo-jumbo. "Tuesday Afternoon" is the most resilient song in their catalog, never losing its luster over the last 40 years.   

How much power can an email have?
Quite a bit, especially when it affects the livelihood of a jazz musician, Henry Grimes and his wife Margaret Davis Grimes are learning. The music community, and it probably extends to all arts, want to see the overlooked and undercompensated given a fair shake and treated properly. We saw it play out internationally with John Lee Hooker and dozens of other musicians on smaller scales.
The re-emergence of the great jazz bassist Henry Grimes, 70, is nothing short of miraculous. In the last five years, this legend of 1960s free jazz has gone from living in a one-room apartment in Los Angeles far removed from music to an in-demand player based in New York. His return, sprung from the gift of a double bass from William Parker, has led to a string of activity, much of it on the East Coast and in Europe. He has been performing with Marc Ribot, Dave Douglas, Rosewell Rudd and others.
What Devendra Banhart did for Vashti Bunyan, William Parker has done for Henry Grimes, who has a record being released this week, “Going to the Ritual” on Porter Records.
Grimes' wife sent out an email alerting fans to two upcoming gigs with the Symphony for Improvisers Double Quartet (Dave Douglas w/ J.D. Allen, Henry Grimes, and Andrew Cyrille; and Roy Campbell, Jr. w/ Mixashawn, Hilliard Greene, and Hamid Drake) performing Aug. 24 in Saalfelden, Austria, and Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy,on Aug. 28.
She included a PS mentioning the re-release of "The Call," noting that Grimes was paid $10 for the recording and has not received a cent from Stollman or ESP since. Henry, she wrote, is owed 40 years of royalties. She's hoping attorneys who are fans will help her with her cause and that fans, she wrote, "if you feel you must buy this re-release, please contact musicmargaret@earthlink.net to arrange to send Henry Grimes some money for your purchase." 
ESP has sprung into action. The label's general manager, Tom Abbs, contacted Ms. Grimes, telling her Henry would receive everything he is owed.
They will have to move quickly  to remove the scars of the last 40 years, but a few checks to Grimes and other musicians from Stollman would go a long way toward patching up the label's problematic past.
"Just in case there is actually something new under the sun, I'm discussing things with Tom at ESP now, and this may or may not lead to something good for Henry," she writes.
"The Call" was recorded by ESP and released in 1965. It is a beauty, a trio recording rich with a multitude of colors and moods. Listen to it and you want more, especially if your tastes run toward Albert Ayler or Don Cherry, two other artists who recorded for ESP.
Grimes is actively looking for bookings and residencies. He has continued to lead several of his own groups, and has played, toured, and/or recorded with Rashied Ali, Marshall Allen, Fred Anderson, Marilyn Crispell, Ted Curson, Andrew Cyrille, David Murray, Cecil Taylor and others.
In addition, he has published a book of his poetry, "Signs Along the Road."

Rhino will release on Sept. 23 the four albums the Replacements made for Sire in the '80s and '90s. All are expanded editions.
"Tim," "Pleased to Meet Me," "Don't Tell a Soul" and "All Shook Down" and the band's four Twin Tone releases will be made available digitally at all download stores the same day.
Peter Jesperson, the band's longtime manager, produced the deluxe editions.
Since any right-thinking rock fan will remember the thrill of securing those albums, let's dive in to the bonus material.
"Tim," known for "Kiss Me On The Bus," "Left Of The Dial" and "Bastards Of Young," will include  "Nowhere Is My Home" and electric and acoustic versions of "Can't Hardly Wait."
"Please to Meet Me," with "Alex Chilton" and "Skyway," will have 11 bonus tracks including  unreleased demos ("Birthday Gal," "Valentine," "Bundle Up"), two covers ("Route 66," "Tossin' 'N' Turnin'") and a rarity ("Election Day") and alternate versions of album tracks ("Can't Hardly Wait," "Alex Chilton"). 
"Don't Tell a Soul," which featured their highest charting single "I'll Be You," has eight bonus tracks, among them "Portland" and "Wake Up" which were released on the 1997 compilation "All For Nothing/Nothing For All." Also included is "Date To Church," the B-side to "I'll Be You" with Tom Waits, a cover of Slade's "Gudbuy T' Jane."
"All Shook Down," which some of us contend is the first Paul Westerberg solo album, will be enhanced with 11 bonus tracks: eight unreleased demos, non-album track "Tiny Paper Plane" and the  three tracks were previously issued on the 1991 promotional EP "Don't Sell Or Buy, It's Crap."

Two songs from the Flight of the Conchords are up for Emmy consideration, "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)" and "Inner City Pressure." But they have a tough battle ahead as Sarah Silverman's Internet hit "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" is a contender in the category, too, and devious-minded voters may prefer watching a presenter work their way around a vulgarity, not to mention a reunion of the freshly split Silverman and Jimmy Kimmel.
"Beautiful Girl" has the classic lines suggesting she could be a high-class prostitute or a part-time model;  in "Inner City," they observe: "When you're unemployed, there's no vacation/No one cares, no one sympathizes/You just stay home and play synthesizers.
The other nominees are "I ain't got no Rhythm" from "Disney Phineas and Ferb" and the MADtv tune "Sad Fitty Cent."
Other nominees from the pop and rock world include the rapper Everlast, James Taylor and Eric Clapton, whose "Crossroads Guitar Festival" is in a category by itself. The show can actually lose to no one as the the Emmy voters still have to give a thumbs up to giving the program a trophy.
Other Emmy nominations include,
The themes: Tree Adams' "Canterbury's Law," Carl Hill Williams, Michael Walker and Michael Culross Jr.'s "Phineas and Ferb," Jeff Lippencott and Mark T. Williams' "Kid Nation," Russ Landau's "Pirate Master" and Eric "Everlast" Schrody's "Saving Grace."
Series score: Ronald Neal Jones ("Family Guy"); John Ehrlich and Jason Derlatka ("House"), Joey Newman (Little People, Big World), Michael Giacchino ("Lost"), Alf Clausen ("The Simpsons").
Score for a miniseries, movie or special: Alex Wurman ("Bernard and Doris"),
Jeff Beal ("The Company"), Rob Lane ("John Adams"), Laura Karpman ("Masters of Science Fiction: Jerry was a Man"), Lennie Niehaus ("Mitch Albom's For One Day"), Martin Phipps ("Sense & Sensibility").
"James Taylor: One Man Band (Great Performances)" is up for Variety, Music or Comedy Special.
"Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival Chicago" (Great Performances) is up for Special Class Program - Not Exclusively made for Television Variety, Music, Comedy Event Programs.

Monterey Jazz Festival Records has come up with six titles for its second round of releases of concert recordings.The releases are slated for Aug. 5.
Four are year-specific recordings: Art Blakey and the Giants of Jazz/1972; Shirley Horn/1994; Tito Puente & His Orchestra/1977; and Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Robben Ford/1972. Two “best of” recordings are Dave Brubeck "50 Years of Dave Brubeck: Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-2007" and Cal Tjader "The Best of Cal Tjader, Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival, 1958-1980."
Interesting tidbits: The  Blakey album includes Thelonious Monk on piano; among the performers with Brubeck are, of course, Paul Desmond on alto but also Gerry Mulligan on baritone saxophone; Puente performs with a 15-piece orchestra; and the Witherspoon disc includes a bonus track with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster from 1959.
At the 51st Monterey Jazz Fest in September, the Cuban flutist and singer Orlando “Maraca” Valle is slated to record a CD with special guests David Sánchez, Miguel Zenón, Ed Simon, Murray Low, John Benitez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez and the Monterey Jazz Festival Chamber Orchestra.

A recording of the Buena Vista Social Club's Carnegie Hall concert 10 years ago will be released by World Circuit/Nonesuch this fall.
The concert was a key part of Wim Wenders' 1999 documentary on the Cuban musicians brought together by Ry Cooder in Havana.
Included on the two-CD set are performances by Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Ruben González, Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Cachaíto López and Guajiro Mirabal, musicians who were able to parlay the BVSC exposure into solo careers.
The Carnegie Hall recording of “Chan Chan” is being previewed at iTunes.

THE GAMBIT is simple yet extraordinary: a superhero without a theme song.
Say Batman, Superman, Indiana Jones -- the list goes on -- and a theme clicks in. Hear a theme, and the mind plays the visual. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard have tossed that tradition out the window for "The Dark Knight": Batman gets two notes. The Joker, only one.
It's a radical concept for a film score, a technique more likely to be found in a Wagner opera. Those notes do not sit alone or on top of a brash comicbook score either. This is a score inspired by minimalism, repeated motifs that echo the work of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" and Philip Glass.
A Joker-like smile came over Zimmer's face as he talked about his favorite aspects of the score, a feeling that he has achieved some sort of mischievous goal.
"It's odd to put avant garde touches on a blockbuster," he said. "It's tremendously enjoyable in an obsessive way. Once we stepped away from supplying a hero's theme, we spent most of our time getting rid of notes."
ZIMMER, HOWARD and director Christopher Nolan worked together on the score for 2005's "Batman Begins." At that time, the idea of a jointly composed score by two of Hollywood's most sought-after composers seemed like pure novelty. "Dark Knight" is hardly an encore -- Zimmer and Howard gave Nolan an iPod filled with 10 hours of music cues based on just the script, which Zimmer contends the director memorized on flights to and from Hong Kong.
The score, which includes pieces composed prior to filming, has elements culled from Bach and hard rock in addition to the minimalists, and, listened to on its own, manages to get the heart palpitating.
The opening extends a full nine minutes and Zimmer swears it's only two notes. "It was like an exercise. One tempo, two notes -- what can you do with it?"
For the previous "Batman" film, Howard and Zimmer took a collaborative approach in which each would work on the same pieces to the point that today they can't fully recall exactly who did what. The result, the composers agree, was that the "Batman Begins" score was textural.
"The Dark Knight," in which the driving force behind the score was to heighten the sense of reality in the film, saw the work divvied between the two, with Howard given the task of creating musical portraits for the Joker and district attorney Harvey Dent.
Howard shaped Dent with elements of Americana, emphasizing brass on the high end and the low end. The Joker, he said, was the most fragile music in the score.
"The emotional extreme could not be much greater," Howard said. "Hans called me and asked how we would show that morally he is completely corrupted. The idea was to use the brass. It seemed like a good way to go, but it's so different from the rest of the movie. We took it and twisted it as the character loses ground. Harvey Dent is the emotional arc of the film."
"THE DARK KNIGHT" is filled with weighty issues -- justice, power, corruption, anarchy and heroes -- and the two composers sought to parallel its otherworldliness with sonic landscape of electronics and orchestra. Recording a perfect hit on a drum, for example, became a starting point for several moments in the highly percussive score. Nearly every note, Zimmer said, has been manipulated, from the corroding of piano sounds to the layering of horns.
"We come from rock 'n' roll and think in terms of record production, not just putting mics up," Zimmer said, seated in the living room of his studio complex in Santa Monica, which is coincidentally designed in the red velvets and dark wood of Wayne manor.
The score was recorded at George Martin's Air Studios in London, and Zimmer swears geography and architecture -- brass sections were recorded in a church loft -- play as big a role as the notes on the sheet music.
With the sound designers, Howard said of its uniqueness, "We created a world from the left corner of the screen to the right rear of the theater. Every movie you score you hope is unlike anything you have done before. You are always trying to not sound like yourself. The vocabulary for this score, we really sweated over. It sounds simple but there were hundreds of choices."
Even though score-based soundtracks generally struggle in the marketplace, Warner Bros. Records is releasing the score album todayin four different configurations: a standard jewel case CD; a two-LP set; a special edition digipack and a collector's edition with special artwork. The film opens Friday.

--Phil Gallo

Watch James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer performing the 'Dark Knight' score at the film's N.Y. premiere. (below)

Fender's electric guitar that lingered in the shadow of the Strat and the Telecaster, the Jazzmaster, turns 50 this year.
Thurston Moore, J Mascis, Nels Cline, Tom Verlaine  and others will fete the Fender's Jazzmaster guitar with a concert on Sept. 12 at New York’s Knitting Factory. The anniversary will also be celebrated with new and historic Fender guitar displays as well as a Jazzmaster guitar giveaway.
"Under the radar, it became an underground icon in its own right and more than worthy of its own time in the spotlight," Justin Norvell, Fender marketing director for electric guitars, said in a statement."The artists who played it then and play it now are some of the musical prime movers who’ve kept the guitar relevant and have pushed it forward sonically.” 
The Jazzmaster has had roles in the birth of surf, punk, new wave, goth and grunge. Fender recently introduced three new models: the J Mascis Jazzmaster, the Elvis Costello Jazzmaster and the Classic Player Jazzmaster Special.
Fender introduced the Jazzmaster guitar in 1958 as a high-end alternative to the Telecaster and Stratocaster. With an abundance of controls and chrome, the Jazzmaster became an unexpected hit with young players.

Coldplay played the first official gig of their 2008 tour on July 14 at the Forum in Inglewood. The minimal stage show had a few cool effects: A large ball hanging at about mid-court contained live video images of the band; a giant backdrop switched late in the show from the "Viva la Vida" album cover to b&w live footage of the band; and a gazillion pieces of confetti shaped like butterflies filled the air for what seemed like  five minutes. (Photo is from the free London show; Chris Martin wore the same outfit at the Forum).
A couple of songs were done at the end of a ramp in the middle of the crowd jutting out from stage left. But the best moment was when the band ran from the stage into the farthest aisle in the Forum and performed "Yellow." Material is lacking cohesion and early on it feels like a hit parade; they need to experiment with the set list a bit. The review is here. On Monday they played ("Chinese Sleep Chant" is a guess):

Life in Technicolor / Violet Hill / Clocks / In My Place / Viva la Vida /  42 / Yes / The Scientist / Chinese Sleep Chant / God Put a Smile Upon Your Face / Square One / Speed of Sound / Trouble / Lost / Strawberry Swing / Yellow / Death Will Never Conquer / I'll Fix You / Lovers in Japan > Reign of Love / Death and All His Friends 

THE WHO HAS ANNOUNCED MORE FALL TOUR DATES:

Oct. 21 Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit
Oct. 22 Copps Coliseum, Hamilton, Ontario
Oct. 24 TD Banknorth Garden, Boston
Oct. 26 Wachovia Center, Philadelphia
Oct. 28 Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Conn.
Oct. 29 Izod Center, East Rutherford, NJ
Oct. 31 The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ
Nov. 3 Verizon Center, Washington, DC
plus the previously announced

Nov. 8 & 9 Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles

Rhino Records has inked Sept. 30 as the date of release for  a 2-CD/1-DVD set of highlights from the Dead's shows Sept. 14-16, 1978 at the Gizah Sound and Light Theater.
Rhino's press release reads: In the fall of 1978, author and counterculture icon Ken Kesey reported to a close friend that he had recently witnessed "the latest Rocking of the Cradle of Civilization." The course of events that he went on to recall was the Grateful Dead's assorted family, friends and fellow Pranksters--"Pyramidiots" of various origins--descent upon Egypt's Nile Valley that culminated in three legendary concerts performed at the foot of the Great Pyramid in Gizah. Although perhaps unintentionally, the entire adventure might have been easily seen, as Kesey did, as one very special contribution to the then-critical Middle Eastern peace effort. To commemorate the 30-year anniversary of this cosmic convergence of sound and sphinx, Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino will release "Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978," a collection of highlights from this historic three-night stand.
Track Listing

Disc 1
1. "Jack Straw"
2. "Row Jimmy"
3. "New, Minglewood Blues"
4. "Candyman"
5. "Looks Like Rain"
6. "Stagger Lee"
7. "I Need A Miracle"
8. "It's All Over Now"
9. "Deal"

Disc 2
1. "Ollin Arageed"
2. "Fire On The Mountain"
3. "Iko Iko"
4. "Shakedown Street"
5. "Drums"
6. "Space"
7. "Truckin'"
8. "Stella Blue"
9. "Around And Around"

DVD
Track Listing
1. "Bertha"
2. "Good Lovin'"
3. "Row Jimmy"
4. "New, Minglewood Blues"
5. "Candyman"
6. "Looks Like Rain"
7. "Deal"
8. "Ollin Arageed"
9. "Fire On The Mountain"
10. "Iko Iko"
11. "I Need A Miracle"
12. "It's All Over Now"
13. "Truckin'"
Featurette: "The Vacation Tapes"

Dead.net Exclusive Bonus CD
1. "Bertha"
2. "Good Lovin'"
3. "El Paso"
4. "Ramble On Rose"
5. "Estimated Prophet"
6. "Eyes Of The World"
7. "Terrapin Station"
8. "Sugar Magnolia"

Death Row Records has been auctioned for $24 million.
New York-based Global Music Group told the Associated Press that it had purchased Death Row, its enviable catalog and current artist contracts.
The hip-hop label released major rap albums by Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
Global Music CEO Anthony Davi Jr. told the AP that the label planned to get "the best economic results of the catalog and provide long term stewardship of the artists' work."

The film that was blocked by Yoko Ono's lawsuit over its inclusion of John Lennon's Imagine" will receive a theatrical re-release this summer.
"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a documentary exploring one  the argument over where and how life began, is being made available to any group that could bring the film to a local theater. Producers are working  with the film's distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures hoping to get the film seen by groups of 250-300 people at a cost as low as $6 per ticket.
The film earned nearly $8 million during its initial run before the lawsuit took it out of theaters.Film stars author/actor/economist Ben Stein.
Shortly after the film's release, Ono filed a suit against the film's producers, Premise Media seeking damages for copyright infringement because the song had not been licensed for use in the film. On May 19, the parties agreed to a voluntary temporary restraining order while they awaited Manhattan U.S. District Court Judge Sydney H. Stein's ruling on Ono's motion to enjoin the showing and distribution of the film. The restraining order prevented the producers from making additional copies of the film for distribution. On June 2, Stein denied the injunction and noted that Premise Media was likely to succeed on its fair use defense.

To celebrate opening night of their tour, Coldplay is offering a free download on their website. "Death Will Never Conquer" is the one minute, 16 seconds track, which the band writes "you'll hear it at the concerts with a twist..."
Will Champion sang the tune at their free show at Madison Square Garden last month. Meanwhile, one of the band's roadies blogs about setting up in L.A.

The front row - not the place Bob Uecker used to sit in his Miller Lite ads but the chair that puts the patron against the stage with no one other than the occasional security guard or photographer to get in the way.
Despite having been to at least a thousand concerts, the shows at which I had front row seats are easy to tally. There have been five of them: Rickie Lee Jones at the Tower in Philadelphia in 1979; Lucero, the singer from Mexico, at Universal Amphitheater in 1996; Tom Waits at the Wiltern in '99; Bruce Springsteen at Pantages on the "Devils & Dust" tour; and American Idols Live at Staples Center last week.
Great as it was to see Springsteen and Waits in that proximity, it's an odd sensation sitting that close, craning your neck and trying to digest all the activity, especially at a show that iinvolves a fari amount of movement. It's better than being at the back of the arena  - I know from experience - but neither position makes it easy to properly critique a show. With the 10 "AI" finalists pacing back and forth across the stage, my view was either so close I could read brand names on their jeans or else partially blocked and half a basketball court away disconnecting our micro-section from the rest of the show. The good news was that it was never very loud though I was rather shocked the audience felt little need to get out of their seats.
Not to complain about a frotn row ticket but placement of critics, one would think, would be important to artists, labels and promoters -  and there are plenty who understand that. (As a person who also covers legit theater, I am almost always placed in the same seats every time I go see a musical, play or opera. That sort of consistency is almost unheard of in the concert industry).
Since there are venues that consistently place critics within the first 20 rows and on aisles, it's bizarre to be placed in a seat with neither good sound nor sight lines; if one is in a row with a group of critics it's easy to shrug your shoulders and figure that's what management wanted. When you're alone, though, you half wonder what you have done wrong to deserve this sort of treatment.
Anyone who is interested in doing the job just wants to be treated consistently. I admit that my appreciation of the Greek, Royce Hall at UCLA and the new Nokia come from being seated in spots where the sound is great; while I am never extremely close at the Hollywood Bowl or Walt Disney Concert Hall, I am always close enough to get a good sense of how an act sounds. Other venues are a crap shoot.   
People complain that the media gets the best seats but that's a bit of hogwash: Agents and managers and their friends are in the best seats in the house - ANY house.
The front row was interesting for a night, but I long to be back on the side, one section removed from the lip of the stags, about half way up from the floor. That's a dream seat in an arena - and there's probably agent sitting in it.

Only made it out see the Idol show this week taking my quest to hit 100 shows and see 300 artists in 2008 down to 62 and 169.
Meanwhile, on the stereo
At home: David Bowie "Live Sana Monica '72"; Wynton Marsalis & Willie Nelson "Two Men With the Blues"; Various artists "Nuggets"; Baseball Project "Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails"; Princeton "Bloomsbury"; Bob James "Explosions"; Los Lonely Boys "Fragile"; Roedelius "Inlandish"; Graham Nash "Songs for Beginners"; Kluster "Volcano"; Jenny Scheinman; Holy Modal Rounders "Indian War Whoop"; John Martyn "Live at Leeds and More"; Thelonious Monk "Mulligan Meets Monk"
In the car: Beck "Modern Guilt"; "The Dark Knight" original score; John Mellencamp "Life Death Love and Freedom"; Henry Grimes "The Call"

Taking a page out of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers playbook, the Who will follow-up a significant television appearance with the announcement of a tour and on-sale dates for tickets.
The Who will tour the U.S. in the fall but are only initially announcing two dates -- Nov. 8 and 9 at the 7,100-seat Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. (It's a guess but the last time they did an official show in L.A. at a venue of less than 10,00 seats was probably the "Who's Next" show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in the early 1970s).
Tickets for fan club members go on sale Monday. The Who and a collection of bands that look up to Pete Townshend and his gang will perform Saturday at Pauley Pavilion at the VH1 Rock Honors concert that is being televised by the cabler.
Petty and the Heartbreakers put tickets onsale for their summer tour the day after they appeared on the Super Bowl.

Pollstar has released its midyear report on concert grosses with two New Jersey acts, Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street band, leading the way.
Bon Jovi has pulled in $56.3 million on its well-received North American tour and the second leg of Springsteen's "Magic" tour has grossed $40.8 million.
Van Halen, Kenny Chesney, Michael Buble, Kanye West and the double bill of Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige all land between $36.8 million and $30.7 million.
Now that the big guns are out of the way, let's examine the rest of the tote board.

REUNION MANIA: After Van Halen, we have Spice Girls and the Police (both at $23.3 million); the Eagles ($15.8 million); Stone Temple Pilots ($5.2 million); and Duran Duran ($4.5 million). 

GENRE BREAKDOWN:  Veteran rockers (24); country (12); Spanish-language (eight, led by Juanes at $9.7 million); R&B/Hip-hop (six);  Christian (three, topped by Casting Crowns at $6.3 million).

CELINE'S VEGAS REPLACEMENTS: Bette Midler's show has earned $14.8 million; Cher has drawn $10.3 million.

WHO NEEDS 4? THE KID SHOWS: The "double bill" of the real Miley Cyrus and the fictional Hannah Montana pulled in $17.1 million. The Jonas Brothers grossed $12.6 million.

NON-CONCERT  LIVE ENTERTAINMENT:   Five shows in the top 10 led by "Riverdance" at $17.9 million. "Dancing With the Stars" has pulled in $12.6 million.

TRIBUTE BANDS: The grand total of one made it into the list, Rain - the Beatles Experience, grossing $4.6 million.

FIVE SHOWS, TWO DAYS, ONE CITY: Garth Brooks grossed $3.8 million doing a benefit for firefighters, which landed him at No. 89.

WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH CONCERT GROSSES?: Jerry Seinfeld was the last of six comedians to make the list, pulling $3.7 million. Top-selling funnyman was Katt Williams at $16 million.

RUSH: The Canadian trio grossed $18.3 million. They are No. 12 on the list. (Last time I reported on Pollstar's list several e-mailers wondered why Rush was not on the list. The reason was a lack of North American  shows. Now they have done enough to rank high.)

MORE CANADIANS: Anne Murray ($4.7 million); Blue Rodeo ($4.2 million); Leonard Cohen ($3.7 million). Neil Young is not on the list.

Speaking of live albums, "CSNY: Déjà Vu Live," a 16 track audio companion to the documentary "CSNY: Déjà Vu," will be released by Reprise Records on July 22.
The performances are presented as they happened, with no overdubs.The only studio recording is a 100 voice choir that was recorded prior to the tour at Capitol Records Studios in Hollywood.  Concert audiences heard the choir’s performance piped into concert venues.
CSNY: Déjà Vu Live track listing (song writers)
1.  What Are The Names (David Crosby)
2.  Living With War Theme (Neil Young)
3.  After The Garden (Neil Young)
4.  Military Madness (Graham Nash)
5.  Let's Impeach The President (Neil Young)
6.  Déjà Vu (David Crosby)
7.  Shock and Awe (Neil Young)
8.  Families (Neil Young)
9.  Wooden Ships (David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Paul Kantner)
10.  Looking For A Leader (Neil Young)
11.  For What Its Worth (Stephen Stills, Richard Furay)
12.  Living With War (Neil Young)
13.  Roger And Out (Neil Young)
14.  Find The Cost of Freedom (Stephen Stills)
15.  Teach Your Children (Graham Nash)
16. Living With War Theme (Neil Young)

Recent laments about the demise of the live recording struck a true and heartfelt nerve in we old-timers who grew up on the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, Bowie's "David Live," Van Morrison's "It's Too Late to Stop Now" and others '60s and '70s artifacts. But those born after "Frampton Comes Alive" appear to have less of an affinity for a document of a live performance.
It owes, in many ways, to live albums no longer possessing the sound of  a room, an act firing on all cylinders and an audience's acceptance of alterations to recorded versions of better-known songs. "Live" albums, which can be used by an artist as a bargaining chit to negotiate their way out of deal, have a tendency to be reasonable facsimiles of a performance. The artists and producers take the tapes into studios and tweak away, adding new parts, adjusting voices and volumes and ultimately make the discs sound like they were recorded within a controlled environment.
It's a lot like wine: When a label reads California Cabernet Sauvignon it means at least 75% of the grapes fit that description. "Live," these days, also tends to refer to a percentage unless the disc is coming from an act that prides itself on its concerts, like Dave Matthews Band or Pearl Jam. Besides, if a concert is little more than triggering pre-recorded bits is it really worth documenting in the first place? Madonna has a live album, for example. Why?
Two exceptions to rule have been released this month, coincidentally by EMI labels, David Bowie "Live Santa Monica '72" (Virgin) and Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis "Two Men With the Blues" (Blue Note). Both have received impressive reviews, the Bowie at Pitchfork and Wynton 'n' Willie at the New York Times.
One layer that neither review gets into is precisely how the two recordings reveal the settings. Bowie's show is raw and energetic, the pieces not quite smoothly integrated and the sound ricochets up and down the dB meter - a typical occurrence at the Santa Monica Civic which seemed rundown even back then. Taken from a radio broadcast on the great KMET in its pre-metal heyday (B. Mitchell Reed, Shadoe Stevens, Stephen Clean and Jimmy Rabbit were your DJs), this is Bowie birthing the concept of Ziggy Stardust as well as glam-rock itself in front of an audience that was the polar opposite of Southern California's homegrown scene. That sense of daring permeates this performance - there's a clear contrast between the still unformed "Life on Mars?" and the easier-going "Space Oddity," to note but one distinction between what was then new or old.
The Nelson-Marsalis disc was recorded in January 2007 at  the 427-seat Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. The three venues at J@LC - there is also a concert hall and a club - defy logic in how good they sound. The Allen and Dizzy's Club have floor to ceiling glass backdrops, the Rose Theater fans out in a way that would appear to create balance issues for listeners. The truth is that you can't find three better rooms in the U.S. and the polish of the intimate Allen Room is a perfect canvas for those two men with the blues.
"Two Men" reveals a waltz through blues, jazz and country styles that abutted one another from the 1920s through the '60s with Marsalis echoing Louis Armstrong, the band echoing Louis Jordan and Nelson being a smooth iconoclast. I have visited the Lincoln Center venues annually since they opened; this is not so much a document of a magical night, but business as usual at those wondrous concert halls.
Wynton and Willie reprised that show Wednesday at the Hollywood Bowl.       

While Nickelback was inking its almost 360 deal, former Epic act and bubble residents Cartel were inking a similar deal with Wind-Up Entertainment.
Wind-Up will release the band’s future recordings and handle all Cartel merchandise; they have also entered an agreement with Wind-up Artist Development Corp.
Cartel is working on the repertoire for their third album and will enter the studio soon. The first Wind-Up release is planned for early next year.  Cartel will co-headline the Crocs Next Step Campus Tour that runs Aug. 29 through Sept. 26 with Yung Joc.
"We believe that bands like Cartel, and deals like this, are the future of this business," Wind-up Entertainment president Ed Vetri said in a statement.
In May of last year, the members of Cartel moved into a see-through bubble off a New York City pier as part of stunt that was televised on MTV.

Posted by Andrew Barker

Opening with a four song block from his 1980 LP "Hotter Than July," Stevie Wonder kept things seasonally appropriate Monday night. Backed by an ultra-proficient band (at times almost too proficient, leaning toward fusion when they should have been bringing the funk), Stevie was in near-perfect form throughout, even keeping his legendarily discursive stage banter snappy.
Among the revelations: Stevie has two records in the works (one a tribute to his late mother, "The Gospel Inspired by Lula"), he still supports Barack Obama, and his twentysomething son isn't above using "Ribbon in the Sky" to try to get fresh with the ladies.
At the Hollywood Bowl Monday he performed:
As If You Read My Mind / Master Blaster (Jammin’) / All I Do / Rocket Love / Knocks Me Off My Feet / (Jam) / Higher Ground / Spain (band solos) / Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing / If It’s Magic / Living for the City / Golden Lady / Keep Fooling Yourself Baby Girl (new song) / I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life (sung by Aisha Morris) / Isn't She Lovely / Ribbon in the Sky / Overjoyed / My Cherie Amour / Signed, Sealed, Delivered / Sir Duke / I Wish / Do I Do / You Are the Sunshine of My Life / I Just Called to Say I Love You / Superstition

On Sept. 9, Calexico drops its new album "Carried To Dust" on Quarterstick Records. Most of the album was born out of collaborative sessions with the stellar lineup used on 2003's "Feast of Wire" -- Joey Burns, John Convertino, Jacob Valenzuela, Martin Wenk, Paul Niehaus and Volker Zander.  Sam Beam of Iron and Wine guests as well.
Below is a video trailer for the new album ... the music sounds gorgeous as usual -- each instrument seems to resonate with an aching beauty that attests to Burns and Convertino's prowess, not only composers, but as fluent record producers. These guys just flat out know how to make great-sounding records.

"Carried To Dust" trailer (tour dates are after the jump):